This paper analyses the role of domestic factors that mediate the transformative power of EU conditionality in Albania and Croatia. The comparison between Croatia and Albania enables a most similar cases research design. Both countries are subject to the same EU enlargement policy and share some of the aspects of ‘difficult democratisers’, including raising authoritarian leaders and the challenge of state building in the first decade of transition. What they differ in, however, is the weight of the past, which we argue is the main factor that shapes domestic actors; differential needs and choices for Europe.
The argument proceeds in three parts. We first summarise the Europeanization via enlargement literature and lay out our explanatory framework. The second part analyses the difficulties that Albania and Croatia have encountered in the path of post-communist reforms and before the enactment of conditionality. The third part analyses why the EU conditionality has generated deep-seated change in Croatia, but only partial and selective reforms in the case of Albania.
