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A Power Through Trade? The European Union and Democracy Promotion in ACP States

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Power in the 21st Century

Part of the book series: Global Power Shift ((GLOBAL))

Abstract

The European Union (EU) is a formidable power in trade. Due to the sheer size of its economy it is now the largest economic unit on the planet. At the same time, the EU is increasingly becoming a power through trade (Meunier and Nicolaidis 2005, 2006). It uses access to its vast internal market as a bargain chip to induce changes in its trading partners’ internal affairs. The size of the European single market combined with an increasingly supranational decision-making process in external economic relations renders the European Union a powerful actor in international trade negotiations. Whoever wants to do business with Europe has to play by the rules the Union establishes, including areas ranging from human rights to democracy, from development policies to good governance.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Although these clauses were not officially established as conditionalities before the revision of the Lomé IV convention in 1995, the case of Togo in 1993 was the first instance in which development aid was suspended on the grounds of democratic deficits in relation with election fraud and arbitrary arrests. Although these sanctions did not directly relate to preferential trade relations, the EU has always linked trade and aid vis-à-vis ACP states. Thus, the case of Togo serves as a powerful illustration of the tool of conditionality even before it had formally been established.

  2. 2.

    For a detailed discussion of the character of the EU’s power, see Stivachtis 2007.

  3. 3.

    This theory of democratization has become widely known under the name of modernization theory (Przeworski and Limongi 1997). Wucherpfennig and Deutsch (2009) provide a useful overview of the state of the debate.

  4. 4.

    Lipset (1959) himself argued in favor of a large number of socio-economic conditions for democracy, not -as is often claimed -for a simplistic relation between income and democracy.

  5. 5.

    It should be noted that some of the subsequently mentioned studies use broader definitions of economic globalization than just “trade flows”.

  6. 6.

    The theoretical framework presented here is primarily a verbalized, non-formal version of a more comprehensive theory developed by Acemoglu and Robinson (2000a, b, 2001, 2002). See also Apolte (2012) for a critique and extension.

  7. 7.

    An alternative strategy for the elite may of course be the use of force and repression to reduce the de facto power of the citizens.

  8. 8.

    Other influential trade theories (New Trade Theory, specific factors model, etc.) are disregarded as they are all less compatible with the research question at stake here and the specifications of the study.

  9. 9.

    Due to limited space the Heckscher-Ohlin model can only be paraphrazed in its basic structure here. See Leamer (1995) for a more in-depth account. Overviews may also be found in virtually any textbook on trade theory and international economics.

  10. 10.

    Thus, I implicitly adopt the (limited) definition of democracy that each indicator follows.

  11. 11.

    Additionally, a handful of countries had to be excluded due to incomplete or subquality data. Thus, the final sample consists of the following 47 ACP states: Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo, Congo (Democratic Republic), Cote d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Fiji, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Jamaica, Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, South Africa, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Trinidad and Tobago, Uganda, Zambia.

  12. 12.

    This observation is confirmed by a correlation coefficient of.61 (significant at the.01 level).

  13. 13.

    In practice, the 2SLS model is carried out by Stata in one model. The two stages are described separately here for reasons of clarity and illustration.

  14. 14.

    The “(s)cale (of this index) ranges from 0 to 10 where 0 is least democratic and 10 most democratic. Average of Freedom House (…) is transformed to a scale 0–10 and Polity (…) is transformed to a scale 0–10. These variables are averaged into fh_polity2. The imputed version has imputed values for countries where data on Polity is missing by regressing Polity on the average Freedom House measure.”(Teorell et al. 2010a: 45) This also explains why the robustness test includes a larger N than the original test.

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Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank Thomas Apolte, Omer Gokcekus, Nathalie Tocci, Britta Weiffen, Martin Welz, Wichard Woyke, the members of the EU research group at the Münster Graduate School of Politics and participants at the ECPR-SGIR 2010 summer school in Tübingen and the 7th ECPR-SGIR conference 2010 in Stockholm for helpful comments and suggestions. The author retains full responsibility for all remaining errors and shortcomings.

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  1. Graduate School of Politics, University of Münster, Münster, Germany

    Dennis Nottebaum M.A. (Ph.D. Candidate)

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Global Studies, Institute for Political Science, Bonn University, Walter-Flex Str. 3, Bonn, 53113, Germany

    Enrico Fels

  2. Center for Global Studies, Institute for Political Science, Bonn University, Walter-Flex Str. 3, Bonn, 53113, Germany

    Jan-Frederik Kremer

  3. Center for Global Studies, Institute for Political Science, Bonn University, Walter-Flex Str. 3, Bonn, 53113, Germany

    Katharina Kronenberg

Data Appendix

See http://www.macalester.edu/research/economics/page/haveman/trade.resources/tradedata.html (accessed 20 July 2010).

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Nottebaum, D. (2012). A Power Through Trade? The European Union and Democracy Promotion in ACP States. In: Fels, E., Kremer, JF., Kronenberg, K. (eds) Power in the 21st Century. Global Power Shift. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-25082-8_13

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