Democratisation without Coercion: Parliamentary Bodies as Democracy Promoters in the Mediterranean (original) (raw)
Related papers
2006
We are used to observing countries along the south shore of the Mediterranean with critical eyes regarding the effective working of their democratic institutions. We know that elections take place in those countries. We know that they have parliamentary institutions. We know that a plurality of parties that operate in the respective territories exist. But, in spite of everything, we doubt that all this is not, on many occasions, more virtual than real, more nominal than effective. And these comments often originate from the conviction that the countries on the north shore already have consolidated democracies, with full exercise of liberties and rights, with highly institutionalised representative assemblies, and with party systems that are capable of including the whole range of political options and which interaction also guarantees periodical processes of alternation in power. In this context, the relatively recent elections in Morocco or those held in Egypt in 2005, have been useful in demonstrating the limits of democratisation processes in the region, but also their encouraging progress. In this article, we are not trying to dig deeper into these electoral processes, neither do we want to ponder over the complications of the system of parties' evolution and the electoral chicanery that characterises the specific developments within this or that North Afri-can political regime. Instead, we want to concentrate on the aspects that both shores of the Mediterranean have in common regarding the need (undoubtedly different, but nevertheless shared) to examine in greater depth the respective situations and evolution of democracy in each region. To this end, we will look instead at the current inadequacies of Western democracy in relation to the values it brings, the limitations carried by an exclusively regulatory conception of this democracy, and the possibilities of confluence between both shores in relation to potential in-depth processes in a perspective that recovers the transforming aspect of democracy.
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...
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.
Good “democratic” governance in the Mediterranean
2012
2011 will remain a very special date in the history of Arab region and for the Euro-Mediterranean area as a whole. Henceforth, mass slogans raised by Arab protestors will have a special meaning in the current political glossary. These mottoes will have a great impact, full of meaning, on the capacity to build change and overcome all the failures regarding the Arab authoritarian regimes. The Tunisian population has fulfilled its duty magnificently to expel the Tunisian authoritarian regime by an unprecedented popular revolution.
EU democracy projection in the Southern Mediterranean: A practice analysis
Mediterranean Politics
This special issue expands on the existing literature on the international dimension of democratization by focusing on democracy projection, defined as the projection of (democratic) norms in the everyday practice of interactions, beyond any donor-recipient relationship, between states and foreign civil society actors on issue areas where both have interests to defend. The SI examines the issue areas of trade, anti-corruption, applied research, gender and LGBTI, focusing on EU practices in its everyday dealings with civil society in the Southern Mediterranean. The authors conclude, based on comparative case studies relying on extensive interviews, direct observations and content analysis, that democracy projection varies according to four main factors: EU's perceived interest, its ideational commitment to norms of dialogue and inclusion, the degree of institutional inertia and discourses/structures of meanings dominating in some policy areas which preclude EU engagement on substance.
Democratization is always an ambidextrous process. On the one hand, it triggers a universalistic set of norms, events, processes and symbols. On the other hand, democratization involves a much more particularistic set of 'realistic' adaptations to the structures and circumstances of individual countries. In analysing the structures and conjunctures of countries in the Arab World during the past decades, scholars looked at them from the perspective of persistent authoritarianism. This essay exploits democratization theory -as well as its converseby analysing the universalistic set of events, processes and symbols of democratization elsewhere in the world, and then identifying the particularistic characteristics of timing, location and coincidence that seem likely to affect the political outcome of regime change in the countries affected by recent popular uprisings in the Arab World.