Multipart thematic paper on multi-stakeholder ... - ISIS Europe

governance approach. In Africa, European political aid is largely focused on more technical governance
reforms (effective government/governance approaches) (Crawford, 2007). The European Neighbourhood
Policy includes a combination of approaches depending on the target countries (Western NIS, the Caucasus,
and the Mediterranean countries), the degree of statehood and democracy that they demonstrate as well as
their strategic relationship with the EU. Democracy promotion approach changes for the EU enlargement or
accession policy from effective government to democratic government depending on how close a country is
to accession (see also Boerzel, Pamuk, & Stahn, 2008; Boerzel et al., 2009). However, in all ENP countries
assistance is mainly aimed at aligning local governance rules and procedures with those of the EU and
considerable amounts of EU funds are spent on assisting the implementation of commitments under
contractual agreements between the EU and third countries.
Even though seemingly technical and with few overtly political objectives, these programs have
huge political impact. In the words of Richard Youngs, “by requiring specific fiscal, auditing, and legal
reforms of its partner states, the EU at this level is more intrusive than the United States, contrary to the
conventional wisdom” (Youngs, 2008: 166). In fact, unlike the US, the EU aims at supporting
democratisation through integration processes and focuses on reproducing its own model through norm
diffusion and socialisation rather than on supporting initiatives explicitly aimed at democracy building (see
also Schimmelfennig & Scholtz, 2008). In the words of Boerzel and Risse, “the EU is making an explicit
effort to project its own identity of a democratic polity into relations with third countries” (Boerzel & Risse,
2004: 26). It demonstrates an eschewal of purely military security concerns in favour of the economic,
societal, and environmental aspects of security, on the one hand, and requires compliance with its policies by
incentives, capacity-building, and persuasion and learning, on the other. In fact, with respect to donors’
impact Wolfgang Benedek rightly emphasises that despite the diversity of the international donor
community, “the local counterparts still experience it as an aggregate of power, which determines local
agendas and, through mechanisms of conditionality and incentives, imposes its policies on the national
governments” (Benedek, 2009: 14).
2.5. Concluding Remarks
1. This subchapter has shown that democracy and good governance promotion is a complex
phenomenon that varies greatly along a number of dimensions, such as the type of donor and its strategic
concerns, the nature of recipient state and its importance for the donor, and significant events in global
politics.
2. Operationally, it has been shown that major democracy promoters around the world tend to follow
a single cultural and political script across very different countries, in which democracy is to be promoted,
showing little sensitivity for local culture and institutional set-up. Both American and European democracy
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