The Clash of Hypotheses: The EU's Eastern Enlargement

Abstract

This paper presents four hypotheses about the causes of the 2004 Eastern
enlargement of the EU. Each of them draws upon a distinct theory of
international relations, from neorealism, through neoliberalism and social
institutionalism, to linguistic, Wittgensteinian constructivism. Each
hypothesis is preceded by a short introduction into the theory itself, its
basic assumptions about the nature of the international system and the
incentives for individual agent's behaviour. The core of each chapter is the
construction of particular hypothesis on the causes of the past EU
enlargement on the grounds of these more general (meta)theoretical
propositions. The hypotheses themselves are not empirically tested and
assessed here. Nevertheless, in some cases I offer alterations or corrections
to the basic hypotheses in response to critiques.