Governmentality and EU Democracy Promotion: The European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights and the Construction of Democratic Civil Societies

Abstract

Democracy promotion has become an important ‘symbolic’ facet of European Union’s (EU) foreign and development policy and the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR) is often considered, despite its moderate budget, the ‘jewel in the crown’ of the EU’s democracy promotion. The EIDHR’s (reformed) mandate, crucially, encompasses the funding of democratising civil society organisations and thus the facilitation of the emergence of democratic publics ‘from below’. But what are we to make of EU’s ‘soft edge’ democracy promotion through civil society support? It is argued here that if we apply Foucauldian governmentality tools to the analysis of the workings of the EIDHR we can see that, despite the pluralistic rhetoric that guides it, the Instrument’s objectives and management structures facilitate very particular kinds of democratic visions and democratic actors. Neoliberal governmentality is, it is argued, hidden deep within the expectations set for EU-funded civil society ‘democratisers’. This has important consequences for how we understand the model of democracy that the EU promotes and the power relations of the EU’s ‘locally owned’ democracy promotion.