EU:s demokratifrämjande roll : En jämförande kvantitativ studie

Sammanfattning

Has the democracy index of Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Hungary, Poland, and Romania increased since joining the EU? The EU is claimed to be the biggest union of democracies, but after recent reports suggested that the EU is facing an autocracy trap, the question of whether the EU can act as a democracy promoter arose. By using V-Dems dataset to measure the liberal democracy index of these six countries from ten years before to ten years after joining the EU, this quantitative analysis aims to understand the correlation between EU membership, liberal democracy, and the political experiences of these countries—where the Nordic countries have a long history of liberal democracy and the Central and Eastern European countries have a history of communism. By applying Robert Dahl's theory of polyarchy to define liberal democracy and examining the EU:s role in promoting democratic values through Manners' NPE theory, the results are presented in linear diagrams and regression tables. The main findings show no correlation between EU membership and a higher liberal democracy index. However, liberal democracy and political experience show a strong statistical correlation, where the Nordic countries tend to exhibit a higher level of liberal democracy compared to post-communist countries.