EU Democracy Assistance Discourse in Its New Response to a Changing Neighbourhood

Abstract

Drawing on Critical Discourse Analysis, this article compares the structure of key policy documents on European Union (EU) democracy promotion in the Southern Neighborhood before and after the “Arab Uprisings.” With reference to the key document presenting the EU's revised conception of democracy and strategic vision in the Southern Neighborhood, this article argues that, despite assertions of a paradigmatic shift in the EU's approach to democracy, the conceptual structure of these documents maintains unaltered the substantively liberal model for both development and democratization. This is likely to leave the EU's pre-Uprisings reputational deficit concerning democracy promotion unaltered.

Keywords:

• Arab Spring
• Critical Discourse Analysis
• Democracy Assistance
• Democratization
• European Union

Notes

We are indebted to Patricia Bauer, Giuditta Caliendo, Neve Gordon, Annette Jünemann, Francesca Longo, Claudio Radaelli, Peter Seeberg, Ingeborg Tömmel, and Ruth Wodak for feedback on elements of earlier drafts.

1. European Commission and High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, A Partnership for Democracy and Shared Prosperity with the Southern Mediterranean, COM(2011)200 final, (2011) March 8.

2. European Commission and High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, A New Response for a Changing Neighbourhood, COM(2011)303, (2011) May 25.

3. NRCN, 1.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid., “New approach” is mentioned twice on p. 2.

7. Ibid.

8. Ibid., 2, 3.

9. This framework building on existing analysis provided in Andrea Teti, “The EU's First Response to the ‘Arab Spring’: A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Partnership for Democracy and Shared Prosperity.” Mediterranean Politics 17(3): 266–84 (2012).

10. Michael Leigh, Europe's Response to the Arab Spring, GMF Policy Brief, October 2011; Nathalie Tocci and Jean-Pierre Cassarino, Rethinking the EU's Mediterranean Policies Post-1/11, IAI Working Papers 11/06, March 2011; Michelle Pace, Peter Seeberg, and Francesco Cavatorta, eds., “The European Union's Democratization Agenda in the Mediterranean,” Democratization 16 (2009): 1; Richard Youngs, The EU and the Arab Spring: From Munificence to Geo-strategy, FRIDE Policy Brief n. 100, October 2011; Richard Youngs, “Democracy Promotion as External Governance?” Journal of European Public Policy 16(6): 895–915 (2009); Michelle Pace and Francesco Cavatorta, eds., “The Post-Normative Turn in European Union (EU)–Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Relations.” European Foreign Affairs Review, 15 (2010); Michelle Pace, “Paradoxes and Contradictions in EU Democracy Promotion in the Mediterranean: The Limits of EU Normative Power.” Democratization 16(1): 39–58 (2009); Frank Schimmelfennig and Hanno Scholtz, “EU Democracy Promotion in the European Neighbourhood.” European Union Politics 9: 187–215 (2008); Roberto Aliboni, “EMP Approaches to Human Rights and Democracy,” in Haizam Fernández and Richard Youngs, eds., The Euro-Mediterranean Partnership: Assessing the First Decade, (Madrid, Spain: FRIDE, 2005).

11. Pace et al., “The European Union's Democratization Agenda in the Mediterranean,” 7.

12. For excellent examples of empirically oriented analyses of discourse as process, see the discursive institutionalism of Vivien Schmidt, “Democracy and Discourse in an Integrating Europe and a Globalizing World,” European Law Journal 6(3): 277–300 (2000); and Vivien Schmidt and Claudio Radaelli, “Policy Change and Discourse in Europe: Conceptual and Methodological Issues,” West European Politics 27( 2), 183–210 (2004).

13. E.g., Michelle Pace “Liberal or Social Democracy? Aspect Dawning in the EU's Democracy Promotion Agenda in the Middle East.” The International Journal of Human Rights 15(6): 801–812 (2011); Milja Kurki, “Democracy through Technocracy? Reflections on Technocratic Assumptions in EU Democracy Promotion Discourse.” Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 5(2): 211–234 (2011).

14. For a partial exception, albeit not on EU DA and without direct reference to CDA, see Rikard Bengtsson, “Constructing Interfaces: The Neighbourhood Discourse in EU External Policy.” Journal of European Integration 30(5): 597–616 (2008).

15. For an introduction to the methods of CDA and a review of the methodological debate, see Norman Fairclough, Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research (London: Routledge, 2003); Teun van Dijk, “Principles of Critical Discourse Analysis,” in Margaret Wetherell, Simeon Yates, and Stephanie Taylor, eds., Discourse Theory and Practice (London: Sage, 2001) and Ruth Wodak and Paul Chilton, eds., A New Agenda in (Critical) Discourse Analysis (Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins, 2005); and the contributions by Meyer, Wodak, and Fairclough, in Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis, eds. Ruth Wodak and Michael Meyer (London: Sage, 2001).

16. Andrea Teti interview with Commission official, March 2011; Andrea Teti interviews with two former Commission officials, March 2012.

17. The EU's first response to the Arab Uprisings was contained in the March 8, 2011 Partnership for Democracy and Shared Prosperity (PfDSP), which addressed itself only to the Southern neighborhood. A more detailed analysis of PfDSP is contained in Teti, “The EU's First Response,” 2012.

18. For a general review of the commitment to democracy promotion in EU documentation focusing on the Lisbon Treaty, see Paul Cardwell, “Mapping Out Democracy Promotion in the EU's External Relations,” European Foreign Affairs Review, 16: 21–40 (2011).

19. Teti, “The EU's First Response,” 2012.

20. COM(2001)252: 3.

21. Ibid., 10.

22. Ibid., 18.

23. EIDHR does refer to “support for awareness raising and capacity building of groups who pursue a rights-based approach to basic human needs and access to resources [including] Social, economic and cultural rights as human rights objectives” (COM(2001)252: 18) but by differentiating between civil society and social partners, it appears to exclude trade unions. Nor, in practice, does much EIDHR funding appear to have reached organizations promoting such issues. For more detailed analysis, see Teti, “The EU's First Response,” 2012.

24. COM(2003)104: 3, par. 4.

25. Ibid., 3.

26. Ibid., 4.

27. Ibid., 7.

28. E.g., “The European Union seeks to uphold the universality and indivisibility of human rights—civil, political, economic, social, and cultural” (COM(2001)252: 3).

29. COM(2001)252 final: 8; see also 14.

30. E.g., COM(2004)373: 12.

31. COM(2001)252: 14; emphasis added.

32. COM(2004)373: 4; emphasis added.

33. COM(2003)104: 3, par. 3–5.

34. Ibid., 12.

35. COM(2009)188/3 2.

36. COM(1994)427 14, emphasis added; cf. 24.2.

37. Ibid., 9.

38. Ibid., 5.

39. Ibid., 7 (III, 7).

40. COM(2001)252: 4.

41. COM(2001)252, 8. It also mentions, presumably as a suggested modus operandi, that the Commission “has its own instrument in the ‘social incentive clause’ in the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP), which provides for additional preferences to be extended to countries honouring certain International Labour Organisation (ILO) standards” (COM(2001)252: 8).

42. Tocci and Cassarino, Rethinking the EU's Mediterranean Policies, 6.

43. COM(2003)104: 13.

44. Ibid., 8.

45. Ibid., 14.

46. Ibid., 4.

47. Ibid. 5–11.

48. COM(2004)373: 14; cf. “creating,” “promoting.”

49. COM(2006)726, 3; also p. 4.

50. COM(2009)188/3: 10. Also see the preamble to (COM (2006) 726: 2); “Most of our neighbours have made progress during the last years in economic and political reforms … Nevertheless, poverty and unemployment, mixed economic performance, corruption, and weak governance remain major challenges.”

51. Ibid., 9–10.

52. COM(2001)252: 1.

53. Ibid., 6–8.

54. Ibid., 16–18.

55. Ibid., 19.

56. Ibid., 8.

57. Ibid.

58. Ibid., 9.

59. Ibid.

60. COM(2003)104, 16; emphasis added.

61. Ibid.

62. Ibid., 10.

63. Ibid.

64. COM(2004)373, 25.

65. COM(2006)726, 2.

66. Ibid., 14.

67. COM(2006)726, 12.

68. COM(2009)188, 10.

69. European Commission, NRCN, 2011.

70. COM(2011) 303: 1–2.

71. Ibid., 2.

72. Ibid.

73. Ibid.

74. Ibid.

75. Ibid., 3. Also, see MEMO/11/918, in which deep democracy is defined as “not only writing democratic constitutions and conducting free and fair elections, but creating and sustaining an independent judiciary, a thriving free press, a dynamic civil society and all other characteristics of a mature functioning democracy” (1).

76. COM(2011) 303: 3.

77. Ibid., 4.

78. Ibid.; emphasis added.

79. Ibid.

80. Ibid.; emphasis added.

81. Ibid.

82. Ibid.; emphasis added.

83. Ibid., 2.

84. Ibid., 7.

85. Ibid., 20.

86. Ibid., 2.

87. Ibid., 7–8.

88. Ibid., 6–8.

89. Ibid., 8–9.

90. Ibid., 7.

91. Ibid., 8.

92. Ibid., 3.

93. Ibid., 15–17.

94. Ibid., 16.

95. Ibid.

96. Ibid.

97. Ibid., 2, 19.

98. Ibid., 17; see also MEMO/11/918.

99. COM(2011)303: 2.

100. Ibid., 19.

101. Ibid., 3.

102. Ibid., 3.

103. Ibid., 3.

104. A detailed analysis of PfDSP is contained in Teti, “The EU's First Response,” 2012.