Turkey-EU relations in the enlargement process: rational choice approach to interests and participation in Turkey

This paper argues that EU conditionality alone has not determined the pace of democratisation in Turkey. For better or worse, the EU has been a motivator for the process. Nevertheless, the effects of this motivation could only be materialised
if accompanied by domestic pressure. A societal interest-orientation for upgrading the level of democratisation "from below" is essential to sustain the process, on the other hand, a state-oriented reform process under the direction of the EU "from above" has had only rudimentary effects. This article applies rational choice methodology to Turkey-EU relations by taking individual agents as the fundamental building block of analysis and by claiming that an aggregate outcome of democratisation in Turkey should be regarded as the consequence of the assumed behaviour of these individual agents.

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