Liminality, liberal democracy and the European integration of Eastern Europe

This paper explores the various manifestations of the agency of Eastern Europe (EE) in its interactions with the European Union (EU) in the post-Cold War period, placing an emphasis on democracy building through the EU integration process. The paper reflects on the scholarship on EU enlargement and neighbourhood policies and the EE agency as taken for granted 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. The paper illustrates these two reactions to liminality and how they have evolved and co-existed in Eastern Europe in the post-Cold war period. It discusses the contestation of the EU-centred democratic and regional order by some political elites in the region leading to democratic erosion and EU foreign policy misalignment. It also zooms in on the societal contributions to the democratization of the region to reaffirm the established liberal democracy paradigm.