European Union's Democratization Agenda in the Mediterranean

Democracy promotion in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) remains a central pillar of the foreign policy of the European Union (EU). Rather than concentrating on the relations between the incumbent authoritarian regimes and the opposition in the relevant countries, and on the degree to which these relations are affected by EU efforts at promoting democracy, human rights and the rule of law (an outside-in approach), this collection of articles inverts the focus of such relationships and attempts to look at them ‘inside-out’. While some contributions also emphasise the ‘outside-in’ axis, given that this continues to be analytically rewarding, the overarching thrust of this book is to provide some empirical substance for the claim that EU policy making is not unidirectional and is influenced by the perceptions and actions of its ‘targets’. Thus, the focus is on domestic political changes on the ground in the MENA and how they link into what the EU is attempting to achieve in the region. Finally, the self-representation of the EU and its (lack of a) clear regional role is discussed.This book was published as a special issue of Democratization.

Michelle Pace is Senior Research Fellow and RCUK Fellow, POLSIS at the University of Birmingham. She is Principal Investigator on two large projects and has published widely on EU policies towards the wider Mediterranean.Peter Seeberg is Associate Professor, Ph.D. Director of Studies at the Centre for Contemporary Middle East Studies, University of Southern Denmark. He has published on the EU and the Middle East, Arabic nationalism, migration issues and ethnic minorities in Europe and Denmark.