The effectiveness of political conditionality in Latin America

When the European Union changed its development assistance policy towards Latin America in 1992, it aimed at increasing its impact on the democratization process. The introduced concept of Political Conditionality has the stated intention of applying pressure on the target governments to implement reforms which improved the democratic situation. Consequently, the question emerges if the application of conditionality has provided an effective strategy to promote the democratic development. This study will figure out that the democratic level of Latin America has improved in general since conditionality has been applied. The effect of conditionality was rather modest. This can predominantly be explained by the inconsistent application of conditionality. There is a huge gap among the Latin American states in terms of their democratic development within the observed time. Moreover, there is a huge gap concerning the EU assistance. Contradictory to its own approach, a positive democratic development is not always rewarded with higher ODA and vice versa.