Promoting democracy in Algeria: the EU factor and the preferences of the political elite

Author: Ayscedile Aslıhan Ccedilelenk
Affiliation: Department of International Relations, Erciyes University, Kayseri, Turkey
Published in: journal Democratization, Volume 16, Issue 1 February 2009 , pages 176 - 192
Source: http://www.informaworld.com


Abstract

The aim of this study is to analyse the reasons for the shortcomings of the EU as an agent of democracy promotion in Algeria. Instead of focusing solely on the EU, the study proposes that it was the interaction between EU-level problems and domestic, political factors which led to the shortcomings of the EU's conditionality in Algeria. The security priorities, the potential threat of Islam, and the perceived potential of instability resulting from democratization made the EU less eager to apply conditionality for political change in Algeria. The preferences and interests of France and the way in which the Mediterranean partners are perceived by the EU also affected the EU's impact at the domestic level. However, the powers and choices of the political elite (especially the army and the president) are argued to be the major determinants of the EU's impact, as this elite controls the channels through which the EU seeks to influence the democratization of Algerian politics. The main argument advanced in this study is that it was the simultaneous processes of re-definition of the security concerns at the EU level and the empowerment of the authoritarian elite in Algeria, which led to the shortcomings of the EU's conditionality for democratization.

Keywords: EU; Algeria; Euro-Mediterranean Partnership; democratization

Introduction

The effectiveness of the EU as a global political actor has been extensively discussed, especially since the 11 September attacks in the United States, when the Union failed to speak with a common voice regarding the war in Iraq and the member states were divided among themselves in terms of their opinions and actions about the responses to the threat of terrorism.1 The EU has launched various initiatives to deal with the challenges of successive enlargements throughout its history and to establish good relations with its neighbours. One of these initiatives covers the Middle East and North Africa within the context of EU-Mediterranean relations. The Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EuroMed, or EMP) was a foreign policy move that set ambitious objectives from the beginning for establishing political, economic, and cultural cooperation in the Mediterranean region, and various instruments were developed in order to realize this cooperation.

One of the objectives of the EU in the Mediterranean is to promote democracy, human rights, and the rule of law in the countries of the region in order to have a more secure international environment.3 This article examines, through an institutionalist perspective, to what extent the EU has achieved this objective in the Algerian context by using the 'misfit model of Europeanization'.4 In order to understand how EU conditionality works in promoting democracy in Algeria, the nature of the EU's pressure for initiating institutional change is analysed. Then, the article investigates the way in which EU-level pressures are interpreted and processed at the domestic level. The interaction between the EU's impact and domestic political processes and actors is taken as the basic factor to determine the prospects for democratization in Algeria and the article focuses on analysing the dynamics of this interaction.

The first part of the article explains the theoretical framework, based on institutionalism and models of Europeanization. The concept of Europeanization is used to refer to various processes within European politics in the literature.5 Within the context of this study, it is essentially understood as the process of exporting political norms and economic practices advocated by the EU, such as democracy, pluralism, and a free market economy6 and forms of government, to EU neighbours. The theoretical framework is developed further in the second part, with a discussion of the nature of EU-level pressures for democratization in Algeria, which are mainly the EMP and the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). In this part of the article, the absence both of a Country Report as well as an Action Plan with regard to Algeria, within the ENP framework, will be dealt with as part of the shortcomings of the EU's democracy promotion policies in Algeria. In the third part, the way in which the EU's impact is dealt with in the Algerian context is analysed and the colonial legacy, the threat of political Islam, and the impact of the political elite are identified as the main factors in this process. The article concludes with some comments on the limitations of the EU's conditionality in Algeria and an analysis of the interaction between the EU's impact and domestic factors.

The body of the article includes sections on:
- The theoretical framework: Europeanization and institutionalization
- The Euro-Mediterranean Partnership and promoting democracy in Algeria
- Democratization and the preferences of the Algerian political elite
- The limitations of EU conditionality in Algeria

Conclusion

The main aim of this article has been to analyse the main factors which led to the failure of the EU's democracy promotion policies in Algeria. Instead of focusing on the EU aspect of the problem alone, the article has proposed a model which takes into account domestic political factors resisting change. It was argued that the EU's conditionality has not worked in Algeria due to the result of simultaneous processes of re-prioritization of security objectives in the EU and empowerment of the authoritarian political elite in Algeria, which has mainly manifested itself through the actions of the army and the increased powers of the president.

The discrepancy between the political objectives of the Barcelona Declaration and actual practices has occurred as a result of the changes in the European security environment, the economic interests of the Mediterranean members of the EU, and the policy preferences of France, which has colonial ties with Algeria. The perception of the Mediterranean partners as 'the other' also diminished the power and credibility of the EU as a promoter of democracy and human rights. The top-down approach of the EU, which prefers to cooperate with the ruling political elite instead of the grass-roots level, the half-hearted commitment of the EU to the policy of democracy promotion, and the tendency to dismiss incentives provided by the EMP, make it easier for the Algerian political elite to evade EU pressures for political reform. For the southern members of the EU, and especially for France (the former colonial power), an authoritarian regime is preferred to a democracy, given the potential of an Islamist government, and the condition of political reform is not applied to economic and political cooperation agreements with Algeria, during times of military intervention and presidential authoritarianism.

While the EU has been re-thinking its security and political priorities, the political elite in Algeria has consolidated its power. As the main agent of change and the major source of power, the political elite has been able to filter the EU's impact before it reached the grassroots level and has, thus, been able to dismiss any pressures coming from the EU. The political elite preferred to maintain the authoritarian regime and deflected any impact by the EU at the domestic level. In the Algerian case, the shortcomings of the democracy promotion policies of the EU were not merely due to the problems stemming from the EU itself. The supremacy of the political and economic concerns of the individual member states, the lack of political incentives for reform, and the changes in the security environment of Europe were all effective in decreasing EU pressure for democratization in Algeria. However, the EU's democracy promotion policies were more easily dismissible in Algeria, because of the domestic political context with the increased powers of the authoritarian political elite and the existence of other policy options in international politics, such as partnership agreements with China on international judicial and criminal matters and economic and technical assistance, which had no conditionality, and expanded relations with the US.