From Democracy Promotion to Cooperation

Abstract

The implementation of the EU’s democracy promotion efforts in the Mediterranean depends to a large extent on the active engagement of the targeted regimes becoming partners in the EU’s efforts, rather than passive recipients. Their willingness and capacity to cooperate with the EU crucially limits the EU’s chances to translate its democracy promotion agenda into practice. The implementation of political dialogue, democracy assistance, and political conditionality is therefore best understood as an instance of international cooperation between external and local actors. It can therefore be considered the outcome of a process of strategic interaction between the external actor actively pursuing its democracy promotion agenda, on the one hand, and the targeted regime reacting to these efforts, on the other. Theories on cooperation in international relations provide models of this process and help identify factors that shape both actors’ choice of strategy and the resulting outcome of cooperation.