Masraff, Naz
(2011)
Why keep complying?: compliance with EU conditionality under diminished credibility in Turkey.
PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.
Abstract
The widely accepted external incentives model of conditionality (EIM) argues
that the rewards promised by the EU need to be credible for target states to
comply with costly EU conditions. Accordingly, compliance should come to a
halt or decline significantly in countries where the credibility of accession – the
most powerful reward used by the EU – is very low. The case of Turkey appears
therefore to present a puzzle, since the current AKP government is still
complying with costly EU conditions despite the negative signals from the most
powerful member-states and the EU general public. This thesis first establishes
that there is indeed a puzzle. The quantitative and qualitative data gathered on
formal and behavioural compliance demonstrates that credibility is not a
necessary condition for compliance. There are absolutely no signs of decline in
compliance, which challenges the EIM’s credibility assumption. The second part
of this thesis moves to consider why the Turkish authorities continue to comply
under diminished credibility. It finds that the AKP makes strategic use of EU
conditionality. Firstly, compliance with EU conditions serves to curb the powers
of the Kemalist/secularist establishment and thereby to secure the party’s
continued presence. Secondly, compliance helps the government to appear as a
Western, reformist, moderate and neo-liberal party to the electorate so as to
widen its domestic support. Moreover, lock-in effects of Turkey’s already
established pro-European foreign policy, together with issue-specific
costs/benefits, also inform the AKP’s decision to comply, albeit to a lesser
extent. Finally, this thesis analyses the role of the EU-related bureaucracy as a
separate, but limited, actor in the compliance process. In contrast to the political
leadership, strong organisational lock-in effects and a high level of social
learning motivate bureaucratic agents’ further compliance, which suggests there
is a specific bureaucratic politics of compliance at work in Turkey.
Actions (login required)
 |
Record administration - authorised staff only |
Download statistics
Download statistics