EU Democracy Promotion and Power Politics

What happens to European Union external democracy promotion during times of geopolitical contestation and backlash against liberal values? In 2019, the EU renewed its commitment to advancing democracy across external actions, emphasizing the growing challenge posed by authoritarianism. New initiatives such as the European Democracy Action Plan and Team Europe Democracy, as well as instruments like the European Peace Facility and NDICI, have determined the way for this renewed focus. Yet, the normative foundations and decision-making processes of EU external relations have also come under intense debate among member states, EU institutions, and the broader European public. As political and financial priorities vary depending on specific countries and contexts involved, democracy promotion presents a core battleground for the EU’s normative values and geopolitical ambitions. While the EU portrays itself as a foreign policy actor committed to championing democracy, its actions may simultaneously reflect strategic efforts to advance its own interests. How can we understand this democracy agenda as shaped by the interplay of both normative ideals and geopolitical maneuvering? While questions about the effectiveness of international democracy promotion and dimensions of democratization have received significant scholarly attention, the forces shaping how these policies are defined, prioritized, and operationalized remain underexplored. This paper seeks to fill that gap by unpacking the diverse interpretations of democracy and geopolitics among EU foreign policy and tracing the processes that drive variation across issue areas, policy instruments, and funding mechanisms. It argues that incorporating party politics and strategic bureaucratic actors into the analysis provides important insights into how normative dimensions interact with material interests, helping to explain the observed variance in EU democracy promotion. By analyzing which actors and interests shape EU democracy promotion and under what conditions specific priorities emerge, this paper develops a new theoretical framework to theorize how normative goals and material interests converge. It focuses on questions about which voices are amplified or marginalized within these processes to understand the meaning of democracy and geopolitics in the context of EU external relations. To analyze how both national and EU foreign policy actors interpret, use, and negotiate democracy promotion policies, this paper employs a mixed-methods approach. Alongside qualitative document analysis, it relies on semi-structured interviews with EU policymakers and bureaucrats, national government officials, and non-governmental representatives. Analytical process tracing is used iteratively to refine the proposed mechanisms. The analysis adopts a twofold strategy, testing and developing the theoretical propositions across two regions: Sub-Saharan Africa and Central Asia. These regions were chosen to move beyond the EU neighborhood and enlargement debates. By integrating both endogenous factors and structural elements across two different regions, this paper makes a theoretical contribution to understanding how normative commitments and strategic considerations shape, reinforce, and at times constrain one another within the evolving dynamics of EU foreign policy.