Suchergebnisse

"Analyzes the Israel-Palestinian conflict by looking at its interactions with seven regional and global powers and the way the conflict is framed at the international level"--

"Democracy promotion is an established principle in US and EU foreign policies today, but how did it become so? In focusing on the promotion of democracy, this comparative study explores one of the most controversial foreign policy phenomena of our time. Drawing on a broad range of examples, from established Western models to fledgling democracies, Huber identifies the triggers and hindrances for democracy promotion and analyses the factors that have driven the United States and the European Union to include democracy promotion as an established principle into their foreign policies today. Why are democratic principles not always applied coherently, and why has democracy promotion varied so decisively over time and space? These questions prove critical in Huber's examination of three democratic promoters in their respective regions, at a time when democracy promotion first made inroads and emerged as an established foreign policy: the United States in Central and South America in the late 1970s and 1980s; the European Union in the Mediterranean neighbourhood in the 1990s and 2000s; and Turkey in the Middle East since the early 2000s. This study contributes to a more rigorous academic discussion of democracy, offering a comparative study that bridges the US-European divide"--

Ten years into the Arab uprisings, how is the EU perceived in the Mediterranean region in terms of its democracy and human rights agenda? Based on a systematic inquiry into images of EU presence and practices through 144 recursive multi-stakeholder consultations with mainly civil society and grassroots actors in Morocco, Tunisia, Lebanon, Egypt and Europe, we found that the EU presence is described as invisible, incoherent, preferable to other powers, ambivalent, unresponsive, ineffective, divisive, and even neocolonial. Its practices appear as depoliticizing, securitizing, and technocratic. While it is not seen as a model in the region, no new model is emerging. However, ideas for alternatives exist, namely embracing the local struggle for democracy, taking account of human security needs on all shores of the Mediterranean, and investing into a new two-way relationship where all voices matter equally.
European Union, Arab countries, external perceptions, non-Eurocentric, alternatives

It is not only since January 2011 and the so-called 'youth revolutions' that youth has become a key concept through which Europeans and Americans are viewing the Arab world. Since the 2000s, youth has increasingly entered European Union (EU) foreign policies in Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and the revised neighbourhood policy has in fact devoted an entire section to youth unemployment. But are EU policies contributing to the inclusion of youth? Based on discourse analysis and a comparative approach with US policies, this article argues that the EU and the United States have framed youth exclusively in relation to their ideal vision of a liberal order in the region as an asset, challenge or threat. This has in turn justified foreign policies which are pushing for a further liberalization of the labour market in these countries and which reproduce gendered images of young Muslim men as terror threats and threats to women, young Muslim women as victims and non-productive. While the Arab uprisings have resisted this discourse and practice of Western actors, they have not succeeded to change them; Western policies remain resilient.

After the US had initially assessed the Arab uprisings as an opportunity and displayed a dual role understanding as an anchor of security and modest advocate of democracy, the second role understanding faded the more the US perceived the uprisings as a risk rather than an opportunity. In respect to practice, the US response did not show clear patterns in terms of goals or instruments it pursued, which would correspond to the development of these role understandings or to predefined geostrategic interests. Indeed, it seems that the US has switched from default to ad hoc modus in its foreign policy in the region which challenges both, the rational actor, as well as the normative actor model. Instead, it might be more appropriate to speak of a pragmatic actor who had to navigate through an array of constraints, including new realities in the MENA region on one hand and domestic and bureaucratic politics in the US on the other. Adapted from the source document.