Technocratisation and Depoliticisation of Democracy Promotion and Development Aid

In the last decades the promotion of democracy and governance became a major component of western governments’ and multilateral organisations‘ foreign policies. Gradually external democracy promotion became a vast field of research in political science and transformation studies. While much scientific research focuses on instruments and strategies of multilateral donor institutions, such as the World Bank (WB), International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Union (EU), the African Development Bank Group (AfDB) is to date subject to few researches. The thesis offers new empirical insights into actors‘ implementation and strategies of development and political aid to Morocco, with a strong focus on the actors‘ orientation, identity and will and contributes to a more systematic research on non-western actors‘ role in external aid. The focus lies on the different conceptualisation and implementation of EU and AfDB democracy and governance assistance regarding the donors‘ operational and strategic orientations. Morocco was chosen as an appropriate country cases study, because the country is the largest recipient of EU bilateral aid within the framework of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) and the most important regional client of the AfDB. The thesis demonstrates that donors adopt technocratic approaches and understandings of democracy and governance. Consequently, objectives of democracy and governance promotion are conflicting or competing and political aid, including democracy and governance promotion, becomes more technocratic and depoliticised. Thus, the actors‘ orientation and modes of interaction limit the implementation of external political aid to a technical-operational level.