“The transformative power of Europe” beyond enlargement: the EU’s performance in promoting democracy in its neighbourhood^*

* Conceptual paper.

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that the European Union’s (EU) performance in promoting democracy in its neighbourhood is not only compromised by the lack of a membership perspective but the selective sanctioning of non-compliance with democracy standards caused by conflicting foreign policy objectives. We identify two conditions for the EU’s consistent application of democratic conditionality: the absence of a stability-democratisation dilemma and the presence of pro-democratic reform coalitions. If neither of these conditions is present, the EU is more likely to act as a status-quo than a transformative power prioritising (authoritarian) stability over uncertain (democratic) change.

KEYWORDS:

• Conditionality
• European Neighbourhood Policy
• differential empowerment
• democracy
• governance effectiveness

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Prof. Dr Tanja A. Börzel is professor of political science and holds the Chair for European Integration at the Otto-Suhr-Institute for Political Science, Freie Universität Berlin. Her recent publications include “From Europeanization to Diffusion” (Special Issue of West European Politics, 2012, 35, 1, 2012, co-edited with Thomas Risse), Business and Governance in South Africa. Racing to the Top? (Palgrave, 2013, co-edited with Christian Thauer), Governance Transfer by Regional Organizations (Palgrave, 2014, co-edited with Vera van Hüllen) and The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Regionalism (Oxford University Press 2016, co-edited with Thomas Risse).

Dr Bidzina Lebanidze is a research associate and lecturer at University of Freiburg. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in political science from Free University of Berlin, and Master’s degree in international relations from Tbilisi State University. Before joining University of Freiburg, he worked as a researcher at Free University of Berlin and was an associated fellow at Kolleg-Forschergruppe “The Transformative Power of Europe”. Previously, he also worked for the Konrad-Adenauer-Foundation and lectured at Berlin School of Economics and Law and at Ilia State University.

Notes

* Conceptual paper.

Additional information

Funding

Research for this paper has been supported by the FP7 programme of the EU for the project ‘Maximizing the integration capacity of the European Union: Lessons and prospects for enlargement and beyond (MAXCAP)’ [grant number 320115].