European Union Enlargement and DemocratisationThe Normative Disconnect in Hungary and Czechia

Explores how and why adherence to the liberal democratic norms of the European Union vary between Central European states

• Challenges key assumptions and understandings about the nature and effectiveness of European Union enlargement through an analysis of case studies of two comparable countries that have experienced differing levels of adherence to the liberal democratic norms of the EU after accession: Czechia and Hungary
• Conducts in-depth analysis of the processes by which both countries underwent their adaptations to the norms of the EU and how this informed post-accession developments in each
• Includes contributions from thirty original interviews with MEPs, politicians, policy makers, journalists and experts which add richness and corroborating testimony
• Contributes to on-going debates within academic and policy circles about the implications for the European Union of the ‘illiberal turn’ in Central and Eastern European member states by examining how the EU has responded to illiberal challenges to its liberal democratic norms, and by providing policy recommendations for how it may more effectively respond to such challenges in the future
• Develops a novel framework of analysis of both international norm transfers and norm internalization that is embedded in liberal and constructivist theory

Enlargement is often considered to be the strongest foreign policy tool available to the European Union, and is instrumental in the EU’s efforts to spread its liberal democratic norms in the post-communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe.

However, the experience of recent years has painted a more uneven picture. While the EU’s norms have proven to be reasonably robust in countries such as Czechia, in others, most notably Hungary, they have proven to be far more fragile.

What accounts for this post-accession variation in adherence to liberal democratic norms between the post-communist Central and Eastern European Countries? And what implications does this have for the use of enlargement policy as a means for spreading democracy? This book explains the processes and mechanisms which determine how the liberal democratic norms of the European Union can be transferred to another country; and why enlargement has had such mixed results to date.