The Pandora’s box: democratization and rule of law in Turkey

A prominent question in the literature on democracy is concerned with the role of external factors in stimulating the process of democratization and uploading rule of law. This paper tackles the following questions: How does the political conditionality of an international organization—the EU in this case—stimulate democracy in third countries? Equally important, does conditionality always have a positive impact and could it be possible to witness the EU undermining democracy in an unexpected manner? This paper addresses these questions through an analysis of the Turkish democracy in the light of its accession to the EU and through an application of the EU membership conditionality by looking at rule of law in Turkey. The general contention in the political conditionality literature is that the EU enables an acceding country to adopt its democratic principles, and facilitates transition to democracy, while strengthening rule of law. However, the Turkish transformation seems to challenge this contention. This paper proposes that the EU’s political conditionality in bringing about political transformation in Turkey as a membership precondition unexpectedly illuminated the underlying anti-democratic tendencies and tensions in Turkish politics. The democratization process in Turkey since 1999, partly stimulated by the EU, has opened up a Pandora’s box releasing the conflict between the secularists and religious conservatives in Turkey that has long been suppressed. This paper analyzes these cleavages through the prism of EU political conditionality with regards to rule of law.     

Turkey's Reform Effort Reconsidered, 1987–2004

The Helsinki Summit of the European Council in 1999 was a turning point in terms of clarifying a concrete membership perspective regarding candidate status for Turkey and accession to the European Union. Political reforms in Turkey to complete the 1993 Copenhagen criteria also gained significant momentum in the aftermath of the Summit. However, arguments stressing the influence of European Union conditionality seriously undervalue the gradual political transformation that Turkey was already undergoing in the years before 1999 and the societal pressure in Turkey that lay behind it. Basing Turkey's eligibility for membership wholly on the effects of European Union conditionality makes the democratic process extremely vulnerable to the still-delicate process of European Union–Turkey relations. The article aims to develop a more coherent explanation of the European Union's impact on Turkey's politics between 1987 and 2004, by offering an alternative framework of analysis based on Moravcsik's analysis of the European human-rights regime and Risse's theory of communicative action. The main argument is that the principal dynamics driving recent democratization in Turkey were its newfound location within the European human-rights regime and the increasing power of ‘European argument’ as an alternative way of resolving domestic conflicts.     

Domestic politics,regional integration,and human rights: interactions among Myanmar,ASEAN, and EU

This paper tries to explain the evolving relations between the recent domestic political changes in Myanmar and the role of regional integration as they affect human rights in Myanmar. I posit that the two most important causes of the humanitarian crisis in Myanmar are the survival of the authoritarian regime and ethnic-religious conflicts. Those causes differ in nature and their political interactions with the ASEAN regional integration. This paper first examines the relationship between authoritarian regime survival and the humanitarian crisis/efforts during the 2008 natural disaster of cyclone Nargis and the resultant flooding. Second, I investigate the political dynamics of the human rights violations of ethnic and religious minorities, especially the Rohingya Muslim minority in the Rakhine State, during Myanmar’s recent democratic transition. This study approaches the aforementioned questions from both the EU and ASEAN perspectives and also deals with these two regional organizations’ interactions regarding Myanmar’s human rights.     

The substance of EU democratic governance promotion via transgovernmental cooperation with the Eastern neighbourhood

Existing studies of the European Union’s (EU) democratic governance promotion via transgovernmental cooperation in the EU’s neighbourhood seem to take the substance of what is being promoted by the EU for granted. In filling this gap, this article examines the substance of EU democratic governance promotion by assessing (1) to what extent norms of democratic governance appear in EU Twinning projects implemented in the Eastern neighbourhood, and (2) what factors account for differences in the presence of democratic governance norms across those projects. To explain possible variation, the article hypothesizes that the democratic governance substance of Twinning projects will vary with the country’s political liberalization, sector politicization, sector technical complexity, and EU conditionality attached to reform progress in a given policy sector. Data are retrieved from a content analysis of 117 Twinning project fiches from the Eastern neighbourhood and analysed via standard multiple regression. The article finds that the EU mostly promotes moderate, mixed democratic governance substance, which varies across different projects. This variation may be best explained by the level of political liberalization of the beneficiary country and the politicization and technical complexity of the policy sectors and institutions involved in respective Twinning projects.     

Structural factors vs. regime change: Moldova's difficult quest for democracy

This article examines the state of and perspectives on democracy in the Republic of Moldova. The fall of its communist authoritarian regime in 2009 – sometimes compared to a colour revolution – went against the trend toward heavy authoritarianism now visible in the Commonwealth of Independent States. However, the regime change in Moldova does not necessarily imply a process of genuine democratic consolidation. This article argues that the future course of the Moldovan polity will be decided by structural domestic and geopolitical factors different from those that produced the regime change. Most of these structural factors do not favour democratization. Moldova's only chance to secure a genuinely democratic trajectory may therefore be dependent on its relationship with the European Union (EU). The article argues that nothing short of a process of accession to the EU can modify factors that are likely to prevent democratic consolidation. In its absence, the article contends that Moldova will either develop a Ukrainian-style hybrid regime or return to its authoritarian past.     

THE EU CODE OF CONDUCT ON ARMS EXPORTS—ENHANCING THE ACCOUNTABILITY OF ARMS EXPORT POLICIES?

Agreed within the institutional framework of the European Union’s Common Foreign and Security Policy, the EU Code of Conduct for Arms Exports is the most comprehensive regional arms export control regime to date. Adding a European dimension to a policy area traditionally limited to national decision-making raises the question, whether the much debated democratic deficit of the EU applies to the area of arms exports. This article argues that, although the original 1998 document provides for neither public transparency nor parliamentary scrutiny, the Code has effectively led to increased transparency of arms export policies and an enhanced role for parliament.     

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.     

The impact of EU-Enlargement on relations between Europe and East Asia

On 1 May 2004 the European Union’s biggest Enlargement ever materialised when ten countries joined the EU. The new member states—Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, the Slovak Republic, and Slovenia—brought 75 million new citizens into the Union which now comprises a population of 455 million. In spite of the historical importance of EU enlargement, it seems to have raised relatively little interest beyond Europe. This paper tries to narrow the research gap by discussing the most significant implications of EU enlargement for Europe–Asia relations in the areas of general inter-regional (political) links, trade and investment.     

The EU in the Western Balkans: Enlargement as Empire? A Response to David Chandler

This article constitutes a response to David Chandler and his conception of the European Union's role in the western Balkans as a contemporary form of empire-building which he argues has deeply compromised the process of democratic institution-building in a still fragile region. It analyses his view that the EU enlargement process is entirely asymmetric in design and process and contends that there is ample room for candidate states both to contest EU demands and shape their own paths toward membership. This is entirely consistent with the evidence from the EU's previous enlargement, its most ambitious to date, which saw ten states from Central and Eastern Europe become members in 2004 and 2007. The EU enlargement regime is thus a tried and tested one and constitutes the most successful instrument in the EU's external relations toolkit. But it is now facing a challenge in the western Balkans that is manifestly more difficult than anything encountered in previous accession contexts. In particular, the problem of first order democratisation, extending to the practice of state-building, remains cogent and, in the fallout from the Kosovan declaration of independence all the more important in regional terms.     

Evaluating Democratic Governance: A Bottom-up Approach to European Union Enlargement

To be admitted to the European Union (EU), an applicant country is expected to meet five conditions for democratic governance set out in the EU's Copenhagen criteria. The first section compares the EU's criteria with alternative criteria of democracy and of governance. Secondly, the article uses New Europe Barometer sample surveys to demonstrate how the bottom-up evaluation of governance by a country's citizens can complement top-down evaluations by external institutions. Evaluations by citizens of Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania, and Ukraine are compared with those of citizens in eight post-communist countries admitted to the EU in 2004. Factor analysis demonstrates that, unlike democracy indexes, democratic governance is a multi-dimensional concept. Citizens characterize their system of democratic governance as acceptable on some criteria but not on others. Taken singly, each Copenhagen criterion can be a tool for diagnosing an area of weakness in democratic governance. However, political pressures lead policymakers to lower demands for improving governance as a deadline approach for deciding whether or not to admit an applicant country to the European Union.     

The evolution of authoritarian rule in Algeria: linkage versus organizational power

This article draws on the Algerian regimes of Chadli Benjedid and Abdelaziz Bouteflika to critically evaluate Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way’s dimension of linkage. The paper shows that, despite the intensification of the country’s ties to the European Union (EU) from one regime to the other, the willingness and ability of Brussels to put democratizing pressure on Algiers decreased rather than increased. This development challenges Levitsky and Way’s thesis and the importance they place on linkage in relation to their other dimensions of leverage and organizational power. The article concludes that: strengthening linkage does not always result in greater EU or Western democratizing pressure; the balance of importance Levitsky and Way strike between their dimensions is open to question; and, the EU has grown less willing to press for political change in Algeria.     

The “Anglo-Saxon” Orientation of Wartime Hungarian Foreign Policy: The Case of Antal Ullein-Reviczky

The political élite of Hungary included a group that expected British and American support for Hungarian revisionist claims after the Paris Peace Conference. Their acknowledged leader was Count István Bethlen, the prime minister from 1921 to 1931 and an adviser to Regent Vice-Admiral Miklós Horthy until 1944. This analysis investigates a largely forgotten member of this group. Antal Ullein-Reviczky, a diplomat and scholar, shifted from being a Hungarian nationalist with an anti-Nazi attitude towards secret efforts to establish political relations with Britain during the Second World War. Press chief of the Foreign Ministry and the prime minister’s office, Ullein-Reviczky’s last appointment was Hungarian minister at Stockholm in 1943–1944. Both the Germans and the British put little trust in a man whose wife was the daughter of a British diplomat, yet who maintained superb connexions in pro-German Hungary. He changed his mind gradually when he realised that the price for revising the Treaty of Trianon was unacceptable. His long journey through international politics made him a significant player in a global drama, also assisting Raoul Wallenberg’s mission to Budapest. It is a political odyssey worth remembering.     

The European public sphere and the debate about humanitarian military interventions

Studies on the democratic control and legitimacy of Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) have thus far mostly focused on formal institutions. However, a comprehensive analysis requires including the ‘sociocultural infrastructure’ in which such formal institutions are embedded. Students of democracy have argued that the public sphere is a crucial dimension, if not a precondition for all mechanisms of democratic control in general. This paper investigates whether and in which ways Europeans participated in transnational European communication on humanitarian military interventions (1990–2005/2006). The paper analyzes a full sample of 108,677 newspaper articles published in leading newspapers of six EU member states, and the US as a comparative case. It demonstrates that the ‘national’ arenas of political communication are intertwined and allow ordinary citizens to make up their minds about common European issues in the highly controversial and normatively sensitive realm of humanitarian military interventions.     

The hybrid role of the High Representative in the security and defence field: more in 10 months than in the 10 years?

ABSTRACT

Despite a growing “momentum” on European Union (EU) security and defence, there are no academic analyses that aim to systematically assess the role of the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice President of the European Commission (HR/VP) in these strategic domains. This is surprising given that the HR/VP is one of the central actors in the complex institutional architecture of EU security and defence. To fill this gap in the scholarly literature and to contribute to a more fine-grained analysis of the two post-Lisbon Treaty HR/VPs, the article assesses Ashton and Mogherini’s mandates in these fields. This study is particularly relevant because the HR/VP’s hybrid institutional role may represent a unique analytical angle to investigate a formally intergovernmental sector, strongly shaped also by EU institutions’ authority over defence-industrial policy. Following these considerations, the article looks at how the two HR/VPs managed to navigate both the military and the defence-industrial dimensions of EU security and defence.     

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.     

Chinese and Indian FDI in Hungary and the role of Eastern Opening policy

Asia Europe Journal - The aim of this paper is to assess the main features of Chinese and Indian investments in Hungary and the role of the Hungarian Government’s Eastern Opening policy in...     

Europe's intergovernmental NGO: The OSCE in Europe's emerging security structure

The OSCE is little understood outside diplomatic circles, but has a unique and increasing role in encouraging European peace and stability. The article highlights the OSCE's historical development and its more recent role in the European security structure. The OSCE mission in Latvia, tracking the country's language and citizenship issue, is illustrative of the organization's unusual charter. A second section attempts to fix the OSCE within the context of contemporary international theory and the developing literature on nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). With a broad but thin mandate, the organization manages regime activity left over from NATO and EU disinterest or immobility and, with its extensive grassroot efforts at problem‐solving, functions much like an NGO. OSCE success may lie in the combination of regime and NGO attributes, allowing it to move easily both within and outside of formal governmental structures.     

Interregional relations and legitimacy in global governance: the EU in ASEM

This article explores the ramifications of the European Union’s (EU) internal legitimacy debate for its external relations. It applies the Asia–Europe Meeting (ASEM) as a case study to examine the EU’s attempts to promote legitimacy in global governance, more specifically in interregional institutions. The article’s theoretical framework draws from the EU’s legitimacy debate. It identifies three key sources of legitimacy, namely, (i) input legitimacy or democratic control and accountability, (ii) output legitimacy or performance and achievement of core purposes, and (iii) the degree of common identity as externalised through collective representation and the articulation of shared norms and values. The empirical analysis thereafter leads to three observations. First, the EU’s presence has contributed to an increased democratic involvement by ASEM’s different stakeholders including parliaments and civil society. Second, purely from an institutional legitimacy perspective ASEM achieves its purpose as a forum to ‘constructively engage’ with Asian countries and address issues relating to global governance. Third, ASEM reveals the EU’s dual identity as an intergovernmental grouping and an organisation with a gradually increasing capacity of collective representation. However, the advancement of the EU’s normative objectives through ASEM has been problematic, leading to a more interest-based and pragmatic policy path. The article concludes that the EU’s legitimacy debate has had a bearing on relations with Asia and, in particular, with ASEM. Importantly, and given the EU’s setbacks, some elements of the ‘EU’s way’ have proven successful in promoting democratic notions of legitimacy beyond the state.     

At the receiving end—Irish perspectives and response to the banking and sovereign debt crises

Having enjoyed nearly two decades of economic recovery and rapid development as one of the most successful member-states of the European Union, Ireland was shocked and chastened by the global financial crisis of 2007–2008 and its traumatic impact on the country. A threefold crisis assailed its economic and political elites and citizens when the property bubble built up since 2002 exploded 6?years later. Its banking system collapsed through over-exposure to loans built up from the cheap credit made available after the euro was introduced. There was an immediate impact on state revenues when property-related windfall taxes collapsed under this pressure, exposing a yawning gap between current expenditure and revenues. And the country’s economic competitiveness suffered from a runaway cost base. The paper puts these events in the context of Ireland’s overall experience of European integration and its economic development. It goes on to explain how Ireland got into trouble in 2008 and tracks the major events over the next 3?years and how they were handled. Three major axes of argument about the EU/IMF rescue packages are discussed, highlighting the views of political leaders and public opinion dealing with the intensified euro zone crisis in autumn 2011. The paper goes on to assess their attitudes to EU decision-making, the role of the European Central Bank, the prospects of treaty change and Ireland’s emerging position in a reconfigured Europe coming to terms with a more multi-polar world.