Contact Person: Dr Wolfgang Zellner

International organizations such as the OSCE and the EU have substantially intervened in the transition processes in post-Communist states. The compendium of instruments they have employed comprises various less direct activities as well as the quasi-protectorate structures we know from Bosnia and Kosovo. After nearly ten years of democratization assistance, one of the key findings of empirical studies is that, alongside positive effects, these interventions have also had negative and unintended impacts on the transition process in these countries. A comprehensive analysis of the effects of external factors on the internal democratization process has not so far been published so far either from the perspective of International Relations theory or from that of Comparative Transition Research.

This PhD project was conducted by Solveig Richter at the University of Dresden and at CORE. Its objectives were twofold: An analytical approach for measuring the effects and impact of international organizations at the subsystemic level was developed, based on theories of International Relations (especially socialization and europeanization) and theories of transition. It focused not only on the achievement of “democratization goals” set by these international organizations but also on their contributions to the transition process. Framed by this analytical schemea, the project undertook a detailed empirical exploration of the OSCE’s democratization efforts by means of case studies in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia and Montenegro.

For the purpose of collecting empirical data Solveig Richter undertook extensive field trips to South-Eastern Europe and had interviews with more than 100 representatives from the OSCE and EU, foreign embassies, domestic institutions and NGOs.

The project was concluded in 2008. Its results were published in a monography by IFSH (link) and in an a short article in the OSCE Yearbook 2008 (link).