ABSTRACT
In November 2014, the world celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin war, which stands for the victory of Western democracy over illiberal forms of political order.1 After the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, democracy promotion became an integral part of the foreign policy of Western states and established itself as a new field of action for Western international and regional organizations.2 After the initial enthusiasm about the EU’s transformative power in Central and Eastern Europe,3 Western efforts at supporting democratic transition and stabilizing democratic consolidation have been increasingly deemed ineffective.4 The failure of the West to bring its
∗Email: tanja.boerzel@fu-berlin.de
Scott, James, and Ralph Carter. “From Cold War to Arab Spring: Mapping the Effects of Paradigm Shifts on the Nature and Dynamics of US Democracy Assistance to the Middle East and North Africa.” Democratization, online first, 2014.
