EU Democracy Promotion and Governmentality

Turkey and Beyond

Hanna L. Muehlenhoff

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351168786
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This volume draws on a Foucauldian understanding of governmentality to explore how EU civil society funding policies depoliticise civil society organisations. It questions whether international civil society funding always depoliticises civil society organisations, as the literature on governmentality and international civil society policies argues.

The author examines how the liberal and neo-liberal rationalities of EU funding have both politicising and depoliticising effects on the human rights organisations funded, and demonstrates that whether the effects help or prevent the politicisation of human rights depends on how legitimate or contested the issue is domestically and how the civil society organisations act in this political context. These themes are explored through an in-depth analysis of the case of Turkey and EU funding of organisations working in the fields of women, LGBT and Kurdish rights.

Unpacking liberal and neo-liberal governmentality in EU democracy promotion and civil society funding, this insightful contribution to the literature will be of interest to scholars of International Relations, Middle East Studies, European Studies and democracy promotion.

1 Introduction

On EU democracy promotion, the question of depoliticisation, and the case of Turkey

This chapter introduces the topic of the EU’s democracy promotion and specifically of the EU’s civil society funding in Turkey. It introduces the main question of this book: How has EU civil society funding depoliticised civil society organisations in Turkey between 2002 and 2013? The author outlines the reasons behind the EU’s funding of civil society organisations in non-EU countries and discusses the widespread notion that civil society is a force for good. However, the author finds that much of the literature has viewed the EU’s policy as ineffective. More specifically, she is interested in the critical argument of the governmentality literature that assumes that the EU’s policies transfer neo-liberal rationalities to civil society organisations and argues that this depoliticises them. The author finds this claim simplistic and Eurocentric and intends to challenge it in two ways. First, she argues that the EU’s civil society funding is based on neo-liberal and liberal rationalities. Second, she suggests that the depoliticising effects depend on the discursive context in which they intervene. The book proposes that the EU’s civil society funding had depoliticising and politicising effects on civil society organisations in Turkey because of their agency, their discursive struggles and the liberal rationalities of the EU programs.

During the last days of May 2013 thousands of people joined the protestors who had originally demonstrated against the plans of Turkey’s governing Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) to destroy Gezi Park, a park in the middle of the European centre of Istanbul, for yet another shopping mall. They protested against the police’s violent suppression of the first demonstration as well as against the governing party and its increasingly conservative and neo-liberal policies. The so-called Gezi Park protests became a symbol for Turkey’s civil society. In the European Union (EU) politicians and societies alike praised the demonstrations as proof of a “vibrant civil society” (Yinanç 2013).

The EU, just like other international organisations, places a great deal of hope in civil society within the EU and in non-EU countries. Internally, the EU counts on civil society organisations (CSOs) – such as environmental groups or industrial lobby organisations – to provide knowledge and opinions on specific topics when drafting and implementing policies. Moreover, the EU assumes that civil society is a central element of democracy. Any state undergoing the process of democratic transformation needs to allow for civil society groups to exist and be active. Within democratic states, civil society is supposed to monitor the state, demand political change and/or take care of people in need by giving them social support. The EU regularly criticises third states for discriminating against CSOs and activists such as the sentencing of members of Pussy Riot in Russia (European Union 2012). In the eyes of the EU, any restriction on CSOs or activists is a violation of human rights. Civil society is imagined as the ‘good’ other (Chandhoke 2001). When we think of civil society, we usually think of civil society being different to the state; being better, more innovative, freer and more democratic. At the same time, citizens’ trust in state institutions and politics in democracies is declining. Politicians are accused of following their self-interest and not being competent enough (Hay 2007). While “we hate politics” (Hay 2007), we love civil society (to overstate the matter). Civil society represents the opposite: altruism and solidarity, knowledge and expertise, transparency. As a consequence, democracies have transferred tasks that were originally the responsibility of the state to CSOs, such as providing social services and contributing to legislative processes. Governing increasingly takes place in the sphere of civil society (Foucault et al. 2008: 295).

Thus, civil society is generally assumed to be a good thing for democracies. Based on this premise, the EU provides financial funds to CSOs across the world. The EU’s most important instrument for direct civil society support is the European Instrument for Democracy and Human rights (EIDHR), which provides funding for CSOs in all regions of the world and aims to contribute to democracy and human rights (European Commission 2015). Yet there are many different but overlapping forms of civil society. Civil society refers to social movements, charity and community groups as well as business organisations or environmental groups (Kaldor 2003a). The EIDHR has a narrow conception of civil society. It gives financial support to human rights organisations that it selects on the basis of project proposals. The criteria that the EU uses to select CSOs for funding are also common in other contexts. They require citizens to set their own goals and self-evaluate their work. For example, departments at universities are encouraged or obliged to evaluate their teaching and research output and make these results transparent in order to become ‘better’. Anyone who has applied for research grants is familiar with project applications and funding procedures. Similarly, CSOs have to draft a project plan including goals and ways to achieve them and to measure them, and suggest a cost-efficient budget. Afterwards, they have to write a report that proves the effectiveness of the project and documents the costs. While many international organisations employ similar types of procedures, the EU is often said to have the highest demands for transparency and accountability, as I will discuss later. Borrowing from Michel Foucault (1991: 92; Foucault et al. 2008: 220–232), authors such as Milja Kurki (2011a), Katharyne Mitchell (2006), William Walters and Jens H. Haahr (2005) argue that these instruments and procedures of transparency, performance and accountability are an integral part of neo-liberal governmentality. In short, in neo-liberal governmentality economic rationalities dominate every part of life (Foucault et al. 2008: 226; Lemke 2001: 200); thus civil society is required to act like a company. Kurki (2011a) analyses the EIDHR program documents and finds underlying neo-liberal economic rationalities.

What does this mean for civil society, and more specifically for the CSOs applying for and receiving funds? Have CSOs always worked this way? Or has applying for EU funds changed the organisations? Many scholars assume that project-based work makes CSOs less grassroots, less honest and, to some extent, less ‘good’. Kurki (2011b: 362) proposes that the EU “has arguably already shifted the practices of some NGO actors, such as political foundations, toward developing more depoliticised and non-ideological (lobby) positions”. The EIDHR turns CSOs into entrepreneurs and service providers and ultimately depoliticises them (Kurki 2011a: 362). Political change and emancipation seems unlikely when EU funding depoliticises civil society. However, is this really the case? What does depoliticisation mean? And what does politicisation mean? Kurki and others (Işleyen 2015; Tagma et al. 2013) analyse the EIDHR documents but do not assess the effects of the EIDHR on civil society on the ground. Yet the domestic context of the EU’s policies influences their effects. This book provides an analysis of how the EU’s governmentality actually depoliticises EIDHR-funded civil society organisations in Turkey. I suggest that the proposed depoliticising effects are shaped by their specific political context. Moreover, they are shaped by how neo-liberal the EU’s rationalities really are. The literature on governmentality in the EU’s external policies and its civil society funding blurs the difference between liberal and neo-liberal rationalities, although it argues that it is neo-liberal rationalities that have depoliticising effects (Kurki 2011b; Merlingen 2007; Işleyen 2015). The analysis of the EIDHR documents in Chapter 3 reveals that the EU transfers both neo-liberal and liberal rationalities to human rights CSOs in Turkey, and both have different effects in a specific context. This book builds on the specific argument that the EU’s civil society funding depoliticises CSOs and their work as developed by Kurki (2011a) in her article on the governmentality of the EIDHR. Yet she is not the first to argue that governmentality depoliticises civil society (Amoore and Langley 2004; Ferguson 1990; Jaeger 2007).

The argument on EU civil society funding, governmentality and depoliticisation

Kurki’s article on the EIDHR (2011a) was part of a larger research project (2013) on the democracy promotion practices of international organisations around the world. She analyses the different conceptions of democracy that underlie the policies of several funding bodies such as the United Nations (UN), national states and agencies. Her project includes various kinds of democracy promotion practices such as election assistance or civil society funding. Kurki looks at the EIDHR to investigate an instrument that gives direct support for civil society organisations and argues that the EIDHR is based on neo-liberal governmentality with which the “European Union has sought to depoliticise its democracy promotion” (Kurki 2011a: 351). Although the author describes this as one major contribution of her approach, she does not go into detail about how the EIDHR depoliticises civil society.

Analysing EIDHR documents, Kurki shows that the EIDHR is based on neo-liberal rationalities as part of neo-liberal governmentality in a Foucauldian sense. She identifies the economic market rationalities and the constitution of the individual as a self-entrepreneur (Kurki 2011a: 353–354) in the objectives and the calls for proposals of the EIDHR. She demonstrates that the governmentality perspective focuses on how economic rationalities shape individuals and every sphere of life. Individuals are made to use their freedom in a self-entrepreneurial way. These economic individuals can be managed within the sphere of civil society (Kurki 2011a: 353–354). In the EIDHR documents civil society is constituted as a sphere of freedom in which CSOs are expected to defend this freedom in the most effective way: “An ideal CSO, too, is seen as self-reliant, risk-taker, entrepreneur, and innovator, who has no need for dependency relations with funders or state support and who take[s] responsibility for finding and adapting themselves to the market opportunities” (Kurki 2011a: 357). The EU attempts to enable CSOs by increasing their capacities. One of Kurki’s main points is that the EIDHR’s governmentality constitutes CSOs as being in opposition to the state as the state is seen to be limiting its freedoms (Kurki 2011a: 357). Following this suspicion of the state, the EU encourages CSOs to defend their freedoms, support democratisation, independent from the state, be a check on the state, be project managers and providers of social services (Kurki 2011a: 357–358). Employing this strategy, Kurki argues, the EU “has arguably already shifted the practices of some CSO actors, such as political foundations, toward developing more depoliticized and non-ideological (lobby) positions” (Kurki 2011a: 362). Kurki suggests that the EIDHR influences CSOs in the way they work and in their political positions, ultimately depoliticising both.

When discussing EU democracy promotion, critical approaches such as Kurki’s are exceptional. While literature on development aid has investigated the effects of neo-liberal rationalities in CSO funding (Hulme and Edwards 1997; Paley 2002; Pearce and Eade 2000), the consequences of neo-liberal governmentality in democracy promotion policies for CSOs have largely been ignored. My book builds on Kurki’s argument regarding the EIDHR but suggests that it needs specification in two instances.

First, although Kurki’s book (2013) includes a wide range of comprehensive concepts of democracy and analyses how these concepts are present in democracy promotion across the world, her analysis of the EIDHR is reductionist. The EIDHR (Kurki 2011a) is clearly described as an instrument based on a neo-liberal idea of democracy and thus embedded in neo-liberal governmentality. Here, Kurki subsumes too much under the concept of neo-liberal governmentality and assumes its effect of depoliticisation too easily. An example of this is how Kurki links the argument of civil society as being responsible for controlling the state and for providing services usually provided for by the state. The notions of civil society as service providers and as opposition to government do not fit together easily. Within neo-liberal governmentality CSOs become a partner of the state and take over some of its functions such as providing social services to the marginalised while the state has retreated from these tasks. Both activities could be politicising in specific contexts, however. CSOs that control or check the government have been central to a liberal idea of state and civil society (Kurki 2013: 113) and monitoring governance practices is hardly apolitical. Especially in non-consolidated democracies, where the EIDHR promotes CSOs, monitoring is very political as it criticises governmental practices and increases the visibility of marginalised groups (cf. Shepherd and Sjoberg 2012). Moreover, even providing social services might be politicising when the state has never provided these services before and these services are for marginalised groups. It makes these communities visible (Shepherd and Sjoberg 2012; Butler and Athanasiou 2013). Not only Kurki but the governmentality literature more broadly discounts these practices as depoliticising because it is based on Foucault’s genealogy of governmentality in Western European welfare states (Foucault et al. 2008). Yet this makes it Eurocentric in its assumptions on how governmentality works in other contexts (Sigley 2006). It is necessary to study how governmentality shapes different societies to overcome this Eurocentrism of the governmentality literature.

Similar to Kurki, Hans-Martin Jaeger (2007) argues that global liberal governmentality (such as by the UN) constitutes CSOs as self-managers. The global “human security” and “social development” discourse made the individual responsible for acting and empowering her- or himself instead of putting marginalisation and discrimination on the political agenda. Even though Jaeger (2007: 262) recognises that civil society is open to “contestation”, he argues that civil society’s “political efficiency depends on communications that conform […] to the (depoliticizing) forms of mobilization and expertise that will resonate with the system” (Jaeger 2007: 263). As a consequence, his analysis does not account for instances of resistance. He further suggests that any political participation of CSOs in the global arena is ultimately contributing to depoliticisation because it is done from inside the system (Jaeger 2007: 260–272). It is too easy to discount every CSO activity as depoliticising because civil society is much more ambiguous, as Louise Amoore and Paul Langley (2004) point out. Taking issue with the generally positive liberal notion of civil society, they discuss that global civil society has become integral to a liberal governmentality reproducing a neo-liberal global order, that it has produced exclusions and repressions itself (Amoore and Langley 2004: 90). However, they also acknowledge that global civil society leaves space for contestation: “Organisations may simultaneously appear to offer coping mechanisms for dealing with globalisation […], while also offering a substantive critique of the structures of global finance and production” and even separating “their role in service-delivery from their advocacy work” (Amoore and Langley 2004: 102). Thus, they might pursue a double strategy while being aware and critical of neo-liberal policies and rationalities. Moreover, civil society is made up of many different actors, many of whom do not apply for international funds because they oppose them on political grounds and lack the capacity to apply or benefit from state support and private donations. The sphere of civil society is itself constituted through contestation (Chandhoke 2001). Instead of assuming that all of civil society is neo-liberal because neo-liberal ideas dominate international organisations and international relations, we should pay more attention to struggles within civil society, and also in relation to domestic and international neo-liberal policies. The literature does not take these ambiguities into account as much as it should when making an argument about the depoliticising effect of neo-liberal governmentality. To analyse struggles within civil society, Antonio Gramsci’s (1992) notion of civil society in the context of hegemony provides a useful conceptualisation of the sphere of civil society and its relations to the state. How CSOs are positioned in hegemonic struggles influences the effects of the EU’s civil society funding and its liberal and neo-liberal rationalities, as I show in this book.

My second modification of Kurki’s depoliticisation argument is connected to the previous discussion and relates to the lack of empirical examples that show the depoliticising effects in concrete cases. Kurki (2011b) and other scholars researching the EU’s intervention abroad from a governmentality perspective (Işleyen 2015; Tagma et al. 2013) analyse the EU documents but do not analyse the effects of governmentality on CSOs funded by the EU. Thus, we do not know how governmentality actually influences CSOs and we do not know how the domestic context of CSOs influences the effects of civil society funding. EU democracy promotion is an intervention in a different context with its own political struggles. In many societies – such as in Turkey – civil society does not enjoy much freedom and is already accused of being political (Plagemann 2000; Diez et al. 2005; Muehlenhoff 2016). In this context the EU’s governmentality is likely to have ambiguous effects. To understand the depoliticising effects of EU civil society support, I look at the case of Turkey between 2002 and 2013. My analysis provides insights beyond the case of Turkey as it shows how the EU transfers specific rationalities to civil society, how liberal and neo-liberal governmentality interact, and how and whether governmentality depoliticises civil society in very politicised and less politicised contexts.

The case of Turkey and EU civil society funding

To understand the interplay of liberal and neo-liberal governmentality, (de)-politicisation and the political context, the case of Turkey is particularly interesting for four reasons. First, Turkey and the EU have had relations since the 1960s. In 1999, Turkey became a candidate for EU membership. Since 2005, Turkey and the EU have been negotiating the chapters of the EU acquis communautaire. To facilitate compliance with the acquis and further democratisation, the EU has given funding to Turkish CSOs since the beginning of the 2000s. In 2002, the AKP came into power. The government strongly supported Turkey’s EU accession and passed a significant number of democratic reforms in the first decade of the twenty-first century. The literature shows how Turkey Europeanised in different ways during that time. Turkey adopted a European legal framework for civil society; EU-funded CSOs professionalised and increased their capacities; EU funds enabled networks between Turkish and European organisations; and CSOs could use the EU as a reference point to push their positions (Rumelili and Boşnak 2015; Rumelili 2005). Nathalie Tocci (2005) and Diba Göksel and Rana Güneş (2005) argue that CSOs profited from the EU integration process because it increased their legitimacy. Civil society actors were able to refer to the EU to strengthen their positions and credibility in pushing for reforms. Many organisations emerged as a reaction to the EU accession process and to the earthquake in 1999 (Kubicek 2005: 376). In particular, business organisations such as TÜSIAD (Turkish Industrialists’ and Businessmen’s Association, Türk Sanayicileri ve İşadamları Derneği) and the İKV (Economic Development Foundation, İktisadi Kalkınma Vakfı) have been strong supporters for democratic reforms and EU accession since the 1990s (also see Altinay 2005). Also many human rights organisations such as the Human Rights Association (İnsan Hakları Derneği, İHD) were strengthened by the EU accession process. Turkey’s candidacy supported their argumentation by making it possible for them to refer to the accession process and European norms. In 2004, under EU pressure the Law on Associations was passed, which considerably reduced state interference in civil society activities (Kubicek 2005: 370). The AKP’s term in government also marks the first time that a Muslim party has remained in government and has not been overthrown by a military coup, despite the failed coup attempt in 2016. The first decade of the twenty-first century was thus a very interesting time in Turkish politics. However, since 2008 the AKP government has consolidated its power and has promoted increasingly conservative policies combined with an authoritarian style of governing. While the beginning of the AKP’s time in government created a more open and liberal political climate, the second half has been characterised by a decrease in pluralism. Along with these domestic developments, Turkey is seen to be less interested in EU membership and the EU appears less committed to Turkey’s membership too (cf. Diez and Muehlenhoff 2014). In this sense, towards the end of my study period Turkey is more comparable with other neighbouring countries of the EU that have no clear membership perspective than with other candidate states as the pressure to comply and accept EU intervention has decreased. Thus, the case of Turkey is also able to tell us something about the possible effects of EU civil society funds in candidate and other neighbouring states such as the Arab countries where the EU uses similar instruments (Roy 2005; Işleyen 2015).

Second, the case of Turkey is especially significant because, while at the beginning of Turkey’s EU accession process, many scholars identified an EU influence on domestic politics (e.g. Diez et al. 2005; Kubicek 2005; Müftüler Baç 2005; Sarigil 2007; Schimmelfennig et al. 2003), authors studying Turkey have increasingly argued that Europeanisation mostly depended on domestic politics and the rationalities of domestic political actors (Alpan and Diez 2014; Yılmaz and Soyaltın 2014). While academics still try to identify some connection between the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• List of tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• 1. Introduction: On EU democracy promotion, the question of depoliticisation, and the case of Turkey
• 2. (De)politicisation, (neo-)liberal governmentality, and hegemonic struggles
• 3. The (neo-)liberal governmentality of EU civil society programs
• 4. The (de)politicisation of women’s rights organisations in a complex context
• 5. (De)politicising LGBT rights organisations and the effects of visibility
• 6. The (de)politicisation of the securitised Kurdish rights issue
• 7. Conclusions
• Bibliography
• Index