Promoting democracy or the external context? Comparing the substance of EU and US democracy assistance in Ethiopia

This article analyses the substance of the European Union's and United States' democracy assistance in Ethiopia in 2005–2010. Does this case reveal a transatlantic split, whereby the EU focuses on the external context and the US on the partial regimes of embedded, liberal democracy? Emphasizing the importance of institutions in analysing how interests and ideas affect democracy assistance, the article investigates how the substance may differ between the European Development Fund (EDF), European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR), US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). The analysis finds a transatlantic split whereby the EU focused more on the external context and the US more on the partial regimes. This transatlantic split can be explained by the combination of ideas and institutions. More specifically, it reflects a difference between the EDF and USAID in their focus on ownership, alignment and harmonization in democracy assistance. The combination of interests and institutions played a less significant role in explaining the substance of democracy assistance, as USAID emphasized the partial regimes, despite political control from the State Department.     

Unintended Consequences of EU Democracy Support in the European Neighbourhood

ABSTRACT

The European Union’s (EU) impact on the political governance of the European neighbourhood is varied and sometimes opposite to the declared objectives of its democracy support policies. The democracy promotion literature has to a large extent neglected the unintended consequences of EU democracy support in Eastern Europe and the Middle East and North Africa. The EU has left multiple imprints on the political trajectories of the countries in the neighbourhood and yet the dominant explanation, highlighting the EU’s security and economic interests in the two regions,cannot fully account for the unintended consequences of its policies. The literature on the ‘pathologies’ of international organisations offers an explanation, emphasizing the failures of the EU bureaucracy to anticipate, prevent or reverse the undesired effects of its democracy support in the neighbourhood.     

Constructing new environments versus attitude adjustment: contrasting the substance of democracy in UN and EU democracy promotion discourses

In contrasting UN with EU democracy promotion discourses, the article contributes to the debate on the substance of EU democracy promotion by approaching the question of ‘democratic substance’ from the vantage point of sovereignty. For its analytical framing, it draws on relevant aspects of Foucault's work on power. The article suggests that, due to their diverging obligations to sovereignty, the substance of democracy promotion in UN discourses revolves around an institutional-centric understanding, whereas in EU discourses we see a significant reconceptualization of democracy as a norms-based concept. The latter does not aim at the government of society but the ethical self-governance of socially embedded individuals. It is argued that, with the decreasing purchase of democracy as a universal political project and the growing concern with local contexts, the EU's norms-based conception emerges as better equipped to adapt to contemporary challenges of governing. The article concludes with raising some doubts about the democratic promise and potential of the democratic rationality underpinning EU discourses. Democracy, participation and political change are no longer conceived in terms of shaping and influencing public agenda but refer to socially shaping and influencing subjective perceptions and behaviours.     

International,national or local? Explaining the substance of democracy promotion: the case of Eastern European democracy promotion

The EU is one of the most prominent democracy promoters in the world today. It has played an especially important role in the democratization of its Eastern European member states. Given the acknowledged success and legitimacy of EU democracy promotion in these countries, it could be expected that when they themselves began promoting democracy, they would borrow from the EU's democracy promotion model. Yet this paper finds that the EU's model has not played a defining role for the substantive priorities of the Eastern European democracy promoters. They have instead borrowed from their own democratization models practices that they understand to fit the needs of recipients. This article not only adds to the literature on the Europeanization of member state policies but also contributes both empirically and theoretically to the literature on the foreign policy of democracy promotion. The article theorizes the factors shaping the substance of democracy promotion—how important international ‘best practices’ are and how they interact and compete with donor-level domestic models and recipient democratization needs. Also, this study sheds light on the activities of little-studied regional democracy promoters—the Eastern European members of the EU.     

Democracy promotion in EU enlargement negotiations: more interaction,less hierarchy

ABSTRACT

In the integration literature, the relationship of the European Union (EU) as a donor and the (potential) candidates for EU membership as recipients of democracy promotion is described as asymmetrical. The donor is portrayed to have full whereas recipients have moderate or even no leverage over democratic reform what brings a hierarchical notion of active donors versus passive recipients into the analysis. Taking the local turn into consideration, however, this contribution argues that democracy promotion, is better conceptualized as a dynamic interplay between external and domestic actors. It reveals the toolbox of instruments that both sides dispose of, traces the dynamic use of these instruments, and systematizes the structural and behavioural factors that constrain the negotiation interplay. A case study of negotiations over public administration reform in Croatia in the context of EU enlargement shows that domestic actors dispose of leverage that counterweights external leverage and mitigates the implied hierarchy.     

Transatlantic Democracy Promotion and the Arab Spring

The Arab Awakening can be seen as a symptom of failure of US and EU democracy promotion policies in the region. By identifying democracy with ‘liberal democracy’ – a discursively powerful political move – the contingent character of democracy has been lost. The US and the EU, the main promoters of a neoliberal understanding of democracy, have sided with the wrong side of history. And because they have failed to deeply revise the philosophical underpinnings of their policies, even after 2011, they risk another, even bigger, policy failure.     

Administrative reform assistance and democracy promotion: exploring the democratic substance of the EU’s public administration reform principles for the neighbourhood countries

International donors, particularly the European Union (EU), vehemently endorse institution-building and public administration reform (PAR) in their work on democracy support. Still, the linkages between externally sponsored reform and advancement of democratic governance in beneficiary countries constitute a blind spot in our understanding of democratization. This article contributes to examining this relationship by exploring the democratic substance of the EU’s PAR portfolio for the neighbourhood countries. The aim of the article is to focus attention on the PA–democracy interface in the study of democracy promotion by elaborating a conceptual framework for exploring the nature of externally supported administrative reforms and the substantive content of democracy being advanced. By using the OECD/SIGMA’s (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development/Support for Improvement in Governance and Management) PAR framework for the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) countries as a case study, this article demonstrates how the EU’s approach to programming PAR accommodates elements from several formats of democratic governance while the conceptualization of the democratic effects of the PAR principles remains vague. The article concludes by highlighting the need for closer examination of the potentials and limits of external PAR strategies in democracy support, and for attuning the EU’s PAR design to its democratic implications.     

Enforcing consensus? The hidden bias in EU democracy promotion in Central and Eastern Europe

Democracy is a primary export norm of the European Union (EU). It has also played a key role in the conditionalities that have governed the accession processes of new member states in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). The EU has often been accused of offering little guidance regarding the specifics of desirable democracy models and the means of their consolidation. But are these accusations justified? In the first part of this article a detailed examination of European Commission opinions and reports reveals that it has consistently promoted a specific model of democracy in future member states. It shows a strong bias in favour of Lijphart's model of consensus democracy, which is indiscriminately advocated for prospective member states. The second part of the article draws attention to the serious obstacles which exist in the region to the realization of this model. We question the wisdom of the Commission's one-size-fits-all democratic model given these obstacles and the real-life diversity of political contexts in the region.     

Democracy promotion in Kosovo: mapping the substance of donor assistance and a comparative analysis of strategies

From the perspective of Kosovo, this article contributes to a growing literature focusing on the substance of donor-driven democracy promotion. Drawing on extensive empirical research between 2010 and 2012, the research provides greater insights into which donors are providing what sort of assistance; how the content and focus of aid are decided and formulated; and the behaviour of the European Union (EU) and other large donors compared with small bilaterals and private foundations. By including the category of ‘governance-oriented’ assistance to classify donor initiatives, a more nuanced mapping of priorities and strategies is offered, which distinguishes between those measures designed to engage civil society (developmental), those focusing on institutions and elite level change (political), and interventions specifically designed to promote closer interaction between government and nongovernmental actors. The conclusion reached is that, although overall levels of aid to Kosovo have remained relatively stable since 2008, donor behaviour is in flux, with evidence of an emergent distinction between what larger donors offer and the provision of smaller bilaterals and private foundations. This, it is argued, has serious implications for the capacity of the EU to continue providing extensive aid across a wide range of issues and policy areas as part of its pre-accession assistance.     

Whose legitimacy? The EU and Russia in contest for the eastern neighbourhood

The impact of external actors on political change in the European neighbourhood has mostly been examined through the prism of elite empowerment through externally offered incentives. The legitimacy of external policies has received less scrutiny, both with regard to liberal powers promoting democracy and illiberal powers preventing democracy. This article investigates the conflicting notions of legitimate political governance that underpin the contest between the European Union (EU) and Russia in the Eastern neighbourhood. It proposes four mechanisms of external soft influence that take into account the EU’s and Russia’s actorness and the structural power of their norms of political governance, and consider their effects on domestic actors and societal understandings of appropriate forms of political authority. It finally traces the EU’s and Russia’s soft influence on political governance in Ukraine. It maintains that through shaping the domestic understandings of legitimate political authority and reinforcing the domestic political competition, the EU and Russia have both left a durable imprint on Ukraine’s uneven political path.     

Dilemmas of implementation: EU democracy assistance in the Mediterranean

The article shows how and why, after having agreed upon a programme for democracy assistance under the name of European Initiative for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR), the EU fell short of its original objectives in programme implementation. This is demonstrated by close analysis of microprojects in Mediterranean countries. The scope of EU action shrank as priorities for action were defined and projects approved. As a consequence, the EU has promoted democracy less than human rights, in relatively less demanding countries, and without spending all the budgeted money. This article shows how these findings are consistent with important themes in Policy analysis and implementation research, and thus supplements other explanations of EU shortcomings. EU democracy assistance, as represented by the EIDHR, is an ambiguous and contested policy, which also suffers from an institutional setting characterized by a long chain of command. This means that there are opportunities for small decisions to gradually shift the focus and downsize the relevance of the policy initiative. The EU is thus unintentionally undermining its own policy goals, as the large number of actors interpret the EU's best interest (and their own position in relation to it) in various and divergent ways.     

On Democratic Peace and Democracy Exporting

Democratic Peace and Democracy Exporting are two relatively young theories in the Western IR theory family.The authors believe both are questionable assertions.Democracy,whether as personal consciousness or a political mechanism,can only arise when the productivity of a nation reaches a certain level. Fundamentally,even if we agree with the assertion that democracy leads to peace,the real reason is level of productivity;democracy is only a result.Secondly,the close relationship between democracy and capitalism means that democracy can not be exported randomly.To treat democracy as a universally adaptable commodity exportable to any nation without considering the level of productivity can hardly be successful;in fact,it may be harmful to some nations.     

Cosmetic agreements and the cracks beneath: ideological convergences and divergences in US and EU democracy promotion in civil society

This piece examines the substance of EU democracy promotion from a comparative point of view and from a perspective placing under inquiry the meaning of the idea of liberal democracy itself. Instead of assuming that the democratic ideal that the EU promotes (‘liberal democracy’) has a clear, fixed meaning, the article examines in detail what actually constitutes the ‘ideal of democracy’ at the heart of EU democracy promotion, and compares this vision to that which informs the democracy promotion of the US. It argues that interesting differences, and shifts and oscillations, in the models of liberal democracy that the EU and the US promote exist and that these are important to note in order for us to fully appreciate how the substance of EU and US democracy support can be shaped by conceptual and ideological debate on the meaning of democracy. This dynamic is particularly relevant today, in the context of the recent attempts to develop transatlantic dialogue on democracy support. This dialogue, it is suggested, plasters over some subtle but important ideological cracks over what is meant by democracy in EU and US democracy support.     

US and EU Human Rights and Democracy Promotion since the Arab Spring. Rethinking its Content,Targets and Instruments

The momentous changes in the Middle East and North Africa have brought the issue of human rights and democracy promotion back to the forefront of international politics. The new engagement in the region of both the US and the EU can be scrutinised along three dimensions: targets, instruments and content. In terms of target sectors, the US and EU are seeking to work more with civil society. As for instruments, they have mainly boosted democracy assistance and political conditionality, that is utilitarian, bilateral instruments of human rights and democracy promotion, rather than identitive, multilateral instruments. The content of human rights and democracy promotion has not been revised.     

Not as bad as it seems: EU and US democracy promotion faces China in Africa

The rise of China in Africa is often described as a major challenge to the United States (US) and the European Union (EU) democracy promotion policies. China is accused of providing important volumes of loans, development aid, trade and investments without “political strings” attached, thereby undermining the US and the EU's possibilities to set material incentives for reforms. This article investigates Ethiopia and Angola as two cases where one would expect that the growing presence of China has made it more difficult for the EU and US to support reforms. Empirical findings presented in this article go against this argument. In both countries, the EU and the US face substantial difficulties to make the respective government address governance issues. However, the presence of China has not made it more difficult for the US and the EU to implement their strategies. Instead the empirical analysis suggests that domestic factors in Ethiopia and Angola, notably the level of challenge to regime survival both governments face, influence both governments’ willingness to engage with the EU and US.     

The EU and Russia's conflicting regime preferences in Ukraine: assessing regime promotion strategies in the scope of the Ukraine crisis

This paper evaluates the competitiveness of the European Union (EU) and Russia's regime preferences in their foreign policies towards Ukraine in the scope of the on-going Ukraine crisis. It is argued that the underpinning geopolitical environment Ukraine currently resides in, wedged between two much larger powers (the EU and Russia), renders it a vulnerable target state for regime promotion from both sides. Indeed, since the 2004 Orange revolution in Ukraine, both the EU and Russia have had discernible regime promotion strategies in their foreign policies. The EU's regime promotion has focussed on facilitating democracy in Ukraine, along with more material interests (trade and strategic aims) while Russia has reacted with increasingly zero-sum policies which pursue its preference for having a loyal and Russian-facing regime in Ukraine. Ultimately, the increasing competitiveness of the EU and Russia has been a key factor in the onset of the Ukraine crisis, which offers important insight into the relationship between large powers and the smaller third states which lie in their overlapping spheres of influence.     

Promotion of democracy as a foreign policy instrument of ‘Europe’: Limits to international idealism

The promotion of democracy abroad was a much published issue in ‘European’ foreign policy during the 1990s. Based on five case studies, this article argues that the policy had very clear limitations to it. The limits were mainly imposed by the high priority given to security, and secondly they were the result of the institutional structure and the political‐bureaucratic culture of the European Community. However, it would be wrong to conclude that the policy declarations on democracy were not important to the European Community/European Union and to the member states. The issue was definitely important, but that was because it served other purposes. First, the promotion of democracy abroad was conceived as one among a number of instruments promoting European security in the post‐cold war era. Secondly, promotion of democracy internationally contributed to the higher profile in world affairs that Europe had sought since 1958. And thirdly, this international profile might have pushed the integration process forward within Europe.     

The rocky road of interregionalism: EU sanctions against human rights-violating Myanmar and repercussions on ASEAN–EU relations*

From 1991 until 2012, the European Union (EU) applied sanctions on Myanmar with the purpose of promoting democracy and human rights. In addition, the EU called on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to exert pressure on Myanmar. This paper analyses, in the context of Myanmar’s 1997 accession to ASEAN, how the EU’s sanctions approach towards Myanmar was perceived within ASEAN and related repercussions of this approach on ASEAN–EU interregional relations. With the accession of Myanmar as the base story, it is argued that a regional organizations membership concept implies specific dealings with normative ideas such as democracy and human rights as well as strategies of punishment such as sanctions. The differing membership concepts of ASEAN and the EU explain ASEAN’s critical perception of the EU’s sanctions on Myanmar. Further, the conceptual difference in membership also explains that the EU’s pressure on ASEAN has severely impaired the interregional relations.     

Negotiating democracy with authoritarian regimes. EU democracy promotion in North Africa

ABSTRACT

In order to better understand the dynamics of international cooperation on democracy promotion with authoritarian regimes, this article looks into the processes and results of negotiations on democracy (promotion) between the European Union (EU) and two of its North African neighbours (Morocco, Tunisia) in the decade leading up to the Arab uprisings. Asking if, how, and to what effect the EU and its Mediterranean partners have negotiated issues related to democracy promotion, it analyses official documents issued on the occasion of their respective association council meetings in 2000-2010. It shows that partners have indeed addressed these issues since the early 2000s, however, without engaging in substantive exchanges. Most of the time, conflicts have been neither directly addressed nor resolved. Where there are traces of actual negotiations leading to an agreement, these are clearly based on a logic of bargaining rather than arguing. These findings challenge the picture of harmony and cooperation between the EU and Morocco. Furthermore, they point to the low quality of these exchanges which reinforces the dilemma of international democracy promotion in cooperation with authoritarian regimes.     

Monopolising the Centre: The AKP and the Uncertain Path of Turkish Democracy

The loss of reform momentum and rising authoritarianism during the most recent phase of AKP government indicate that Turkish democracy is in crisis. Although the Gezi protests emerged as a movement from below reacting to the rising authoritarianism of the AKP government, it did not turn into an organised and sustainable movement. Similarly, external anchors or reputational effects are failing to reverse the backsliding of Turkish democracy. The notion of ‘bounded communities’ is a key concept in accounting for the continued dominance of Erdo?an and the AKP in the face of significant pressure for change. Erdo?an’s victory in the August 2014 presidential elections generates both benign and pessimistic scenarios for the future of Turkish democracy.