Conditionality or specificity? Bulgaria and Romania's economic transition performance in comparative perspective

The differences in transition performance among the former socialist countries in Central and Eastern Europe have sometimes been traced back to specific historical or cultural legacies without sufficiently taking into account the impact of EU conditionality. In this context the cases of Bulgaria and Romania are particularly interesting, because these countries belonged to the laggard group before they were exposed to EU conditionality from the late 1990s on and since then have improved their transition performance. Thus an empirical analysis of their transition performance before and after EU conditionality set in might improve our understanding of the relative importance of specific historical and cultural traits on the one hand and of EU conditionality on the other for transition performance. This article applies the before/after and with/without approaches well known from economic conditionality research and relates them to Milada Anna Vachudova's politico-economic analysis of the impact of conditionality in Central and Eastern Europe.