Pre-accession and Neighbourhood: The European Union’s Democratic Conditionality in Turkey and Morocco

EU Democracy Promotion and the Arab Spring

“…Especially since the 1990s, the region is, for example, marked by a much lower degree of aid dependence than other 'nonWestern' world regions (Bräutigam 2000;Djankov et al 2008;O'Connell and Soludo 2001). In relations with the EU, scholars highlight in particular the lack of an EU membership perspective in Euro-Mediterranean relations, severely limiting the EU's transformative power vis-à-vis its Southern neighbours compared with former and future accession candidates in Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe (Baracani 2007(Baracani , 2009Vachudova 2005). Considering the EU's trade and aid relations with individual countries there are, however, differences in their respective (inter-)dependence (Bendiek 2008b;Youngs 2009).…”