The promise of European integration: improving the quality of democracy in the European neighborhood

The recent research on EU’s role in democratization in the post-communist world has been primarily concerned with its new member states of Central and Eastern Europe, as well as the prospective member states. A great deal of knowledge is now available on EU’s impact on members or prospective members, but little stays known about EU’s influence on democratic development in the neighborhood beyond the accession orbits. This paper makes an inquiry into the effect of European policies on democratic processes in a country which is not impacted by conditionality for EU accession but where the promise of “European integration” is nevertheless seen as an important factor affecting political developments. The particular focus of this paper is on the state of inter-institutional accountability within the frameworks of the democratic constitution in Armenia. This rather narrow concentration on constitutional structures is stipulated by the nature of the major European policies and instruments put into effect in the “remote neighborhood”. As it will be explicated further in the text, these policies and instruments predominantly rely on the reforms of macro-political democratic institutions at the same time as the democratic achievements are largely “measured” by reference to the formal institutional reform.