Paper Titles & Abstracts

This paper looks at the challenges that ethnically divided states are facing in the process of state-building and democratisation within the larger EU integration framework. Through a comparative study of the cases of Bosnia and Macedonia, both of which are aspiring to join the EU, this paper investigates the effects of extensive political decentralisation and autonomy and deeply divided society have on the prospects of democratic consolidation and state capacity. The data is discussed specifically in relation to the EU integration process and investigates the different ways in which EU conditionality works and fails to work in an ethnically divided context.