Pamela Jawad The interaction of democracy promoter and target country context The case of the OSCE in Georgia The interaction of democracy promoter and target country context The case of the OSCE in Georgia vom Fachbereich Gesellschafts- und Geschichtswissenschaften der Technischen Universität Darmstadt zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades einer Doktorin der Philosophie „doctor philosophiae“ (Dr. phil.) genehmigte Dissertation von Pamela Jawad M.A. aus Frankfurt am Main Referenten: Prof. Dr. Klaus Dieter Wolf Prof. Dr. Peter Schlotter Einreichungstermin: 11. Januar 2017 Prüfungstermin: 15. März 2017 Darmstadt 2017 D 17 For Yunis VI Foreword and academic vita Writing my doctoral thesis has been quite a journey for me—a journey, which I have enjoyed very much and which has been an extremely rewarding experience. I have been fortunate enough to not having traveled by myself, but in close fruitful exchange with my doctoral advisors, Prof. Dr. Klaus Dieter Wolf and Prof. Dr. Peter Schlotter, and a number of highly valued fellow researchers as well as with the support and encouragement of friends. It is quite a challenge to express the full gratitude I feel towards these people and for having had the opportunity of this journey. My journey started in 2005, two years after receiving my political science M.A. degree of the University of Heidelberg. After holding the position of research associate in a research project at the Institute for Political Science in Heidelberg, the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF) offered me the great opportunity of working in the multi-disciplinary program area „International Organisation, Democratic Peace and the Rule of Law“ and of starting to develop my doctoral thesis within this framework. Being a research associate at the PRIF allowed me to be part of a community of researchers committed to furthering the academic agenda around the democratic peace theory and to building bridges between academia, policy and practice. I have benefitted particulary from the peer exchange in the PRIF postgraduate colloquium under the prudent guidance of then-PRIF Executive Director, Prof. Dr. Harald Müller, in the International Relations colloquium at the Technical University of Darmstadt under the prudent guidance of Prof. Dr. Klaus Dieter Wolf, and in the discussion forum “External Democratization Policy”, of which I was lucky enough to be a founding member, benefiting from the initiative of Dr. Sonja Grimm and Dr. Julia Leininger. Initially focused on bringing together German female researchers who focus their work on democratization and democracy promotion and being funded by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) in 2010-2015, this discussion forum has in the meantime evolved into a wider research network funded by the Leibniz- Wettbewerb 2015-2018. Seizing opportunities as they arise, my journey led to me to another track and a path I stayed on ever since. After consultant assignments, GTZ (since 2012: GIZ), the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische (since 2012: Internationale) Zusammenarbeit, offered me a position in a sector advisory project in 2007 working closely with the Federal Ministry for Economic Development and Cooperation (BMZ), the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the European VII Commission, and the World Bank on good governance, democracy and the rule of law at the intersection between policy, research and practice. The experience with GTZ strengthened my understanding of the challenges and concerns of the implementation level of international cooperation and the demand for practice- oriented guidance from research and policy. This experience was further deepened by positions I have held in GTZ/GIZ projects in Cambodia and Laos since 2010— always in the field of good governance. While maintaining my association with PRIF, my engagement with GTZ/GIZ slowed down the process of working on my doctoral thesis significantly. Therefore, it was only when I took a sabbatical that I had sufficient time and energy to set my mind on finalizing my study at the end of 2016. I would like to sincerely thank Klaus Dieter Wolf and Peter Schlotter for accompanying me throughout the entire journey and for believing in its completion in 2016/2017. Klaus Dieter Wolf has been exceptional in his encouragement, in highlighting the theoretical contribution of my study, in providing valuable methodological guidance, and in always making himself available for feedback when needed. Peter Schlotter, who had already appraised in 2002 my M.A. thesis on the contribution of OSCE long-term missions to crisis prevention, was the one bringing me to PRIF. I cannot thank him enough for that. His advice has been highly beneficial especially with regard to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), for which he is an expert of high renown for in the German research community. My gratitude also goes to Harald Müller, who among many other fruitful suggestions was the key person in encouraging me early on to pay attention to the praxeological value of my study. I would like to thank the participants of both colloquia at PRIF and the TU Darmstadt in the period between 2005 and 2007 for their valuable input to different early draft chapters of my doctoral thesis, especially Dr. Claudia Baumgart-Ochse, Dr. Una Becker-Jacob, Dr. Melanie Coni-Zimmer, Prof. Dr. Nicole Deitelhoff, Dr. Moira Feil, Dr. Susanne Fischer, Dr. Katja Freistein, and Dr. Jonas Wolff. Of particular importance to me was the exchange within the discussion forum that focused exclusively on topics of external democratization and democracy promotion. I am particularly grateful to Prof. Dr. Tina Freyburg, Dr. Sonja Grimm, Dr. Julia Leininger, Dr. Tatjana Reiber, Prof. Dr. Solveig Richter, and Prof. Dr. Vera Van Hüllen. In my view, it is impossible to grasp the extent to which being part of such fruitful exchange fora contributes to translating an initial idea into a “ripe” concept and into a complete empirical study. I am forever grateful. The extent and depth of my research would not have been possible without the invaluable information and views provided by numerous interlocutours in Georgia VIII as well as at the OSCE headquarters. Furthermore, the OSCE granting me the status of researcher-in-residence at the archives of the OSCE Office in Prague in 2009 and 2016 permitted access to restricted OSCE documents through which I gained indispensable insights into the inner workings of the regional organization and the internal processes and procedures in dealing with the challenges of the political transformation context of Georgia. Many thanks to the OSCE Documentation Center for the trust and for maintaining such a highly useful program! For her invaluable support during my research at the OSCE documentation center and archives, I would like to thank first and foremost Alice Nemcova, OSCE Senior Documentation and Information Assistant. I am also thankful for the support of Jan Plesinger, the Head of the OSCE Office in Prague, David Bednar, Senior Information Technology Assistant, and Katerina Cerna, Archives Assistant. The autonomy to focus on developing my doctoral thesis at its early stages was provided by the funding I received initially from PRIF in 2005 and then from a special scholarship fund from 2005 until I started working with GTZ in 2007. I still feel very honored of having been one of only two researchers who were selected by a committee chaired by Prof. Dr. Dr. Senghaas to be awarded the “Bundeskanzler-Gerhard-Schröder-Stipendium für vorausschauende Friedens- politik” (Chancellor Gerhard Schröder Scholarship for anticipatory Peace Policy). Prof. Dr. Harald Müller and Prof. Dr. Peter Schlotter proposed my thesis for this thematic scholarship. For this, I will always be grateful. The scholarship was funded by donations collected on the occasion of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s 60th birthday and was managed by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES). In addition to a monthly allowance, the scholarship provided funding for research trips to the OSCE headquarters and to Georgia. Martin Gräfe of FES provided helpful guidance through all the administrative aspects of the scholarship. I would like to warmly thank the then-German Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, for initiating the scholarship fund and for receiving my fellow stipendiary and myself in the Chancellory in August 2005 amidst the run-up to the 2005 federal elections. Many thanks also to Anke Fuchs, then-FES Chairperson, and Dr. Manuela Erhart, then-Head of the FES scholarship department, for accompanying us to the meeting with the German Chancellor. Last but certainly not least, I owe the most to my dear friend and highly valued colleague Dr. Julia Leininger. She has been tireless in her encouragement, in her availability despite her always dense schedule, and in her extremely helpful and constructive suggestions. I thank her for her heart and her mind, for being my confidante and my friend. Thank you! IX I submitted my doctoral thesis to TU Darmstadt in January 2017 under the title “Successful Democracy Promotion by Regional Organizations—The interactive contribution of the target country’s domestic context conditions and the democracy promoter’s internal prerequisites for context sensitivity: The case of the OSCE in Georgia”. It was assessed by Prof. Dr. Klaus Dieter Wolf and Prof. Dr. Peter Schlotter. Further members of the examination committee in March 2017 were Prof. Dr. Nina Janich and Prof. Dr. Markus Lederer.