explores how the leverage of an enlarging EU has facilitated a convergence toward liberal democracy among credible future members of the EU in Central and Eastern Europe. It reveals how variations in domestic competition put democratizing states on different political trajectories after 1989, and illuminates the changing dynamics of the relationship between the EU and candidate states from 1989 to accession, and beyond. Albeit not by design, the most powerful and successful tool of EU foreign policy has turned out to be EU enlargement—and this book helps us to understand why, and how, it works.