Conditionality and Compliance

Though many authors recognize the existence and the need for further elaboration of constraining measures to bring about compliance and punish uncooperative behavior, most of the attempts to produce more insight into the effectiveness of NATO mechanisms applied towards aspirant countries remained fairly unconvincing and vague.³ One of the most prominent writers in the democratization field Frank Schimmelfennig is not an exception in this regard. His contributions represent brilliant work illustrating the complexity of social and even political socialization of the aspirant countries‘ officials during the period of intensive negotiations with EU - executives. Yet, despite his exemplary findings that favor interest based explanations of the European policy of conditionality, the problem of scant evidence on the motives of the commitment to domestic transformation remains unresolved.⁴

As already mentioned, the notion of conditionality has mainly to be regarded as an analytical tool facilitating proper understanding of institutional influence, applied to Armenia and Georgia. Within this logic the close affinity of the category of compliance to the overall concept of conditionality exists, for which we will often use henceforth the abbreviation ―CC‖

(Conditionality and Compliance). Clearly, every social phenomenon is a unique process, with its own historical context, not likely to reappear in other settings.⁵ This fact, however, should not prevent us from extensive application of valid propositions to case - study examples of NATO - accession, which most probably will result in even more valuable findings, bringing

1 L . Lisa Martin, Democratic Commitments: Legislatures and International Cooperation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 225.

2 McFaul, Magen, and Stoner-Weiss, ―Evaluating International Influences on Democratic Transitions,‖ 12.

3 Voeten, ―Resisting the Lonely Superpower: Responses of States in the United Nations to U.S. Dominance‖;

Mark Kramer, ―NATO, the Baltic States and Russia: A Framework for Sustainable Enlargement,‖ International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-) 78, no. 4 (October 2002): 731–56; Frank Schimmelfennig,

―NATO‘s Enlargement to the East: An Analysis of Collective Decision-Making,‖ EAPC-NATO Individual Fellowship Report 2000 (1998): 1–75.

4 Schimmelfennig, ―NATO‘s Enlargement to the East,‖ 66.

5 James J. Wirtz, ―Review of ‗Dangerous Alliances: Proponents of Peace, Weapons of War‘ by Patricia A.

Weitsman,‖ The Journal of Politics 69, no. 1 (February 2007): 258.

67 us closer to the truth. Bearing this in mind we focus our attention on a number of categories that appear to be most critical to the CC - concept. First, we capture the notions of incentives and relative gains (pay - offs), due to their close contextual and semantic relationship to state interests. As Celeste Wallander argues strong incentives allow countries to conform to international norms.¹ Naturally, the strength of incentives will increase if they correlate with states interests.

Whenever a state decides to engage an international organization (and NATO is not an exception here) or other states within the organization, the question of the hierarchy of state interests (preferences) for the formation of the mode of behavior becomes of utmost importance. From the analysis on NATO enlargement Franks Schimmelfennig could conclude that ―…in this account, the alliance identity and norms had no independent effect on the enlargement outcome but simply happened to be in line with the preferences of the most powerful actor(s).‖² Admittedly, this statement bluntly challenges the whole concept of CC and once more underlines the strength of the interest-based argumentation line of enlargement studies. Preferences are also often identified as expected pay-offs from certain action (decision), and as subject to rational orderings made by state.³ They must be substantial in order to be detected by a state, and in the best case, to correlate with existing incentives to ensure rapid action and implementation. Incentives are rewards, offered by an external actor (NATO) in case of compliance; however, they also exist in the domestic realm, and together with potential gains at this level offer very powerful alternatives for a state to behave.

The evidence of post - communist European experience shows, the prospect of NATO - membership is a major stimulus to reforming the state and improving institutional performance.⁴ However, as argued by Marina Caparini even though the carrot of membership appears to be very influential, the imperatives of the domestic agenda may turn this source of influence to become very vulnerable.⁵ Domestic interests (preferences) and constituencies

1 Wallander, ―Institutional Assets and Adaptability,‖ 709.

2 Schimmelfennig, ―NATO‘s Enlargement to the East,‖ 65.

3 Voeten, ―Resisting the Lonely Superpower: Responses of States in the United Nations to U.S. Dominance,‖

732.

4 Vladimir Socor, ―NATO Prospects in the South Caucasus,‖ Contribution to ―Building Stability and Security in the South Caucasus: Multilateral Security and the Role of NATO‖, on the occasion of the NATO summit 2004 (Central-Asia Caucasus Institute, School of Advanced International Studies, J. Hopkins University, 2004), 13, available at www.jamestown.org/fileadmin/Vlads_Corner/policypapers/natoscauc.doc.

5 Marina Caparini, ―Security Sector Reform and NATO and EU Enlargement,‖ in SIPRI YEARBOOK 2003:

Armaments, Disarmament and International Security, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 2003, 241–242, available at http://www09.sipri.org/yearbook/2003/files/SIPRIYB0307.pdf.

68 play a crucial role in creating such behavioral alternatives: partial compliance or non - compliance. The conflict between external and domestic might be very real and can very well illustrate the existing problems in preference orderings. We readily join at this point Stephen Krasner‘s resolute statement by slightly amending it, that the key question is rather, how essential and strategic are the objectives to be achieved both for the external actor as well as for the state.¹ Since the prospect of membership is the only substantial incentive - ―carrot‖ and

―stick‖ at the same time, the probability of real influence on the candidate (*) must be assessed as high, so according to Reinhard Janine.² Applying this logic to the NATO - relations with Armenia and Georgua, where the prospect of membership at first glance is neither imminent nor procedurally guaranteed, the causal relationship between membership promises and democratic transformation of the national defence sectors seems to be problematic. Thus, the priority ranking of conditions, assumed to be fulfilled by a candidate, must be thoroughly studied, and may render surprising conclusions contrary to our initial expectations.

Not less important is the understanding of the Alliance‘s own interests. As some authors argue the more NATO is strategically interested in enlargement the less attention is paid to strict evaluation of conditionality (as was done earlier with former socialist satellite countries in east Europe).³ Or the other way around – the less interest is shown in the enlargement the more scrutiny will be put to assess the aspirant country‘s performance. Other studies also reveal that the probability of good governance, reduced autocracy, and democratic consolidation increased, once NATO - allies demonstrated credible commitments to the survival of other states, contrary to other states that did not receive such guarantees and continued to face existential external pressures.⁴

1 Stephen D. Krasner, ―International Support for State-Building: Flawed Consensus,‖ PRISM Security Studies Journal 2, no. 3 (June 2011): 65–74.

2 Janine Reinhard, ―EU Democracy Promotion through Conditionality in Its Neighbourhood: The Temptation of Membership Perspective or Flexible Integration,‖ Caucasian Review of International Affairs 4, no. 3 (2010):

197.

* We use terms candidate and aspirant interchangeably; however, within the NATO context, they refer to different country-categories. Candidate status is given to the country, which is under MAP (Membership Action Plan) and is formally recognized as next to become full member, whereas the status of aspirant-countries does not imply formal recognition of any timeframes of accession, not to mention the imminent membership.

3 Inna Melnykovska and Rainer Schweickert, ―Regional Security as a Driver of Institutional Change in Post-Communist Countries? Empirical Evidence on NATO Accession Incentives,‖ Kieler Analysen Zur

Sicherheitspolitik, no. 26 (January 2010): 8–9.

4 Gibler M. Douglas and Jamil A. Sewel, ―External Threat and Democracy: The Role of NATO Revisited,‖

Journal of Peache Research, Special Issue on Alliances, 43, no. 4 (July 2006): 414–417, 424, doi:10.1177/0022343306065115.

69

4.2.2 Implementing Commitments – An Imperfect Indicator for the