The EU’s hegemonic interventions in the South Caucasus: Constructing ‘civil’ society, depoliticising human rights?

Abstract

This article draws upon poststructuralist and postcolonial theories to examine the European Union’s (EU’s) policies of human rights promotion in the South Caucasus – notably, the EU’s engagement with local human rights activists and organisations in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. Contrary to most literature, which has been concerned with policy (in)effectiveness, this article is interested in problematising the discursive foundations of this EU-civil society ‘partnership’ in the realm of human rights promotion, as well as in retrieving the agency of actors who are ‘at the receiving end’ of EU policies. It is argued that the discursive construction of ‘civil’ society as a ‘good-Other’ of the EU-Self serves as a means to depoliticise the EU’s interventions, aiming at the approximation of ‘transitioning’ countries to the EU’s human rights standards. Although the hegemonic relation requires subaltern actors to perform the ‘civil’ society identity, processes of hybridisation and subversion arise as external interventions interact with local realities and meanings. Building on in-depth interviews and ethnographic observations, the article shows how the hegemonic identity of ‘civil’ society is negotiated by South Caucasus ‘not-quite-civil’ actors striving for local legitimacy, financial survival or ownership of their human rights work.

A comparison of institutional quality in the South Caucasus

“…For instance, Georgia is believed to be active and well-organized, while Armenia is still undergoing a transformative process to enable civil society to play a role in political changes. However, Azerbaijan shows low promise due to the artificial hardships inhibiting foreign funding for the Non-government Organizations (NGOs) and the government's lack of interest in fast improvements in civil liberties (Luciani 2021).…”

AB'nin Türkiye'deki Sivil Toplum Örgütlerine Finansal Desteği: Gezi Süreci Sonrası Siyasi Alanın Daralması mı?

“…This can be seen in the EIDHR and IPA eligible applicant criteria, in which the beneficiaries have to be responsible for demonstrating effective and continuous links with that country's economy, able to prepare and manage the action with their partners, to have stable and sufficient sources of finance to ensure the continuity of their organisation throughout the project and to play a part in financing it and to demonstrate their capacity to manage activities of a scale corresponding with the size of the project for which a grant is requested. For some (Kurki, 2011b;Muhlenhoff, 2014;Luciani, 2021), by doing so, the EU has gradually depoliticized the rights-based CSOs in two ways. Firstly, right-based organizations only provide technical expertise to enable Turkey to match EU standards while following the projects' implementation criteria.…”

“…On the other hand, some scholars (Muehlenhoff, 2014;Zihnioğlu, 2019a;Luciani, 2021) stress that the EU's civil society policy actually supports nongovernmental organizations' (NGOs), whereby the concept is used synonymous with civil society. NGOs have become a neoliberal form of civil society "characterised by a formal, institutionalised and professionalised structure, financial dependence on (Western) donors and an orientation towards their agendas rather than towards local claims or needs" (Luciani, 2021: 104).…”

Editorial: Decolonizing Rather than Decentring ‘Europe’

“…Quite the contrary, it is suggested that decentring of knowledge can, by being more aware of other perspectives, contribute to the effectiveness and even to the legitimacy of EU foreign policy. 23 Eurocentrism is problematic not only because of moral reasons but because it is 'self-defeating', 24 'counterproductive' and 'ineffective' for EU foreign policy. In turn, these can be illustrated by referring to the EU's failure to anticipate the Russian war against Ukraine 25 and many abstentions within the UN on this issue which diminish the EU's power.…”