Policy learning and democracy aid in the EU’s southern neighbourhood

Support for democracy in the EU’s southern neighbourhood has been central to the EU’s Mediterranean policy since the 1990s. EU member states have also supported democracy in MENA countries. Development aid is a key tool for supporting democracy, as financial assistance is assumed to incentivise democratic reforms. Europe’s rhetorical support for democracy peaked amid the euphoria of the Arab uprisings, accompanied by sharp increases in aid spending. As aid became increasingly securitised and migration focussed after 2015, democracy support remained central to European narratives on engagement with MENA countries. More recently, aid has been re-framed as supporting ‘democratic standards’ in the EU’s Global Gateway infrastructure investment programme, and in the comprehensive partnership with Egypt. This raises the question of what lessons the EU and its member states have been learned about democracy support since the Arab Uprisings? The impact of policy learning on democracy aid is difficult to assess using evaluations. Do donors learn from successes and failures? Can they learn from each other? This article offers an exploratory study. We discuss insights from the literature on policy learning, such as policy convergence and policy reform, with reference to aid policy documents from four major European donors to the MENA region: the European Institutions, Germany, France and the UK. We complement this with an analysis of OECD-DAC aid data from 2009 to 2022, focussing on aid for democracy relevant categories and specific projects that purport to support agents of democratic change, including civil society, local government and state institutions. Our analysis reveals a convergence of policy positions among European donors. There has been a shift away from a ‘political approach’ to democracy support towards a ‘developmental approach’. This has resulted in reduced direct support to changemakers and more indirect support for economic exchange, infrastructure and prosperity. We argue that this indicates a lack of learning about what can be effective and what does not work. The developmental approach to democracy support has been favoured because it is less risky, but its effect is to strengthen autocratic actors and governance systems in MENA countries.