Democracy Promotion Meets Development Cooperation: The EU as a Promoter of Democratic Governance in Sub-Saharan Africa

This article analyses whether the European Union (EU) has a standard substantive content that it tries to promote in sub-Saharan Africa. It is argued that the EU's policies are both broad and limited. On the one hand, the EU promotes a holistic agenda of 'democratic governance', inspired by the paradigms of international development cooperation, namely good governance, the securitization of development policies and participatory development. This is clearly reflected in the aid programmes.

At the same time, there is some differentiation between various sub-Saharan African countries, which can be explained mostly by the specific situation and needs of the countries and by the openness of partner countries to democracy assistance. On the other hand, when looking at EU political conditionality, only a very limited, electoral, democratic model is promoted, with little variation according to the specific situation in the country.