Quality of Governance in the Eastern Partnership Countries: the Role of the EU and Local Factors

This thesis is devoted to studying the quality of governance in the Eastern Partnership countries - a project of the European Union, which includes Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and, Ukraine. We aim to understand how external and internal factors influence the quality of governance in this area. As a method of data analysis, we initially use qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), which allows us to identify combinations of factors leading to the result for each of the cases. The regression analysis helps to reveal the significance of factors over time. The results of the work demonstrate a significant influence of the European Union on the quality of governance, even though many authors doubt the EU’s ability to influence countries beyond its borders that are not offered the membership in the EU. We also show that in this case the influence of Russia as another external actor does not contradict the influence of the EU since the approach of Russia is not focused on improving the quality of governance in these countries. The internal significant factors for the quality of governance are the level of GDP, the democratic regime, the polarization of elites, ethnic fractionation and reserves of resources.