Albania's quest for the EU membership and the prolonged integration process

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Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, İktisadi ve İdari Bilimler Fakültesi, Uluslararası İlişkiler Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2013

Öğrenci: ELDA KURTI

Danışman: MUSTAFA TÜRKEŞ

Özet:

The main aim of this thesis is to analyze Albania’s ongoing EU integration process and to consider Albania’s bid for the EU membership. This study, by providing an overview of Albania-EU relations in time and presenting an analysis of the stances of the social forces in the country regarding the EU integration process, aims to reveal the existence or not of a hegemonic pro-membership perspective in this regard. In addition, an analysis of the EU’s stance towards this Albania’s quest for the EU membership is to be considered as the other side of the same coin and as such, it is to be essential in the understanding of the process indeed. This thesis considers the integration theories as insufficient in explaining the Albania’s EU integration process and thus tries to make an analysis of it by reading it through the lenses of neo-Gramscian perspectives. Whereas a pro-membership perspective seems to be at work on the Albania side, though a very fragile hegemony, the absence or lack of it on the EU side has resulted in a prolonged integration process for the country. The thesis thus argues that Albania’s EU integration is an open-ended process.