Human rights and democracy

5.2 Human rights and democracy

Just as Bicchi (2006 ) for the case of regionalism, Tanja Börzel and Thomas Risse argue in a recent paper that “the instruments used by the EU to promote democracy, human rights, the rule of law, and ‘good governance’ look surprisingly similar across the globe”, indicating that “the EU follows quite clearly a specific cultural script” (Börzel and Risse 2004

: 2). The use of political conditionality, political dialogue and capacity-building mechanisms in all world regions demonstrate movement “towards a coherent approach”, which did not follow a grand design, however, but “incremental ‘learning by doing’” (Börzel and Risse 2004 : 28-29). Yet, Börzel and Risse avowedly do not analyze the implementation of the EU’s approach nor its effectiveness on the ground. When these are taken into account, the picture of consistency quickly becomes blurred.

The consistency of EU political conditionality is one of the central issues addressed in the literature and the general finding is “not consistent”. Inconsistency starts with the fact that “essential-elements” clauses are not included in agreements with China and the ASEAN countries as well as with Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Whereas in the latter cases, this may be attributed to stable democracy, this excuse clearly does not apply to the Asian countries.

Authors generally observe that the EU treats countries differently even though their human rights record is similar (or the other way around). Despite the pervasive political and legal rhetoric of democracy and human rights promotion, actual policy seems to match rhetoric only when consistency is “cheap”; otherwise, it is driven by a host of other – geopolitical, economic or security – interests. According to Karen Smith, “poor, marginal states (often in Africa) of little importance to the EU or one of its member states tend to be subjected to negative conditionality; these are the cases where it is easiest to show that you are doing something about human rights” (Smith 2001 : 193). In other cases, member states block suspension or termination because this would harm their commercial interests, because the country is strategically or politically too important, or because they have doubts about the effectiveness of negative measures (Smith 2001 : 196). Overriding interest in cooperation on energy and the war on terror is also cited as the main reason why democracy promotion was not prioritized in Central Asia despite the dismal political record of the region (Warkotsch 2006 ). Martin Holland reports that suspensions have mainly hit participants in the Lomé Convention and countries that were economically relatively unimportant to the EU; on the other hand, the EU spared Asian and economically more relevant countries (Holland 2002 : 133). In conclusion, he argues that, whereas the “link between development and democratic principles of good government has become the accepted and inevitable face of North-South relations; the degree to which this conditionality is supervised and sanctioned remains variable, almost idiosyncratic” (Holland 2002 : 135).

Richard Youngs also generally finds that the “the overall distribution of EU trade and aid provisions did not to any significant extent correlate with democratic criteria” and punishment as well as rewards “were adopted on an ad hoc basis and not pursued with any coherence or vigour” (Youngs 2001b : 357). He also observes that the EU has reacted more to massive human rights abuses and “dramatic interruptions of the democratic process” than to persistently autocratic governments. “Democratic conditionality has not been systematic.” (Youngs 2001b : 356)

In a statistical analysis of the suspension of development cooperation in reaction to human rights violations, Hadewych Hazelzet comes to more nuanced results. On the one hand, her findings that “the level of respect for human rights or regime type was not significant for the granting of EU development cooperation” and that the EU was less likely “to impose sanctions on countries with which it has institutionalised cooperation” confirm the general picture of inconsistency (Hazelzet 2005 : 9-10). She also finds that former French or British colonies were sanctioned less severely than former colonies of other EU member states, indicating the protective influence of these member states (Hazelzet 2005 : 10). On the whole, however, her multivariate regression analysis “indicates that, in the 1990s, overall the level of human rights violations was a more important determinant for EU sanctions than the level of economic or strategic importance of a country” (Hazelzet 2005 : 11). However, Hazelzet’s findings refer to ACP countries only. As other authors have pointed out (see above), this group of countries was of relatively minor economic and strategic importance to the EU and was thus more likely to be treated consistently than the Asian countries.

The inconsistency differs markedly from the fairly consistent and meritocratic use of political conditionality vis-à-vis the accession countries (see, e.g., Schimmelfennig 2003 : 99-108; Vachudová 2005 ). The variation in institutional set-up may be one cause for this difference in consistency. In the accession cases, political assessments and decisions are prepared by the Commission in a centralized way; beyond the applicant countries, member state governments and the different pillars of the EU are more strongly involved (Smith 2001 ; Youngs 2001a : 28-46). Alternatively, the difference can be explained by a “community effect: when constitutional questions such as membership are at stake, the pressure to act in line with the constitutive community rules increases. Rule adoption is expedient for outside cooperation partners but indispensable for future members. Whereas interest-based considerations are permitted to take the upper hand in relations with external states, the constitutive community rules will prevail in relations with future insiders” (Schimmelfennig et al. 2006 : 46).

Beyond Europe, the move toward intergovernmental political conditionality thus seems to have been declaratory rather than practical policy. If the EU’s political conditionality has been inconsistent beyond Europe, what about its policies of domestic empowerment and socialization? According to Richard Youngs, the EU did not pursue these strategies consistently either. As to civil society assistance, “the EU did not push hard to gain access for political aid work” and was “unwilling to risk tension with recipient governments”; and in its dialogue and cooperation, “the EU often deliberately sought ways of circumventing its own formal preconditions, offering concrete sectoral cooperation without the need for a formalization of new democracy-based discourse” (Youngs 2001a : 193; see also Youngs 2001b : 365). Thus, it seems to be a general feature of EU democracy promotion that it has been, as several authors have put it, “high on rhetoric and low on policy” (Crawford 2005 on Ghana; Warkotsch 2006 on Central Asia).

Elsewhere, Richard Youngs (2004 ) uses the case of EU human rights promotion in order to make a general point about the interaction of norms and strategic interests in EU external relations. He argues that “instrumental choices are made within a range of common normative understandings” and, in particular, that “security-driven choices [have] been selected within the overarching human rights framework” (Youngs 2004 : 431). In his analysis, EU human rights policy has been attuned to the general promotion of international stability and exhibited a “state-oriented capacity-building bias” (Youngs 2004 : 424).

There is broad agreement in the literature not only on the overall inconsistency of EU strategy but also on the overall low impact of the EU on democracy and human rights in non-candidate third countries. This finding holds regardless of the region under study and the strategy used. The causes of ineffectiveness appear rather overdetermined for political conditionality. First, vis-à-vis non-candidate countries the EU cannot use its most important incentive for compliance: the prospect of membership. Second, inconsistency hampers effectiveness: the “seemingly variable application of conditionality … detracts from the EU’s international credibility and influence” (Holland 2002 : 135). Third, for the mostly authoritarian or autocratic governments in the EU’s neighboring regions, compliance with the EU’s democratic or human rights standards is politically costly. It involves the risks of losing political power that, in the perception of the third-country governments are not offset by whatever economic or diplomatic rewards the EU has on offer. The indirect strategies were confronted with the same obstacle when the ruling elites in the target states “perceived that the good governance agenda was elaborated with increasingly political intent” (Youngs 2001a : 195; see also Tanner 2004 : 140-141).

In sum, EU democracy promotion and human rights policy beyond Europe has used the three mechanisms of conditionality, socialization, and domestic empowerment. In all of these cases, however, it is characterized by low consistency and effectiveness.