Limitations and space for development

As any other research, this also has its limitations, which relate to the theoretical, methodological, and empirical aspects of inquiry. First, at the theoretical level, owing to the nature of my research objectives, I am neither testing nor devising an overarching theoretical framework explaining EU TG cooperation in the neighbourhood, which limits the general theoretical contribution of the study.

Instead, I am enriching a set of theoretical debates pertaining to the specific facets

11 Papadimitriou and Phinnemore, “Exporting Europeanization to the Wider Europe: The Twinning Exercise and Administrative Reform in the Candidate Countries and Beyond”; Tulmets, “The Introduction of the Open Method of Coordination in the European Enlargement Policy: Analysing the Impact of the New PHARE/Twinning Instrument”; Papadimitriou and Phinnemore, “Europeanization, Conditionality and Domestic Change: The Twinning Exercise and Administrative Reform in Romania.”

12 Hamid Dabashi, “Can Non-Europeans Think? What Happens with Thinkers Who Operate Outside the European

Philosophical ‘pedigree,’” Al-Jazeera English, 2013,

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/01/2013114142638797542.html.

of such cooperation, i.e., democratic governance promotion, MS participation, and effectiveness of norm transfer. Nonetheless, I do hope that this study offers a stepping stone to such a framework in future research.

Second, there may be problems with the current theoretical frameworks covering the specific research questions of this study. For example, with democratic governance substance, it is still not clear whether the inclusion of democratic governance norms in Twinning cooperation happens reflexively as the result of the EU’s explicit commitment to it, or as an unintended consequence of EU internal governance and its reflection in EU external governance.¹³ While the domestic structure variables explain well the variation in the democratic governance substance of Twinning projects in the Eastern neighbourhood, they shed little light on how exactly those norms transpire into specific Twinning fiches. I thus cannot rule out the possibility that a micro-level analysis of Twinning instrument, especially at the preparation stage, will not produce more explanatory factors behind the variation of the democratic governance substance of Twinning projects concerned.

In addition, I believe there should be a way to measure uniformly the democratic governance substance of the EU acquis and of other EU legal sources, which inform the content of TG cooperation in the neighbourhood. That is something I could not accomplish within the confines of this work. Other possible factors, such as the initial levels of adoption of democratic governance norms by the ENP country, pro-Europeanness of political elites and public personnel, or effects by other actors like Russia may also be interesting points for exploration.

Before engaging in further theorising, it would also be worthwhile to check how well my theoretical framework explains variation in the democratic governance substance of EU TG projects in the countries of the Southern neighbourhood under the ENP or the Balkan states under the IPA. In the same vein, future studies should evaluate the democratic governance substance in other EU TG instruments, such as TAIEX or CIB, and draw parallels with Twinning projects. That also applies to my analyses of MS comparative advantages and of the overall effectiveness of EU TG cooperation, both of which could benefit from a broader landscape of data, and not only from the selected countries of the Eastern neighbourhood. On the other hand, factoring in the full extent of differences among the Eastern neighbourhood countries themselves, including their political and institutional dynamics, is also something I could not capture with this work.

Methodologically, the use of probabilistic tests of group differences based on the measures of central tendency may have introduced biases relating to the presence of outliers and the non-normal distribution of data on most variables analysed. Moreover, the relatively small number of cases (117) and four

13 Paul Pierson, “The Path to European Integration: An Historical Insitutionalist Analysis,” Comparative Political Studies, 1996, 129.

independent variables (plus nine control variables), as is the case in Article 2, may have some implications for the generalisability of findings to other regions under the ENP. Some caution is also due in explaining the variation of democratic governance substance of Twinning along the sector-based independent variables within one country. The fact that the relationship between sector politicisation and democratic governance substance does not hold in less liberalised countries may have to do with a lack of cases to establish such relationship, their non-normal distribution, or unaccounted effects by other, unknown variables. With the smaller number of Twinning fiches in some countries and policy sectors (20 or fewer), I also run a greater risk to incur a Type II error. That means that there could have been some omitted effects or that the existing effects could be stronger if the sample size for the specific variable categories of Twinning fiches were to be increased.

My presentation of an added value by CEECs and the older MS also needs to be treated with some reservations. The broad focus on these two groups may omit the inter-country differences among CEECs and the older MS in their sector- and country-specific comparative advantages. In that regard, I could not yet locate sufficient data to systematise comparative advantages of MS in relation to each other and build “country dossiers”. In addition, the question of why exactly certain MS are selected for Twinning projects by the beneficiary extends beyond the scope of this dissertation and also remains subject to further research. The division between the country- and sector-specific comparative advantages, mainly used as an heuristic tool for structuring the theorised storyline and the empirical section in Article 3, may also pose some theoretical hindrances. The reason being, some types of comparative advantages, like transition experience or country’s size, manifest the attributes of both country- and sector-specific comparative advantages. Added to this, the framing of interview questions and the level of rapport between the researcher and interviewees may have introduced a degree of preference bias to the results, which was partially offset through triangulation with other sources.

The similar type of bias may pose a problem in the analysis of the effectiveness of EU TG cooperation in Ukraine, whereby I also rely on extensive interview data.

Additionally, while judging whether a particular Twinning project was effective or not, I did not consider impacts by other programmes by the EU or by other actors in a particular policy sector. As Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier advised, adoption of EU norms by the country may coincide with the adoption of similar domestic norms and not be the direct results of the EU influence. Similarly, the domestic authorities may comply with the requirements of other international actors promoting similar to the EU norms. In both cases, it is difficult to establish formal ownership of the norms. ¹⁴ This limitation is somewhat mediated by the fact that

14 Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier, The Europeanization of Central and Eastern Europe, 9.

Twinning is one of the most important tools of EU TG cooperation and targets very specific domains of public policymaking, normally not covered by the overlapping programmes. Besides, in many instances, specific laws adopted by Ukraine referred to EU policy requirements that could be traced back to given Twinning projects.

One of the specific methodological problems related to the use of configurational methods like QCA is that they do not allow the researcher to deal properly with “hard-to-capture” or “big” events. In my case, it may be the Russian factor and the influence of the Russian aggressive foreign policy in the context of Twinning cooperation. Luckily, the number of policy sectors in Ukraine that were directly affected by the Russian factor has been rather low, yet a more systematic analysis of its implications with regard to my research questions would also be welcome. Another methodological concern is that the crisp-set variant of QCA and the associated process of dichotomisation may lead to some cases being underrepresented or other irregularities, especially in measuring unclear or borderline cases. I tried to address this problem by consistently applying operationalisation guidelines for conditions and outcomes and doing so in close reference to the theoretical literature and interview data.