Balancing Backsliding and Solidifying Stagnation: A comparative case study on EU conditionality and democratic backsliding in Serbia and North Macedonia.

Sammanfattning

The European Union has long been regarded as a global transformative power, capable of promoting democratic reforms in candidate countries through its merit-based enlargement process. However, democratic backsliding in the Western Balkans has raised concerns about the credibility and effectiveness of EU conditionality. This thesis examines the extent to which the EU enlargement process has enabled or constrained democratic backsliding in North Macedonia and Serbia, and why their trajectories differ despite shared structural and institutional foundations. Using a Most-Similar-Systems-Design, the study combines document analysis and process tracing across EU reports from 2008 to 2026, combined with quantitative data and reports from civil society. The analysis is based on a theoretical framework that draws from Schimmelfennig & Sedelmeier's external incentives model, Bermeo’s concept of executive aggrandisement, and Tzifakis & Vasdoka's notion of reversed conditionality. The analysis is structured around 3 hypotheses: Geopolitical shift, Elite capture and reversed conditionality, and Enlargement fatigue. The findings conclude that EU conditionality has lost its foundational credibility. In Serbia, the union is exposed to reversed conditionality, accommodating the political elite’s will out of fear of losing influence in the region; in North Macedonia, the process has lost credibility in recent years due to a flawed accession process. The key difference between the two cases is geopolitical leverage, which Serbia possesses and North Macedonia does not. Keywords: EU conditionality, democratic backsliding, Western Balkans, enlargement fatigue, elite capture