Promoting democracy through economic conditionality in the ENP: a normative critique

Abstract

This article presents a normative critique of the coherence of democracy promotion in the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). As an immanent critique, the paper derives its normative standards internally from an analysis of key ENP policy documents. It is argued that democracy promotion is in conflict with some of the other goals of the ENP such as market liberalisation, trade policy reforms and private sector development. Further, the incentive of market integration is argued to undermine democracy promotion. Though the ENP’s current way of pursuing the goal of democratisation is normatively incoherent, this article also argues that incentivising democratisation through conditionality is not inherently contradictory. Two potential ways democratisation could be coherently promoted are suggested: delimiting the policy to unilateral transfers conditional on democratisation alone (‘simple transfers’), or offering EU membership to ENP countries (‘no integration without incorporation’).

Keywords:

• European Neighbourhood Policy
• democracy promotion
• economic conditionality
• democratisation
• political theory
• normative

Acknowledgements

For comments and discussion thanks are due to Jan-Pieter Beetz, Richard Bellamy, Astrid Von Busekist, Ben Crum, Renaud Dehousse, Florence Haegel, Carlo Invernizzi Accetti, Maurits de Jongh, Justine Lacroix, Glyn Morgan, Kalypso Nicolaïdis, Janie Pélabay, Andrei Poama, Enzo Rossi, Jacques Rupnik and the anonymous reviewers. I would also like to thank the participants of the seminar ‘L’Europe et le Politique. Approches Théoriques et Empiriques’ organised by the Centre d’études européennes and the Centre de recherches politiques at Sciences Po, the POLIS seminar at the Centre de théorie politique of the ULB Brussels and the ACCESS EUROPE Early Career Workshop on the Political Theory of European Integration at the VU University Amsterdam.

Notes

1. While engaging ‘legitimation discourses’, centrally EU policy documents, this paper does not, however, use discourse analysis as a formal tool. For an evaluation of EU democracy promotion using this method, see Teti 2012.

2. Some scholars of the substance of EU democracy promotion have noted this tendency empirically. For instance, Voltolini and Bicchi argue that security concerns ‘trump’ democracy promotion in Israel and Palestine (2015, see also Pace 2009). The argument of this paper, following the discourse, is focused on the tension between economic and trade-related reform goals and democracy promotion. A similar point in the context of EU internal economic policy has been made by Crum (2013) and regarding governance and democracy by Hazenberg (2013). At the level of theory, however, the argument of this paper is applicable to conditionality generally – the pursuit of substantive ends is ordinarily in tension with the promotion of democracy – a type of governing regime that is open-ended in principle (again, the paper argues that enlargement politics were an exception to this rule). The author thanks an anonymous reviewer for the Journal of European Integration for highlighting this point.

3. Later reports also show a more communal side, for instance, when the 2012 regional report for Southern partners introduces the idea of a ‘democratic culture’ (2013b, 2) and ‘democratic dialogue’ (ibid., 16); the 2014 financial regulation continues on this foot with its desire to build ‘democratic societies’ (Regulation (EU) No 232/2014, preamble 4).

4. Calculated using 2014 figures from the World Bank available at: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD (1 May 2016).

5. CIA estimate for 2014 available at: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2004.html (1 May 2016).

6. Israel’s per capita GDP was $33,703.4 in 2014, almost double the figure for Bulgaria, the poorest EU member state at $17,207.6. The next richest country in the ENP on this measure is Belarus at $18,184.9. On the Economist Intelligence Unit’s ‘Democracy Index’ of 2015, Israel ranks at 34 globally, above EU states. The next highest ranked ENP country is Tunisia at 57, below the lowest ranked EU state which is Hungary at 54.