Building Democracy After Conflict: The “Helsinki Moment” in Southeastern Europe

After the accession of ten new member states in 2004, the European Union seeks to expand its sphere of stability and prosperity toward the southeast, from Croatia all the way to Turkey. While democratic consolidation and economic development is already underway in Bulgaria, Romania, and Turkey, other countries of the region appear to be falling behind. Although the European Union has declared that all these countries share “a common European destination,” the various strategies being pursued to bring them to that destination differ profoundly. Three models may be discerned: traditional capacity-building; authoritarian state-building (in the two European protectorates of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo); and member-state building (in the official EU candidate countries of Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, and Turkey).