Transatlantic Trends in Democracy Promotion

Electoral Assistance in the Palestinian Territories

Rouba Al-Fattal Eeckelaert

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781409449294
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317008101
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Comparative Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

How did the EU, US, and Canada decide and implement their electoral assistance in the Palestinian Territories (PT)? Why did the EU, the US, and Canada embark on assisting the elections in the PT, and what factors influenced their electoral assistance? What lessons can be learned for other countries approaching elections after a long period of conflict? This book answers these questions and charts the process of electoral assistance with an in-depth analysis of each transatlantic actor's electoral assistance in the PT. It shows that, despite the many institutional and operational differences between the EU, the US, and Canada, the three actors do share common interests and influencing factors which often unify their response. The book also reveals the limitations facing electoral assistance and the implications of this on the sustainability, clarity, consistency, and responsiveness of the policy. In this systematic, comparative analysis of European, American and Canadian efforts to assist elections and transform governance in conflict zones Rouba Al-Fattal greatly advances the empirical knowledge of electoral assistance and provides the first steps needed to reform electoral assistance policy to cope with the challenges of the twenty-first century.

Chapter 1
Introduction

This research, in a nutshell, covers two aspects. Firstly, it explores the electoral assistance of the European Union (EU), the United States (US) and Canada in the Palestinian Territories (PT)¹ from 1995 to 2010. Secondly, it provides a systemic comparison of these actors’ electoral assistance in order to determine the similarities and differences between their foreign policy decision-makers and their institutional settings, their policymaking process including the decision-making and implementation phases of electoral assistance in the PT, their motivations in assisting elections in the PT and the internal/external factors that influence that policy, and the limitations they face while pursuing their electoral assistance policy in the PT. Therefore, the objective of this work is not to add to the literature which politicises the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; rather, it aims to provide a scientifically based and systematic approach for the study of external electoral assistance in that part of the world.

This chapter is designed to introduce the core components of the study. It sets the stage by presenting the reader with the key topic under investigation – that is transatlantic electoral assistance in the PT and its paradoxes. It then outlines the research objectives and questions before moving on to clarify how the questions are going to be addressed methodologically. At that point, it explains the rationale behind the choice of method, context, actors, policy, timeframe and data collection technique. Next, it specifies the relevance of the study and closes with an overview of the structure of this work.

The State of Transatlantic Electoral Assistance in the PT and Its Effects

Since the end of the Cold War (1991) the transatlantic community – represented by European, American and Canadian policymakers – has emphasised the value of democracy and the importance of democracy promotion as a foreign policy objective and instrument in the Middle East and beyond. After the fall of the Iron Curtain and with the demise of communism, politics became increasingly defined by the ‘victory of democracy’ and the desire of democratic actors to promote democracy globally.²

There are several reasons to explain this development. First, according to Thomas Risse, major powers across history have always tried to externalise their values abroad by spreading their own political and socioeconomic systems to other actors.³ Second, democracy was seen by actors across the Atlantic as the panacea for failed-states, a notion that was based on the actors’ own experiences and entrenched in the finding of Bruce Russett and John Oneal: democracies do not fight each other.⁴ Third, as Girod, Krasner and Stoner-Weiss argue, there is a growing body of evidence that democracy is inextricably linked to development and good governance.⁵

With the launch of the Oslo Process in 1993, the transatlantic community stressed – through its rhetoric as well as its partnership programmes – the need to restore peace and to reform the PT in the democratic direction. The aim was to transform this conflict zone into a peaceful and developed area ready to negotiate its sovereignty with Israel. At first, the transatlantic actors seemed to understand that a comprehensive foreign policy approach was needed to promote the necessary changes. Hence, cooperation and task-delegation took place between the major decision-makers, where some acted as the political catalyst and others supported the process financially. But after 9/11, democracy promotion started to take on a different meaning and the ideas of ‘regime change’ and forced democratic reforms were growing within the Bush administration.⁶ However, since 2006, democracy promotion in the PT suffered a blow as the promoters boycotted the then democratically elected party, Hamas, and rolled back their demands of holding further democratic elections.

Due to these developments, it has been contended by some academics and experts that the foreign policy of the transatlantic community, directed toward assisting the PT in its transition to a democratic state, is failing due to an quintessential rhetoric-practice gap that has recently dogged their electoral assistance policies and reduced these actors’ credibility in fulfilling the normative goals that their rhetoric typically inspires.⁷ In essence, the image of these three actors as influential players in the democratisation process in the PT has been typically inflated, while in reality their actions remained greatly constrained by various indigenous and exogenous factors.⁸

The transatlantic actors’ failure to fulfil their electoral assistance promises was particularly evident in their dealings with Hamas after the latter party assured itself a clear majority in the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) elections in January 2006. Not only did the US immediately withdraw its financial and political support from the newly ‘democratically’ elected body, but so did the EU and Canada – despite their rhetorical emphasis on the importance of democracy and hailing the success of the process of the elections. This reaction has deepened the political crisis in the PT, as it widened the rift between the two major Palestinian political parties, namely Fatah and Hamas, making a National Unity Government (NUG) impractical and almost unfeasible or unsustainable.

Thus, despite the earlier hopes raised by the Middle East Peace Process (MEPP), the Oslo Process (1993), and the Barcelona Process (1995), the transatlantic actors ended up behaving in a manner demoting rather that promoting electoral progress on the ground.⁹ Indeed, if one is to take a quick look back, electoral assistance in the PT went through a broad range of actions: starting with pushing to hold elections without an official viable opposition in 1995,¹⁰ to postponing the elections for security reasons during the intense Intifada years during 2000–2003, to dismissing the undesired outcomes of the elections once an Islamic party came to power in 2006, to finally ignoring the elections all together. Consequently, not only did the transatlantic actors fail to deliver what they had promised Palestinians since 1995 (democracy, peace, prosperity and sovereignty), but also they left them more pessimistic about the future and untrusting of the EU, the US and Canada as honest or even effective democracy promoters.

Research Objectives and Questions

The puzzling thing, from a critical standpoint, is that the transatlantic community allowed their money and efforts to ‘go to waste’.¹¹ So, many years after the launch of the democratisation process in the PT we are witnessing a reversion to authoritarianism instead of seeing a leap forward for democracy.

The objectives of this research are hence four fold. The first is to figure out who the main decision-makers are that shape the transatlantic foreign policy, and what kind of institutional setting are they embedded in. The second objective is to grasp the EU’s, the US’s and Canada’s decision-making and decision-implementation processes with regard to electoral assistance in the PT. The third is to understand the reasons behind the three actors’ electoral assistance in the PT as well as the external and internal factors that affect their rationale. The last objective of this work is to highlight the limitations that these actors have faced during their electoral assistance in the PT in order to provide valid proposals for the way forward.

In order to achieve these objectives this work, broadly speaking, tackles three topics. At first, it explores the meaning of electoral assistance and where the latter fits in the democracy promotion pyramid – which provides the conceptual framework for the research. Next, by using the foreign policy decision-making approach, it examines the reasons and influencing factors behind the electoral assistance actions of the transatlantic actors – which allows for ‘hypothesis-building’ at the end.¹² At last, this research investigates systematically and empirically the similarities and differences between the electoral assistance activities in the PT of the EU, the US and Canada from 1995 to 2010.

Building on the aforementioned objectives, the overall study can be reflected in the following four specific research questions. Each of these questions seeks a particular type of knowledge, while they build upon each other to provide a comprehensive and comparative picture of transatlantic electoral assistance in the PT.

(Q1). Who are the main decision-makers shaping EU, US, and Canada’s foreign policy, and what institutional tools do they have to accomplish that?

This first question stimulates a thick description of the key decision-makers involved in shaping the foreign policy of the EU, the US and Canada as well as the institutional arrangements such as voting process in foreign policy, legal procedure and follow-up mechanisms that are available in each system, and that guide their foreign policy actions.

The answers to this question provide(s) a general overview of the main foreign policy decision-makers in the EU, the US and Canada, which is necessary before delving into their specific foreign policies that are related to electoral assistance and directed towards the PT.

(Q2). How did the EU, US and Canada decide and implement their electoral assistance in the PT?

Building on the general description above, the second question calls for a more specific assessment of external actors’ electoral assistance processes in the PT at the decision-making and decision-implementation phases, which constitute the policymaking process.¹³

The descriptive and analytical exercises conducted to answer this question constitute one element of the intended comparative analysis. It should allow for a better understanding of these actors’ policy frameworks, budgets and the institutions that are in charge of administering them, their strategies, instruments and methods of electoral assistance in the context of the study.

(Q3). Why did the EU, the US and Canada embark on assisting the elections in the PT, and what factors influenced their electoral assistance policy?

The third question is closely linked to the previous explanation, yet it is analytically distinct from it and goes further in depth, as this question goes beyond exploring the instruments to investigate the reasons behind changing them.

The answer to this question provides some explanatory factors and assumptions that may determine the core interests in transatlantic electoral assistance, and specifies the external and internal factors that were conductive or discouraging to the actors’ electoral assistance in the PT. The analysis, however, will operate with only a ‘soft’ concept of causality. Instead of claiming to provide a hierarchical scheme of interests and influenc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Preface
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Palestinian Territories
• 3 EU Electoral Assistance in the PT
• 4 US Electoral Assistance in the PT
• 5 Canada Democracy Promotion in the PT
• 6 Conclusion
• Annexes
• References
• Index