Introducción

Before scrutinising the democratic governance substance of EU TG cooperation, I provided a general overview of the literature on EU democracy promotion in the neighbourhood (Article 1). In such a way, I presented EU TG cooperation as a promising tool of EU democracy promotion in the absence of a membership perspective.¹ On surveying a range of relevant research, I found that EU democracy promotion policy under the ENP was often inconsistent and reactive towards democratic violations in the neighbourhood. Oftentimes, the EU followed suit of other players, for example the U.S., in framing its democracy promotion policy. In other cases, EU democracy promotion was not successful because of Russia’s geopolitical interests in the EU’s Eastern neighbourhood. One of the most oft-cited sources of inconsistency in EU democracy promotion is a conflict between the normative ideals of democracy, on the one side, and strategic, commercial or geopolitical interests, on the other. Perhaps, a more vivid manifestation of the limited role of the EU is a relative consensus in the literature that the recent democratic uprisings in the neighbourhood, like the Colour Revolutions, the Arab Spring, and more recently the Euromaidan revolution in Ukraine, have mainly been the result of domestic factors in countries concerned. Even though the pro-EU aspirations may have exceptionally triggered the Euromaidan revolution in Ukraine, domestic forces inside the country actually led to a change of leadership. Therefore, despite the EU’s claim for responsibility in the neighbourhood, it should be noted that one needs to be cautious while establishing the EU’s effectiveness versus that by other domestic and international actors.

The EU has adopted a variety of instruments in its democracy promotion policy in the neighbourhood, some of which are more successful, some less. One of the most debated and reportedly successful instruments in the context of the EU’s Eastern enlargement was accession conditionality, whereby an EU membership was contingent upon a set of pre-agreed democratic and legislative reform targets, which aspiring candidates had to meet. After the enlargement, the EU became reluctant to expand further East, and hence the EU’s leverage over the ENP countries diminished. The tools of the EU’s linkage, referring to the support of grassroots organisations in other countries, have also reportedly brought little bang for the buck. Scholars suggested that the governance model of democracy promotion might be an answer to the absence of the main carrot of membership.

By diffusing the norms of democratic governance at the sectoral level via TG

1 Lavenex and Schimmelfennig, “EU Democracy Promotion in the Neighbourhood: From Leverage to Governance?”

cooperation, they argued, the EU could get another chance to succeed in democracy promotion in the ENP countries.

After contextualising TG cooperation in the broader literature on EU democracy promotion, I took a closer look at the democratic governance substance of EU TG cooperation in the Eastern neighbourhood (Article 2). The available literature did not produce systematic evaluations of the democratic governance substance of EU TG cooperation, having limited itself to its general impacts and the underlying processes of socialisation as concerns promotion of democratic governance. It was not clear, for example, to what extent democratic governance norms of transparency, accountability, and participation were present in the specific instances of EU TG cooperation under the ENP and what factors could explain the variation of those norms across different projects, policy sectors, and countries.

Using a sample of 117 Twinning project fiches from the Eastern neighbourhood between 2006 and 2015, I classify the democratic governance substance of EU TG programmes according to its configuration and magnitude. Thus, a majority of Twinning projects in the region displays mixed democratic governance substance, whereby no single democratic governance norm prevails. Transparency-oriented projects are runner-ups, followed by accountability- and participation-oriented projects, which are somewhat lagging behind. As for the magnitude, most Twinning projects in the Eastern neighbourhood display a medium level of democratic governance substance, which generally stays the same among the different countries analysed. As regards the specific sectors, Twinning projects in the environmental sector show the highest average values for the democratic governance substance and its three categories, whereas those in transport and statistics – the lowest. In further exploring this variation, I tested several EU-related and domestic structure explanations. I hypothesised that the democratic governance substance of EU TG projects would vary with the level of the beneficiary country’s political liberalisation, sectoral politicisation, sector technical complexity, and the EU’s sectoral conditionality.

Statistical analysis reveals that, first, Twinning projects in more politically liberalised countries like Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine tend to include more democratic governance substance than Twinning projects in democratic laggards like Armenia and Azerbaijan. That is especially so for the average values for accountability and participation, whereas the average for transparency did not vary considerably across the countries. According to my operationalisation, the Twinning objectives pertaining to accountability and participation presumed concrete obligations on the part of the beneficiary institution, for example, to involve non-state actors and reformat its organisational structure in order to strengthen vertical and horizontal accountability. For that reason, perhaps, embracing transparency as a normative point of reference in TG cooperation with the EU is easier for the less

democratic Eastern neighbourhood countries than embracing the other, apparently more demanding dimensions of democratic governance substance. The unexpectedly lower democratic governance substance of Twinning projects in Ukraine suggests, in line with some of my interviewees’ opinions, that this country, while being more liberalised at the political level, remains relatively closed to change at the sectoral level of public administration.

Second, opposite to my original hypothesis, with an increase in the level of sector politicisation, I actually observed an increase in the democratic governance substance of Twinning projects. Besides hinting at the common sense that it is the politicised sectors that need to be democratised most, this finding also suggests that the EU may enjoy a greater leverage versus the beneficiary country in deciding whether or not to include provisions for democratic governance in Twinning cooperation. That goes somewhat against the hypothesis, found for example in Anne Wetzel’s study of EU sectoral governance in the Eastern neighbourhood,² that the EU will water down its emphasis on participatory governance in policy sectors susceptible to a conflict of political or commercial interest. Nevertheless, I should admit, this relationship between politicisation and democratic governance substance does not seem to hold in Azerbaijan. That may be explained by the generally low interest of Azerbaijan in EU integration and, as the result, reduced EU’s leverage in promoting democratic governance in “politicised” Twinning projects in the country.

Third, I provide evidence for the claim in the public administration literature that policy fields requiring an advanced level of scientific expertise (calculus skills, economic models, or lab testing in natural sciences) are less likely to embrace the norms of democratic governance. The analysis of Twinning fiches on the individual dimensions of democratic governance substance reveals that it is especially so in the case of participation, whereby contributions by non-state actors are hardly ever encouraged in technically complex policy areas.

Lastly, I uncover no conclusive empirical support for the hypothesis that the EU’s sectoral conditionality (bargaining power) is related to a change in the democratic governance substance and its indicators in the sample of Twinning projects analysed.³ That points us in two directions. First, the EU’s “carrots” of visa liberalisation or facilitation of trade (which influence the EU’s bargaining power) play a decisive role neither in the EU’s capacity/willingness to include more democratic governance substance in EU TG cooperation, nor in the beneficiary’s institution propensity to make such substance a contractual obligation for Twinning.

Alternatively, clauses relating to trade or visa liberalisation in the context of EU

2 Wetzel, “The Promotion of Participatory Governance in the EU’s External Policies: Compromised by Sectoral Economic Interests?”

3 The t-tests on separate countries, however, supplied inconclusive evidence of such relationship in the category

“participation”, which may be positively related to the presence of EU sectoral conditionality in respective Twinning projects.

relations with the ENP region may be less about the promoting of democratic governance and more about the removing of technical barriers and the implementation of the trade-related acquis.

In sum, the regression analysis tipped the scales towards the country’s political liberalisation, sector technical complexity, and sector politicisation as explaining the greatest variation in the dependent variable. It can be concluded then with some caution (see Section 2 below for limitations) that the domestic variables in the Eastern neighbourhood are mainly responsible for variation of democratic governance substance in EU TG cooperation in the countries concerned. That conclusion is roughly in line with the EU’s commitment to the domestic ownership of Twinning projects by the beneficiary administration.⁴

1.2. CEECs and old MS: Comparing apples and