Paradoxes and Contradictions in EU Democracy Promotion Efforts in the Middle East (2008 - 12)

Researchers: Dr Michelle Pace (m.pace@bham.ac.uk) and Valentina Kostadinova (VIK596@bham.ac.uk)

Project web site: www.birmingham.ac.uk/eumena

This project has received a three-year £368,290 First Grants Scheme grant from the UK's national social science research funding body, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) (RES-061-25-0075).

This research project seeks to cast empirical and theoretical light upon an increasingly important aspect of international politics: attempts by the ‘West’ to export democracy to other regions. While acknowledging that the European Union (EU) is not the only actor with a democratisation agenda for the Middle East and that there are strategic reasons for the EU’s involvement in the region, the research examines whether a self-reflexive process on the part of EU actors on the precise nature of the ‘normative’ element in the EU’s democratisation agenda for the Middle East may be long due, if EU policy is to be effective.

By focusing on the specific case of the EU, this project seeks to explore how EU actors’ self-construction of the EU as a 'normative power' shapes conceptions and policies of democratisation. It also seeks to investigate whether EU actors’ self-constructions are shared by ‘agents of change’ in areas where the EU seeks to export its norm of  liberal democracy.

Project aims

The project aims to:

  • Focus on the period from the 1990s - since this coincides with one of the defining periods when the EU opted for democracy promotion as a key external relations instrument – to date
  • Explore any inherent paradoxes, contradictions and challenges in equating conceptions of the EU as a normative power with EU engagement in the promotion of democracy in the Middle East
  • Investigate the ways in which the EU’s initiatives are playing out in the region
  • Both Egypt and Palestine have been chosen as case studies in order to gauge how EU actors' understandings are received within target countries of the EU’s democratisation policy

Research design

The project addresses the following questions:

  • How do EU policy-makers conceptualise the EU’s democratisation agenda in the Middle East?
  • How do EU policy-makers perceive the ‘agents of change’ in the Middle East?
  • How do societal actors in Palestine and Egypt interpret EU actors’ self-understanding of the EU’s normative, democratisation agenda for the Middle East?

Detailed analysis of the project's research  problem could play a crucial role in shaping the ways in which EU specific democratisation policies are adapted. Thus this research takes a discursive constructivist approach to the study of EU democratisation policies in the Middle East, both conceptually as well as empirically.

Discursive constructivism takes the radical strand of social constructivism and combines this with a Foucauldian inspired discourse analysis. Discourse analysis is less a theory than a methodology, that guides analysts on how to read, how to interpret texts and how to pose questions surrounding these texts. Hence it is a relevant tool for understanding EU external policies. The proposed research will extend this work by analysing the discourse of democratisation as an unstable concept that changes meaning according to the discursive context in which it is framed.

Discourse analysis is thus used throughout the various stages of the project in order to explore whether there are any inside / outside distinctions, paradoxes or contradictions in the EU’s democratisation discourse.

The research is conducted through three stages:

Stage One:
Research interviews will be conducted in Brussels and EU texts analysed. This stage will enable the PI to interpret the EU’s internal discourse on democratisation.

Stage Two:
At workshops organised in the two case studies, the PI will present the EU’s internal discourse to societal actors in Palestine and Egypt. The PI will thus seek to explore whether the Middle East world ‘hears’ EU discourse in the way EU actors think they do, that is, to investigate any outside distinction (discourse outside the EU's frame) in the EU’s democratisation discourse.

Stage Three:
At a final conference in Brussels the PI will report back to EU actors what societal players in the Middle East make of the EU’s discourse on democratisation. Thus the overall project research findings will be shared and discussed with EU officials, as well as Palestinian and Egyptian state and non-state actors, who will also be invited to participate at this conference.

Research outputs

Project web site: www.birmingham.ac.uk/eumena

The following is a selection of the papers, chapter, articles, reports and book that have been produced as a result of the research so far:

  • Books

Michelle Pace, The European Union’s Democratization Agenda in the Mediterranean, London and  New York, Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, publication date: October 2009 (edited  book, main editor, with Peter Seeberg). ISBN10:0-415-55168-4 and ISBN13: 978-0-415-55168-7

  • Articles

Michelle Pace, Democratization, 16 (1), February. Special Issue on The European Union’s Democratization Agenda in the Mediterranean: A Critical Inside-Out Approach. 2009. (Main guest editor, with Peter Seeberg). ISSN: 1351-0347

Michelle Pace, ‘Paradoxes and Contradictions in EU democracy promotion in the Mediterranean: the limits on EU normative power’. In Democratization, 16 (1), February, 2009, pp. 39-58. (Special Issue). ISSN: 1351-0347

Michelle Pace, ‘The European Union’s Democratization Agenda in the Mediterranean: A Critical Inside-Out Approach’ (with Francesco Cavatorta and Peter Seeberg). In Democratization, 16 (1), February, 2009, pp. 3-19. (Special Issue). ISSN: 1351-0347

Michelle Pace, ‘A Tale of Two Egypts’. In Mediterranean Politics, 13 (3), November, 2008, pp. 439-444.

  • Chapter

Michelle Pace, The European Union and the Mediterranean, in Bailey, David and Uwe Wunderlich (eds.). EU and Global Governance. Routledge (forthcoming, 2010).

  • Papers

Michelle Pace, ‘Liberal or Social Democracy? Aspect Dawning in the EU's Democracy Promotion Agenda in the Middle East’. Paper presented at the ESRC project research group’s fourth meeting, University of Leeds, 16th October, 2009.

Michelle Pace, ‘The European Union’s Internal Discourse on Democracy Promotion in the Middle East’. ESRC project workshop, held at the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) seminar hall, Cairo, Egypt, 11th October 2009.

Michelle Pace, ‘Democracy Promotion in the Context of an Occupied Nation? The Case of Palestine’. Paper presented at a contributors (for an edited book volume with Palgrave MacMillan) workshop, Muirhead Tower, University of Birmingham, 29 September, 2009

Michelle Pace, ‘Interrogating the European Union’s Democracy Promotion Agenda: Discursive Configurations of ‘Democracy’ from the Middle East’. Paper presented at a contributors (for a Special Issue of  the European Foreign Affairs Review journal) workshop, Muirhead Tower, University of Birmingham, 3-4 September, 2009

  • Reports

Valentina Kostadinova, ‘Democracy Promotion and Human Rights in Europe and the Middle East'. Report of the fourth meeting of the ESRC research group. Joint workshop held with the University of Leeds, 16th October 2009.