Original scientific paper
Comparing Western Democratic Leverage: From Tirana to Tripoli
Mieczysław Boduszyński
; Pomona College, Claremont, U.S.A.
Abstract
What are the conditions under which external actors positively influence democratization?
A growing literature analyzes the external dimension of democratization,
focusing, for instance, on the power of EU enlargement conditionality
to spur democratic reform in the post-communist world, and
especially the Balkans. This paper compares the effect of Western leverage
over transitions in the Balkans and the Arab Spring countries. Western democratic
leverage is a function of external power and internal vulnerability to external
democratizing pressure, but it is also related to factors such as Western
political will, the influence of countervailing external powers, and nationalist
resistance. The article demonstrates that on all of these dimensions, Western
democratic leverage over the Arab Spring countries is significantly lower than
it has been over the Balkan states, and thus that the prospects for democratization
in states such as Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia are dimmer.
Keywords
Arab Spring; Democratization; Democracy Promotion; Balkans; Conditionality
Hrčak ID:
115736
URI
Publication date:
27.12.2013.
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