Liminality, Liberal Democracy and the European Integration of Eastern Europe

This paper explores the various manifestations of Eastern European (EE) agency in the interactions of the region with the EU in the post-Cold War period with an emphasis on democracy building through the EU integration process. It reflects on the scholarship on EU enlargement and neighbourhood policies and the taken for granted EE agency by mainstream accounts of democratization and EU integration. It adopts a liminality perspective and examines the EU accession and association process as a liminal space and the countries from the region as liminal actors. It conceptualizes the reactions of EE agents to the dominant order established through the EU accession and association process by examining strategies of subversion and reaffirmation as mechanisms of enacting liminality and claiming agency. It illustrates how both reactions to liminality have evolved and co-existed in Eastern Europe in the post-Cold war period. In this vein, it discusses the dark side of EE agency by examining the contestation of the EU-centered democratic and regional order by some political elites in the region leading to democratic erosion and foreign policy misalignment in several countries of Central Europe, the Balkans and the Eastern neighbourhood. It finally zooms in on the unexpected bright side of EE agency by focusing on the neglected societal contributions to the democratization of the region that reaffirm the established liberal democracy paradigm.