Who needs goodwill? An analysis of EU norm promotion in the Central Asian context

Abstract

iii Abstract This Ph.D. thesis analyses three EU norm promotion endeavours in the field of security, human rights and education. In doing so, it compares implementation levels in three Central Asian countries (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan), which allows it to draw comparisons on norm adoption rates. The objective of this analysis is to identify the factors influencing norm adoption rates and test Levitsky and Way's linkage, leverage and organisational power model in the Central Asian context, which harbours a range of regime types. By applying this model to the case of EU-Central Asian relations, this thesis contributes to the field of Central Asian and European Union Studies. Moreover, it sheds light on the forces behind norm adoption, thereby reflecting on the Europeanisation of countries beyond the direct neighbourhood. This is important as Levitsky and Way originally omitted Central Asia from their analysis and thus no data was available for a region which remains largely neglected by Western scholarship. This thesis has remedied this shortcoming by carrying out an in-depth analysis of the case studies in the framework of Levitsky and Way's model. This thesis' findings support the main premise of Levitsky and Way's model but stress the importance of organisational power in the norm...