Stabilitocracy in Practice: An Analysis of the EU’s Policy towards the Kosovo-Serbia Dialogue

This thesis analyses the evolution of the EU’s foreign policy towards enlargement by focusing on the case of the Brussels Dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia. This case study is analysed within the framework of the concept of ‘stabilitocracy’. It asserts that the EU initially interlinked its promotion of democratic reforms and the pursuit of stability but ultimately focused primarily on the latter. The thesis argues that the weakening of the EU’s soft power due to enlargement fatigue, the heightening of geopolitical competition in Europe, and the securitisation of the Brussels Dialogue all contributed to the EU’s shift towards this preference for stability and the status quo.

While the term stabilitocracy has been used to explain how the EU trades stability for reforms in the Western Balkans, there has yet to be an in-depth academic study of its application in a specific policy setting such as the Brussels Dialogue. This thesis outlines the impact of the EU’s stabilitocracy approach towards the Brussels Dialogue on the democratic transformation in Kosovo and Serbia by showing how the EU disregarded the lack of democratic reforms within both countries and how the local elites within both gained from manipulating the EU’s focus on stability in the absence of enlargement.

More broadly, this thesis extracts lessons from the Kosovo/Serbia case that can be applied to other cases within the Western Balkans and beyond. This issue is particularly important after the role that the EU has assumed following the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the designation of Ukraine as an EU candidate country in June 2022.