Research Papers

Political scientists have studied state-building mainly as a domestic phenomenon and, in the few accounts where external influence has been considered among the plausible causes, they have regarded its effects as unintended ones. However, since the end of the Cold War, outsiders have intervened more and more in state-building processes in new democracies and, in particular, the EU has increasingly embarked on deliberate attempts to remake weak states in candidate, potential candidate and neighbor countries. Hence, under what domestic conditions are EU-driven reforms successful? and when do they fail? I attempt to answer these questions with a structured, focused comparison of civil service reform in Croatia and Serbia from democratic transition to the present day. Contrary to what the diffusion literature would expect on the basis on their level of economic development and degree of international integration, the EU managed to establish a merit system significantly more in Serbia than in Croatia. How was that possible? Based on official documents and semi-structured interviews with key informants, I argue that such a variation is explained by the absence of the former single party in post-authoritarian governments and the fragmentation of those governments along party lines: if, as in Croatia, the former single party comes back to government and plays a dominant role in the government coalitions, then the government becomes a veto player that is both willing and able to resist EU pressures aimed at increasing bureaucratic competence; if as in Serbia, the above conditions do not hold, the government has both less interest and capacity to oppose EU-driven reforms and keep the inherited patronage networks.