Democratisation in the European Neighbourhood

Until recently there was pervasive pessimism over whether the countries of the former Soviet Union or the Arab/Muslim states in the Mediterranean and Middle East would engage in genuine democratic reform. This landscape has begun to change, however, as some of the European CIS states resolved to clean up their phony democracies, and the Arab/Muslim world witnessed either advances in the formal institutions of democracy or signs of popular uprisings against authoritarian regimes. The contributors to this volume approach democratization of the European neighborhood from two sides, first exploring developments in the states themselves and then examining what the European Union has been doing to promote the process. While democracy always receives top billing in formal EU speeches, in practice it has had to find a more modest place in a complex set of often competing and sometimes contradictory interests.