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Impact of the EU Accession Conditionality on Patterns of Engaging Civil Society in Policy Making Processes

New instruments used within the EU enlargement policy enable more structured approach to measuring the progress of candidate countries in improving State-civil society relations, as one of important political criteria in the EU accession process. This paper seeks to assess the extent to which the EU conditionality influences the patterns of engaging civil society in shaping public policies in Western Balkans countries. Reforms of public consultations practices and quality of policy dialogue with civil society have been increasingly integrated into indicators for monitoring the public administration reform in candidate and potential candidate countries, and often combined with strict conditionality for EU direct sector budget support. However, the effects of these new forms of EU conditionality have been quite diverse in Western Balkans countries. By exploring how different mechanisms of EU conditionality affect the patterns of policy engagement of CSOs in Serbia and Montenegro as the only two Western Balkans countries which started the EU accession negotiations, this papers aims to clarify the conceptual framework for analysing policy engagement of CSOs in the specific EU pre-accession context, abut also provide impetus to better understanding of Europeanization effects on participatory governance reforms in candidate and potential candidate countries.

EU enlargement ; Civil Society ; Policy-Making ; Participatory Governance

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