Divide and reward: Maintaining EU'S deterrence in the Balkans after the 2004 enlargement

This article claims that after the 2004 enlargement the EU will continue to deploy in the Balkans the policies it adopted in the wake of the 1999 Kosovo crisis. Such perspective favors a broader appreciation of the "Europeanization" effects of EU enlargement, accounting for the dynamics of "effective deterrence" - i.e., the active engagement of Brussels in the internal affairs of Balkan states. The suggestion is that in the Balkans the effectiveness of external incentives is maintained by the insistence on individual compliance rather than regional cooperation. This investigation concludes with a cautiously optimistic conjecture on the prospects for the EU's "divide-and-reward" strategy in the Balkans.