Sonja Grimm

Not all good things go together: conflicting objectives in democracy promotion

Conflicting objectives are often problematized as challenges to the effectiveness of international democracy promotion. However, systematic research about their emergence and effects is still missing. This special issue addresses this research gap and seeks to provide conceptual and empirical answers in the field of conflicting objectives in international democracy promotion. The authors represented in this special issue investigate (post-) conflict societies, developing countries, and authoritarian regimes, attempting to identify the patterns of conflicting objectives in democracy promotion, the reasons for their emergence, and their consequences. This introduction presents a conceptual framework that pursues four aims: first, it differentiates between two types of conflicting objectives (intrinsic and extrinsic); second, it offers an approach for identification of their phases of emergence; third, it proposes reasons for their emergence; and fourth, it discusses how political actors deal with these conflicting objectives. The empirical findings of the contributions to this special issue illustrate and substantiate the theoretical and conceptual reflections.

‘Fragile States’: introducing a political concept

The special issue ‘Fragile States: A Political Concept’ investigates the emergence, dissemination and reception of the notion of ‘state fragility’. It analyses the process of conceptualisation, examining how the ‘fragile states’ concept was framed by policy makers to describe reality in accordance with their priorities in the fields of development and security. The contributors to the issue investigate the instrumental use of the ‘state fragility’ label in the legitimisation of Western policy interventions in countries facing violence and profound poverty. They also emphasise the agency of actors ‘on the receiving end’, describing how the elites and governments in so-called ‘fragile states’ have incorporated and reinterpreted the concept to fit their own political agendas. A first set of articles examines the role played by the World Bank, the oecd, the European Union and the g7+ coalition of ‘fragile states’ in the transnational diffusion of the concept, which is understood as a critical element in the new discourse on international aid and security. A second set of papers employs three case studies (Sudan, Indonesia and Uganda) to explore the processes of appropriation, reinterpretation and the strategic use of the ‘fragile state’ concept.

External Democratization after War: Success and Failure

In post-war societies external actors promote democracy within a broad framework of state- and nation-building, rule-of-law building, and economic development. But not all democracy promotion efforts succeed in an equal way. A closer look at cases of intervention and democratization since 1945 helps us to account for this variation. Cases of democratization can be differentiated according to their level of post-war socio-economic development, the level of social trust versus the level of inner-societal violence, the character of remaining stateness, the potential erosion of the nation, and the terms of peace. In order to explain the democratization successes of the post-World War II period on the one hand, and the apparent democratization failures of the 1990s and after 11 September 2001 on the other, the strategies external actors use in post-war transformation must be considered. Sometimes, external actors differ significantly in their ability and willingness to deal with the five issues mentioned above. Given differences in both structural conditions and actor engagement, external actors should be more careful when using some of the early democratization cases as blueprints for democracy promotion today.

War and democratization : legality, legitimacy and effectiveness

Promotion of democracy in post-war and post-conflict societies became a hot topic during the 1990s. External actors linked their peace-building efforts to the promotion of democracy. Four modes of promotion of democracy by external actors can be distinguished: first, enforcing democratization by enduring post-war occupation (mode 1); second, restoring an elected government by military intervention (mode 2); third, intervening in on-going massacres and civil war with military forces (‘humanitarian intervention’) and thereby curbing the national sovereignty of those countries (mode 3); and fourth, forcing democracy on rogue states by ‘democratic intervention’, in other words, democracy through war (mode 4). In this special issue we consider the legality, legitimacy, and effectiveness of the four modes where the international community of states not only felt impelled to engage in military humanitarian or peace-building missions but also in long-term state- and democracy-building. All cases analysed here suggest that embedding democratization in post-war and post-conflict societies entails a comprehensive agenda of political, social, and economic methods of peace-building. If external actors withdraw before the roots of democracy are deep enough and before democratic institutions are strong enough to stand alone, then the entire endeavour may fail.

The European Union’s ambiguous concept of ‘state fragility’

Although scholars and practitioners alike perceive ‘state fragility’ to be a key challenge for security and development, there are significant variations in the definition of this phenomenon. This article analyses the European Union’s notion of ‘state fragility’. Based on a document analysis covering the years 2001–12 and expert interviews conducted in November 2012, the article reveals that the EU has not (yet) decided on a clear-cut definition of ‘state fragility’. Three factors explain this lack of decisiveness: the EU’s complex institutional framework, which impedes policy coherence; developments at the international level that require the EU’s compliance; and the organisation’s diplomatic efforts to maintain cooperative relationships with aid-recipient countries that have been labelled ‘fragile’. The result is conceptual ambiguity that potentially reduces the EU’s capacity to respond to fragile situations.

Conflicts of preferences and domestic constraints: understanding reform failure in liberal state-building and democracy promotion

ABSTRACT This paper challenges the common explanations that failures of external state-building and democracy promotion are the result of a lack of domestic capacity or a lack of domestic willingness against an externally set liberal agenda of state-building and democratisation. Studying political decision-making on a micro-level, we argue that both explanations fail to capture the multi-faceted motivations and interests of domestic actors that go beyond mere ‘resistance’ against externally induced liberal reforms. Rather, criticism of reforms might be rooted in ideas of social justice and claims to socio-economic security. Furthermore, these explanations tend to overlook the need for domestic elites to bargain with various domestic stakeholders. A case study of Croatian public administration reform illustrates that failure of externally promoted reforms remain an option when significant international resources are available for liberal state-building and the target of reform is a relatively mature bureaucracy.

Does National Identity Matter? Political Conditionality and the Crucial Case of Serbia's (Non-)Co-operation with the ICTY†

Seeking to explain the difficult cases of delayed democratic transition in the Western Balkans, recent literature argues that ‘national identity’ significantly limits the effectiveness of external actors’ political conditionality. This argument is tested in this article by investigating Serbias co-operation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), which was demanded by the United States and the European Union (EU). The findings show that incidents of Serbian co-operation with the ICTY were not preceded by widespread national identity change; rather, co-operation occurred when Serbia was faced with consistent external pressure and the immediate prospect of small-scale rewards. Conditionality thus remained effective. These findings challenge theoretical arguments that issues of national identity may impede external actors’ projection of power, independently of domestic actors’ cost-benefit calculations. Moreover, they suggest that, in the future, external actors such as the EU may continue to rely upon political conditionality for their democratization agenda, even concerning domestically sensitive issue-areas.

Too good to be true? United Nations peacebuilding and the democratization of war-torn states

This article examines the effectiveness of UN peacebuilding missions in democratizing war-torn states, emphasizing those missions that include democracy promotion components in their mandates. Based on a multinominal logistic regression, we reveal that democratization is significantly more likely if a UN peacebuilding mission is deployed. Furthermore, regimes categorized as more liberal at the outset have an increased risk of revealing antidemocratization trends over the post-war period. Oil wealth impedes democratization and clear victory of one conflict party makes regime transitions more likely, yet in both directions. Descriptive statistics suggest that an increase in the mission’s capacities may be conducive to democratization.

Democratization via aid? The European Union’s democracy promotion in the Western Balkans 1994–2010:

In this article, we investigate the effect of European Commission democracy assistance on democratization in the countries of the Western Balkans. The analysis is based on a comprehensive dataset of the financial assistance given by the European Commission to the region from 1994 to 2010. Since this dataset is disaggregated into different sectors, it allows for the distinction between direct and indirect approaches to democracy promotion. The regression results do not confirm the expected positive association between direct democracy promotion and democratization in the Western Balkans. We contextualize our findings by considering the specific post-conflict context in the region and the European Commission’s conflicting policy objectives in play.

Domestic elites and external actors in post-conflict democratisation: mapping interactions and their impact

Abstract Following the end of the Cold War, post-conflict democratisation has rarely occurred without a significant international involvement. This contribution argues that an explanation of the outcomes of post-conflict democratisation requires more than an examination of external actors, their mission mandates or their capabilities and deficiencies. In addition, there is a need to study domestic elites, their preferences and motivations, as well as their perceptions of and their reactions to external interference. Moreover, the patterns of external–internal interactions may explain the trajectory of state-building and democracy promotion efforts. These issues deserve more attention from both scholars and practitioners in the fields of peace- and state-building, democracy promotion, regime transition and elite research. Analyses of external actors and domestic elites in post-conflict democratisation should therefore address three principal issues: (1) the identification of relevant domestic elites in externally induced or monitored state-building and democratisation processes, (2) the dynamics of external–domestic interactions and (3) the impact of these interactions on the outcomes of post-conflict democratisation.