7. Democracy protection: fundamental reforms needed to adjust to the new context
Christine Hackenesch and Julia Leininger
in: Hackenesch, C., Keijzer, N., & Koch, S. (Eds., 2024). The European Union’s global role in a changing world: Challenges and opportunities for the new leadership (IDOS Discussion Paper 11/2024). IDOS.
State of play
Since the European Union (EU) started to introduce democracy support instruments in the early 1990s, the Union’s democracy support has been one of the most controversial aspects in the EU’s external action, both regarding its relevance and its effectiveness. Throughout the decades, policymakers and academics have debated to what extent other interests outdo EU democracy support and whether the EU uses double standards when pressuring for political reforms in some countries but not others. Whether the EU is effective in promoting democracy and contributing positively towards political reforms or whether, and under what conditions, the EU unintentionally even strengthens authoritarian regimes remain key concerns. Moreover, the normative question of whether the EU should engage in democracy support at all has recently moved up the political agenda amid geopolitical shifts and increasing discourse on systemic rivalry and domestic challenges in Europe.
Despite these controversies, the EU has developed and institutionalised a whole set of instruments that aim at supporting democratic reforms in its neighbourhood, Sub-Saharan Africa and other parts of the world. The EU uses various forms of political conditionality in its development assistance, trade relations, and the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). It spends a substantial part of its development assistance in governance and democracy support. For example, about 10% of its development assistance to Africa go to supporting democratic reforms (Hackenesch et al., 2020). Even though the EU has often been criticised for remaining “high on rhetoric but low on delivery” (Crawford, 2005) and for being inconsistent in reconciling differing foreign policy goals, it has arguably become a key player in international democracy support.
Yet, most of these instruments were first introduced and then further developed in the 1990s and 2000s, when political liberalisation swept across Eastern Europe, Africa and parts of Latin America, thereby opening entry points for democracy support. The instruments were developed in an international context of (largely) unipolarity, in which democracy tended to be undisputed as the most successful type of political regime. Today, the EU’s democracy support instruments are characterised by high path dependencies and have not (yet) changed much in response to the fundamentally changing international context and changing domestic affairs in Europe.
In parallel to the EU’s already existing democracy support policy, Commission President von der Leyen has sought to move democracy higher up the political agenda since 2019 during her first term. One key element in the Commission’s attempts to become a geopolitical actor was a stronger emphasis on values and norms in the EU’s external relations. In particular, the Global Gateway was presented as an alternative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which would be more attractive for the EU’s partners because the EU – in contrast to China (without mentioning that country explicitly) – would emphasise values, norms and standards in its cooperation with partners. Democracy has thereby become more important rhetorically. In practice, however, the substance of the EU’s approach of engaging with partners around the world in political reforms has changed little and has not lived up to the rhetoric.
Internal and external influences
During the next five years, at least five key trends will challenge the EU’s role as a norm entrepreneur and the effectiveness of the EU’s democracy support. The new von der Leyen Commission will need to fundamentally adjust its approach to democracy support to respond to those trends.
First, autocratisation rather than democratisation has been the dominant trend across many countries across all world regions, including in parts of the so-called Global North. More than 40 countries worldwide currently experience an autocratisation trend. More than 70% of the world’s population today lives in an autocratic regime (V-Dem, 2024). On top of these regime trends, violent conflicts have been increasing to their highest numbers since 1989 and create a political vacuum in many places. At the same time, political mobilisation and protests in urban settings are accompanying autocratisation trends. Up to now, EU democracy support instruments have instead assumed a stable situation from which democracy can be built and strengthened or a situation of transitioning towards democracy where the EU can support that positive trend. The EU’s support will need to be fundamentally reformed to move from democracy support towards democracy protection in the context of shrinking democratic spaces and political vacuums, particularly in fragile contexts.
Second, the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion in Ukraine have further fuelled perceptions that autocratic powers are proactively seeking to position their political system as an alternative to Western democracy. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the Chinese government actively sought to promote an alternative narrative on the “origins of the Coronavirus” to present the Chinese authoritarian system as particularly successful in fighting the pandemic and its approach to cooperation as being more helpful for partners in the Global South in comparison to the EU’s or US activities. Russia has used recent political turmoil and military coups in West Africa to position itself as an alternative cooperation partner to the EU that “delivers” and provides military and security support with “no political strings attached”. With the Global Gateway and “Team Europe”, the EU has made first steps to respond to this trend. Moving forward, it is likely that EU support for democracy will be even more strongly challenged to develop a convincing narrative and to provide proof of why democracy is attractive and delivers tangible socioeconomic benefits for citizens.
Third, democracy support is no longer about the EU’s external relations only but increasingly about democracy protection at home. In the past, the EU debated on how to contribute to political liberalisation in China, Russia and elsewhere through trade and societal exchanges. Today, discussions about China’s and Russia’s attempts to exert influence in the EU’s partner countries as well as in Europe itself dominate political debates. This was very visible during the 2024 European Parliament (EP) election campaign, when investigations revealed that Russia and China might have paid European Parliamentarians and their political advisors to buy access to information and to influence debates on Russia and China in the EP. Already in 2022 “Qatar-Gate” revealed how foreign entities seek to buy political and economic influence in the EP through corruption and bribery.
Fourth, the EU’s external migration policy (see Section 5 in this publication), as well as the rise of populist radical-right parties across many European countries, challenges the EU’s normative credibility when seeking to engage on democratic reforms with partners in the Global South. Moreover, populist radical-right parties may pressure the EU from within to reduce activities related to protecting and supporting democracy reforms beyond the EU’s borders as well as domestically.
Fifth, the EU’s engagement on democracy protection, as well as the framing of a new systemic rivalry in global politics, is being controversially debated across the Global South. Some African governments as well as parts of African civil society do not subscribe to the narrative that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s backing of Russia are an expression of a new systemic rivalry between democracy and autocracy. Moreover, some African governments that have decided to “take sides” and to align with the EU, the United States and the West have more broadly been faced with a strong backlash in domestic political debates. In Zambia, for instance, the political opposition used the occasion of the “Summit for Democracy”, which was co-hosted by the Zambian government in 2023, to portray the government as a “puppet of the West” that falls into the trap of the neo-colonial practices of Western countries (Kamwengo, 2024).
Looking ahead
Invest more in strengthening a democracy narrative: First, the EU needs to make more efforts to explain how democracy is not only a value in itself, but at the same time also delivers concrete socio-economic benefits for its citizens. Second, rejuvenating democratic values and norms within the EU and its populations is necessary. Democracy as a value and norm has been contested in European societies. Offering spaces for dialogue about a joint vision of democracy could be a valuable approach to re-creating the democratic foundations of the EU and its people. Third, the EU needs to move towards a joint learning approach in cooperating with partners on democracy support. In some areas, for instance regarding the role of social media in election campaigns, European countries face domestic challenges not too different from their partners. The EU should use the opportunity for joint and open exchanges rather than prescriptions and lecturing.
Strengthen “Team Europe” Democracy: The EU has introduced a dedicated “Team Europe” Democracy Initiative (TED) that aims at sharing experiences and lessons among European donors on democracy support. Under this initiative, the EU and several member states seek to share lessons on their democracy support activities. This initiative is an important step forward to strengthening policy-learning across key European actors. Moving forward, European actors engaged in TED should build on knowledge-sharing to strengthen their strategic cooperation at the level of partner countries. Only if the EU institutions and (several) member states join forces can they make meaningful contributions towards political reforms in partner countries.
Rethink the Global Gateway to make sure the European Union at least “does no harm” to democracy: Global Gateway projects on energy, transport or digitalisation are currently designed in a way that does not differ much from previous financing initiatives in how they address the political context in partner countries (see also Sections 1 and 8 in this publication). The projects aim at ensuring that human rights and social standards are well respected. However, large-scale infrastructure projects can also have broader political implications. For instance, if energy projects provide important rents for traditional elites, they can have a regime-stabilising effect, regardless of whether the EU or another international partner provides the funding for them. The Global Gateway does not address these important political economy questions in different ways as compared to previous funding initiatives; democracy support, as such, is not part of the Global Gateway at all. Moving forward, the EU should take the lessons from previous funding initiatives more strongly into account and strengthen political economy analyses in project development and implementation. As a minimum baseline, Global Gateway projects should at least “do no harm” to democratisation efforts in a partner country.
Adjust existing democracy instruments to the new context: EU approaches need to encompass instruments to support democratisation and protect democracy against autocratisation. Both have different logics and are applied in different contexts. Foresight instruments that indicate typical procedures or tools used by autocratisers should be established and complemented with dynamic analysis of processes of regime change rather than the status quo of a political economy only. While the EU has reacted to shrinking spaces with more flexible support to individuals such as human rights defenders and civil society, adaptive approaches are necessary to do justice to current autocratisation trends; in particular, approaches that combine support for pro-democratic actors with diplomatic and economic measures that sanction autocratisers at critical junctures of regime change. Furthermore, “do no harm to democracy” should be a guiding principle for all of the EU’s external activities. This will require a comprehensive approach that takes the potential effects of external EU activities in different policy fields such as trade, economic support or development and military assistance on democratic institutions and practices into account.
References
Crawford, G. (2005). The European Union and democracy promotion in Africa: The case of Ghana. The European Journal of Development Research, 17(4), 571-600. https://doi.org/10.1080/09578810500367516
Hackenesch, C., Leininger, J., & Mross, K. (2020). What the EU should do for democracy support in Africa: Ten proposals for a new strategic initiative in times of polarisation (Discussion Paper 14/2020). German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE).
Kamwengo, C. (2024) Social media debates on Zambia’s evolving relations with the West and East. Megatrends Policy Brief 21, 6 February 2024. https://www.megatrends-afrika.de/assets/afrika/publications/policybrief/MTA_Policy_Brief_Kamwengo_Zambia_and_Social_Media_final.pdf
V-Dem. (2024). Democracy Report 2024: Democracy winning and losing at the ballot. https://v-dem.net/publications/democracy-reports/
