EU Democracy Research Articles

Long-Term “Ethnicized Silences”, Family Secrets and Nation-Building

This article demonstrates the dynamic relationship between long-term ethnicized silences, family secrets and nation-building in Central and Eastern Europe. How have modern nation-states been imagined and formed on the basis of these long-term silences? In order to illustrate what we believe could be the contribution to anthropology (principally to nationalism studies) enabled by introducing this analytical category of silences, in this research we will focus on a close analysis of the life story and identity journey of a self-identified “Slovak woman with Hungarian-Roma roots” who settled in the Czech Republic in 2009. Through this ethnographic example, and in an attempt to go beyond particularities, some of the themes covered are: what meanings, uses and processes of silences can we find in Slovakia, and what is their relationship to the construction of minorities and to an ethno-cultural model of nation-building (an imagined community)? In which domains and under which power relationships have long-term silences and hidden family secrets prevailed in everyday life? To what extent have those silence frameworks been negotiated and used as intergenerational strategies of family unity and protection? And finally, within the context of migration and the complex processes of Europeanization and globalization, how have those long-term, in this case “shamed”, ethnicized Roma silences been contested and broken, and what is the meaning of this development (at micro and macro levels)? In other words, for nation-states that have long been imagined on the principle of ethno-cultural homogeneity, I ask what can long-term ethnicized silences tell us about the process of nation-building (from the bottom up) and the quality of our EU democracies? Where do we come from, where are we now and, at least in terms of a warning (due to the rise of xenophobic forms of populism and radical nationalism), where are we going?

Is the Governance of Europe's Transnational Party System Contributing to EU Democracy?*

AbstractDoes Europe's transnational party system contribute to EU democracy? Existing debates on this issue have conventionally revolved around conflicting assumptions on the feasibility of supranational democracy in general, rather than examining the party system's structure as it is set up and regulated. In this paper we evaluate to what extent the transnational party system contributes to the democratic qualities of the EU by studying the regulatory framework for European political parties. We establish an analytical framework based on studies of party system governance, and focus on two specific characteristics: the contestability of the Europarty system and the extent to which it promotes citizen participation in European political parties. Our analysis demonstrates that the governance structure impedes rather than bolsters the democratic potential of Europarties, since the rules work to prevent new parties from entering the party system, and fail to provide incentives for a more active political participation of European citizens.

Disruptions in the ENP Cycle: EU Gender Policies in Tunisia from a ‘Decentring Perspective’

The article explores how policy actions generated by the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) are enacted in partner countries as the result of cooperation between their governments and EU headquarters and between local actors and EU delegations (EUDs). By borrowing insights from the literature on EU democracy support and on external perceptions of the EU, the article considers the implementation of EU gender policies in Tunisia through the analytical lens of the ‘policy cycle model’. It adopts a ‘decentring perspective’ privileging local actors’ needs, expectations and viewpoints, which reveals that major disruptions in the implementation of EU gender policies derive more from the organization’s bureaucratic rigidity than from the way policy is conceived. The EU does not properly address these disruptions, because of a mix of procedural constraints and political prioritization, which affect the functioning of the ENP cycle. This risks undermining desired outputs at the local level and questions the so-called EU ‘local turn’ that accelerated especially after 2011. The article concludes that the ‘policy cycle model’ can be a useful analytical tool to examine other ENP policies, especially if combined with a ‘decentring perspective’. ENP, gender policies, Tunisia, EU delegations, female civil society, policy cycle model, decentring perspective

EU democracy projection in Tunisia: The case of civil society consultations

ABSTRACT Tunisia’s civil society has widely been identified as one of the factors that prevented the country from following the unfortunate path of other Arab states in which long-term autocrats were ousted in 2011. Hence, the EU has identified it as a key interlocutor, began to provide more substantial support to associations and started to regularly consult with activists. While substantial research has been devoted to the EU’s financial assistance for civil society, interactions outside the donor-recipient relationship have received less attention. In line with this special issues’ objective to examine how the EU projects democratic norms through its interactions with non-state actors in in the Southern Mediterranean, this article zooms in on its consultations with Tunisian civil society. It finds that the EU is including only a non-representative subset of civil society activists as a result of its practices. To what extent these activists’ perspectives and preferences are conveyed to Brussels is not entirely clear either. Moreover, some of its practices strengthen the perception of the EU being a patronizing and paternalistic actor.

EU democracy projection in the Southern Mediterranean: A practice analysis

ABSTRACT This special issue expands on the existing literature on the international dimension of democratization by focusing on democracy projection, defined as the projection of (democratic) norms in the every-day practice of interactions, beyond any donor-recipient relationship, between states and foreign civil society actors on issue areas where both have interests to defend. The SI examines the issue areas of trade, anti-corruption, applied research, gender and LGBTI, focusing on EU practices in its everyday dealings with civil society in the Southern Mediterranean. The authors conclude, based on comparative case studies relying on extensive interviews, direct observations and content analysis, that democracy projection varies according to four main factors: EU’s perceived interest, its ideational commitment to norms of dialogue and inclusion, the degree of institutional inertia and discourses/structures of meanings dominating in some policy areas which preclude EU engagement on substance.

EU democracy projection: Does the EU practice what it preaches?

After the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, democracy promotion became an integral part of the EU’s external relations (Kelley, 2012; Magen & Morlino, 2008; Magen et al....

Gender equality in Tunisia: The EU’s tripartite dialogue

ABSTRACT To what extent is the EU projecting democratic norms in the area of gender? Gender equality and women’s empowerment have been at the heart of the EU’s external action since the Arab uprisings. This article is an in-depth study of how the EU interacts with non-state actors in practice, and beyond the recipient-donor relationship, in the format of tripartite dialogue whereby the EU, civil society and the Tunisian government consult each other before any major EU meeting. First, this article reviews what EU democracy projection involves in the field of gender equality. Then it offers a mapping of the local, active participants on feminism and gender equality. Third, the article focuses on an innovative practice of trust-building, that of the gender sub-group of the tripartite dialogue. The main argument is that the dialogue has provided a new venue to project trust-building practices that are central to the consolidation of democracy. Yet this practice is weakened by the lack of considerations of major divides around gender in Tunisian society. Interaction on democratic norms thus remains secluded to a very selective venue. Democracy projection is, however, not fully ‘transversal’ as the Islamist-secularist cleavage, socioeconomic inequalities and divides of the rural peripheries constrain the impact of the tripartite dialogue and subsequent democracy projection.

Hanna L. Muehlenhoff, EU Democracy Promotion and Governmentality: Turkey and Beyond. New York: Routledge, 2019. xii + 173 pp.

Hanna L. Muehlenhoff, EU Democracy Promotion and Governmentality: Turkey and Beyond. New York: Routledge, 2019. xii + 173 pp.

Assessing dynamics of EU democracy projection through expert communities in the Mediterranean region

ABSTRACT Although the EU promoting democracy and providing democracy assistance as an international actor is abundantly analysed; EU democracy projection remains relatively under-researched. Applying analytical approach of current Special Issue, this article assesses dynamics of transversal democracy projection between the EU and Mediterranean region through the lens of Euro-Mediterranean expert communities. Unlike a number of specific policy-related studies, we take a broader regional approach as our main aim is to demonstrate that Euro-Mediterranean expert communities are agents of transversal democracy projection through practicing internationally accepted norms and values in different contexts including policy level. The foundations of this article rest on an EU funded project involving empirical field research conducted in 2018 covering a total of 205 individual field interviews, focus group meetings, and online surveys. Syntheses of our results indicate that interactions between Euro-Mediterranean expert communities enhance scope of policy making in the Mediterranean region and support transversal democracy projection. The way democracy is projected through these expert communities’ everyday practices in specific local contexts in the Mediterranean currently requires new modalities of engagement with policy makers, empowering their scope for transversal democracy projection in the region further; and the same is also true for the EU.

Notes on the ‘Politics’ of EU Politicization

This article proposes an understanding of politicization as the field of contestation about the political. Applied to the contested field of EU governance, the argument is that EU politicization cannot be understood without analysis of its synergy with EU depoliticized governance. We will start with a discussion of some of the dimensions and modalities of (de)politicization and follow with analysis of EU (de)politicization in relation to the political field and public sphere. To understand the ‘politics of politicization’, we demarcate the field of political struggle and locate the wider public and societal resonances of such a struggle over the political. The research programme for the analysis of the ‘politics of EU-politicization’ then refers to the wider processes of how political conflicts are selectively amplified to create public visibility, how attention among relevant publics is unequally distributed, how opinions of these publics are formed and, ultimately as well, how legitimacy (or de-legitimation) is generated. After delineating possible research directions, we finish with some comments on EU (de)politicization as a rupture from national politics and the competitive and multi-level merging of political fields and public spheres through the transnational encounter of agents and publics. This chaotic process has unpredictable outcomes for EU-legitimacy, but nevertheless opens a European field where political contestation meets with societal resonance with possibilities of reflexivity and democratic learning for both institutional agents and publics involved. This working paper thus contributes with insights into the conditions for EU democratization, which is a core concern for EU3D (in particular in Work package 4, which focuses on public opinions, debates and reforms).

Asymmetric ratification standards and popular perceptions of legitimacy

ABSTRACT The ratification of EU agreements is characterized by the application of different democratic procedures across member states. Building on the demoi-cratic theory of legitimate global governance, I argue that citizens benchmark their national procedure against highly visible direct democratic ratification votes held in other member states. If citizens experience unequal influence on EU decision-making, the perceived legitimacy of the EU regime erodes. I test this argument with a research design that combines a population-based survey experiment and a quasi-experiment. First, a survey experiment in Germany reveals that information about asymmetric ratification standards decrease fairness perceptions and satisfaction with EU democracy. Second, a natural experiment around the 2005 French vote on the EU constitutional treaty shows that the referendum decreased satisfaction with EU democracy in states with pending and indirect ratification. These findings suggest that asymmetric access of citizens to EU decision-making can decrease popular support for EU governance.

EU fundamental rights and democracy implications of data-driven political campaigns

This paper examines the impact of data-driven political campaigns on fundamental rights and democracy in the European Union. It demonstrates that such campaigns risk curtailing a number of rights and freedoms enshrined in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. They can affect voters’ right to respect for private life and protection of personal data (Articles 7 and 8 Charter) through the collection of massive amounts of personal data that serve as the base for profiling of voters. Moreover, they can restrain freedom of information of voters (Article 11 Charter) by providing them only partial information about campaigns of political parties. Furthermore, political manipulation stemming from targeted political advertising may affect the freedom of elections (Article 39(2) Charter), even though it might be a step too far to assert that the use of data-driven political campaigns undoubtedly leads to elections that are not ‘free’. Finally, the author cautions that it might be challenging to rely on the foundational legal category of democracy from Article 2 TEU, given that this provision needs to be given a concrete expression through another Treaty provision. Rather, in case of manipulative data-driven political campaigns, democracy as a value can be affected.

Interest Groups, NGOs or Civil Society Organisations? The Framing of Non-State Actors in the EU

Scholars have used varying terminology for describing non-state entities seeking to influence public policy or work with the EU’s institutions. This paper argues that the use of this terminology is not and should not be random, as different ‘frames’ come with different normative visions about the role(s) of these entities in EU democracy. A novel bibliometric analysis of 780 academic publications between 1992 and 2020 reveals that three frames stand out: The interest group frame, the NGO frame, as well as the civil society organisation frame; a number of publications also use multiple frames. This article reveals the specific democratic visions contained in these frames, including a pluralist view for interest groups; a governance view for NGOs as ‘third sector’ organisations, and participatory and deliberative democracy contributions for civil society organisations. The use of these frames has dynamically changed over time, with ‘interest groups’ on the rise. The results demonstrate the shifting focus of studies on non-state actors in the EU and consolidation within the sub-field; the original visions of European policy-makers emerging from the 2001 White Paper on governance may only partially come true.

EU democracy in the times of coronavirus

The future of the European integration project depends on the EU’s ability to respond to the COVID-19 crisis and to other crises in the future. The pandemic constitutes an opportunity for EU democracy to be reinvented and for its complex institutional design and mechanisms to be adapted to the current challenges. This article examines the long-standing debate around the shortcomings of EU democracy and focuses on two elements—populism and communication—as crucial components in understanding the difficulties of democratic governance in the EU today. The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted the flaws of the populist forces, which seemed to lose their consensus in the first months after the outbreak of the pandemic, thus giving traditional parties a chance to reaffirm their position. Furthermore, COVID-19 has emphasised the need for more and better communication between EU institutions, member states and citizens. Overall, EU democracy could benefit from these difficult times and bring the EU closer to its citizens.

Supporting the Tunisian transition? Analysing (in)consistencies in EU democracy assistance with a tripartite nexus model

ABSTRACT This article puts forth a new heuristic model for analysing the EU's democracy assistance to non-accession countries. The EU's democracy assistance has predominantly been scrutinized in academia through the so-called democratization-stability dilemma, whereby allegedly the EU is found to single-mindedly promote regime stability to the detriment of democracy. Nevertheless, we argue that this conceptualization falls short of analysing the full dynamics of EU democracy assistance. Our contribution provides an alternative to the traditional conceptualization of EU democracy assistance, by proposing three alternative nexuses of analysis: formal/substantive democracy, elite/non-elite engagement and security/stability. We apply this new analytical framework to the study of EU's democracy assistance to Tunisia from 2011 to date. While EU's political and financial investment in the transition has been considerable in the three nexuses, negative interaction effects have generated several inconsistencies that affected several areas of EU's democracy assistance.

Populist Voting in the 2019 European Elections

This paper looks at the electoral performances of populist parties of the left, right and centre in the 2019 European elections. Using survey data, it examines the main drivers of the populist vote. The paper finds that populist voters do not all fit the so-called ‘globalization losers’ profile, yet they tend to see themselves as economically disadvantaged and to support economic redistribution. Ideologically, populist voting is embedded in broader sets of socio-political conflicts and identities, which strongly differentiate between different instances of populism. Finally, opposition to European integration, critical views of EU democracy and the lack of support for democratic government are common features of populist voting across the spectrum.

Review of: Globalization, EU Democracy Assistance and the World Social Forum: Concepts and Practices of Democracy

Review of: Globalization, EU Democracy Assistance and the World Social Forum: Concepts and Practices of Democracy

Europe’s Democracy Challenge: Citizen Participation in and Beyond Elections

As the EU enters a new political cycle, this article provides a critical analysis of the state of EU democracy by focusing on its two main components: representative and participatory democracy through their theoretical and practical realities. It argues that it is for EU democracy — and potentially for the Conference on the Future of Europe — to rethink its system of representative and participatory channels in order for these channels to become more complementary and more effectively engage with the citizenry. While it will not magically treat the EU democratic malaise, it could make the system more intelligible, accessible, and ultimately responsive to citizen-driven issues — without necessarily undertaking Treaty reform. The immediate priority is therefore to ensure that EU citizen level participation appear prominently in the agenda of the new Commission without being totally appropriated by the ad hoc Conference on the future of Europe. Europe will not find its democratic soul in a large-scale, stand-alone, and pre-framed deliberation exercise. It is instead through the creation of an accessible, equalizing, and safe space, which accommodates public input on a daily basis, that the EU will overcome its own chronic democratic malaise.

Ideas and Interests: European Democracy Aid and the Democracy-Security Dilemma, 1990-2010

Since the end of the Cold War, advanced democracies have enacted explicit strategies of democracy promotion by providing assistance to governments, political parties, and other non-governmental groups and organizations all over the world. This paper examines the factors shaping European Union democracy aid allocation decisions from 1990-2010, weighing the relative impact of ideational concerns (regime type, human rights) and self-interests (political, security, economic). We argue that EU democracy aid reflects a “democracy-security dilemma” as the EU balances ideational reasons for promoting democracy with concerns over political and economic relationships, regional stability, and security. We test our hypotheses with a series of random effects, generalized least squares and Heckman selection models, which provide support for our argument. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for the impact and explanation of EU democracy promotion policies.

Revisiting Transnational European Consociationalism: The European Union a Decade After Lisbon

AbstractThis article discusses the notion of consociationalism as applied to the EU and assesses whether the institutional and procedural changes introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon (ToL) and by the management of the Euro and refugee crises still warrant considering the EU as a case of consociational democracy. Our contention is that the changes introduced by the ToL bore the promise to strengthen the consociational structural traits of the Union but that the further institutional and procedural changes engendered by the management of the Euro and refugee crises have made the behavioral dimension of consociationalism all the more necessary just as the accommodating orientation of the political elites had begun to evaporate. We support this argument by looking at empirical evidence which allows us to offer a set of propositions on the effects of the recent crises on the attitudes of the European elites towards the future of EU democracy.