Today Adea Gafuri, Ph.D. student in political science at the University of Gothenburg, and connected to the V-Dem Institute, is defending her Doctoral Thesis Democratic versus Autocratic Donors: Does Aid Impact Democratization and Citizen’s Perceptions in Recipient Countries?
EU democracy assistance is effective in promoting democracy, but in countries that also receive aid from authoritarian donors, support for democracy can decrease. At the same time, citizens are concerned that aid from authoritarian regimes can contribute to corruption and a lack of accountability among local politicians, her dissertation shows.
After the US, the EU is the world's largest aid donor. Part of the aid consists of democracy support which is directed directly to the democratic institutions of the recipient countries. This can include support for the implementation of free and fair elections, for example. Previous studies have been critical of whether the EU's democracy promotion efforts actually yield results. However, the dissertation shows that there is a positive correlation between EU democracy assistance and the level of democracy in a country.
"EU democracy assistance is more robustly associated with a country's levels of democracy compared to similar aid from other donors. Furthermore, democracy assistance has a greater impact on democratization processes compared to all other types of EU support, which do not seem to have a significant effect on democracy," says Adea Gafuri.
She has examined the effect of democracy promotion efforts in the 126 recipient countries eligible for EU democracy assistance during the period from 2002 to 2018. To measure levels of democracy, she uses data from the OECD's credit reporting system and an index from the Varieties of Democracy Institute (V-Dem). The dissertation shows that EU democracy assistance is effective when aid is linked to political conditions and monitoring mechanisms.
In recent times, the EU, US, OECD, and other traditional aid donors have been challenged by authoritarian regimes such as China, Russia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. China is one of the largest authoritarian aid donors globally. Emerging evidence is showing that these actors have different practices in recipient countries, compared to Western donors.
“In a world where 72 percent of the global population lives under authoritarian rule, it is important to know whether it matters for people's perception of democracy whether aid comes from democratic or authoritarian donors."
Read the full article on the University of Gothenburg website.