Democracy Promotion In The Eu S Neighbourhood

EU external democracy promotion has traditionally been based on ‘linkage’, i.e. bottom-up support for democratic forces in third countries, and ‘leverage’, i.e. the top-down inducement of political elites towards democratic reforms through political conditionality. The advent of the European Neighbourhood Policy and new forms of association have introduced a new, third model of democracy promotion which rests in functional cooperation between administrations. This volume comparatively defines and assesses these three models of external democracy promotion in the EU’s relations with its eastern and southern neighbours. It argues that while ‘linkage’ has hitherto failed to produce tangible outcomes, and the success of ‘leverage’ has basically been tied to an EU membership perspective, the ‘governance’ model of democracy promotion bears greater potential beyond the circle of candidate countries. This third approach, while not tackling the core institutions of the political system as such, but rather promoting transparency, accountability, and participation at the level of state administration, may turn out to remain the EU’s most tangible form of democratic governance promotion in the future. This book was originally published as a special issue of Democratization.

This book presents a novel 'governance model' of democracy promotion. In detailed case studies of EU cooperation with Moldova, Morocco, and Ukraine, it examines how the EU promotes democratic governance through functional cooperation in the fields of competition policy, the environment, and migration.

EU external democracy promotion has traditionally been based on �linkage�, i.e. bottom-up support for democratic forces in third countries, and �leverage�, i.e. the top-down inducement of political elites towards democratic reforms through political conditionality. The advent of the European Neighbourhood Policy and new forms of association have introduced a new, third model of democracy promotion which rests in functional cooperation between administrations. This volume comparatively defines and assesses these three models of external democracy promotion in the EU�s relations with its eastern and southern neighbours. It argues that while �linkage� has hitherto failed to produce tangible outcomes, and the success of �leverage� has basically been tied to an EU membership perspective, the �governance� model of democracy promotion bears greater potential beyond the circle of candidate countries. This third approach, while not tackling the core institutions of the political system as such, but rather promoting transparency, accountability, and participation at the level of state administration, may turn out to remain the EU�s most tangible form of democratic governance promotion in the future. This book was originally published as a special issue of Democratization.

The book investigates the substance of the European Union's (EU) democracy promotion policy. It focuses on elections, civil and political rights, horizontal accountability, effective power to govern, stateness, state administrative capacity, civil society, and socio-economic context as components of embedded liberal democracy.

This book provides a systematic analysis of the EU’s extensive, but so far largely failed, efforts to promote democracy in the Mediterranean region, thoroughly assessing its democracy promotion in relation to two Mediterranean countries – Jordan and Turkey. By pinpointing essential prerequisites for democracy promotion and analyzing how the EU’s policies have related to these, the author offers a theoretically based analytical framework focused on the importance of the local orientation and ownership of the project of democratization, and the broader dialogue between the democracy promoter and the partner society. The author concludes that there are basic deficiencies in the EU’s democracy promotion, leading to policy implications of vital importance as the EU now grapples with how to make its democracy promotion successful. The EU’s Democracy Promotion and the Mediterranean Neighbours will be of interest to students and scholars of Democratisation studies, EU studies, Middle East Studies and EU Neighbourhood studies.

Studienarbeit aus dem Jahr 2018 im Fachbereich Politik - Thema: Internationale Beziehungen, Note: 1,3, Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen (Institut für Politikwissenschaften), Veranstaltung: Rule of Law and European Integration in Post-Soviet Societies, Sprache: Deutsch, Abstract: This paper will focus on the two parts of the promotion of democracy and the Rule of Law by the EU but also Russia as a counterpart to it. It is indispensable not to see a connection between both influences, the European one and the soviet or Russian one because of the soviet history of the country. We also should take into consideration the geopolitical aspect of this threefold relationship. The collapse of Communist systems in Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) marked a fundamental turning point in their domestic development. The transformation of post-communist systems included not only the partly won democratization of the political systems, but also the transformation of virtually all social subsystems. Over the years, it soon became apparent that the former communist states were performing very differently in this task and achieved very different successes. While in Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and the Baltic States, functioning democratic systems and pluralistic societies have been established relatively quickly, many of the states that emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union remained in stagnation and chaos or developed into authoritarian systems. On the other hand some states evolved from some fundamental steps towards democratization like for example Georgia where the so called Rose Revolution, a peaceful change of power, took place. This revolution allowed the country not only to transition to another political system but also towards a change of Rule of Law in an echo of the European thought. Important to know in this case is that during the Rose Revolution in 2003 and right after this event the European Union (EU) increasingly supported Georgia through a diverse set of measures – especially covering the financial aspect in order to develop a more independent judicial system. Therefore, this paper will focus on the lack of judicial independence as a long-standing problem in Georgia, dating back to Soviet times. The EU is trying to solve this problem with the help of projects and agreements. Georgia is (progressively) approaching the EU by signing an association agreement in 2014 “in which the country undertook to pursue comprehensive reforms, particularly in the areas of democracy, the Rule of Law, human rights and basic civil liberties, good governance, market economy and sustainable development.”

This book examines the effectiveness and consistency of EU democracy promotion in its Eastern neighbourhood between 1991 and 2014. It concludes that the EU’s democratization role in this region was, not surprisingly, weak within this time period. However, this weak role only took shape under four domestic and transnational conditions: (a) a higher cost-benefit balance of rule transfer, (b) a lower structural difficulty a given country would need to overcome on its way towards a democratic regime, (c) increased levels of authority distribution across branches of power, and (d) a higher extent of democratic diffusion resulting from regional interactions. In those countries where these domestic and transnational conditions were present, as in Moldova, Ukraine, and Georgia, the EU’s democratizing influence was in causal terms only the tip of the iceberg. Most variation in regime dynamics remains to be explained by domestic and transnational contexts.

Approaches democratization of the European neighbourhood from two sides, first exploring developments in the states themselves and then examining what the European Union has been doing to promote the process.