Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 The EC's recognition policy: origins and terms of reference
- 2 Recognition of states: legal thinking and historic practice
- 3 International law, international relations and the recognition of states
- 4 EC recognition of new states in Yugoslavia: the strategic consequences
- 5 Political conditionality and conflict management
- Conclusion
- Appendices
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - Political conditionality and conflict management
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 The EC's recognition policy: origins and terms of reference
- 2 Recognition of states: legal thinking and historic practice
- 3 International law, international relations and the recognition of states
- 4 EC recognition of new states in Yugoslavia: the strategic consequences
- 5 Political conditionality and conflict management
- Conclusion
- Appendices
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The EC's policy of conditional recognition, we have seen, represents a significant departure from legal thinking and historic state practice as well as a novel approach to conflict management. It is not, however, the first time that conditionality has been used in support of political aims. For more than two decades, states and multilateral organisations have been employing political conditionality in their relations with developing countries, often in pursuit of objectives akin to those of the EC in Yugoslavia, such as the promotion of human rights and, more recently, democratisation and ‘good governance’. Indeed, since the 1970s the EC/EU itself has used and continues to use political conditionality as part of its trade and aid programmes, imposing on recipient states requirements relating to their domestic political structures that in many ways are not unlike the requirements it stipulated for the new state authorities in Yugoslavia.
This final chapter examines these parallel uses of political conditionality for what they suggest about the potential for, and the limitations of, conditional recognition as an instrument of conflict management. It charts the evolution of these policy initiatives and the thinking behind them – politically conditioned aid in particular – and explores the similarities they bear to the EC's use of conditional recognition. It also looks at how effective political conditionality has been and identifies factors that may account for its successes and shortcomings.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Europe and the Recognition of New States in Yugoslavia , pp. 146 - 179Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005