The promotion of good governance has become an increasingly prominent issue in the EU's policies towards Africa. The EU has developed a comprehensive toolbox to promote governance reforms through conditionality and cooperative instruments such as political dialogue or governance aid. Conventional analysis on the usage of good governance instruments focuses on the donors’ interests in relation to the target country to explain differential applications of conditionality. This paper adds a different perspective by arguing that the EU’s usage of conditionality is substantially shaped by the responsiveness of African governments towards the EU’s cooperative instruments. The examples of Ethiopia and Rwanda show how the willingness of the African government to engage with the EU in the implementation of cooperative instruments affects the EU’s willingness to rely on conditionality. The findings of the paper suggest a need for incorporating African governments' agency more systematically as a variable when analysing EU good governance strategies. The results also point to important unintended consequences of the EU's cooperative governance instruments: their implementation does not only (if at all) take an influence on governance reforms in African countries, but also on the EU's good governance strategies.
