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This volume explores the conditions under which regional organizations engage in governance transfer in and to areas of limited statehood. The comparison of 12 regional organizations in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and the Middle East shows that regional organizations have not only institutionalized commitments to human rights, democracy, the rule of law, and the fight against corruption. They have also developed more detailed prescriptions of these 'good' governance standards and established similar instruments to promote and protect them in their member states. The authors argue that a global script of governance transfer by regional organizations is emerging. Rather than developing from a central model, however, this is patched together by regional and national actors who are translating governance standards and instruments into their local context.

This volume explores the conditions under which regional organizations engage in governance transfer in and to areas of limited statehood. The comparison of 12 regional organizations in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and the Middle East shows that regional organizations have not only institutionalized commitments to human rights, democracy, the rule of law, and the fight against corruption. They have also developed more detailed prescriptions of these 'good' governance standards and established similar instruments to promote and protect them in their member states. The authors argue that a global script of governance transfer by regional organizations is emerging. Rather than developing from a central model, however, this is patched together by regional and national actors who are translating governance standards and instruments into their local context.

Compared with a global trend towards governance transfer by regional organizations, the League of Arab States is clearly a latecomer in prescribing and promoting governance standards in its member states — and its efforts are more limited and weaker than in many other regional organizations (Börzel and Stapel in this volume). While the Arab League started to deal with selected human rights issues in the late 1960s, an Arab Charter on Human Rights as the cornerstone of a regional human rights regime only entered into force in 2008 — much later than its American, European, and African counterparts. Continental organizations like the Organization of American States (OAS), the Council of Europe (CoE), and the Organization for African Unity (OAU), the predecessor of the African Union (AU), had developed regional human rights regimes early on. Moreover, many regional organizations worldwide turned to more actively prescribing and promoting standards related to human rights, democracy, the rule of law, and good governance in the 1990s. By contrast, only in the 21st century has the Arab League begun to step up its efforts at governance transfer. It focuses on human rights as compared with democracy, the rule of law, or good governance, but even the catalogue of human rights adopted in 2004 falls short of international standards, and the Arab Human Rights Committee has only a limited mandate for its promotion and protection.

The author explores the practice and effects of the European Union's democracy promotion efforts vis-à-vis its authoritarian neighbours in the Middle East and North Africa. She argues that the same set of factors facilitated both international cooperation of authoritarian regimes on democracy promotion and their persistence during the Arab Spring.

This article asks under which conditions the state-building efforts of external actors in areas of limited statehood are likely to be effective. We argue that the legitimacy of the specific norms promoted by external actors among local actors is crucial for their success in strengthening state capacities. International efforts need to resonate with prevalent social norms. To substantiate this argument, we focus on the European Union's (EU) anticorruption programs and their implementation in one of the most corrupt regions in the world, the Southern Caucasus. We show that legitimacy can explain why the EU's fight against corruption helped reduce corruption in Georgia but not in Armenia. In both countries, political elites could selectively use anticorruption programs as an instrument against political opponents, using enhanced state capacities to stabilize the incumbent regime. Only in Georgia, however, was the fight against corruption facilitated by sustained domestic mobilization for anticorruption policies that added pressure on political elites "from below."

The failure of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) in bringing about democratic change in the European Union (EU)’s neighbourhood starts with the EU’s limited effectiveness in shaping outcomes of international negotiations according to the ambitious objectives it pursues. This paper argues that this is not primarily a problem of a lack of actorness, however. The EU does have one message and speaks with a single voice but pursues conflicting goals. Rather than the lack of internal cohesiveness, it is the ENP’s substantive inconsistency in seeking to promote effective and democratic governance that undermines the EU’s external effectiveness. While the ENP conceives of the two objectives as complemen- tary, the democratization of (semi-)authoritarian countries entails the risk of their destabilization at least in the short run. As a result, promoting effective and democratic governance become conflicting objectives. The lower the level of political liberalization and the higher the instability of a country, the more ineffective the EU is in asserting a democratic reform agenda in the ENP Action Plans, clearly favouring stability over change.

In dieser Ausgabe wird untersucht, unter welchen Bedingungen die Bemühungen externer Akteure zum Staatsaufbau (state-building) in Räumen begrenzter Staatlichkeit effektiv sind. Wir argumentieren, dass die Legitimität der extern geförderten Norm unter lokalen Akteuren wesentlich für den erfolgreichen Aufbau von Staatskapazitäten ist. Internationale Normen müssen anschlussfähig sein an dominante innerstaatliche Diskurse über politische Reformen. Empirisch untersuchen wir die Anti-Korruptions-Programme der Europäischen Union (EU) und ihre Implementation in einer der korruptesten Regionen der Welt, dem Südkaukasus. Wir zeigen, dass Legitimität erklären kann, warum die Bemühungen der EU in Georgien zur Verringerung von Korruption beigetragen haben, nicht aber in Armenien. In beiden Ländern konnten politische Eliten die Anti-Korruptions-Programme selektiv als Instrument gegen politische Gegner nutzen und mit Hilfe vergrößerter Staatskapazitäten das Regime stabilisieren. Allerdings wurde nur in Georgien die Korruptionsbekämpfung durch eine dauerhafte innerstaatliche Mobilisierung unterstützt, die zusätzlichen Druck auf politische Eliten zur effektiven Umsetzung institutioneller Reformen aufbaute. This paper asks under which conditions the state-building efforts of external actors in areas of limited statehood are likely to be effective. We argue that the legitimacy of the specific norms promoted by external actors among local actors is crucial for their success in strengthening state capacities. International norms need to resonate with the dominant domestic discourse on political reforms. To substantiate our argument, we focus on the European Union’s (EU) anti-corruption programs and their implementation in one of the most corrupt regions in the world, the Southern Caucasus. We show that legitimacy can explain why the EU’s fight against corruption helped reduce corruption in Georgia but not in Armenia. In both countries, political elites could selectively use anti-corruption programs as an instrument against political opponents using enhanced state capacities to stabilize the incumbent regime. Only in Georgia, however, the fight against corruption was facilitated by sustained domestic mobilization for anti-corruption policies that added pressure on political elites ‘from below.’

Whether the European Union (EU) really lives up to its image of “transformative power” is still an open empirical question. There is no doubt that the EU has been active in setting and promoting norms that go far beyond the objective of regional economic integration. It prescribes and promotes standards for national governance institutions related to democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. However, in comparison to other regional organizations, the EU used to focus on the transformation of domestic governance institutions beyond rather than within its borders, targeting accession candidates, neighboring countries, and third states alike. Only recently did the EU start to develop policies and instruments explicitly aiming to protect the same norms and values within its own member states that it seeks to transfer externally. This paper traces the evolution of the EU’s external and internal governance transfer. While the external dimension is still better developed institutionally, regional integration provides the EU with effective policies and instruments to protect its fundamental values within the member states., Ob die Europäische Union (EU) tatsächlich dem Anspruch einer „transformativen Macht“ gerecht wird, ist eine offene empirische Frage. Die EU setzt und fördert jedoch ohne Zweifel aktiv Normen, die weit über das Ziel regionaler wirtschaftlicher Integration hinaus gehen. Dazu gehören Standards für nationale Governance-Institutionen mit Blick auf Demokratie, Menschenrechte, und Rechtsstaatlichkeit. Im Gegensatz zu anderen Regionalorganisationen konzentrierte sie sich dabei ursprünglich vor allem auf die Transformation nationaler Governance-Institutionen jenseits ihrer Grenzen in Beitrittskandidaten, Nachbarländern und Drittstaaten. Erst seit Kurzem entwickelt die EU auch Strategien und Instrumente, die explizit auf den Schutz dieser Normen und Werte in ihren eigenen Mitgliedstaaten zielen. Dieses Papier zeichnet die Entwicklung des externen und internen Governance-Transfers der EU nach. Obwohl die externe Dimension institutionell nach wie vor besser entwickelt ist, stehen der EU im Rahmen des Integrationsprozesses effektive Instrumente zum Schutz ihrer Grundwerte in den Mitgliedstaaten zur Verfügung.

Since the end of the Cold War, international organizations and states have developed programs to promote (good) governance at the country level. Regional organizations have gained an important role in governance transfer because they constitute an intermediary level of agency between the nation-state and global institutions. This paper maps the governance transfer of nine regional organizations in the Americas, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Weanalyze the objectives, approaches, and instruments used to promote the creation and transformation of governance institutions in target countries. This comparison shows that similar standards and instruments have been adopted throughout the areas of study, in line with the notion of a global governance script. At the same time, we find important differences with regard to when and how the regional organizations prescribe and promote “good” governance institutions at the national level. Research on diffusion and comparative regionalism is ill-equipped to account for this double finding of increasing similarities and persisting differences. The paper calls for a more agency-centered approach that conceptualizes governance transfer as an institutional choice by states. We identify factors that elicit states’ demand for governance transfer, on the one hand, and that shape its institutional design, on the other. Seit Ende des Kalten Krieges haben Internationale Organisationen und Staaten Programme entwickelt, um „Gutes Regieren“ in Mitgliedstaaten und Drittländern zu fördern. Regionalorganisationen sind als Vermittler zwischen nationalen und globalen Institutionen wichtig für solche Governance-Transfers. Dieses Papier erfasst den Governance-Transfer von neun Regionalorganisationen in den Amerikas, Afrika, Asien und im Nahen Osten. Dabei analysieren wir die Ziele, Ansätze und Instrumente für die Schaffung oder Veränderung von Institutionenin Zielländern. Dieser Vergleich zeigt Ähnlichkeiten bei Standards und Instrumenten, was auf die Ausbreitung eines „globalen Skripts“ für Governance hindeutet. Allerdings unterscheiden sich Organisationen auch darin, wie und wann sie bestimmte Governance-Institutionen in Mitgliedstaaten vorschreiben und fördern. Die Diffusions- und Vergleichende Regionalismusforschung ist auf einen solchen Doppelbefund schlecht vorbereitet. Unser Papier schlägt einen stärker auf Akteure fokussierten Ansatz vor, der Governance-Transfer als Konsequenz staatlicher Entscheidungen ansieht. Wir identifizieren Faktoren, die einerseits die Nachfrage nach solchen Prozessen und andererseits ihre institutionelle Ausgestaltung beeinflussen.

Since the end of the Cold War, international organizations and states have developed programs to promote (good) governance at the country level. Regional organizations have gained an important role in governance transfer because they constitute an intermediary level of agency between the nation-state and global institutions. This paper maps the governance transfer of nine regional organizations in the Americas, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. We analyze the objectives, approaches, and instruments used to promote the creation and transformation of governance institutions in target countries. This comparison shows that similar standards and instruments have been adopted throughout the areas of study, in line with the notion of a global governance script. At the same time, we find important differences with regard to when and how the regional organizations prescribe and promote “good” governance institutions at the national level. Research on diffusion and comparative regionalism is ill- equipped to account for this double finding of increasing similarities and persisting differences. The paper calls for a more agency-centered approach that conceptualizes governance transfer as an institutional choice by states. We identify factors that elicit states’ demand for governance transfer, on the one hand, and that shape its institutional design, on the other., Seit Ende des Kalten Krieges haben Internationale Organisationen und Staaten Programme entwickelt, um „Gutes Regieren“ in Mitgliedstaaten und Drittländern zu fördern. Regionalorganisationen sind als Vermittler zwischen nationalen und globalen Institutionen wichtig für solche Governance-Transfers. Dieses Papier erfasst den Governance-Transfer von neun Regionalorganisationen in den Amerikas, Afrika, Asien und im Nahen Osten. Dabei analysieren wir die Ziele, Ansätze und Instrumente für die Schaffung oder Veränderung von Institutionen in Zielländern. Dieser Vergleich zeigt Ähnlichkeiten bei Standards und Instrumenten, was auf die Ausbreitung eines „globalen Skripts“ für Governance hindeutet. Allerdings unterscheiden sich Organisationen auch darin, wie und wann sie bestimmte Governance-Institutionen in Mitgliedstaaten vorschreiben und fördern. Die Diffusions- und Vergleichende Regionalismusforschung ist auf einen solchen Doppelbefund schlecht vorbereitet. Unser Papier schlägt einen stärker auf Akteure fokussierten Ansatz vor, der Governance-Transfer als Konsequenz staatlicher Entscheidungen ansieht. Wir identifizieren Faktoren, die einerseits die Nachfrage nach solchen Prozessen und andererseits ihre institutionelle Ausgestaltung beeinflussen.

Ob die Europäische Union (EU) tatsächlich dem Anspruch einer „transformativen Macht“ gerecht wird, ist eine offene empirische Frage. Die EU setzt und fördert jedoch ohne Zweifel aktiv Normen, die weit über das Ziel regionaler wirtschaftlicher Integration hinaus gehen. Dazu gehören Standards für nationale Governance-Institutionen mit Blick auf Demokratie, Menschenrechte, und Rechtsstaatlichkeit. Im Gegensatz zu anderen Regionalorganisationen konzentrierte sie sich dabei ursprünglich vor allem auf die Transformation nationaler Governance-Institutionen jenseits ihrer Grenzen in Beitrittskandidaten, Nachbarländern und Drittstaaten. Erst seit Kurzem entwickelt die EU auch Strategien und Instrumente, die explizit auf den Schutz dieser Normen und Werte in ihren eigenen Mitgliedstaaten zielen. Dieses Papierzeichnet die Entwicklung des externen und internen Governance-Transfers der EU nach. Obwohl die externe Dimension institutionell nach wie vor besser entwickelt ist, stehen der EU im Rahmen des Integrationsprozesses effektive Instrumente zum Schutz ihrer Grundwerte in den Mitgliedstaaten zur Verfügung. Whether the European Union (EU) really lives up to its image of “transformative power” is still an open empirical question. There is no doubt that the EU has been active in setting and promoting norms that go far beyond the objective of regional economic integration. It prescribes and promotes standards for national governance institutions related to democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. However, in comparison to other regional organizations, the EU used to focus on the transformation of domestic governance institutions beyond rather than within its borders, targeting accession candidates, neighboring countries, and third states alike. Only recently did the EU start to develop policies and instruments explicitly aiming to protect the same norms and values within its own member states that it seeks to transfer externally. This paper traces the evolution of the EU’s external and internal governance transfer. While the external dimension is still better developed institutionally, regional integration provides the EU with effective policies and instruments to protect its fundamental values within the member states.

The Arab spring has highlighted once more the European Union's failure to bring about democratic change in the Middle East and North Africa through its Mediterranean democracy promotion policy. However, Arab authoritarian countries engage to different degrees in cooperation on democracy promotion, giving the EU more or less influence on domestic institutional change related to political participation, respect for human rights, and the rule of law. A comparison of domestic change and cooperation in Morocco and Tunisia in 2000-2010 shows that the EU has been instrumental in supporting and potentially reinforcing domestic reform initiatives. Yet the EU cannot trigger domestic institutional change in the first place. The degree of political liberalisation determines the fit between the domestic political agenda and external demands for reforms. It reflects different 'survival strategies' between political inclusion and exclusion and is therefore a scope condition for rather than the result of cooperation and change.

This thesis investigates the European Union’s (EU) democracy promotion efforts visà-vis its neighbours in the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean. It starts from the observation that the EU generally succeeds in implementing its two main instruments for democracy promotion, namely political dialogue and democracy assistance, in cooperation with its Mediterranean neighbours but that implementation varies significantly across countries. This finding is puzzling in two regards: First, both instruments are ‘partnership-based’, i.e. their implementation requires the active engagement of the targeted actor which can hardly be expected in the case of authoritarian regimes. Second, while Mediterranean partners apparently engage in cooperation on human rights, democracy, and the rule of law with the EU, it is not obvious why implementation should vary. This puzzle has been largely neglected in research on EU and more generally international democracy promotion. Therefore, the central research question underlying this thesis is “How and under which conditions are partnership-based instruments for democracy promotion implemented in Euro-Mediterranean relations?” Drawing on theories of (international) cooperation, the thesis suggests a rationalist model of strategic interaction in order to explain the implementation of political dialogue and democracy assistance. The strategic interaction approach allows integrating three factors that figure prominently in the literature, namely the degrees of political liberalisation and statehood in the target country as well as the configuration of interdependence in bilateral relations between the EU and its Mediterranean partners. It specifies their interaction effects in shaping the actors’ preferences as well as the outcome of cooperation at the country level. The thesis tests these hypotheses in a comparative analysis of EU cooperation with seven Mediterranean partners (Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria, and Tunisia) in 1990-2008. It complements this deductive approach with an inductive comparative case-study of Morocco and Tunisia for 2000-20008 in order to substantiate causal claims and to further develop and refine the theoretical framework. The thesis argues that a specific combination of political liberalisation and statehood can account for variation across countries in the timing, extent, and quality of implementation. The level of political liberalisation in the target country affects the costliness of implementing political dialogue and democracy assistance in terms of power and stability, while limitations to statehood can make cooperation on democracy promotion either more or less beneficial for the target regime in the same line as interdependence. The implementation of partnership-based instruments for democracy promotion is better, the higher the level of political liberalisation in the target country, especially when combined with a medium degree of statehood. By contrast, if the level of political liberalisation is too low, the costs of cooperation become prohibitive; and if the degree of statehood is either too low or too high, cooperation is either not feasible or not beneficial enough for the target regime. Diese Dissertation untersucht die Demokratieförderungspolitik der Europäischen Union (EU) gegenüber den Nachbarstaaten des südlichen und östlichen Mittelmeerraumes. Sie geht dabei von der empirischen Beobachtung aus, dass die EU ihre zwei zentralen Instrumente der Demokratieförderung, den Politischen Dialog und die Demokratiehilfe (Democracy Assistance), in der Kooperation mit den Mittelmeerpartnern generell erfolgreich umsetzen kann, diese Umsetzung jedoch über Länder hinweg stark variiert. Dieser Befund ist in zweierlei Hinsicht überraschend. Erstens handelt es sich bei beiden Instrumenten um „partnerschaftliche Instrumente“, d.h. ihre Umsetzung erfordert das aktive Engagement der Akteure in den Partnerländern – was im Fall von autoritären Regimen kaum zu erwarten ist. Zweitens kooperieren die Mittelmeerpartner zwar im Hinblick auf Menschenrechte, Demokratie und Rechtsstaatlichkeit mit der EU, aber es bleibt unklar, warum die Umsetzung in den Ländern jeweils variiert. Dieses Puzzle wurde von der EU-Forschung und der Literatur zu externer Demokratieförderung bisher vernachlässigt. Deshalb lautet die zentrale Forschungsfrage dieser Arbeit: „Wie und unter welchen Bedingungen werden partnerschaftliche Instrumente der Demokratieförderung in den EU-Mittelmeer- Beziehungen umgesetzt?“ Unter Rückgriff auf Theorien (internationaler) Kooperation wird in dieser Dissertation ein rationalistisches Modell strategischer Interaktion entwickelt, um die Umsetzung von Politischem Dialog und Demokratiehilfe zu erklären. Der strategische Interaktionsansatz ermöglicht die Integration dreier in der Literatur prominent diskutierter Faktoren: den Grad politischer Liberalisierung und den Grad der Staatlichkeit in dem Zielland sowie die Art der Interdependenz in den bilateralen Beziehungen zwischen der EU und ihren Mittelmeerpartnern. Er spezifiziert darüber hinaus ihre Interaktionseffekte im Hinblick auf die Präferenzen der Akteure und die Ergebnisse der Kooperation auf Länderebene. Im Rahmen einer vergleichenden Studie zur Kooperation zwischen der EU und sieben Mittelmeeranrainern (Ägypten, Algerien, Jordanien, Libanon, Marokko, Syrien und Tunesien) in den Jahren 1990-2008 werden diese Hypothesen getestet. Dieser deduktive Ansatz wird durch eine induktiv vergleichende Fallstudie der Länder Marokko und Tunesien in den Jahren 2000-2008 ergänzt, um Kausalmechanismen aufzudecken und den theoretischen Rahmen weiterzuentwickeln und zu spezifizieren. Das zentrale Argument der Dissertation ist, dass eine spezifische Kombination von politischer Liberalisierung und Staatlichkeit die Unterschiede zwischen den Ländern hinsichtlich des Zeitpunkts, des Umfangs und der Qualität der Umsetzung der partnerschaftlichen Instrumente erklären kann. Während der Grad der politischen Liberalisierung eines Ziellandes die Kosten der Umsetzung des politischen Dialogs und der Demokratiehilfe im Hinblick auf Macht und Stabilität bestimmt, kann begrenzte Staatlichkeit ähnlich wie Interdependenz die Kooperation im Rahmen der Demokratieförderung entweder mehr oder weniger erstrebenswert erscheinen lassen. Die Umsetzung partnerschaftlicher Demokratieförderungsinstrumente ist damit umso besser, je höher der Grad der politischen Liberalisierung in dem Zielland ist; insbesondere wenn dieses zudem einen mittleren Grad an Staatlichkeit aufweist. Wenn der Grad politischer Liberalisierung im Gegensatz dazu gering ist, wirken die Kooperationskosten prohibitiv; und wenn der Grad an Staatlichkeit zu niedrig oder zu hoch ist, ist Kooperation entweder nicht realisierbar oder aus Sicht des Ziellandes nicht erstrebenswert.

The EU’s Eastern Enlargement is considered to be one of the (few) successful experiments of promoting good – both effective and legitimate – governance. By contrast, the EU’s transformative power appears to be weak or non-existent vis-à-vis its (old) neighbors in the South and its (new) neighbors in the East. Both are not only marked by ‘bad governance’ but also lack a (credible) membership perspective. While the Western Balkans and Turkey have made significant progress towards good governance, both with regard to government effectiveness and democratic legitimacy, the European Neighborhood Countries(ENCs) appear to be stuck in transition or never got that far in the first place. Even when the effectiveness of their governance institutions has improved, they remain well behind the other regions and especially their democratic legitimacy is still wanting or even in decline. The paper shows that there is a correlation between an EU membership perspective and the successful transformation of neighboring countries. Therefore, it has been argued that the ineffectiveness of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) is due to the lack of this ‘golden carrot’. However, we argue that the prospects of EU membership stabilizesrather than drives the move towards effective and legitimate governance in candidate countries. Thus, a membership perspective is unlikely to either turn around negative or speed up positive developments in the EU’s neighborhood. Even if the ENCs received a membership perspective, it would be unlikely to pushthem significantly towards democratic and effective governance as long as there is no endogenously driven process of change. Given the EU’s preference for stability and state-building, the ENP does not provide an alternative for promoting good governance either. The ENP clearly lacks transformative power and where it might have some domestic impact, it risks consolidating rather than undermining authoritarian regimes by helping to strengthen their capacities for effective governance.

Focusing on the Euro-Mediterranean relations since the early 1990s, this paper investigates in how far the EU has been able to shape its relations with third countries according to its democracy promotion policy. The paper traces the evolution of the EU’s provisions for democracy promotion and compares the implementation of political dialogue and democracy assistance with seven (semi-)authoritarian regimes (Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria, and Tunisia) since the early 1990s. A clear regional trend to more intensive cooperation lends credibility to the claim that the EU possesses a certain agenda setting power in international relations. A systematic comparison across countries and over time explores the explanatory power of interdependence, political liberalisation, and statehood for the remaining country variation. The paper finds that the degree of political liberalisation in target countries is the most important scope condition for cooperation in the field of democracy promotion and points to the need of further investigating (domestic) factors to account for the EU’s differential ‘normative power’ in international relations.