Economic Crisis and Democratic Deficits: What Are the Perspectives for the European Integration of the Western Balkans?
Economic Crisis and Democratic Deficits: What Are the Perspectives for the European Integration of the Western Balkans?

Summary/Abstract: The paper focuses on the seven Western Balkans countries on the road to EU membership, specifically, in the period of global financial and economic crisis that started in 2008. The aim is to present the interconnection between economic crisis and political deficits, while highlighting the role of democratic institutions and the public environment for overcoming the crisis. Against this backdrop, the author presents some general lessons that have been learned and the prospects for European integration of the Western Balkan countries. The empirical data on which this paper is based are the results of an international project conducted on behalf of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, Brussels, and the Center for European Studies, Brussels, in the period 2010–2012. Some of the basic conclusions are that decreasing the negative impact of the crisis upon these countries’ economies and the improvement of the population’s economic situation is of vital importance for gaining public support for, and achieving progress in, the pre-accession process. This study has confirmed the pro-European orientation of the Western Balkan countries, which persists despite the severe economic crisis. Yet the political deficits and weaknesses of the democratic process in some of the countries, and in the Western Balkans as a whole, intensify the negative impact of the economic consequences of the crisis and create additional obstacles to the progress of pre-accession.

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