Democratization in EU Foreign Policy: New member states as drivers of democracy promotion

by Benedetta Berti (Editor), Kristina Mikulova (Editor), Nicu Popescu (Editor)

New democracies are uniquely positioned to promote democratic values and have a competitive advantage in the global democracy assistance industry. This book examines the attempts of one group of young democracies, from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), to channel this pro-democracy agenda into both national and European foreign policy and development support. It looks at how CEE is ‘upstream’ changing the EU on crucial policy issues as part of the common foreign and security policy. Furthermore, it tracks the process whereby imported ideas and norms are recycled for further export ‘downstream’, and how these concepts are received in countries outside of the EU including the post-Soviet space, the Western Balkans, the Middle East and North Africa region and Central Asia. This text will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners of democratisation studies, European Union studies, comparative politics, international relations, international development, European politics, as well as area/regional studies.

224 pages, Paperback

First published October 14, 2015

Reviews

[Ana-Maria · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book offers a systematic attempt at analysing the democracy promotion agenda of the Central and Eastern European countries. In doing so, the framework used rests mostly on institutionalism, the way the priorities are set on the national foreign policy agenda, because of their own transitions, how the priorities are influenced by strategic calculations, also dependent on institutional frameworks, as well as the fitting of national foreign policies into the European big picture. The books is useful as an overview of the actions, showing that democratization may seem like a priority on the development agenda of the CEE. However, the traction of this idea cannot be fully evaluated without structural context of the target regions, most of them being out of prospective membership options with the EU. Therefore, democratization cannot be only analysed strictly as an institutional endeavour, but needs also to factor in structural factors for proper context.

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

For the academic caste democracy means more taxes, because that spells higher wages for the same zero work, and bigger budgets to hire servants (they call those assistants). In this case Berti's gang will tell you that each country having its own position on international problems isn't democracy. Once the smaller countries agree to bomb whomever the German or French government wants, that is ”democratization”.