Islamist radicalisation the challenge for euro-mediterranean relations

16 | R
OBERT 
S
PRINGBORG
 
engagement requires skilful, focused management within the context of 
clear policy parameters. Neither precondition is likely to be met in the 
foreseeable future. A certain amount of constructive ambiguity surrounds 
EU policy towards Islamism, while the capacity to manage potentially 
explosive relationships with governments and Islamists is simply not there. 
Nor is it likely to be developed in the near future because the EU’s 
attention is directed elsewhere. The list of higher priority issues is long, 
including internal structural matters, complicated by the presence of new 
member states and the failure to ratify the constitution or approve the 
treaty-substitute for it; the global financial crisis and the EU’s 
comparatively weak financial architecture to deal with it; the emergence of 
a bellicose, threatening Russia on the eastern flank; and a failure as yet to 
construct a viable, long-term energy policy.  
Finally and possibly most importantly, many EU decision-makers 
actually believe they do have a coherent, effective policy for assisting the 
liberalisation and even democratisation of Arab regimes. They would 
probably concede that it is an approach that will take time, but would claim 
in response that efforts to force the pace of change are likely to be 
ineffective or even to backfire. In its essence, the operational if poorly 
explicated EU approach is an indirect democratisation strategy based on 
facilitating economic growth and improved governance for its ‘near 
neighbours’ in the MENA. The key underlying assumptions in this 
approach are that economic growth and better governance ultimately will 
pave the way for more competitive polities, and that because regimes will 
benefit from the comparatively non-threatening assistance that contributes 
to economic growth and better governance, they will allow it. 
Unfortunately, these assumptions are not warranted.  
To assume that economic growth leads to democracy begs the 
question of over what period such an outcome might be expected. In the 
West, it required generations. China has experienced the economic forces 
and transformations that analysts had predicted would generate 
democratic change, but that change has failed to materialise. In fact, 
market-oriented reforms may not only be long delayed, they may also go 
hand in hand with political regression, and may do so for years. Evidence 
from China, the MENA, Venezuela, Russia and elsewhere indicates that 
improvements in economic performance can help sustain authoritarianism 
and even enable it to create new bases for legitimacy. China’s example in 
particular suggests that while economic growth and the spread of markets 
may translate into greater individual freedoms and personal autonomy, 
this may not result in a more democratic system.  

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I
S THE 
EU
 CONTRIBUTING TO RE
-
RADICALISATION
?
 
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17 
Another flaw in the assumptions underlying the EU’s indirect 
democratisation strategy for the MENA is that the alleged chain of 
causality that runs from market reforms and economic growth to 
democracy through the development of ‘classes for themselves’, especially 
entrepreneurial middle classes and workers, is questionable. That chain of 
causality may well have been obtained in Western European countries, but 
the abstract logic that sustains it has not been supported by the experience 
of Arab countries and others in the past three decades. Arab middle classes 
for many reasons have not been democratic battering rams and there is 
little indication that they will become so in the near future. The crony 
capitalism that has developed in much of the MENA is symptomatic of the 
relationships between states, markets and emerging middle classes that are 
profoundly different from those that evolved during the West’s 
democratisation. Similarly, where working-class political mobilisation has 
contributed to democratisation, such as in South Korea and Taiwan, 
underlying the political capacity of this class was the nature of the 
economies in which it was embedded. In each of these countries, the 
economy was dominated by a manufacturing industry organised into 
large-scale enterprises that required concentrations of labour. These in turn 
provided ideal breeding grounds for collective economic – and finally 
political – action. In most of the Arab world, by contrast, economic reform 
has eroded the last bastions of large-scale, labour-intensive manufacturing 
industry, which was dominated by a public sector that in fact still provides 
the locus for working class radicalism. The private sector, which is now 
creating far more jobs than the public sector, is overwhelmingly constituted 
of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises. The conditions of 
employment, therefore, do not support the emergence of a working class 
dedicated to, and capable of, contributing to the reform of the economy or 
the polity.  
Because MENA governments have rejected assistance activities 
manifestly intended to generate momentum for democratic reforms, the EU 
has chosen to focus instead on assistance for economic growth and to 
promote better governance (more effective, accountable and transparent 
government institutions and operations). Its justification for this emphasis 
on governance is that it will help consolidate a democratic breakthrough if 
and when the latter materialises and that it even may contribute to such a 
breakthrough by helping to generate or sustain economic growth. One 
problem with such reasoning is that authoritarian states may be either 
unable or unwilling to allow governance-oriented reforms to go beyond a 
minimal level. Making state institutions more effective is likely to require a 

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