The Europeanization of Eastern Europe: the external incentives model revisited

The External Incentives Model (EIM) was designed to explain the Europeanization of the Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) through the EU’s accession conditionality. This article asks how relevant the model remains beyond its original context. We examine recent data and research on the EU’s impact in two additional contexts: post-accession developments in the CEECs and the Southeast European countries currently in the accession process. We find that the model generally accounts well for the variation in Europeanization across domains and countries. More specifically, the credibility of incentives stands out as a crucial condition for the success of EU conditionality. At the same time, we note omissions and limitations of the original model: first, the model works with highly abstract conditions that require contextual specification to render them more meaningful and better testable. Second, the EIM starts from generally favourable, but underspecified, background conditions.