Reversing the Gaze: Can the EU Import Democracy from Others?

Abstract

For over two decades, the EU has used a wide range of policy instruments to support democratic reform in third countries under the assumption that the rest of the world must learn from Europeans. This one‐way democracy policy is out of tune with the times as political malaise spreads within the EU and as global geopolitics calls for genuine decolonial mindsets. In this contribution, we ask what it would take for the EU to reverse the democratic gaze. We argue that the EU could do more to open itself to the democratic innovations unfolding around the world where reformers have long been grappling with anti‐democratic playbooks. We distinguish between three relevant realms, namely, that of power‐sharing arrangements, democratic backsliding and regional mechanisms. We hope to offer a significant tweak to decolonization analysis and a political, normative supplement to this Special Issue's concern with outside influences on the EU.

The Third Democratic Transformation: From European to Planetary Politics

“…The task of scholarship is vast in providing decision‐makers and the public at large with ammunition to decentre eurocentrism. It starts with critically engaging with non‐Western viewpoints and analytical mindsets, contesting the prevailing ‘liberal script’ and recasting the relationship between the social sciences and area studies (Acharya, 2014; Chakrabarty, 2008; Fawcett et al, 2020; Fisher Onar and Nicolaïdis, 2013; Fisher‐Onar and Nicolaïdis, 2015; Nicolaidis and Youngs, 2023; Spivak, 2002; Young, 2012). As argued by de Sousa Santos in The End of the Cognitive Empire (2018), this requires engaging with ‘epistemologies of the south’ in order to counter the Global North's ‘hegemonic way of representing the world as one's own and of transforming it according to one's own needs and aspirations’.…”

“…Such sharing in turn leads many to ask most directly: what will it take for Europeans genuinely to decolonise, or as my students say decolonise 2.0? One pathway is for the EU to ‘reverse the democratic gaze’ (Nicolaidis and Youngs, 2023).…”

Arrival of Normative Power in Planetary Politics

“…The forum consists of three responses to this intervention written by scholars who have thought seriously about co-joining normative and power over the past decades. Kalypso Nicolaïdis (2023) starts by arguing that the advent of planetary politics changes the conditions of possibility for the kind of democratic practices that can best deliver on our planetary-human eco-system found in the third democratic transformation from European to planetary politics through the normative power approach. This is followed by Michelle Pace's (2023) study of the construction of EU normative power and the Middle East 'conflict' 16 years on, arguing that Israel and Palestine are 'co-dependent' representing a microcosmic image of planetary politics as the space we need to think differently.…”