Conditional under what conditions? Analysing the democratic preconditions for the EU’s application of ex-ante aid allocation in the European neighbourhood

-- Paper funded by EMBRACE -- The promotion of democracy, human rights and the rule of law constitutes the core of the (European Union’s) EU’s effort in achieving political and economic stability in its immediate neighbourhood. One of the instruments by which these norms are promoted is political conditionality attached to aid. Using this instrument, the EU aims at altering the behaviour of third countries by either providing material incentives before meeting the conditions set out (ex-post conditionality) or after certain progress has been made (ex-ante conditionality). While extensive research has explored the nexus between aid and democracy in terms of ex-post conditionality, much less scholarly attention has been payed to ex-ante conditionality. In the article, we investigate EU’s ex-ante conditionality attached to the EU’s aid. We ask: Do democratic qualities of governance in third countries impact the amount of EU aid allocated to them? In doing so, we investigate whether democratic qualities of governance, which we capture using disaggregated levels of democracy, influence the amount of financial assistance received by beneficiaries within the vastly diverse countries in the EU’s neighbourhood. Empirically, we focus on the neighbourhood in its broader understanding (i.e., countries in the Eastern and Southern neighbourhood, the Western Balkans and Turkey). In this article, we adopt a minimalistic understanding of “democracy” conceptualizing it as electoral democracy. The individual democratic qualities of governance which we distinguish between are freedom of expression, freedom of association, clean elections, and elected officials. Using panel data between 2000-2020, we employ a large-N research design to investigate whether ex-ante conditionality is applied by the EU vis-à-vis countries and if so, when. By the logic of positive ex-ante conditionality, we assume that when progress in democratisation is made, financial assistance increases. By utilising this disaggregated approach to democracy, we establish which democratic qualities of electoral democracy that are most important for the EU when applying ex-ante conditionality. In doing so, we not only establish if and if so when ex-ante conditionality is applied when considering electoral democracy, but also provide further insights into how the EU understands of advancements made in terms of electoral democracy.