Strangers in Plain Sight: Conceptions of Democracy in EU Neighbourhood Policy and in Public Opinion across North Africa

Pamela Abbott; Andrea Teti

doi:10.1080/13629387.2021.1923011

Strangers in Plain Sight: Conceptions of Democracy in EU Neighbourhood Policy and in Public Opinion across North Africa

Pamela Abbott^* (Corresponding Author), Andrea Teti

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

3 Citations (Scopus)

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Abstract

We draw innovatively on new and existing public opinion survey data carried out across North African countries since 2011 to provide a ‘view from below of the type of democracy that citizens of North African countries want and compare this conception with the type of democracy the European Union (EU) ‘offers’ its counterparts in the ‘Southern Neighbourhood’. This comparison shows there is a mismatch between what citizens want and what the EU is offering. While citizens want a ‘thicker’, socially just democracy, the EU ‘offers’ a market democracy that prioritises a limited number of civil and political rights. Social and economic rights are discursively constructed as macroeconomic issues relevant to the stability and consolidation of democracy rather than human rights as integral to democracy as their civil-political counterparts

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	691-713
Number of pages	24
Journal	The Journal of North African Studies
Volume	27
Issue number	4
Early online date	4 May 2021
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1080/13629387.2021.1923011
Publication status	Published - 2022

Bibliographical note

Open access via Taylor & Francis read and publish agreement
Funder: Seventh Framework Programme

Funding
This work was supported by the EU’s 7
th Framework Programme (grant number
320214).
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the anonymous reviewer(s) from the journal whose insightful
commented on our article enabled us to significantly improve it. We alone remain
responsible for the final version.

Keywords

European Union
Arab Spring
European Neighbourhood Policy
Democracy
Neoliberalism
Social and Economic Rights
Human Rights

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10.1080/13629387.2021.1923011Licence: CC BY-NC-ND

Abbott_etal_TJNAS_Stangers_In_Plan_VoR
© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
Final published version, 2.59 MBLicence: CC BY-NC-ND

Cite this

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title = "Strangers in Plain Sight: Conceptions of Democracy in EU Neighbourhood Policy and in Public Opinion across North Africa",

abstract = "We draw innovatively on new and existing public opinion survey data carried out across North African countries since 2011 to provide a {\textquoteleft}view from below of the type of democracy that citizens of North African countries want and compare this conception with the type of democracy the European Union (EU) {\textquoteleft}offers{\textquoteright} its counterparts in the {\textquoteleft}Southern Neighbourhood{\textquoteright}. This comparison shows there is a mismatch between what citizens want and what the EU is offering. While citizens want a {\textquoteleft}thicker{\textquoteright}, socially just democracy, the EU {\textquoteleft}offers{\textquoteright} a market democracy that prioritises a limited number of civil and political rights. Social and economic rights are discursively constructed as macroeconomic issues relevant to the stability and consolidation of democracy rather than human rights as integral to democracy as their civil-political counterparts",

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AB - We draw innovatively on new and existing public opinion survey data carried out across North African countries since 2011 to provide a ‘view from below of the type of democracy that citizens of North African countries want and compare this conception with the type of democracy the European Union (EU) ‘offers’ its counterparts in the ‘Southern Neighbourhood’. This comparison shows there is a mismatch between what citizens want and what the EU is offering. While citizens want a ‘thicker’, socially just democracy, the EU ‘offers’ a market democracy that prioritises a limited number of civil and political rights. Social and economic rights are discursively constructed as macroeconomic issues relevant to the stability and consolidation of democracy rather than human rights as integral to democracy as their civil-political counterparts

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KW - Arab Spring

KW - European Neighbourhood Policy

KW - Democracy

KW - Neoliberalism

KW - Social and Economic Rights

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Strangers in Plain Sight: Conceptions of Democracy in EU Neighbourhood Policy and in Public Opinion across North Africa

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

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Cite this