The EU's differentiated democracy promotion policies in Ukraine and Georgia: The effects of Russia as an illiberal regional power

After the end of Cold War, the EU has ascribed itself the leading role of promoting democracy across the world not only through tying democracy clauses in agreements with third parties but also through allocating huge amounts of funds for promoting European values such democracy, respect for human rights and rule of law. Over time, The EU's institutional transformation due to deepening and widening processes and changing international conjuncture has necessitated the transformation of EU democracy promotion policies. By the mid-2000s, not only normative ideals to export these European values, but also geostrategic and security considerations have been built into the EU democracy promotion policies. Within this new framework, the EU has declared that it would start to apply "tailor-made" democracy promotion agendas towards different countries depending on their domestic conditions. Yet, empirical evidences have revealed that the EU has applied different democracy promotion policies towards the countries with similar domestic conditions. Therefore, this dissertation attempts to answer the following question: What are the determinants of variation in the substance of EU democracy promotion agendas across target states? To answer it, this dissertation uses Wetzel and Orbie's model of embedded liberal democracy as an analytical framework. However, as different from the determinants suggested by Wetzel and Orbie, this dissertation adds a new variable shaping the substance of EU democracy promotion policies: the illiberal regional power. To investigate the role of illiberal regional power on the substance, this dissertation aims to examine the EU's differentiated democracy promotion policies in Ukraine and Georgia based on the assumption that the substance of EU democracy promotion can be shaped directly or indirectly by Russia, who has certain level of leverage over target country at stake. By conducting the content analysis of EU official documents, policy frameworks, reports as well as incorporating relevant studies in democracy promotion literature, this dissertation comes to the conclusion that the EU has changed democracy promotion agendas towards Ukraine and Georgia at critical turning points when the leverage of Russia as an illiberal regional power over Ukraine/Georgia has changed considerably. This study makes an important contribution to existing knowledge in the field on the impact of regional powers over the EU democracy promotion policies.