REDEMOS Working Paper D2.2, December 2024
Taking Stock of EU Member States Democracy Action towards the Eastern Neighbourhood
Theofanis Exadaktylos, Michael Martin Richter, Arusyak Aleksanyan, Ashot Aleksanyan, Laura Chappell, Danil Denysenko, Valentina Gevorgyan, and Vanatur Sherents
This working paper sheds light on the democracy support actions of key EU Member States and reflects on the way they developed bilateral relations with the countries of the eastern neighbourhood. It offers a detailed overview and analysis of these actions, carefully selecting seven countries that have been heavily involved in the region in terms of democracy assistance: Germany, Poland, Sweden, Romania, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
Keywords: European Union, Democracy, Democracy support, Eastern neighbourhood, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Democracy assistance
REDEMOS Working Paper D2.2
Taking Stock of EU Member States Democracy Action towards the Eastern Neighbourhood
Executive Summary
This working paper sheds light on the democracy support actions of key EU Member States and reflects on the way they developed bilateral relations with the countries of the eastern neighbourhood. It offers a detailed overview and analysis of these actions, carefully selecting seven countries that have been heavily involved in the region in terms of democracy assistance: Germany, Poland, Sweden, Romania, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The paper finds that while the EU developed its common strategy towards the eastern neighbourhood, not all Member States nurtured deeper relations with the region. Instead, these key Member States prominently directed aid to support the emergence, development and sustainability of democracy. Nonetheless, their focus did not always cover the whole region but rather focused on specific countries depending on their prior context, existing strong bilateral relations due to proximity to the region, or ethnic, linguistic and historical ties. The paper highlights for each EU donor selected their overall strategy during 2010-2021, offering a comparative view. In the analysis, the paper concludes that while significant amounts of aid were channelled towards the eastern neighbours, the distribution is not even towards these countries or across priority projects, and topics, usually coupled with changing priorities over time in the EU donors and political developments in the beneficiary countries. Country data are pulled from EU Aid Explorer and each Member State is assessed on their policy and objectives regarding democracy promotion, human rights, economic development and poverty reduction, which may be perceived by the donor countries with varying degree as key drivers for kickstarting, sustaining or consolidating democratisation processes in the beneficiary countries. Each Member State case presents the geographical focus, aid spending structure and distribution patterns and discusses their strategic interests (including political, economic and security interests) for further nuance. Each case also assesses the focus of the Member States on specific democracy models (as developed in Freyburg et al 2024) linked to their democracy promotion actions and how these actions have been implemented (bilaterally or multilaterally) within the wider EU framework for democracy support and alongside local stakeholders. The seven Member States present a wide variety of approaches based on a customised strategy reflecting their relative strengths and comparative advantages, domestically and internationally, showcasing a fundamental difference between a one-size-fits-all EU strategy and their own perceptions of their role in the region and within the EU.
Keywords: European Union, Democracy, Democracy support, Eastern neighbourhood, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Democracy assistance
Citation: Exadaktylos, T., Richter, M. M., Aleksanyan, A., Aleksanyan, A., Chappell, L., Denysenko, D., Gevorgyan, V., & Sherents, V. (2024). Taking Stock of EU Member States Democracy Action towards the Eastern Neighbourhood. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14360046
REDEMOS Working Paper D2.4, January 2025
Interplay of security & stability and democracy support
Ragnar Weilandt
Keywords:Eastern neighbourhood, Eastern Europe, South Caucasus, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Security, Stability, Democracy support, EU, EU external action, EU democracy promotion, democratisation, autocratisation
REDEMOS Working Paper D2.4
Interplay of security & stability and democracy support
Keywords: Eastern neighbourhood, Eastern Europe, South Caucasus, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Security, Stability, Democracy support, EU, EU external action, EU democracy promotion, democratisation, autocratisation
Executive Summary
Although supporting and promoting democracy has traditionally been a key theme of the EU’s external action, its record in that domain has been mixed. This has been partly attributed to both the challenges of promoting democracy in general as well as the adequacy and efficiency of the EU’s tools. At the same time, questions have been raised about how serious the EU actually is in promoting democracy, and to what extent its policies have been shaped by trade-offs between, on the one hand, norms and principles and, on the other, interests. In that context, a growing literature has been examining how EU external action and democracy promotion are shaped by concerns related to security and stability. Seeking to contribute to a better understanding of these dynamics in the EU’s engagement with the South Caucasus, this working paper zooms in on the cases of Armenia and Georgia, two EU neighbours that have been undergoing substantial change over the past two decades – both in terms of their geostrategic trajectory as well as their domestic political dynamics.
The paper argues that the EU has generally been reluctant to criticise and counter autocratic tendencies in both countries over the past two decades, and that this was usually at least partly linked to four key security and stability considerations: Maintaining or not undermining domestic stability in the two countries, stable and constructive relations with both countries’ governments, regional security as was as the EU’s geopolitical interests. This is not to say that these considerations were the only or even the main causes for the lack of action or stronger rhetoric. The EU’s reactions were also informed by a general lack of attention, bandwidth and capacity given various domestic and external challenges the Union faced over the past two decades. This notably affected its relations with Armenia, which never received quite as much attention as post-Rose revolution Georgia to begin with, and even less following its 2013 decision not to sign an Association Agreement with the EU and join the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union instead. At the same time, the most problematic developments in Armenia were at least partly overshadowed by other issues that incentivised the EU to adopt a less critical stance to the regime. In 2008, a fraudulent presidential election was followed by protests that were brutally cracked down, leaving ten people dead. If the EU’s reaction was rather muted, this might have to be seen in the context of its strong support for and encouragement of the Armenia-Turkey rapprochement in 2008 and 2009. Similarly, the 2015 Armenian constitutional referendum, which was widely seen as a vehicle to allow President Serzh Sargsyan to stay in power beyond his term limit, occurred in the context of increasing tensions and border clashes between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Finally, the EU’s reaction to developments that risk undermining the positive evolution that Armenia has taken since the 2018 Velvet revolution needs to be seen in the context of both the escalation of the Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict since 2020 as well as Armenia’s subsequent gradual geopolitical reorientation from Russia towards Europe and the West.
While Georgia received more attention than Armenia, the EU’s reaction to democratic backsliding within the country followed a similar pattern. Before 2024, the EU was reluctant to criticise Georgia’s gradual, but increasing, autocratisation. This seems to have been informed by the perception that consecutive Georgian governments appeared keen on joining Euro-Atlantic structures and that EU influence was most efficiently pursued through constructive engagement. In that context, the 2004-2013 Saakashvili presidency was generally given the benefit of the doubt when it came to its democratic credentials because of its radically pro-Western orientation, the dramatic domestic challenge of fixing a failing state as well as the equally dramatic external challenge of Russia infringing on its territorial integrity. This EU tendency continued under successive Georgian Dream governments. Actual and perceived progress in functional cooperation between the EU and Georgia overshadowed democratic stagnation and backsliding, even when it became ever more obvious and egregious in the late 2010s and early 2020s. The EU’s soft approach and its decision to grant Georgia candidate status in 2023 were also informed by the objective of keeping Russian influence in check. The EU only changed its approach in 2024, when the Georgian government’s rhetoric became overtly hostile and its action more extreme all the while both rhetoric and action became harder to ignore given Georgia’s status as a candidate for EU membership from December 2023 onwards.
Citation:Weilandt, R. (2025). Interplay of security & stability and democracy support. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14794564
REDEMOS Working Paper D3.1, March 2024
Conceptual framework EU democracy funding
Tina Freyburg, Madalina Dobrescu, and Anastasiia Vlasenko
This working paper outlines a conceptual framework to provide a coherent structure for our further data collection and analysis efforts. Drawing on this research, we make two contributions: First, we conceptually acknowledge the varieties of democracy in democracy assistance, and second, we empirically assess which of these varieties of democracy prevail in EU democracy assistance to the eastern neighbourhood countries, over time and across partner countries.
Keywords: Democracy promotion, democracy assistance, european union, eastern neighbourhood, eastern europe, post-soviet space, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia
REDEMOS Working Paper D3.1
Conceptual framework EU democracy funding
Executive Summary
As the first deliverable of Work Package 3, the main objective of which is to collect and analyse data on democracy funding by the European Union (EU), EU member states and other international donors, this working paper outlines a conceptual framework to provide a coherent structure for our further data collection and analysis efforts. The framework is designed to overcome many of the challenges of researching a phenomenon as difficult to capture empirically as ‘funding for democracy’, where donors continue to face challenges in accurately identifying what they are spending and where clear figures are often not available. This is partly because democracy assistance is often intertwined with other financial support, and comparisons between categories of aid from different donors are not straightforward. In this paper, we acknowledge that part of this apparent confusion is due to different understandings of what should be promoted in the name of democracy. Comparativists remind us that polities differ in the way their political institutions put democracy into practice. More recently, research has shown that individuals and collectives also differ in their understanding of democracy and, consequently, in what they expect from it. Drawing on this research, we make two contributions: First, we conceptually acknowledge the varieties of democracy in democracy assistance, and second, we empirically assess which of these varieties of democracy prevail in EU democracy assistance to the eastern neighbourhood countries, over time and across partner countries.
Our exploratory study shows that the EU mainly promotes a common understanding of liberal democracy, but not exclusively. Its investment in a peacebuilding variety of democracy assistance is significant and unsurprising, given the unstable nature of many of the hybrid political regimes in the region, the grave security challenges that virtually every single one of the six eastern neighbours is nowadays facing, and the authoritarian or authoritarianising nature of some of the regimes. At the same time, and unexpectedly, the participatory variety of democracy assistance has become more prominent over time, and in particular since 2013. The modest representation of the egalitarian model is to some extent unexpected, given the EU’s alleged proclivity to focus on the socioeconomic conditions supporting democracy. The electoral and feminist models are the most scarcely funded of the six varieties of assistance proposed here. Whether EU democracy assistance is driven by declared strategic priorities and/or policy substance, or alternatively, by external events and shocks, remains an open question. Similarly, we cannot confirm that stability trumps democracy when it comes to the EU’s approach to democracy assistance. What emerges, instead, is a mixed picture behind which it is difficult to discern consistent trends. Like so much of EU foreign policy, the provision of democracy assistance appears to unfold in an ad hoc or path dependent manner, as opposed to a strategic or externally reactive evolution. Looking forward, it will be important to continue exploring the preliminary hypotheses formulated in this paper, together with new ones, in addition to analysing additional data on EU member states and other international actors’ democracy assistance in the EU’s eastern neighbourhood, with a few to bringing to the fore key trends and puzzles in EU and international democracy assistance.
Keywords: Democracy promotion, democracy assistance, european union, eastern neighbourhood, eastern europe, post-soviet space, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia
Citation: Freyburg, T., Dobrescu, M., & Vlasenko, A. (2024). Conceptual framework EU democracy funding: Unpacking EU democracy assistance. What model of democracy does EU funding suit? REDEMOS Working Paper D3.1. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13310202
REDEMOS Working Paper D4.1, May 2024
Democratic progress, stasis, regression and authoritarianisation in the EU’s eastern neighbourhood
Madalina Dobrescu and Ragnar Weilandt
This working paper provides an in-depth stocktaking of democracy building efforts and failures in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine between 2010 and 2022. The democratic and autocratic trajectories of the six eastern neighbourhood countries examined point to the critical role of the demos in bringing about democratic change, sustaining democratic progress and deterring or reverting democratic regression, in particular when these processes are simultaneously supported by political elites and organised civil societies.
Keywords: Democratization, political transition, eastern europe, south caucasus, political participation, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia
REDEMOS Working Paper D4.1
Democratic progress, stasis, regression and authoritarianisation in the EU’s eastern neighbourhood
Executive Summary
The EU’s ability to provide effective and sustainable democracy support to its eastern neighbours hinges on its thorough knowledge of the state of democracy on the ground, together with a deep understanding of the relevant trends characterising democratisation and, where relevant, authoritarianisation processes in individual countries. This working paper responds to these needs by providing an in-depth stocktaking of democracy building efforts and failures in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine between 2010 and 2022. Examining key aspects of democratic rule, such as elections, political and civil rights, and judicial and legislative constraints on the executive, the paper seeks to provide interested decision- makers, scholars, civil society representatives and students with a comprehensive overview of how the six countries’ political institutions have developed during this period. Moreover, and in line with the REDEMOS project’s understanding of the centrality of the “demos” in the transition towards and the sustainability of democracy, the working paper also analyses the support for democratic principles within the broader populations; the skills and resources that citizens possess to sustain and advocate for democracy; as well as their active participation in the political process. Finally, the paper provides a discussion of some of the most relevant contemporary political trends shaping each country’s domestic politics. Together with D2.1 (Working Paper on Stocktaking of EU democracy support towards the eastern neighbourhood), this working paper (D4.1) is part of REDEMOS’ first stage of retrospective scrutiny, aiming to take stock of both EU and EU member states’ efforts at democracy support towards the eastern neighbourhood, as well as of the six individual countries’ successes and failures in democracy building.
Democratic and authoritarian developments in the EU’s eastern neighbourhood throughout the period 2010- 2022 were marked by a high level of heterogeneity, with both democratic progress and regression, as well as authoritarianisation, having become ever more consolidated, not least in light of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The region has seen further entrenchments of authoritarian practices and cementation of dictatorial rule (Azerbaijan and Belarus), democratic backsliding (Georgia) as well as significant, though fragile, democratic reform processes (Armenia, Moldova and Ukraine). Despite this variance, the EU’s six eastern neighbours share some important commonalities. None of the countries have an independent, professional, transparent, and accountable judiciary. In recent years, not least given Russian disinformation, all of them also witnessed, albeit to a different extent, restrictions to the freedom of expression. To the extent that there is a common thread connecting the formidable challenges all these countries encounter on their way to democratisation or – at the very least – rolling back authorianisation, this revolves around oligarchisation and corruption. The region’s ruling elites – both democratic and authoritarian – rely heavily on personality politics and distinct leadership networks, a feature which has enabled them to remain relatively resilient in the face of a multitude of internal and external challenges to their rule.
Emboldened by Azerbaijan’s successful military campaign in and around Nagorno-Karabakh and President Ilham Aliyev’s ensuing domestic popularity, Azerbaijan’s political regime has deepened its authoritarian nature and moved closer to being a ‘closed autocracy’, systematically restricting citizens’ rights and freedoms and dismantling any remaining vestiges of political opposition and civic activism in the country. These developments come against the background of a decade of steadily deteriorating or stagnating performance on all democracy indicators examined here, and which continues the broader trend apparent already after 1992. As far as Belarus is concerned, notwithstanding the minor democratic concessions of the 2014 – 2019 period, designed to improve the country’s international standing and facilitate cooperation with the West, the regime has displayed autocratic stasis, with hardly any change in its democracy status between 2012 – 2020. Following the August 2020 presidential election, a clear and dramatic downward trend can be discerned, and the country can now be said to be on a pathway towards a full-blown totalitarian system, with ever-more military and economic leverage exerted by Russia.
As a result of the 2018 Velvet Revolution, Armenia recently transitioned from electoral autocracy to electoral democracy, but has been moderately regressing again more recently. The most decisive factor negatively impacting its democratic post-revolution trajectory is the fallout of the war with Azerbaijan and the ensuing protracted domestic crisis which has enhanced, rather than reduced, political polarisation. Georgia has been an electoral democracy for more than a decade but is increasingly faced with the monopolisation of the decision-making process by the governing Georgian Dream party and the informal rule of the oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili. In that context, it has been characterised by degradation of state institutions, elite corruption, a stalled judiciary reform, contested media freedoms, and repeated attempts to crackdown on a civil society which itself shows growing signs of engagement and mobilisation fatigue. As a result, the democratic progress Georgia has achieved since 2012 has begun unravelling, with the country regressing to the lowest level of democracy in a decade. It remains to be seen if the granting of EU candidate status in December 2023 can act as a stimulus for addressing democratic shortcomings and revitalising reform processes. Moldova has been assessed as an electoral democracy, except for the episode of democratic breakdown that coincides largely with oligarchic rule in 2016-2019. However, the country bounced back to electoral democracy thanks to the vigour and collective action of a critical segment of Moldovan elite, civil society, and the general public. In recent years, Moldova’s democratic development has been on a clear upward trajectory – a dynamic that is also reflected in the European Commission’s 2023 recommendation to open EU accession negotiations.
Following the removal of President Viktor Yanukovych from office in early 2014, Ukraine has also seen significant democratic progress. Elections have generally been deemed free and relatively fair, but observers noted flaws in each of them. Also, there have been notable improvements with regards to political and civil liberties, but concerns have been raised regarding the rights of ethnic and linguistic minorities. More generally, efforts to combat corruption and to enhance transparency have encountered formidable resistance from entrenched state structures and oligarchic circles, though the latter’s sway over Ukrainian politics has been reduced in recent years. Despite these setbacks, the overall direction of Ukraine’s transition towards a consolidated democracy seems locked in for the time being. Two factors are especially relevant in this context. First, citizens and civil society have become increasingly invested in the political arena and are demanding change. Secondly, ever-closer political and defence cooperation with the EU and other Western actors is accompanied by these actors’ encouragement of and support for further democratic reforms, particularly after the European Council on 14 December 2023 decided to open accession talks with Ukraine.
The democratic and autocratic trajectories of the six eastern neighbourhood countries examined here during the period 2010 – 2022, while highly diverse in their manifestation and root causes, point to the critical role of the demos in bringing about democratic change, sustaining democratic progress and deterring or reverting democratic regression, in particular when these processes are simultaneously supported by political elites and organised civil societies. Where elites, civil societies and citizens have jointly pushed for democratic reforms, as in the cases of Moldova, Ukraine and Armenia, remarkable progress has been achieved. When civil society and citizens join forces in calling out corrupt, democratically flawed governments, democratic regression can be stopped in its tracks, though the extent to which this can pave the way for genuine democratic progress in the absence of a buy-in from political elites, remains questionable, as Georgia’s case poignantly shows. At the same time, autocrats which control domestic and external levers of power are likely to quash any dissent resulting from the joining of forces between civil society and citizens, as the example of Belarus starkly demonstrates. And where civil society has been gradually but steadily decimated and the regime still enjoys popular legitimacy, as in Azerbaijan, widespread demands for democracy are still far- fetched. What all these democratic and autocratic experiences show is that the ‘virtuous triangle’ of citizens, civil society and political elites must be carefully cultivated both domestically by those advocating and struggling for democracy, and externally by those international actors who support these processes.
Keywords: Democratization, political transition, eastern europe, south caucasus, political participation, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia
Citation: Dobrescu, M., & Weilandt, R. (2024). Democratic progress, stasis, regression, and authoritarianisation in the eastern neighbourhood. REDEMOS Working Paper D4.1. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13981634
REDEMOS Working Paper D5.2, November 2024
Conceptual framework & design of custom-made instruments of democracy promotion
Sergiu Buscaneanu and Marianne Kneuer
The REDEMOS Working Paper D5.2 presents a new approach to diagnosing political regimes and their development. Its objective is to enhance the precision and effectiveness of democracy support by tailoring it to the specific characteristics of target political regimes in the EU’s eastern neighbourhood. The paper advocates for a more refined and context-sensitive approach to democracy support, one that aligns with the political realities of the region.
Keywords: EU, Eastern neighbourhood, autocratisation, democracy support, regime classification, regime transition, regime states
REDEMOS Working Paper D5.2
Conceptual framework & design of custom-made instruments of democracy promotion
Executive Summary
The REDEMOS Working Paper D5.2 presents a new approach to diagnosing political regimes and their development. Its objective is to enhance the precision and effectiveness of democracy support by tailoring it to the specific characteristics of target political regimes in the EU’s eastern neighbourhood. The paper advocates for a more refined and context-sensitive approach to democracy support, one that aligns with the political realities of the region.
The point of departure for this paper is twofold: First, over the past few decades, policymakers and practitioners have increasingly relied on democracy measurement, casting it in the form of democracy indices that shape empirical knowledge. This, in turn, influences practical-political decisions regarding democracy support activities. However, not only is the measurement of democracy a contested issue, but there is also an ongoing debate about its interpretation and application. Second, the global state of democracy has become more complex: since the 2000s, different pathways have emerged. Democratisation often did not lead to fully consolidated democracies, creating a growing grey zone of hybrid or intermediate regimes, which have proven more vulnerable to destabilisation. Another trend has been democratic backsliding or erosion, the predominant form of movement away from democracy in recent decades. This complexity challenges democracy support, which must increasingly account for the dynamic nature of political regimes in target countries.
This paper bridges the ongoing debate on the measurement of regimes and regime transformation, on the one hand, and the practical-political need for democracy support that is precisely tailored to the specific conditions of the target regimes (both the direction and kind of their dynamics), on the other. We propose a new approach that distinguishes between static and dynamic regime states. In terms of static regimes, we differentiate between autocratic stasis and democratic stability. Referring to the dynamic nature, we conceptualise downturns and upturns, as well as regressions and progressions. This framework allows for a finer-grained classification of political regimes and their transformations.
Using the Liberal Democracy Index (LDI) from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project, the paper analyses regime changes in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine from 1990 to 2023. It identifies their specific regime states and highlights periods of stasis, intra-regime changes, and transitions across different regime categories. Our analysis reveals that Azerbaijan and Belarus have experienced sustained autocratic trajectories, while we observe gradual improvements in democratic quality in Armenia, Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova; with the latter two showing an oscillating upward movement.
Our findings demonstrate a high regime dynamic in the EU’s eastern neighbourhood, especially in the intermediate zone comprising electoral autocracies and democracies. Both are highly vulnerable and thus require specific attention by domestic actors and external democracy supporters, such as the EU. Particularly important becomes thus the in-depth study of institutional and actor-related conditions that drive downturns and regressions in electoral democratic settings. This also bears practical consequences such as a specific programming on how best to protect and defend democratic gains in electoral democratic contexts. Another takeaway from our study is that external democracy support in a target country needs to consider: (a) its position on the autocracy-democracy continuum; (b) whether it is in a static or dynamic state, and if dynamic, (c) the direction and kind of regime change.
“One size fits all” approaches are long overcome and prove to not be efficient. Our framework provides the basis for a more informed and precisely targeted policy action. We claim that a more regime-sensitive approach is needed when it comes to choosing the instruments of external democracy support. For policy action, the paper suggests tailoring democracy support strategies to the specific regime states of target countries, considering the nuances of autocratic stasis, democratic stability, downturns, upturns, regressions, and progressions. The more precise regime states and their development can be captured, the more precise democracy support activities can be tailored.
Keywords: EU, Eastern neighbourhood, autocratisation, democracy support, regime classification, regime transition, regime states
Citation: Buscaneanu, S., & Kneuer, M. (2024). Conceptual framework & design of custom-made instruments of democracy promotion. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14236181
REDEMOS Working Paper D7.2, November 2024
Narratives of external norm contenders across the EU’s eastern neighbourhood
Kristi Raik, Igor Gretskiy and Tetiana Fedosyuk
This paper focuses on narratives of contested democracy by third-country actors — notably Russia and China — in the European Union’s (EU) eastern neighbourhood. It is important to understand the anti-democracy narratives of these two authoritarian powers as part of the broader geopolitical context of the EU’s democracy support efforts in the region. In this paper, narratives are understood as sets of meanings that organise events and experiences and make sense of them. The paper draws on six case studies conducted by researchers in each country, and these case studies include qualitative content analysis of some of the most popular digital media outlets in each country, as well as expert interviews. The timeframe focuses on the pivotal years of 2013-14 and 2021-22.
Keywords: Democracy promotion, narratives, EU, European Union, Eastern neighbourhood, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Russia, China, Eastern Europe
REDEMOS Working Paper D7.2
Narratives of external norm contenders across the EU’s eastern neighbourhood
Executive Summary
This paper focuses on narratives of contested democracy by third-country actors — notably Russia and China — in the European Union’s (EU) eastern neighbourhood. It is important to understand the anti-democracy narratives of these two authoritarian powers as part of the broader geopolitical context of the EU’s democracy support efforts in the region. In this paper, narratives are understood as sets of meanings that organise events and experiences and make sense of them. The paper draws on six case studies conducted by researchers in each country, and these case studies include qualitative content analysis of some of the most popular digital media outlets in each country, as well as expert interviews. The timeframe focuses on the pivotal years of 2013-14 and 2021-22.
The paper outlines, in a comparative manner, the most popular narratives in the six countries. It identifies four dominant narratives across the EU’s eastern neighbourhood that originate from Russia — ‘decadent and declining West’, ‘historical unity with Russia’, ‘Russia provides security, the West stokes conflict’, and ‘Western-imposed democracy’ — and one broad narrative promoted by China, summed up as ‘China as a positive alternative’. It explores similarities and differences between the six country cases as well as between the narratives advanced by Russia and China. Finally, the paper also seeks to assess the receptiveness of local audiences to the narratives promoted by the two authoritarian powers and their relevance from the viewpoint of democratisation and EU democracy support.
In all, the Russian narratives pose a serious challenge to the EU’s efforts to promote democracy in the eastern neighbourhood countries by directly and indirectly contesting Western or European values and influence. However, the receptiveness of local audiences varies greatly, ranging from active efforts to counter the Russian narratives in Ukraine to active reproduction of the Kremlin’s messages in the Belarusian public discourse. The Chinese narratives do not have a significant presence in most eastern neighbourhood countries, but they do bring into question the Western model in a more subtle way. It is important for the EU, in cooperation with local partners, to further develop ways to respond to disinformation that undermines democratic values and practices. In addition to identifying the narratives promoted by Russia and China and putting into question possible false claims therein, it is necessary to strengthen the narratives of the EU and local democratic actors that highlight the benefits of democratisation and European integration for the local populations, i.e. the demos that is at the centre of democracy building achievements and failures.