EUROPE AND THE PROMOTION OF DEMOCRACY IN POST COLD WAR AFRICA: HOW SERIOUS IS EUROPE AND FOR WHAT REASON?

Abstract

The ending of the Cold War brought new topics on the agenda of the international aid donors. Questions of democracy and human rights were voiced with rising intensity not least by the European IJnion and by individual European countries. However, when it came to implementing the ambitious principles, both the EU and the bilateral donors lacked a 'serious' commitment. This is indicated by European policies towards South Africa, Kenya, Niger and Algeria. The policies of the Europeans towards Africa in the l99Os have primarily been influenced by security concerns and thus by the narrow national interests of individual donors. This is particularly manifest in the case of France which has a dominating position within the development cooperation of the EU. Thus, only in very few exceptional instances is it in the national interest of European donor states to promote moral issues such as democracy and respect for human rights. In the l990s such themes have become little more than the rhetoric of politicians and treaties, just as it was during the Cold War. THE ENDING OF THE Cold War brought new issues to the development debate. The change from the bipolar international system to multipolarity opened the way for introducing several new themes and instruments into international development aid. After 1989, topics such as democracy and human rights were voiced with rising intensity by the donors.l In June 1990, only half a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the British Foreign Minister Douglas Hurd gave a speech in which he maintained that economic development and so-called 'good governance' go hand in hand in developing countries. And Hurd continued, 'economic success depends extensively on the existence of an efficient and honest government, on political pluralism and, I would like to add, respect for the law and free and more open economies'. In the same month, the French president Franvois Mitterrand pointed out at a meeting with African heads of state that in Dr Gorm Rye Olsen is a senior research fellow at the Centre for Development Research in Copenhagen. He also teaches international relations and African politics at the University of Copenhagen. 1. O. Stokke ed., Aid and Political Conditionality (Frank Cass, London, 1995), pp. lff. P. Uvin, 'Do as I say, not as I do: The limits of political conditionality', The European 3fournal of De7nelopment Research, 5, 1 (1993), pp. 63ff.