After the third wave of democratization at the end of the last century (cf. Huntington 1991), a disturbing countertrend has emerged since the mid-2000s, which is discussed under the terms “shrinking civic spaces” and “democratic regression” (Brechenmacher & Carothers 2019; Wintersteiner 2019). External democracy promotion within the framework of foreign and development policy attempts to counteract this trend in the name of human rights, peace, and security. The party-affiliated political foundations are central actors in the external promotion of democracy in the Federal Republic of Germany (Beise 1998: 207; cf. Carothers 2015). Due to their close ties to the state institutions of the Federal Republic (political parties and the Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development), they have relatively great political weight and greater financial leeway than other NGOs (Bartsch 2007: 282). At the same time, thanks to their special status as quasi-NGOs, they operate relatively independently and can simultaneously contribute to the maintenance of bilateral relations in a country, support related parties, conduct research as think tanks, and carry out political, sociopolitical, and cultural education work (Pogorelskaja 2009: 182; Adam & Kerbusch 2012: 421f.). In particular, this educational engagement of political foundations abroad represents “a very specific, namely ‘political variant of international/cross-border education, compared to other variants such as education aid (humanitarian), education export (commodity), and education exchange (reciprocity)“ (Adick & Giesemann 2015: 19).

The foundations declared goals include the global establishment and strengthening of democratic orders based on the rule of law, support for sustainable economic development, support for the formation and enrichment of an open and competitive democratic-political space, the fight against poverty by changing the structural framework conditions, the promotion of environmentally conscious action, crisis prevention, and the creation of stable networks of partnerships with various actors, among others from politics and civil society, among others (Pogorelskaja 2009: 29; Schreck 2020: 106f.).

"In all these areas, the foundations organize an extensive transfer of knowledge and exchange of experience, sometimes with an explicit advisory character, sometimes more dialog-oriented. This takes place through conferences, seminars and workshops, scientific research, the production of teaching materials and other publications, personnel and material support, the secondment of short-term experts, fellowship programs, and visits and information trips to Germany for foreign partners" (Bartsch 2007: 284- translated by the author).

Hoewever, the practice of political education by external actors in non-democratic contexts in general, as well as the educational activities of German political foundations in specific, has received little attention (Adick & Giesemann 2014: 352). However, given the ever increasing demands for a value-based foreign policy in times of crisis of the liberal world order on the one hand and the proven power of education to affect socio-political developments on the other hand, making this work visible and accessible seems to be of great relevance for both academia and practice. Moreover, political education as an instrument of positive democracy promotion with high regime compatibility is particularly consistent with the principles of development cooperation on ownership and cooperation at eye level (Burnell 2000: 10; Bush 2015: 57).

Against this background, this study attempts to better understand political education as an instrument and field of action of external democracy promotion. Through a case study in Tanzania, the question is explored as to what is the underlying rationale for the educational measures offered by German political foundations with regard to the promotion of democratization.

Given the operational scope of political foundations and the necessary context-specificity of democracy promotion, it is impossible to exhaustively address all educational activities of all six foundations on an international scale. However, with this case study, a first approximation is possible (cf. Heisterkamp 2018: 23). Tanzania is a country that ranks in the middle to lower range in various democracy indices. CIVICUS (2021) classifies the country as “repressed” in terms of “civic spaces” because of drastic cuts to civil society, particularly in recent years. Nevertheless, Tanzania has received relatively constant ODA in the area of “Government and Civil Society” in recent years (about 8% of ODA in 2020). Therefore, Tanzania is not only suitable as a “per se interesting case” for the study of foundation work, but should also be understood as a hypothesis-generating case (cf. Hering & Schmidt 2014: 532). To identify the crucial mechanisms that explain the practices of political education work of political foundations in Tanzania, both operational, contextual, and interpretive knowledge for this field are necessary (cf. Meuser & Nagel 2009: 76ff.). Therefore, 17 guided expert interviews were conducted with foundation directors, staff, and partners in Tanzania, as well as other experts on the work of political foundations abroad. Following the suggestion of Przyborski and Wohlrab-Sahr (2014: 125), high proportions of narrativ stimuli were included so that the interviewees could structure the presentation of their explicable knowledge themselves. Finally, since this is an investigation of social mechanisms, a reconstructive evaluation method, qualitative content analysis, is used (Gläser & Laudel 2010: 26). Content analysis is useful when descriptions of social facts are to be extracted from texts such as expert interview transcripts (ibid: 47). The category system is derived inductively-deductively from the material. Because political education and international democracy promotion are so closely intertwined in the field of study, the analysis will be grounded in both educational and political science theory. Thus, theories and concepts that address the supply side of education as well as the suppy side of democracy promotion will be used to create an analytical framework that integrates the international and national contexts, actors, addressees, and the understanding of (civic) education.

Field experience has already shown that the practice of civic education in the formal education system in Tanzania is, as expected, subject to systemic barriers (cf. Huruma 2012: 37ff.). Thus, although there are formally corresponding subjects, civic education is not established in terms of content, methods, and didactics. Against this background, the foundations try to contribute in terms of civic education work where the state education system is unable or unwilling to do so. Close cooperation with long-standing partner organizations enables the foundations to use the few "windows of opportunity" effectively and in a way that is geared to local needs. In addition, the foundations' specific political situations give them varying degrees of freedom to integrate political issues into their educational formats. Although the foundations, which are now all registered NGOs under Tanzanian NGO law, have a stable relationship with the government, not all of them are in a position to address a wide variety of issues. The political foundations thus work in a complementary way. When political dialogue on topics such as the constitution or elections is no longer possible because Tanzanian politics is becoming increasingly authoritarian, political education gains in importance. In this context, smart design and maintaining a fine line between adherence to principles and willingness to cooperate with an authoritarian regime can nevertheless open up spaces for in-depth political discussions on sensitive issues. In addition, however, it also became clear that there is a lack of educational or democratic pedagogical foundation. This was evident not least in the vagueness of the terminology and the difficulty of the interviewees to substantiate their activities with pedagogical or educational arguments. In addition, although open, learner-centered methods are used, the methodological and didactic conception is rather based on praxeologically based knowledge of experience, and the self-concept of the actors involved.

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