The EU's democracy promotion and the Mediterranean neighbours. Orientation, ownership and dialogue in Jordan and Turkey (original) (raw)
Related papers
Limits of EU Democracy Promotion in the Arab Middle East: The Cases of Egypt and Morocco
The outbreak of pro-reform demonstrations in the Arab Middle East has not only raised questions on the underlying internal dynamics, but also raised questions about EU's role as an external normative actor. Although the EU has long presented itself as a moral power in its southern neighborhood, there has been an inconsistency between what is being presented by the EU and its actual policies. Thus, eruption of the Arab uprisings has signified not only the failure of authoritarian ruling regimes, but also of the EU policies across the region. This article analyzes how the EU democracy promotion policies have influenced political liberalization/deliberalization in Egypt and Morocco since the early 2000s and elaborates on how the Arab Spring unfolded in Egypt and Morocco and the EU's response to its political consequences in these two states. It is argued that while an external actor such as the EU has a remarkable potential to influence process of political liberalization in Arab states such as Egypt and Morocco, democracy cannot be imposed from outside in the absence of meaningful pro-reform demand in the domestic context. Still, European support is viewed as more critical than ever for Arab countries undergoing transition. In addition, it underlines the difficulty to define the EU as a genuinely normative power when its democracy promotion policies towards regional states are taken into account in the past decade.
The paper aims to give an in-depth analysis of the democratisation process in Turkey and attempts to evaluate the lessons that may be learned from this experience. Being one of the aims of the Barcelona process, democratisation is a general theme of politics in the Mediterranean. The countries in the Mediterranean region are experiencing problems in establishing a democratic system of governance. The transition process in countries such as Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Jordan and Egypt run into similar problems experienced in Turkey. Thus being countries that share cultural and social commonalities they may benefit from Turkey’s experiences. The paper attempts to examine whether Turkey’s example of a democratic and secular country with a predominantly Moslem population can also be repeated in similar countries of the region. The main research question will revolve around the analysis of Turkey’s process of democratisation, conditioned by the role of the state, state-society relations, secularism and development of civil society and answer the question whether Turkey’s case is unique, i.e. that it rests on the existence of distinctive factors and cannot be replicated elsewhere, or it may serve as an example for other countries that share similar cultural and socio-economic factors and commonalities in historical development. It must also be emphasised that EU has been an important external stimulus for the democratisation process in Turkey. The paper also attempts to place the issue in the context of the EU’s Mediterranean policy and the Euro-Mediterranean process and evaluate the impact that the EU factor may have on the prospects of democracy in the region.
The European Union and Its Muslim Neighbours: The Prospects for Democracy Promotion
Presenterat på seminariet för internationell politik, …, 2006
To its south and south-east, the EU borders on a range of Muslim countries, which – for different reasons – are not marked by a democratic political order. Arguably, one exception from this is Turkey, a candidate country to the EU, which started accession negotiations in October 2005. Turkey definitely has its share of democratic problems, but the country has in recent years shown a great willingness to reform its political order in a democratic direction. In different ways, the EU works – not least as a part of its security strategy – to promote democracy in this region and thus to make these southern and south-eastern Muslim neighbours democratise their political orders. That the Mediterranean region is of vital strategic importance to the EU stands clear – both the Council and the Commission have identified the southern and eastern Mediterranean region and the Middle East as a prioritized area in the external relations of the EU. But what are the prospects for the democracy promotion policies of the EU to succeed in making for democracy in this part of the Muslim world? To analyse how an international actor like the EU acts to promote a democratic development in undemocratic countries is important in itself, but also important from a more general theoretical point of view, as a step in developing theories on democracy promotion. In order to make such an analysis, an appropriate theoretical framework is needed. However, as we will return to later, such appropriate theoretical frameworks for analysing democracy promotion have largely been lacking in literature. In this paper, I therefore propose a theoretical framework for how the prospects for democracy promotion in general – as well as for EU democracy promotion towards its Muslim neighbours – can be analysed. This paper thus focuses on how to conceptualise democracy promotion theoretically, and a framework pinpointing vital aspects for successful democracy promotion is developed.
Focusing on the Euro-Mediterranean relations since the early 1990s, this paper investigates in how far the EU has been able to shape its relations with third countries according to its democracy promotion policy. The paper traces the evolution of the EU’s provisions for democracy promotion and compares the implementation of political dialogue and democracy assistance with seven (semi-)authoritarian regimes (Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria, and Tunisia) since the early 1990s. A clear regional trend to more intensive cooperation lends credibility to the claim that the EU possesses a certain agenda setting power in international relations. A systematic comparison across countries and over time explores the explanatory power of interdependence, political liberalisation, and statehood for the remaining country variation. The paper finds that the degree of political liberalisation in target countries is the most important scope condition for cooperation in the field of democracy promotion and points to the need of further investigating (domestic) factors to account for the EU’s differential ‘normative power’ in international relations.
EU Democracy Promotion and lessons from the Eastern Europe and Middle Eastern experiences
The studies of democratization constitute a significant portion of the comparative domestic politics literature and they generally draw on the 'second image' explanations derived from experiences at a domestic level, followed by an in-depth ideographic analysis of the specific institutional settings. What is generally absent from the limelight however is the role of international actors and the linkage between international relations and regional studies of democratization. Drawing on the role of the EU as a committed promoter of democracy at the time of the post-Soviet transitions from 1989 onward, this paper aims to draw a comparative analysis in the light of the recent developments in the Middle East; the so-called "Arab Spring". The paper argues that political conditionality attached to the EU accession process has had a significant influence on the post-Soviet space's transition to democracy. By contrast, in cases where the conditionality raises questions of uncertainty under the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), such as the recent Middle Eastern cases, the future potential of the regimes in the region in making successful transitions remains at best questionable. The events of 1989 to 1991 created a new dimension and a new research programme regarding the role of external actors, most significantly focusing on the role played by European Union as an external anchor in the democratization process of Central and Eastern European (CEE) states. 2 One of the main pillars of the European Union's foreign policy has been the promotion of democracy, human rights and rule of law, especially after 1993 with the Copenhagen European Council imposing political conditionalities for the accession of CEE countries, commonly referred to as the 'Copenhagen criteria' which consisted of stable institutions for democracy, rule of law and respect for human rights and minority rights. 3 The transition of the CEE countries marked an important point in the democratization literature for including the international dimension, however; studies on the recent Middle 2 Eastern mobilizations still continue to focus on the internal dynamics of each country. Rightfully so, each country in the Middle East has followed a divergent path, like those of CEE, after the events of 2011 and it seems necessary to highlight the national level processes of these developments. However the relationship with the most important external actors in the region; namely the EU and the USA, and the implications of their foreign policies have a quite significant impact in the common underlying feature of the almost all states in the region 4 : region's general lack of democratization in comparison to the rest of the world's developing regions despite the quite pronounced demands put forward for regime change since 2011. The EU and external actors' role in the process of democratization lacked systemic analysis and remains largely undertheorized 5 . Democratization as a research programme holds major importance for the comparative political literature while the legacy of studying democratization by focusing primarily on the domestic dynamics constitutes the mainstream paradigmatic discussions. Research and analyses generally draw on the 'second image' 6 explanations focusing at great lengths over the the nation-level attributes while seeing systemic and international factors epiphenomenal at best 7 . Arguably, with the exception of studies of International Political Economy (IPE), mainstream international relations and comparative politics remained two separate areas of study during this period; neorealism saw second image explanations as 'reductive', the rational choice framework assumed that politicians and institutions were autonomous and independent actors which existed separately from their embedded context and did not problematize the direct constitutive influence of international structures on domestic actors and mainly took their importance as secondary to domestic actors.
EU Democracy Promotion and Electoral Politics in the Arab Mediterranean
2010
After 9/11, the Arab world climbed the political agenda of the European Union’s (EU) priorities, accelerating calls for reform in the region. In order to surround itself with prosperous and stable neighbours, the EU has sought to achieve political reforms in the Mediterranean and the wider Middle East as part of a more comprehensive policy of democracy promotion. New studies on democratization have challenged the old prevailing scepticism about electoral politics in the Arab Mediterranean and suggest that elections need not to be dismissed as meaningless; instead there is a ‘politics of elections’ which deserves further investigation. This topic is very relevant to the EU, as internal electoral dynamics cannot be overlooked when developing policy tools aimed at promoting political reforms. Unless we understand the politics of authoritarian elections and their institutions we cannot distinguish between elections that create real momentum toward democratization from those that reinfor...
The EU Democratization Efforts in the Middle East and North Africa
For a long time, democratization in third countries has been on the agenda of Western powers such as the European Union (EU). However, while it was more successful with Central and East European countries, democratization has had limited results in countries further east and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). The Arab Spring events opened a new reality highlighting the diversity in the region. While some countries liberalized, others were either not affected at all or even strengthened the authoritarian grip of the regime. Even those countries that went through the Arab Spring ended up differently. The current increased political instability in various MENA countries show the inability of the EU and other international actor not only in the democratization process but also in stabilizing the neighbourhood. The only Arab Spring country that seems to be on right track with respect to democratic transition is Tunisia at the moment. This article seeks to answer the following question: Despite the EU democratization policies in the MENA, why have we seen a different outcome in the various countries? Why the democratic support has resulted in a limited success? And do we see a change following the Arab Spring events? Answering these questions, this article argues that the diversity in the outcome is the result of the interaction between Western linkages and domestic politics and the existence of different levels of elite socialization and veto points.