25. Inter-Organizational Relations in the Field of Democratisation: Cooperation or Delegation? The European Union, the OSCE, and the Council of Europe

The European Union (EU), the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and the Council of Europe (CoE) are major actors in European democracy promotion policies. As the EU is the most powerful actor among them, their varying modes of interaction and the time and stage of their formalization are very much dependent on the EU’s approach to, and preferences regarding, inter-organizational cooperation. In the case of the EU, the OSCE, and the CoE, the nestedness of the EU within both organizations cannot be regarded as a sufficient explanatory factor in understanding their relations in the democracy promotion policies. As the chapter shows, there are substantial differences between various four policy fields of democracy promotion. One explanation is the degree of intergovernmental interest in supporting a certain policy field. Issue-specific cooperation which is rather technical or project based seems to be more likely than political cooperation at the intergovernmental level. Beyond rather rational-choice-based neo-institutionalist explanation, there is no clear pattern visible. The degree of formalization does not seem to be a sufficient explanation for International Organization (IO)–IO cooperation. However, asymmetry between funding opportunities and implementation capacities seems to be decisive as well as flexibility or room for manoeuvre of the involved IO institutions.