Driven to Change

Will joining the European Union help achieve prosperity, stability and democracy in Central and Eastern Europe? This book addresses this question by analysing how the European Union has approached this enlargement. Specifically, the book shows how, in its enlargement to the East, the European Union has tried to guide the post- communist states of Central and Eastern Europe towards new institutions and changing rules. In addressing the little explored link between post-communist transformations and enlargement, the book presents the effects of enlargement governance extended by the EU on domestic processes of reform and transformation. With its rich empirical overview of the reform challenges to various sectors, the author presents various scenarios of the interaction of EU rules with post communist reform. In contrast to other books on enlargement, this one relies on the perspective of scholars from Eastern Europe to illustrate the importance of the accession process to reform.