The Crisis of the Liberal International Order and the Europeanization of the Western Balkans

Abstract

The liberal international order today faces a crisis of legitimacy and social purpose. Although the crisis is primarily internal, the consequences have vast external manifestations, especially in Europe. Not only have US-EU relations been affected, but the effects of Europeanization have also changed, both within and outside the EU. Transformative power, once the main integrative resource of the European Union, no longer yields results. This is particularly evident in the Western Balkans. There are many reasons for the EU’s failure to play the essential transformative role in the Western Balkans region. Most authors ascribe this either to the Western Balkans’ domestic situation (Börzel, 2011; Freyburg and Richter, 2010; Ademović, 2019), or to the EU’s inability to enlarge further (‘integration incapacity’) and to exert a credible pressure (Kovačević, 2019), or to both reasons simultaneously (Bieber, 2019; Radić Milosavljević, 2019). This chapter puts this issue into a larger perspective and draws attention to the global context in which the EU’s enlargement policy and external Europeanization efforts operate. We argue that the crisis of the liberal order spilled over into the European Union and thus damaged the ability of the EU to shape institutions, processes and political outcomes in the Western Balkans. We observe these significant trends through the erosion of the value-institutional pillar of the liberal order and the EU’s increasing reliance on real-political instruments for pursuing its strategic goals. This chapter is organized as follows. First, we explain what a liberal international order is, the role and position of the European Community/Union in this order, and why a crisis occurs. Secondly, we explain how the crisis of the liberal order has affected the European Union and its ability to Europeanize itself and others. Finally, we give a brief genesis of the EU’s efforts to shape institutions, processes, and political outcomes in the Western Balkans and explain why there has been a slowdown and stalemate in recent years.