A House of Cards? Building the Rule of Law in East Central Europe

Abstract

This paper assesses the ten years of experience of East Central European (ECE) with the reform of the judiciary in view of EU accession. The paper examines in depth the cases where the challenges to rule of law and the EU conditionality were both at a maximum to generate some explanations (Romania, and Bulgaria in particular). It then proceeds to test the chief explanatory factors in a quantitative model of rule of law on the 28 postcommunist cases, concluding that democracy, and not organization or logistics is the most important determinant of rule of law.

Keywords: Rule of Law, Europeanization, State Building, Conditionality, Corruption, East Central Europe

JEL Classification: A005