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External Actors’ Strategies of Influencing the Social Order in Eastern Partnership Countries: A Heuristic for the Case of Turkey
Type
conference paper
Date Issued
2017
Author(s)
Research Team
EU-STRAT
Abstract
More than 25 years after the collapse of the socialist regimes in South and Central Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union believe in smooth democratisation of the region turned out to be premature. Likewise, Western actors’ power to fuel democratization fell short of expectations. Western democracy promotion, including the efforts of the EU, had particularly little success in the Eastern Partnership countries Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova. In the meanwhile, in recent years the influence of non-democratic external actors on these countries has increased. These observations call for a better understanding of external actors’ strategies towards the Eastern Partnership (EaP) region. Gaining an adequate picture of opportunities and constraints of democracy promotion in this region requires sound knowledge about the external actors’ varying influence on change or stability of the target countries’ current social orders. This paper takes a first step in this direction. It draws attention to Turkey as an external actor with a domestic social order moving towards authoritarianism. We develop a heuristic for analysing Turkey’s strategy towards the EaP countries that allows us to gain insights on its direct and indirect efforts to manipulate the social orders. The heuristic suggests analysing the discursive and practical dimension of foreign policy strategy by focusing on guiding principles, goals and objectives, the relationship between these three elements as well as the groups of actors in Turkey that carry foreign policy and the groups of actors targeted at in the EaP countries. This approach pays tribute to the growing complexity of international and transnational relations.
Language
English
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
HSG Profile Area
SEPS - Global Democratic Governance
Event Title
EUSA Fifteenth Biennial Conference
Event Location
Miami
Event Date
04.-06.05.2017
Subject(s)
Division(s)
Eprints ID
252428