Has Eastern enlargement been a success for the political development of the new member states? How do the political effects of Eastern enlargement compare to the changes in democratic and effective governance we observe in (potential) candidates, and to what extent does the European Neighbourhood Policy deploy transformative power in the absence of a membership perspective? We assess the political integration capacity of the EU – defined as its ability to promote democratic and effective governance – in a macro-quantitative panel analysis of the Central and Eastern European post-communist new member, candidate, and neighbourhood countries. Descriptively, we find overall progress, which is more pronounced and less diverse with regard to democracy than governance capacity. Still, there are significant disparities in democratic quality and governance capacity that mark a rift between the “old” member states in Western Europe and the “new” member states and candidate countries in Eastern Europe. In addition, we will test in a fixed-effects analysis of the panel to what extent political change can be attributed to EU policy.
