Ulrich Sedelmeier

• PhD
• Lecturer at London School of Economics and Political Science

Research shows that information cues influence public opinion on international cooperation, yet it is unclear whether all cues are equally effective in the context of a global crisis. This paper sheds light on this issue by analysing how frames in public discourse influence support for multilateral vaccine cooperation during Covid‐19. Building on r...

Perceptions of an East–West divide in the European Union (EU) with regard to democracy have led to re-evaluations of EU eastern enlargement as a policy failure and militate against further enlargement. This article examines the accuracy of narratives of an intra-EU East–West divide on democracy, in which the western member states outperform the eas...

The EU has expanded many times and many countries still aspire to join. Enlargement illustrates the success of the European model of integration. It has also provided the EU with a powerful tool to influence domestic politics in would-be members. But enlargement also poses fundamental challenges. It has implications both for how the EU works (its s...

This chapter examines the main phases of the European Union’s enlargement policy process—association, pre-accession, and accession—and the key decisions involved in each of these stages. It discusses how these decisions are made, and how policy practice has evolved over time. The chapter then explores enlargement as a tool of foreign policy and ext...

The European Union (EU) has made effective corruption control a condition for membership, but it cannot sanction non-compliance once a country has joined. The Cooperation and Verification Mechanism (CVM) was an institutional experiment to compensate the loss of sanctioning power after accession with continued monitoring. Most commentators dismiss t...

A central tool of the European Union (EU) to promote the democratization of post-communist Europe have been the conditions it has attached to the offer of accession. Yet EU’s influence varies across countries, and over time between the periods before and after accession. A key factor limiting the EU’s democratizing impact are domestic costs of comp...

The External Incentives Model (EIM) was designed to explain the Europeanization of the Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) through the EU’s accession conditionality. This article asks how relevant the model remains beyond its original context. We examine recent data and research on the EU’s impact in two additional contexts: post-accessi...

The EU has expanded many times and many countries still aspire to join. It has extended the prospect of membership to countries in the Balkans and Turkey and has developed a ‘neighbourhood’ policy towards other countries, some of which may want to join in the future. Enlargement illustrates the success of the European model of integration. It has a...

When confronting democratic backsliding in its member states, the European Union (EU) cannot rely on material sanctions. There are formidable obstacles to using the one political safeguard that entails material sanctions, namely Article 7 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU). Moreover, the experience of the EU’s pre-accession conditionality sugges...

Although enlargement increases the preference diversity in the EU, this paper shows that enlargement has not led to a deterioration of compliance with EU law. In three of the EU’s four enlargement rounds, the new member states comply better with EU law than the old member states. The southern enlargement in the 1980s is the only one that led to a s...

This article analyzes the European Union's reactions to breaches of liberal democratic practices in Hungary and Romania during 2012–13 in order to assess its capacity to lock in democracy in the Member States. The article finds that a combination of partisan politics and weak normative consensus thwarted the EU's ability to use the sanctioning mech...

Is the impact of EU accession conditionality sustainable after target states achieve EU membership? Although accession changes the incentive structure for compliance, this article suggests that a lock-in of pre-accession institutional changes can contribute to their persistence even after the EU's sanctioning power weakens. A case study of gender e...

The Europeanisation of candidate countries and new members is a rather recent research area that has grown strongly since the early 2000s. Research in this area has developed primarily in the context of the EU's eastern enlargement. A small number of theoretically informed book-length studies of the EU's influence on the Central and Easte...

A central tool of the European Union (EU) to promote the democratization of post-communist Europe is its accession conditionality: the conditions it attaches to the offer of membership. Yet the EU’s influence on democratization varies across countries, and over time between the periods before and after accession. A key factor limiting the EU’s impa...

This article applies a public policy instrumentation approach to two instruments of EU security policy-civilian crisis management and enlargement conditionality. Both have come to be portrayed, by policy-makers and observers alike, as deliberate and efficient responses to specific policy challenges. Our analysis of the processes behind their adopti...

Is the future shape of the EU a question of maps, policies or culture? In other words, is its shape defined in terms of its territorial borders, or the functional reach of its rules, or by the constitutive identity of its members? The EU’s territorial and functional dimensions do not necessarily overlap, as its functional reach extends beyond its b...

This paper analyses the transposition of EU legislation on gender equality at the workplace in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania and Slovenia, as well as the enforcement powers of their national equality institutions. It does not find significant differences between post- and pre-accession compliance. Overall compliance can be considered good...

The European Union's (EU) membership conditionality has been perceived as a highly effective means of influence on non-member states in the run-up to the 2004 and 2007 enlargements. According to the incentive-based explanation that dominates the literature, conditionality has been particularly effective when the EU offered a credible membership inc...

The European Union's pre-accession conditionality was very effective in prompting the alignment of the post-communist candidate countries with EU law. As the conditional membership incentive was the main factor driving alignment, the changing incentive structure after accession suggests that - ceteris paribus - post-accession compliance with EU law...

According to the dominant incentive-based explanation, European Union (EU) conditionality has been particularly effective when the EU offered a credible membership incentive and when incumbent governments did not consider the domestic costs of compliance threatening to their hold on power. However, after the EU's eastern enlargement the influence o...

Originally, research on “Europeanization” was concerned almost exclusively with domestic change in EU member states. In light of the developments of European integration in the past decade, however, this exclusive research focus no longer appears appropriate. In the aftermath of the crisis and downfall of communism, most Central and Eastern Europea...

This major new text brings together specially-commissioned chapters by leading authorities on European politics--East and West--to provide a systematic assessment of developments in political institutions and processes, politics and society, and policy set in the context of globalization, EU enlargement and Europe's changing role on the world stage...

The Annual Review, produced in association with JCMS, The Journal of Common Market Studies, covers the key developments in the European Union, its member states, and acceding and/or applicant countries in 2005/2006. It contains key analytical articles on political, economic and legal issues in the EU by leading experts, together with a keynote arti...

The political relevance of EU enlargement, both for the EU’s internal development, and for international relations in Europe more broadly, is undisputed. Yet for a long time, enlargement has been a neglected subject in studies of European integration and in the theory of regional integration (see also Friis and Murphy, 1999; Wallace, 2000a). Classi...

In May 2004, eight former Eastern Bloc countries joined the European Union: the three Baltic republics, Poland, Hungary, the Czech and Slovak republics, and Slovenia. What is involved in "accession"? How have accession dynamics affected and been affected by the domestic politics of candidate countries and their adoption of EU rules? In this careful...

The Europeanisation of candidate countries and new members is a rather recent and still comparatively small, but - particularly since 2003 -- a fast-growing research area. Research in this area has developed primarily in the context of the EU's eastern enlargement. More recently, a small number of theoretically informed, book-length studies of the...

In May 2004, eight former Eastern Bloc countries joined the European Union: the three Baltic republics, Poland, Hungary, the Czech and Slovak republics, and Slovenia. What is involved in "accession"? How have accession dynamics affected and been affected by the domestic politics of candidate countries and their adoption of EU rules? In this careful...

In the process of the EU's eastern enlargement, the Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) have undergone a major process of external governance. What are the main characteristics of the mode of EU external governance in this region, and under which conditions is it most effective for the transfer of EU rules to the CEECs? The article prese...

The eastern enlargement of the EU provides an excellent vantage point to examine the interplay of EU identity and European foreign policy. Yet most analysis of eastern enlargement either focus on enlargement as a case of EU foreign policy or on enlargement as the result of EU norms and identity. They therefore neglect that the EU's enlargement poli...

Despite its indisputable political relevance, the enlargement of the EU has suffered from a theoretical neglect in studies of European integration. While theoretically informed studies have emerged recently, this literature suffers from a predominant focus on single cases and from not being linked to the more general study of international organiza...

Theoretical studies of EU enlargement have mainly focused on the macro-level of enlargement, namely under which conditions the EU decides to enlarge. We still lack a conceptual framework to analyse the sectoral dynamics of enlargement that specifies under which conditions the preferences of the candidate countries are accommodated in EU policy. I a...

The paper argues that rationalist approaches cannot fully account for the European Union’s policy towards the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEECs). EU policy accommodates the preferences of the CEECs to a greater extent than an account based on purely material interests on the part of the EU would expect. The paper argues that we need to...

Policy‐Making in the European Union. Fourth edition. Edited by Helen Wallace and William Wallace. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp.xxvi + 610, 32 figures, 21 boxes, 45 tables, 2 appendices, bibliography, index. £17.99 (paper) ISBN 0–19–878242‐X.The Political System of the European Union. By Simon Hix. London: Macmillan, 1999. Pp.xx + 427,...

In February 2000, 14 EU Member States collectively took the unprecedented step of imposing bilateral sanctions on their Austrian EU partner. How can this be explained? Was it, as the 14 governments argued, because the inclusion in the Austrian government of Jörg Haider's extreme right FPö opposes many of the ideas making up the common identity of t...

In this Forum, five ECSA members examine the progress and prospects of EU enlargement to the east and south, asking about the impacts of the enlargement process on the existing members of the Union, the candidate countries, and the "next neighbors" of an enlarged EU.

In order to better understand the EU's accession requirements towards the central and eastern European countries (CEECs), or, more specifically, the degree of the EU's flexibility in demanding alignment from the CEECs, we need to conceptualize how the broader dynamics that shape the EU's policy towards the CEECs translate into specific substantive...

European integration is at a turning point with implications for all member states and their citizens. The Amsterdam Treaty marked a shift towards constitutional issues. Integration has involved a continually evolving process of constitution‐making. A group of leading scholars argues that the shift towards constitutional issues is rooted not only i...