Paradoxes and contradictions in EU democracy promotion in the Mediterranean: the limits of EU normative power

Abstract

Disciplinary debates about the challenge of liberal democracy in the Mediterranean suggest that the underlying constraints in the region, such as the nature of authoritarian regimes, economic underdevelopment, and the nature of rentier states, pose severe tests for external actors like the European Union (EU) seeking to encourage political reform. These debates have, however, failed to address the question of how and why liberal democracy per se achieved normative status. This article seeks to take this debate forward by examining the substance of the EU's efforts at democracy promotion in the Mediterranean. It does this first by explaining the EU's diagnosis of the Mediterranean ‘condition’, which highlights the logic behind the EU's prescription for democratization specifically in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. This sheds light, second, on the inherent paradoxes and contradictions in the EU's push for democracy in the MENA. The article concludes by arguing that EU actions limit any potential for normative impact in the MENA because of the lack of coherence in EU policy.