Liberal or social democracy? Aspect dawning in the EU's democracy promotion agenda in the Middle East

International Journal of Human Rights

Volumn 15, Issue 6, 2011, Pages 801-812

  Pace, Michelle ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Democracy; Egypt; European Union; Middle East; Palestine

Indexed keywords

EID: 84859234334     PISSN: 13642987     EISSN: 1744053X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13642987.2011.580596     Document Type: Article

References (54)

1. A version of this article was published as 'Liberal or Social Democracy? Aspects of the EU's Democracy Promotion Agenda in the Middle East', © International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, 2009, at http://www.idea.int/resources/analysis/upload/Pace-2.pdf.
2. I borrow this term from Aletta Norval, Aversive Democracy: Inheritance and Originality in The Democratic Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
3. See for example European Commission, Communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament. The European Union's Role in Promoting Human Rights and Democratisation in Third Countries, Document COM(2001) 252 final, May 8, 2001.
4. Jósef Pinior, 'European Neighbourhood Policy', European Parliament Debates, 18 January 2006, http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:C:2006:287E:010 1:0102:EN:PDF (accessed May 11, 2010).
5. Fareed Zakaria, 'The Rise of Illiberal Democracy', Foreign Affairs 76, no. 6 (1997): 22-43.
6. Michelle Pace, 'A "Modern" Islamist Democracy? Perceptions of Democratisation in Palestine, the Case of Hamas' (paper presented at Birmingham, Plymouth, Exeter, Leicester, LSE and Oxford universities and at the BRISMES conference. Presentations of revised versions of this paper were delivered at the Kenyon Institute in Jerusalem on November 9, 2009 and at the UNDP in Jerusalem on the November 12, 2009).
7. European Commission, Communication From the Commission on EU Election Assistance and Observation, Document COM(2000) 191 final, April 11, 2000.
8. Milja Kurki, 'Democracy and Conceptual Contestability: Towards Pluralisation and Contextualisation of Conceptions of Democracy in Democracy Promotion' (paper presented at the Millennium Conference, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, United Kingdom, October, 2008).
9. Haitham Arar (Ministry of Interior, Democracy and Human Rights Division (Fatah) Ramallah), interview by Michelle Pace, 5 September 2007.
10. Council of the European Union, Document 10255/1/05, 15 July 2005.
11. The Oslo Agreement was signed by the PLO and Israel in 1993. It was renegotiated in 1995 as Oslo 2, partly because there were several unclear elements in the first agreement.
12. Rami Nasrallah (Head of International Peace and Cooperation Center (IPCC), East Jerusalem), interview by Michelle Pace, 3 September 2007.
13. Zakaria, 'Rise of Illiberal Democracy'.
14. Haitham Arar, interview by Michelle Pace, 5 September 2007.
15. David Chandler, Bosnia: Faking Democracy After Dayton (London and Sterling, VA: Pluto Press, 1999).
16. Michael G. Cox, John Ikenberry, and Inoguchi Takashi, American Democracy Promotion: Impulses, Strategies and Impacts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
17. Larry Diamond, Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 1999).
18. John D. Nagle and Alison Mahr, Democracy and Democratization: Post-Communist Europe in Comparative Perspective (London: Sage Publications, 1999).
19. Marina Ottaway and Thomas Carothers, Funding Virtue: Civil Society Aid and Democracy Promotion (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment, 2000).
20. Richard Youngs, The EU and the Promotion of Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
21. Jason Brownlee, 'The Decline of Pluralism in Mubarak's Egypt', Journal of Democracy 13, no. 4 (2002): 6-14.
22. Kamal Khalil (Cairo) is a political activist (since the 1970s student movement) and a leading member of the Revolutionary Socialists' political party. Interview by Michelle Pace, 24 March 2008.
23. http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/MDE12/005/2003/en/dom-MDE1200520 03en.html (accessed February 9, 2009) on Kamal Khalil's incommunicado detention during February 2003.
24. Javier Solana and Benita Ferrero-Waldner, 'Statebuilding for Peace in the Middle East: An EU Action Strategy' (joint paper by EU High Representative Javier Solana and EU Commissioner for External Relations Benita Ferrero-Waldner, Document S378/07), http://www.consilium.europa.eu/ueDocs/cms_Data/docs/pressdata/en/reports /97949.pdf (accessed 9 February 2009).
25. Peter Burnell, Democracy Assistance: International Co-operation for Democratization (London: Frank Cass, 2000).
26. Haitham Arar, interview by Michelle Pace, 5 September 2007.
27. Basim Naim, interview by Michelle Pace, 11 September 2007 (Ministry of Health, Gaza).
28. Pace, '"Modern" Islamist Democracy'.
29. Khalil Shikaki (Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research, PSR, Ramallah), interview by Michelle Pace, 4 September 2007.
30. According to Norval, Aversive Democracy, such reflexivity requires moving away from what she terms aspect blindness to aspect dawning to aspect learning and eventually aspect change.
31. Pace, "Modern" Islamist Democracy'.
32. Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc J.D. Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992).
33. Walid Salem (former director of Jerusalem Office, PANORAMA, The Palestinian Center for the Dissemination of Democracy and Community Development, East Jerusalem), interview by Michelle Pace, 3 September 2007.
34. Abdelwahab El-Affendi, 'On the State, Democracy and Pluralism', in Islamic Thought in the Twentieth Century, ed. Suha Taji-Farouki and Basheer M. Nafi (London: I.B. Tauris, 2004), 172-94.
35. Michelle Pace, 'Interrogating the European Union's Democracy Promotion Agenda: Discursive Configurations of "Democracy" from the Middle East', European Foreign Affairs Review, 15, 2011, 611-628.
36. Drawing on deliberative (Habermas, Rawls) and post-structuralist (Mouffe and Laclau) approaches to democracy, Norval offers a Wittgenstein-inspired way of understanding the global complexities of the formation of a democratic subjectivity through what she terms 'aversive democracy'.
37. Norval, Aversive Democracy.
38. George Ishak (Kefaya movement, Cairo), interview by Michelle Pace, 24 March 2008. Thus, we need 'to think change in a more nuanced manner than is traditionally the case. Most work on change is caught between the horns of revolution and reformism. Wittgenstein's conception of aspect dawning helps [us] to think about quite radical change, which would not be reducible to a revolutionary break, yet which could occur as a result of quite small changes in articulations between elements. I draw a distinction between aspect dawning and change to capture the senses in which we think of change in relation to democracy. Again, much of the literature works with a distinction between "societies in transition" and "well established liberal democracies"... [T]his tends to be a dichotomy that also has teleological overtones. I feel that we need to question the distinction in kind between change under different conditions...Finally, Wittgenstein's conception of aspect change requires a shift of/in perspective, which...emphasizes the importance of the subjective dimension'. Communication between Aletta Norval and the author, (my own emphasis), 24 October 2008. See also Pace, 'Interrogating the European Union's Democracy Promotion Agenda.
39. Western understandings of the word reform may be different from the original Arabic term. As Dr Mohamed Kadry Said argues: 'the word reform when translated into Arabic is the word islah, which means repairing...this is an unfortunate translation. Reform means sometimes reshaping or advancing, for example, but unfortunately it was translated as islah...and of course this is a heavy blow for anybody or any institution here especially when it is imposed from outside'. Dr Mohamed Kadry Said (Al Ahram Centre, Cairo), interview by Michelle Pace, 23 March 2008.
40. Rami Nasrallah, interview by Michelle Pace, 2007.
41. Rafik Habib (Coptic intellectual), interview by Michelle Pace, 25 March 2008.
42. Ahmed Youssef (Political Adviser to Ismail Haniyeh, Office of the Prime Minister, Gaza), interview by Michelle Pace, 11 September 2007. The term political society organisations refers to the fact that democracy is at its roots about questioning the political.
43. Sabri Saidam (Centre for Continuing Education, BirZeit University, Ramallah), interview by Michelle Pace, 15 September 2007.
44. Dalia Dassa Kaye, Frederic Wehrey, Audra K. Grant, and Dale Stahl, More Freedom, Less Terror? Liberalization and Political Violence in the Arab World (Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 2008).
45. Basem N. Naim (Minister of Youth, Sport and Health, PNA, Gaza), interview by Michelle Pace, 11 September 2007.
46. Thus, EU funding for so-called democracy building projects since the 1990s has had little or no impact on actual democratisation in the Middle East. The key recipients of these funds, governments in the Middle East, have shown little interest in real political reform and change.
47. Tarek Al Beshri, The Islamic Secular Dialogue (Cairo: Dar Al Shorouk, 2006) [In Arabic].With thanks to Haya AlFarra for assistance with translation
48. Mohamed Elhachmi Hamdi, 'Islam and Liberal Democracy: The Limits of the Western Model', Journal of Democracy 7, no. 2 (1996): 81-5.
49. Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
50. Ian Traynor, 'US Outlines "New Realism" in Afghanistan', The Guardian, 9 February 2009.
51. Dimitris N. Chryssochoou, 'The European Synarchy: New Discourses on Sovereignty', Göttingen Journal of International Law 1, no. 1 (2009): 115-41.
52. See for example, Council of the European Union, Quartet Statement, Document S319/08, September 26, 2008.
53. Such a critical debate on the concept of autonomy is the subject of an Ethnicity and Democratic Governance (EDG) workshop held in Barcelona in March 2010 and coordinated by Alain-G Gagnon and Michael Keating.
54. Abou El Ela-Mady (Al-Wasat Party, Cairo), interviewed by Michelle Pace, 24 March 2008. Al-Wasat is a moderate Islamist organisation which, nonetheless, is not recognised in Egypt.