Publication

This paper examines how EU initiatives for promoting democracy and political reform in the Arab World have shaped relations of power and subjectivities between the EU and Arab governments over the last two decades including the Post-Arab Spring era. The author makes two main claims: first that the liberal character of EU reform programmes has conditioned and enabled Arab resistance to political reform, and secondly that political reform has become a simulacrum that necessitates a seduction of reform both by Arab incumbents and by EU reform managers.