The Problematics of the EU's Ethical (Self)Image in Africa: The EU as an ‘Ethical Intervener’ and the 2007 Joint Africa–EU Strategy

Abstract

Against the background of decades of limitedly successful Western international state-building efforts and in light of the recent heightened attention to (state-building in) Africa, this study investigates the feasibility of less international involvement instead of more. To make such assessment convincingly, the involvement needs to be identified as counterproductive to the achievement of peaceful well-functioning societies, and the counter-productivity is to be located in the involvement as such and not just linked to its defective implementation. To this effect, this paper proposes the conceptual framework of the EU as an ‘Ethical Intervener’ as an instrument to deconstruct the EU's well-intended Africa policies into the mechanisms (‘Inequality Mechanism’ and ‘Intervener-Centric Mechanisms’) that are potentially detrimental to the achievement of these ethical goals. The conceptual framework is applied to some of the defining policy documents in EU–Africa relations of the last decade, thus incorporating the most recent developments such as the focus on the principles of ownership, equality and partnership. In conclusion, we reflect on the feasibility of less international involvement by differentiating between the avoidable and unavoidable problematics in today's state-building efforts.

Keywords:

• ethical foreign policy
• EU-Africa relations
• Joint Africa-EU Strategy 2007
• (humanitarian) interventions
• state-building

Notes

¹ While using the term International Community (IC), it is understood that the decisive influences in this conglomerate of nations originates in the industrialised ‘West’ headed by Europe and the United States. In the framework of ethical foreign policy, IC is chosen over the ‘West’ as a term, because descriptively it better reflects the origin of the legitimacy of such a collective agenda, namely in that it is seen as supported by the ‘international’ community.

² The use of the term ‘we’ in the context of this paper refers to the generic category of the ‘West’, the ‘Affluent North’ or more specifically, ‘the European Union’, of which the author is a part.

³ See, for example, the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness (2005), Available online at: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/11/41/34428351.pdf (accessed 25 May 2010).

⁴ Manners (2008, p. 47–55) lists nine ‘substantive normative principles’: sustainable peace; social freedom; consensual democracy; associative human rights; supranational rule of law; inclusive equality; social solidarity; sustainable development; and good governance.

⁵ On processes of ‘othering’, see also Rumelili (2004).

⁶ For a comprehensive overview see, for example, the 2008 special issue of Perspectives on European Politics and Society, 9(2), on the EU and Africa with contributions from Bonaglia, Carbone, Chesterman, Crawford, ECDPM, Farrell, Mackie, Mitzen, Olsen.

⁷ On ownership, partnership and participation see,for example, Abrahamsen (2004), Baaz (2005), Kapoor (2008), Raffer (1998, 2001) and Whitfield (2009).

⁸ Based on text analysis guided by some of the concepts representing the manifestations of the identified mechanisms, such as ‘capacity building’, ‘equality’, ‘conditionality’, as well as on a simple word count between the 2000, 2005 and 2007 documents (see Appendix).

⁹ ‘In much of the developing world, poverty and disease cause untold suffering and give rise to pressing security concerns’ (Council of the European Union, 2003, p. 2).

¹⁰ This in itself is a problematic assumption given that, in the identification of ‘shared’ values in a situation of clear power inequality, it is the most powerful that defines them and presents them as shared. By this I do not mean to exclude the possibility of shared values between Europe and Africa.

¹¹ I say formally, because, in case of, for example, human rights, good governance and democracy obligations, both parties are bound to this equally. In practice this is obviously more challenging for the ACP countries than the EU, which overall has attained the obligations domestically, or when this is not the case, it is put outside the object of the Agreement, into the realm of domestic European affairs.

¹² The expected mimicry or copy/paste mentality goes from practical transformation of one's economic system or state structure, to the alteration of the local systems of values and norms if necessary to achieve the former. Ian Manners, in his concept of Normative Power Europe, sees especially in this Europe's power, in that it inspires others to act in the way it does, adhering to the same norms, and sees this as an added value to the concept of civilian power: ‘The emphasis on material assets and physical power in civilian power approaches contrasts with the emphasis on the normative power of non-material exemplification found in the contagion of norms through imitation (mimétisme) and attraction’ (Manners, 2006, p. 176).

¹³ Article 10.1 of the Reform Treaty 2007 reads as follows: ‘The Union's action on the international scene shall be guided by the principles which have inspired its own creation, development and enlargement, and which it seeks to advance in the wider world: democracy, the rule of law, the universality and indivisibility of human rights and fundamental freedoms, respect for human dignity, the principles of equality and solidarity, and respect for the principles of the United Nations Charter and international law’ (italics added).

¹⁴ This idea is contained in the word development (towards what…?).

¹⁵ These two realities need not to be a priori opposed to each other. It is important to acknowledge that there is no space for investigating this in the first place, and secondly, given the substantial material discrepancies between the majority in the West and that in Africa, the likelihood of a convergence is rather limited.

¹⁶ The power and influence and responsibilities of the African actors are consciously underexposed in this study. Not because their agency is not believed to be there, on the contrary, but because, writing from a European perspective, it would go against the spirit of this research approach to focus prescriptively on their role.

¹⁷ Critics of the ‘partnership’ trend in international relations indicate that such an evolution is unlikely because it is not only the receiver's formal position that is being transformed by the intervention. In a power-process described by Nye (2004) as ‘soft power’ and praised by Leonard (2005) as the recipe that will make ‘Europe run the 21st century’, the intervener also transforms the receiver's preferences and eventually identity. The initial dependency position of the relation, in combination with the intervener's prestige and the attractiveness of his message, favours an internalisation process by the receiver of the intervener's interests. Lukes describes this as ‘the most insidious exercise of power’ as it works to shape people's ‘perceptions, cognitions and preferences’ in ways that may be contrary to their own interests, making people accept the existing order of things, including their own domination' (Lukes cited Abrahamsen, 2004, p. 1458; Abrahamsen, 2000).