From Conditionality to Persuasion? Europeanization and the Rights of Sexual Minorities in Post‐Accession Poland

Through an examination of sexual minorities’ rights in Poland, this paper compares the effectiveness of ‘external incentives’ and ‘social learning’ as Europeanization mechanisms after EU enlargement in post‐communist Europe. The politics surrounding the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in Poland raise questions about the EU’s capacity to foster norms of tolerance and non‐discrimination now that accession has weakened the tools of external incentives. Through interviews with LGBT activists and political elites in Warsaw in 2007, I examine the potential of a policy of Europeanization through persuasion, or social learning.