So far, economic analyses of NATO enlargement have been restricted to aspects of regional security while political analyses focused on indirect peace-building effects on democracy in the first place. Our panel regressions for 25 post-communist countries for the period from 1996 to 2008 reveal...

Russia and China are assumed to challenge democratization and to promote autocracy. In a first step, we analyze Central Asia as the most-likely case, considering both Russia and China as relevant external actors. We develop a concept for our analysis based on the different strategies of Russia...

Among ENP countries, Azerbaijan is outstanding because it leans on its resource base and sees the EU at the receiving end of bilateral relations. At the other extreme, Ukraine depends on EU cooperation, especially with respect to trade. We develop a comprehensive theoretical concept for...