FRIENDSHIP COMMUNITIES? THE POLITICS OF REGIONAL INTERGOVERNMENTAL COOPERATION IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE 1990-2007 By Luciana-Alexandra Ghica Submitted to Central European University Department of Political Science In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Supervisor: András Bozóki CEU eTD Collection Budapest, Hungary 2008 I hereby declare that this work is entirely my own, except where otherwise indicated, and that it does not contain materials accepted for any other degrees in any other institutions. Luciana Alexandra Ghica Budapest, 3 September 2008 CEU eTD Collection ABSTRACT In this dissertation, I investigate from a social constructivist perspective how international regionalism has become a widespread phenomenon in post Cold War Central and Eastern Europe, although the historical and political circumstances were not pointing towards this development. Existing scholarship on the topic, focusing mostly on the regional intergovernmental arrangements established in the aftermath of the Yugoslav wars, seems to agree that the European Union had the decisive role in the process, even if not through direct intervention. Instead, I argue that democratic rather than EU conditionality was mostly at play in this case. At the same time, post Cold War regionalism has been also a race to appropriate better mental spaces in the attempt to be recognised as part of the democratic community. In order to investigate this hypothesis of democratic conditionality and rhetoric action, I analyze comparatively the creation and evolution of the major Central and East European regional intergovernmental initiatives. For this purpose, I use the conceptual frameworks of social constructivism and international regionalism, which I further develop particularly through the introduction of the concept of regional cohesiveness. Prompted by the necessity to find an alternative to the regional integration/interdependence paradigm, this concept refers to the degree to which a group of actors inhabiting a limited contiguous space act and represent themselves as a group. In line with social constructivism, regional cohesiveness has both material/institutional and normative-representational dimensions. At CEU eTD Collection the same time, regional cohesiveness develops in a particular political context, as well as on a certain institutional and normative-representational background. All these aspects form the discursive space of international regionalism as political phenomenon and each could be placed in one of four possible strata of meaning production (background, context, design, and practices). In order to understand how Central and East European regionalism has developed, one has to identify the features and dynamics within each of these strata, as well as the inter-strata articulations. Mainly due to this conceptual setting, the dissertation is a prospective one, aiming at identifying the potential of the regional cohesiveness concept using the particular case of post Cold War Central and East European regionalism. In terms of methods, I use discourse analysis tools loosely inspired by the archaeological method of Michel Foucault. More specifically, discourse is understood as social practice and its analysis requires a wide set of raw empirical data ranging from common written or spoken text materials such as speeches, interviews and reports, to historical events, ideas and institutions. From this perspective, the research can be classified best as interpretativist, although it has also some positivist allegiances. Finally, in terms of the type of first hand data, the main sources of this dissertation are the major documents that the regional intergovernmental cooperation structures have produced since their creation, particularly founding treaties, statements, charters, resolutions, declarations, minutes of meetings and press releases. These are supplemented with interviews with high-ranked officials involved in the creation and development of the initiatives under scrutiny. Beyond producing a theoretically framed monograph of the most important Central and East European regional intergovernmental arrangements underpinned by a historical account of their constitutive conditions, this dissertation may have relevance for the larger field of regionalism studies, as well as for research on international interaction, especially due to the proposed conceptual innovations and analytical framework. CEU eTD Collection ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A far-better storyteller than I am, named Salman Rushdie, once remarked that all stories are haunted by the ghosts of the stories that could have been. This story might have been different in many ways. It could have been very short because, as George Schöpflin commented when I told him its subject at the beginning of my PhD research, “there is not much regional cooperation in Central and Eastern Europe.” It could also have been perfect but since it seems that only two categories of texts exist – written or perfect, I had to make a choice mostly because the PhD explicitly requires a written one (though sometimes it was difficult to resist temptation to choose the alternative). Not least, this story might not have been at all, for reasons that produced many different stories, each one haunting my research and private life. Despite all these ghosts, this story exists but it would not have been possible in this particular format without the valuable comments, suggestions, support and good intentions of some people whom I like to name here. First and foremost, I am indebted to my supervisor and friend András Bozóki, who patiently guided my overflowing enthusiasm and research curiosities, and supported me in some of the most difficult moments of the last years. It is to him that I want to express my deepest gratitude. At the same time, I owe my first professional curiosity for identity discourses to late professor Alexandru DuĠu. That is why I dedicate this dissertation to his memory. I am also much indebted to Sorin Antohi and Balazs Trencsenyi, whose questions and comments CEU eTD Collection have been always inspiring, reminding me each time I tended to forgot why theoretically grounded research may be an extremely satisfying intellectual endeavour. My thanks also go to Larry LeDuc and Erin Jenne for providing methodological guidance in the initial phases; the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for facilitating the access to documents and people relevant for the research; Irina Culic, András GérĘ, Carol Harrington, and Aida Hozic, who acted as reviewers of the first draft of this dissertation; as well as the academic staff, colleagues and participants to the CEU departmental seminars and doctoral conferences for their effort to understand the story that I was trying to tell them while sometimes not very sure of its details myself. During my doctoral research, I continuously benefited from the financial support of the Open Society Institute. A British Foreign and Commonwealth Office fellowship also allowed me to spend one year at the University of Oxford, where I found an inspiring intellectual home at St.Antony’s College and the European Studies Centre. For my fruitful research and stimulating discussions in this place, I would like to thank particularly Kalypso Nicolaïdis, Othon Anastasakis and Dimitar Bechev. All these people’s visions and ideas, as well as the support of my family and friends (whom I could not thank enough for their patience for my long absences or sometimes overwhelming presences) haunt in different degrees this story. Its shortcomings are, of course, fully mine. CEU eTD Collection SUMMARY OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1 PART I BUILDING THE CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR A CONSTRUCTIVIST ANALYSIS OF INTERNATIONAL REGIONALISM CHAPTER 1 MAPPING INTERNATIONAL REGIONALISM 31 CHAPTER 2 A CONSTRUCTIVIST RECONSTRUCTION OF REGIONALISM 55 CHAPTER 3 THE FIELD OF INTERNATIONAL REGIONALISM 82 PART II LEGACIES, CANONS, PALIMPSESTS: HISTORICAL BACKROUNDS AND POLITICAL CONTEXT OF REGIONAL COHESIVENESS CHAPTER 4 HISTORICAL ANAMNESIS: PREHISTORY OF INTERNATIONAL REGIONALISM IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE 107 CHAPTER 5 REGIONAL IDENTITY PALIMPSESTS 139 CEU eTD Collection CHAPTER 6 A TRIPLE TRANSITION, MULTIPLE TRANSFORMATIONS: CONTEXT AND FACTORS OF FOREIGN POLICY CHANGE 156 i PART III DYNAMICS OF REGIONAL COHESIVENESS IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE CHAPTER 7 FROM UNCERTAINTY TO NORMALITY: THE DEVELOPMENT OF POST COLD WAR INTERNATIONAL REGIONALISM IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE 191 CHAPTER 8 INSTITUTIONAL DIMENSION OF REGIONAL COHESIVENESS 224 CHAPTER 9 RHETORIC DIMENSION OF REGIONAL COHESIVENESS 268 CONCLUSIONS 297 CEU eTD Collection ii CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES VI LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS VII INTRODUCTION 1 Puzzle 1 Current state of research and hypotheses 4 Conceptual and methodological framework 13 The social construction of international regionalism 13 Methodological approach 15 Units of analysis and case selection 21 Sources 26 Overview of the thesis 28 PART I BUILDING THE CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR A CONSTRUCTIVIST ANALYSIS OF INTERNATIONAL REGIONALISM CHAPTER 1 MAPPING INTERNATIONAL REGIONALISM 31 1.1 The universe of contemporary regionalism 32 1.2 The evolution of international regionalism in world politics 43 1.3 International regionalism as academic inquiry 49 CHAPTER 2 A CONSTRUCTIVIST RECONSTRUCTION OF REGIONALISM 55 2.1 Social constructivist premises 56 2.2 A constructivist vocabulary of regionalism 61 2.3 Introducing regional cohesiveness 76 CHAPTER 3 THE FIELD OF INTERNATIONAL