Strengthening Authoritarian Rule through Democracy Promotion? Examining the Paradox of the US and EU Security Strategies: The Case of Bin Ali's Tunisia

EU Democracy Promotion and the Arab Spring

“…Following a cooperative approach in line with its global democracy promotion policy, the EU has always sought the active engagement of targeted regimes in implementing its instruments of political dialogue, democracy assistance, and political conditionality in the Middle East and North Africa. The EU has often been criticized for its failure to advance democracy and human rights in the region with charges ranging from hypocrisy to incapacity and from ineffective to counterproductive measures (Börzel and van Hüllen 2014;Durac 2009;Durac and Cavatorta 2009;Youngs 2009). Comparing patterns of cooperation with the resilience of incumbent rulers in early 2011 actually raises the suspicion that the EU's efforts may have insulated its Arab neighbours from the full force of the uprisings.…”

“…The EU therefore had hardly any chance to directly affect the onset of the Arab Spring through the implementation of political dialogue or democracy assistance. The situation suggests, on the contrary, that the EU's efforts may have had a stabilizing effect on authoritarian rule -a criticism regularly advanced, but hard to prove (Börzel and van Hüllen 2014;Durac and Cavatorta 2009). …”

“…While this certainly put a strain on EU-Tunisian relations, the EU never considered any sanctions publicly and cooperation in other areas continued, including the implementation of other aid programmes, trade, and migration (Del Sarto and Schumacher 2011). Next to economic concerns (Durac and Cavatorta 2009), the EU and other international actors closely linked the radicalization of Islamism to the threat of international terrorism and to their concerns for international security (Powel 2009b), thus supporting incumbent regimes in their attempts at 'containing radicalism' (Willis 2006) at the expense of more insistent democracy promotion efforts. Counting on the European discomfort with political Islam, the Tunisian regime could use this argument actively to deflect international pressure and seek support for their repressive practices (Kausch 2009b: 18), given that for the EU 'authoritarian governments offer an equally effective, immediate and proven short-term response' (Powel 2009b: 71).…”

Framing and reframing the EU’s engagement with the Mediterranean: Examining the security-stability nexus before and after the Arab uprisings

“…Calling a bluff on the EU's rhetorical commitment to democracy, the rule of law and human rights, most literature offers an interest-driven narrative of EU policies towards the region, in which security and economic concerns prevail (e.g. Cavatorta et al, 2008;Durac & Cavatorta, 2009;Joffé, 2008;Seeberg, 2009). Before the Arab uprisings, the EU was willing to support authoritarian regimes, providing them with much needed international legitimacy and financial support, whenever this was perceived as functional to achieving its security objectives, even if this was against the proclaimed imperative of supporting democracy (cf.…”

“…Countering rational choice institutionalist approaches, we contend that interests are not given but rather socially constructed, and that they are plural, with the implication that interests are not naturally ordered, and often compete and clash with one another. On the first point, much literature on EU relations with the Southern Mediterranean implies a direct causal path whereby material factors determine interests, which in turn determine behaviour (Durac & Cavatorta, 2009). However, even in the most rationalist accounts this path holds only if two conditions are verified: actor's rationality and perfect information.…”