The Enlargement of the European Union and NATO: Ordering from the Menu in Central Europe

Description

In 2004 the European Union and NATO will each add ten new member states, most from the post-communist countries of Eastern and Central Europe. In order to prepare for membership, these countries had to make many thousands of institutional and legal adjustments. Indeed, they often tried to modernize in just a few years, implementing practices that evolved over many decades in Western Europe. This book emphasizes the way that policy elites in Central and Eastern Europe often 'ordered from the menu' of established Western practices. When did this emulation of Western practices succeed and when did it result in a fiasco? Professor Jacoby examines empirical cases in agriculture, regional policy, consumer protection, health care, civilian control of the military, and military professionalism from Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland, Bulgaria, and the Ukraine. The book addresses debates in institutionalist theory, including conditionality, Europeanization, and external influences on democratic and market transitions.

Wade Jacoby is Associate Professor of Political Science and director of the Center for the Study of Europe at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. His first book, Imitation and Politics: Redesigning Modern Germany was a Choice Outstanding Academic Book for 2000, and he has published in many journals, including Comparative Political Studies, Politics and Society, The Review of International Political Economy, East European Constitutional Review, WSI-Mitteilungen, Governance, German Politics and Society, and The British Journal of Industrial Relations. Jacoby received the Carl Friedrich Prize of the American Political Science Association and was a German Marshall Fund visiting scholar at both the Center for German and European Studies and the Center for Slavic and East European Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

'Jacoby's book offers a deep and unique insight'. Steve Schwarzer, European Societies 'Mixing thoughtful analysis and detail with great aplomb the publication of Jacoby's book is very much to be welcomed.' Slavonic & East European Review