NORMATIVE POWER AND POLITICAL CONDITIONALITY IN THE WESTERN BALKANS A qualitative content analysis of the EU progress reports of Bosnia & Herzegovina and Serbia

Sammanfattning

Europe's normative power has shaped global politics since the 1990s, especially during theenlargement process, by encouraging countries to emulate the EU through norms and valueswithout military force. These norms are spread through various methods, some moreeffective. While prior research highlights the EU's influence, it mainly criticizes candidatecountries during accession, focusing on negative portrayals of their progress. Less attention isgiven to how the EU presents normative power in progress reports, and no comparativestudies exist between Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, two countries the EU should focusmore on. This thesis analyzes how the EU portrays its normative power in these countries,identifies key mechanisms, and examines their effectiveness, variation across countries, andover time. Using normative power Europe theory and political conditionality as frameworks,the study conducts qualitative content analysis of four progress reports. Findings indicate ashift over time, with procedural diffusion becoming more prominent in later years. However,informational diffusion is more common, and there is little evidence of transference andpolitical conditionality in either report.