Liberal community and enlargement: an event history analysis

Abstract:

This article presents the findings of a statistical analysis of the major enlargement events of the European Union, NATO, and the Council of Europe - the establishment of institutionalised relations between the organisation and outsider states, outsider states' application for membership, accession, and exclusion or suspension of membership. It is designed to test the 'liberal community hypothesis' about enlargement according to which the likelihood of these enlargement events depends on the degree to which states adhere to the constitutive liberal values and norms of these three regional organisations. The main results of the event history analysis corroborate the liberal community hypothesis: compliance with democratic standards is the only variable that is robustly significant across different organisations, events, and time periods.