Western democracy promotion: a counter-narrative

Joel LazarusSt Anthony’s College, University of Oxford

Paper to be presented at the ‘Challenging Orthodoxies’ conference, Critical Governance Studies Centre, University of Warwick, December 13-14th 2010

Introduction

The promotion of democracy worldwide is a declared foreign policy objective of

Western governments. ‘Democracy promotion’ also takes the form of aid

interventions funded by Western governments and multilateral organisations and

implemented by American and European non-governmental organisations (NGOs)

designed to build democratic political institutions within non-democratic political

systems and societies. In this paper, I consider the nature and effects and the future of

Western democracy promotion both as foreign policy and aid strategy.

In the first section of this paper, I critique both the stated objectives of and

justifications for Western democracy promotion as foreign policy and also challenge

the often implicit assumptions about democracy and democracy promotion that serve

to legitimate the concept and practice of democracy promotion. In the second section,

I consider what we know about the actual rather than the desired or idealised effects

of Western democracy promotion as aid strategy. I find strong evidence for both

potential and actual damaging consequences of democracy promotion aid. In the third

section, I argue that, because of a failure to deliver on what is promised and because

of a changing geo-political world order, the model of Western neo-liberal democracy

promotion and the states and organisations that endeavour to export it are suffering a

growing crisis of legitimacy. In the fourth and final section, I suggest that

prescriptions for reforming the way democracy is promoted are flawed and will not

redeem democracy promotion from its current crisis.

What is democracy promotion and why promote democracy?

With several detailed anatomies of the democracy promotion industry – the ‘who’ of

democracy promotion - already on offer (e.g. Carothers 1999, Burnell 2000), I focus

here on the objectives and justifications – the ‘what’ and ‘why’ - of democracy

promotion. I contrast democracy promoters’ own objectives and justifications with

my own understanding of reality.

Objectives: What are democracy promoters seeking to promote?

Unprincipled democracy promotion

European and American governments alike declare their commitment to the

promotion of ‘democracy’ throughout the world. The US State Department declares

that ‘[p]romoting freedom and democracy and protecting human rights around the

world are central to U.S. foreign policy’.1 Similarly, the European Union ‘believes

that democracy and human rights are universal values that should be vigorously

promoted around the world’.2 In reality, however, the promotion of democratic

principles and institutions is routinely sidelined and undermined by the prioritisation

of the commercial, geostrategic, and energy interests of both the United States, the

member states of the European Union, and the domestic and transnational capitalist

forces that greatly influence their foreign policies. Evidence of this ‘unprincipled

democracy promotion’ can be found on all continents.3

Little difference among democracy promoting nations

1 US State Department website (http://www.state.gov/g/drl/index.htm). Accessed July 15th 2010.2 European Commission website (http://ec.europa.eu/europeaid/what/human-rights/index_en.htm). Accessed July 15th 2010.3 For evidence of unprincipled democracy promotion in the post-communist world see Brown 2001; Wedel 2001; Mendelson & Glenn 2002; Youngs 2006; Gahramanova 2009. For evidence from the Arab world see Carothers 2004; Schmid & Braizat 2006; Olsen 1998; Ottaway 2008; Kausch 2008; Choucair Vizoso 2008; Echagüe 2008. For evidence from Asia see Carothers 2004; Youngs 2008; Nordhold 2004. For evidence from Latin America see Robinson 1996; Carothers 2004; Clement 2005. For evidence from Africa see Olsen 1998; Chafer 2002; Crawford 2005; Khakee 2007; Carother 2004; Youngs 2008. I intentionally exclude coverage of the democracy promotion policies of the US in Iraq and Afghanistan under President George W Bush primarily because I wish to emphasise that what I call unprincipled democracy promotion goes well beyond the extreme examples of the Bush administration to characterise the actions of virtually all American and European governments.

Many commentators argue that a real and significant distinction must be made

between the American and European approaches to democracy promotion. Much has

been made of the European Union’s ability to use soft, normative power rather than

hard, military force to secure the changes it desires in neighbouring countries and

beyond (Manners 2002, Diez & Pace 2007, Kleinfeld & Nikolaidis 2009). In the wake

of American failure to bring democracy by invasion to Iraq and Afghanistan or by

electoral revolution to Georgia, Ukraine, and other post-communist states, the idea

and ideal of ‘normative power Europe’ is understandably attractive. A depletion of

American credibility as democracy promoter makes proponents of democracy

promotion look to the EU to lead on this issue. In response, the European Union

claims to have ‘developed an approach to democracy promotion based on patience, a

long-term perspective and sensitivity to the primary role of local actors’ (Youngs

2008: 1). Yet, in reality, in a recent volume of six country case studies, Youngs (2008:

1) concludes that ‘[m]ost European governments do not now have a strategy for

democracy promotion that is consistent, effective and based on a clear vision of the

relationship between democratisation and other political objectives’.

What is clear is that unprincipled promotion of democracy characterises the foreign

policies of the European Union and its member states as much as those of American

governments. Beyond this, what is equally clear is that the conflicting interests of

different member states in different global regions and their widely contrasting

commitments to the promotion of democracy makes the notion of a unified and

consistent EU foreign policy, as of now, an unattainable myth:

‘Far from the monolithic Brussels superstate of Eurosceptic nightmare, what we have

here is more like herding cats’ (Garton Ash 2008).

The idea of a uniform American democracy promotion strategy is equally misguided.

The inconsistent application of American democracy promotion policies is in no small

way the product of a permanent battle between individuals and groups within

Congress, the Senate, the State Department, USAID, and the Department of Defense.

In this battle, those representing the interests of American commerce and geo-strategy

invariably come out on top:

‘[E]very important institutional advance in the U.S. Government that strengthens the

democracy policy – the human rights reports and creation of DRL [Bureau of

Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor], the offices for religious freedom and

trafficking in persons, the funding for various country and functional programs – not

only emerged from Congress rather than the State Department, but was consistently

resisted by the Department’ (anonymous communication in Melia 2005:15).

In conclusion, the unprincipled promotion of democracy is consistent both among

geographic regions and among American and European governments. Indeed, even

the United Nations itself has faced major criticisms of its role in the unfree, unfair,

and violent presidential elections in Afghanistan in 2009 (Daily Telegraph 2009).

Promoting polyarchy, even authoritarianism, but not democracy

Depending on the disposition of incumbent and opposition elites towards Western

interests and the balance of power between them, Western actions are often directed at

sustaining authoritarian regimes or even bringing autocratic rulers to power. At best,

they are directed to installing a model of liberal democracy that equates to orthodox

political scientists’ top-down and institutionalist definitions of polyarchy rather than

to any bottom-up, structuralist understanding of democracy (Dahl 1971, 1989;

Robinson 1996). Thus, a ‘democracy’ is defined by the presence of certain (formal)

institutions which ensure democratic politics.

Consensual hegemony?

By applying Gramscian theory to case studies of Western democracy promotion in

Latin America, Robinson (1996) has argued that democracy promotion constitutes an

attempt by transnational capitalist elites to avoid excessive coercion and instead

establish global consent to secure the hegemony of neo-liberal forms of economic and

political globalisation. This is what he and other critical thinkers identify as the real

objective of Western democracy promotion. We will consider this perspective later in

this paper. Suffice to conclude at this juncture that the foreign policies and diplomatic

actions are serving often to support authoritarian elites and even to undermine rather

than support genuinely pro-democratic forces in non-democratic societies around the

world.

Justifications: Why promote democracy?

The three founding myths of democracy promotion: principle, security, development

Democracy promotion as both foreign policy objective and aid strategy is justified by

its proponents on three main grounds: principle, security, and development. These are

encapsulated most succinctly in USAID’s (2005) ‘Democracy and Governance

Strategic Framework’. According to this Framework, the US government promotes

democracy first ‘as a matter of principle: people have the fundamental right to

participate in the decisions that affect their lives’ (USAID 2005: 5). Second, USAID

sees the promotion of democracy as ‘central to our national security’ because

‘countries that lack political freedom, accountability, and avenues for redress can also

breed internal instability and threaten regional and international security’ (ibid: 5).

Finally, the US promotes democracy because ‘democracy, good governance, and

development reinforce each other to create a virtuous circle’ (ibid: 5). Let us consider

these three justifications one by one.

Principle

With regard to the first of these justifications, principle, it is beyond the scope of this

concluding chapter to explore fully the ethics of Western interventions in the name of

democracy promotion. Suffice to say here that by labelling the current implementation

of democracy promotion as ‘unprincipled’, I am contrasting the pristine and presently

unattainable ideal of democracy promotion with its sullied reality. Thus, I am

concerned here not with justifications based on ideals but based instead on a

contemporary reality in which Western democracy promotion is an unprincipled

rather than a principled pursuit. Unprincipled democracy promotion may be justified

on other grounds, but surely not on ethical ones. This undermines the first of the

founding myths justifying and legitimating democracy promotion. The protection of

universal democratic principles would require a principled application of this

protection itself. This is currently unattainable.

Security

The security justification for democracy promotion is founded firmly on the long-

established ‘democratic peace’ theory which, in its simplest formulation, states that

democracies do not go to war with other democracies.4 Building democracies abroad

4 See, for example, Doyle 1986, Gleditsch 1992, Owen 1994, Halperin et al 2005

thus becomes a matter of self-interest: ‘the US must make democracy promotion a

priority because “liberty at home now depends on liberty abroad”’ (Traub 2008: 219).

The security argument is at the heart of official American and European justifications

for democracy promotion. President Bill Clinton asserted that ‘[u]ltimately, the best

strategy to ensure our security and to build a durable peace is to support the advance

of democracy elsewhere’.5 For President George W Bush, ‘expanding freedom’ was

‘more than a moral imperative. It is the only realistic way to protect our people’.6 In

Europe, both the EU’s Euro-Mediterranean Partnership and European Neighbourhood

Policy have been designed as mechanisms to build liberal democratic institutions

beyond EU borders with security concerns in mind (Schmid & Braizat 2006; Ferrero-

Waldner 2007).

There are many flaws in this simplistic version of the democratic peace thesis. First,

the power of the thesis depends very much on what definition of democracy one

adopts. Here, again, the problem is one of a conflation of ideal and reality. Whilst the

democratic peace thesis may prove somewhat robust with regard to mature

democracies with genuine elements of institutionalised representation, it falls apart

when applied to those ‘democracies with adjectives’ – fragile polyarchies,

competitive authoritarian regimes, and the like - for whom the term ‘democracy’ is far

too liberally applied (Collier & Levitsky 1997). Mansfield and Snyder (2005) have

shown how and why what they call ‘emerging democracies’ are more likely to go to

war across and within their own borders. Collier and Rohner (2007: 2-4) find that

polyarchy actually increases prospects of internal conflict in countries below a

threshold of $2,750 GDP per capita. Thus, while the establishment of a nominally

5 State of the Union Address 1994 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/states/docs/sou94.htm). Accessed August 4th 2010.6 George W Bush’s speech to mark Human Rights Day 2008 (http://www.america.gov/st/texttrans-english/2008/December/20081210155356eaifas0.9769709.html). Accessed August 4th 2010.

pluralist party system and elections may seem to many to be putting a country on the

road to democracy, it could well be putting it on the road to internal conflict and even

violence.

This brings us to the issue of the nature of the conflicts we include. The democratic

peace thesis is more concerned with cross-border wars, but internal civil wars can be

equally devastating to a nation and the wider region. Hobsbawn (2007: 98) offers the

example of Colombia, a country with ‘an almost unique record of virtually continuous

constitutional representative democratic government’, yet one in which ‘the number

of people killed, maimed and driven from their homes…over the past half-century

runs into millions…’. The Colombian and other examples lead Hobsbawn (2007: 99)

to the conclusion that ‘the well being of countries does not depend on the presence or

absence of any single brand of institutional arrangement, however morally

commendable’.

Then there is the issue of the nature of the military threat that Western democracy

promoting nations now face. Rather than military invasion from other nations, the

threat is far more one of acts of terrorism committed by non-state actors. Citing

examples of long-lived terrorist groups in mature democracies such as the IRA in the

United Kingdom and ETA in Spain, Bermeo (2009a: 24) concludes that ‘there is little

evidence that democracy provides immunity from terrorism’. Furthermore, one must

not forget that the present threat of terrorism from Islamist groups comes from within

American and European societies as much as it does from Muslim nations (ibid: 25).

Carothers (2008a: 74) argues that ‘the notion that democratization around the world

will dry up the sources of radical Islamist terrorism rests on substantial doses of

wishful thinking’ and, offering the examples of China and Saudi Arabia, reminds us

that ‘[m]any autocracies have been more effective in preventing terrorism than many

democracies’.

Finally, while mature democracies may not attack other mature democracies, their

democratic political systems have not stopped them attacking other, non-democratic

nations. In reality, a ‘culture of democracy’ is not always ‘fundamentally a culture of

peace’ (Boutros Ghali in Diamond 1999: 5). Very often, of course, the deliverance of

peace and freedom is used to justify such invasions. ‘[American] presidents rarely fail

to trot out “democracy” as a justification for their actions abroad’ (Bueno de Mesquita

& Downs 2004). Yet, the actual track record is far less impressive than the rhetoric.

Bueno de Mesquita and Downs (2004), for example, find that of the 35 post-War

military interventions undertaken by the United States in ‘developing countries’, in

only one case did a ‘full-fledged, stable democracy’ subsequently emerge within ten

years. The case in question was Colombia whose own political stability has been

questioned earlier in this section. Whatever the real justifications for invasion may be,

democratic nations are no less belligerent. Bermeo (2009a: 25) seems right to find

‘the functionalist message that democracy will bring peace’ both ‘unrealistic’,

‘blatantly self-serving’, and an unintended way to ‘legitimat[e] skepticism’ towards

American and European democracy promotion efforts.

Development

The relationship between particular forms of political and economic systems remains

a puzzle at the heart of social scientific research. In spite of this uncertainty, however,

the message propounded by Western aid donors is clear and unambiguous: that ‘all

good things go together’, that is political and economic freedoms complement and

sustain each other in a virtuous cycle of development and democratisation.

One does not even need to explore the literature on this theme to challenge this claim

of universal mutual complementarity. Empirically, in fact, the link between

authoritarian rule and rapid and sustained economic development seems far more

evident. Consider, for example, the phenomenon of the so-called ‘developmental

states’ of Latin America and particularly of East Asia.7 Within the literature on

developmental states lies an emphasis on the importance of the autonomy, albeit

‘embedded’ within key industrial sectors (Evans 1995), of state leaders, allowing

them to make big decisions quickly. This is not to say that democracy is always

necessarily incompatible with rapid, sustained development, but that it seems less

compatible than with more authoritarian or at least more centralised forms of

governance.

One final point on the issue of development is to highlight that the model promoted

by aid donors of the restrained, ‘nightwatchman’ state regulating a free-market,

private sector-driven process of economic development also conflicts with the

historical evidence of the state’s role in the successful development of today’s

Western First World nations and the more protectionist industrial and economic

strategies they employed (Chang 2002, 2008).

Once more, then, the final fundamental justification for Western democracy

promotion weakens when the logic behind it is interrogated.

Assumptions about democracy and democracy promotion

Behind the moral, strategic, or economic justifications for democracy promotion lie

often implicit assumptions about democracy and democracy promotion that also serve

to justify democracy promotion as foreign policy objective and aid strategy. The

7 See, for example, Johnson 1982, Amsden 1989, Leftwich 1995, Evans 1995, Aoki et al 1997, Woo-Cumings ed 1999.

primary assumptions in question here are: that democracy is a universally applicable

political system, that citizens of the ‘developing world’ want democracy and want the

West to intervene in their societies to promote it, and that citizens in Western societies

want their governments to promote democracy abroad.

Assumptions of democracy as universally applicable political system

A detailed discussion of the nature of democratisation is beyond the scope of this

paper. Suffice to say here that the whole logic of Western democracy promotion is

necessarily founded on an assumption that all non-democratic political systems can

become democratic which necessarily rejects structuralist or culturalist arguments

about the socio-economic or political cultural pre-requisites for democratic politics

posited by many political scientists and sociologists.

Assumptions of universal demand

Beyond assumptions about the universal applicability of democracy lie assumptions

about a universal demand for it. The first problem with this assumption is a

methodological one. Surveys such as the Afrobarometer, Eurobarometer, and

Latinobarometer may reveal consistently high levels of popular demand for

democracy, but individual definitions of what democracy actually means vary greatly

and are highly subjective. In fact, there is strong evidence to show that people in all

societies (where their material needs are not secure) prioritise economic security and

prosperity over increased personal liberty (Inglehart 1997). Achard and Gonzalez

(2005: 16) find that, whilst ‘[d]emocracy is now the ideal and the goal of most Central

Americans’, ‘they are increasingly dissatisfied with the way it actually functions’ and

‘whilst defending democracy as an ideal, the majority says that it would support an

undemocratic regime that could solve their economic problems’. In eight post-Soviet

societies, Haerpfer (2008: 415) finds that it is the ‘structure and performance of the

macro-economy’ that constitutes ‘the most important single influence upon support

for the current political regime’. In Eastern Europe too, ‘popular trust in democratic

institutions strongly correlates with the quality of life, as indicated by the Consumer

Price Index, inflation, index of income inequality, and the social security index’

(Krupavicius 2007: 134). In Russia, Whitefield (2005: 140) finds that ‘democratic

norms play no role in shaping Russian state identification while economic norms

dominate’. In her global level study, echoing Haggard and Kaufman’s (1995: 7) thesis

that good economic times generate support for regimes of all stripes, Doorenspleet

(2004: 313) finds a highly statistically significant correlation between regime

legitimacy and economic performance.

Diamond (1999: 192-3) argues that ‘[t]he growing evidence from many countries and

regions suggests that, in forming beliefs about regime legitimacy, citizens weigh

independently – and much more heavily – the political performance of the system, in

particular, the degree to which it delivers on its promise of freedom and democracy’. I

disagree with this submission. I side instead with Sardamov (2007: 407):

‘[t]he underlying notion that human beings all over the world can be chiefly

motivated by a desire for personal liberty seems a truly noble ideal. Like many other

noble ideals, though, it is hardly realistic’.

Thus, the assumption underpinning justifications for Western democracy promotion

of the universal demand for democracy, though ‘noble’, is flawed and instead reflects

‘a sort of wishful thinking entailing dangerous and counterproductive policies’ (ibid:

407).

The assumption of society’s demand for democracy serves to validate actor-oriented

institutionalist theories of democratisation and policies of democracy promotion in the

same way that assumptions of economic demand encapsulated in Say’s law validate

neo-classical economic theory. Thus, Dahl (1971: 26) contends that ‘the greater the

opportunities for expressing, organizing, and representing political preferences, the

greater the number and variety of preferences and interests that are likely to be

represented in policy making’. The assumption here is that, once liberated, civil

society will do all the jobs prescribed for it by liberal theorists. This assumption is

both apolitical and acultural in the sense that it ignores both the structural power

relations and the cultural factors that inhibit and limit the mobilisation and

organisation of oppressed social groups and keeps them politically impotent and

marginalised.

Finally, it is essential to disaggregate demand for democracy per se from any specific

demand for democracy promotion. Whilst donors may be keen to assume that demand

for democracy means demand for their services, this does not necessarily follow.

Indeed, though the welcome for American democracy promotion organisations may

be slightly warmer since Barack Obama replaced George W Bush in the White House,

in many parts of the world, American efforts to promote democracy are widely met

with a deep sense of cynicism and mistrust.

In short, there are good reasons to challenge the assumptions that democracy

promotion’s proponents make about universal demand both for democracy and

democracy promotion.

Assumptions of Western citizens’ demand for democracy promotion

One might be forgiven for assuming from the way in which Western leaders use the

emotive power of democracy in their discursive legitimation of their own foreign

policies that demand for democracy promotion among their own citizens is high. Yet,

Tures (2007: 560) finds that ‘Americans rarely express passionate views on the

subject’ and ‘only a minority express strong preferences for democracy promotion, or

list it as a top priority’. Instead, like their counterparts in non-democratic societies,

Americans ‘give greater preference to elements such as peace, national security, job

security, and a reliable source of energy’. Indeed, whilst 85 percent see protecting

American jobs as a foreign policy priority, Tures (2007: 565) found that only 22

percent saw democracy promotion in a similar light.

Tures’ findings lead him to identify what he calls the ‘democracy promotion gap’ – a

tension between the democratic rhetoric that American citizens seem to like and a

general unwillingness to prioritise and pay for the global promotion of democracy

(Tures 2007: 561). In addition, in the wake of the experiences in Iraq and

Afghanistan, Tures finds that ‘Americans are becoming more skeptical of pushing

freedom upon other countries’ (ibid: 564). Tures’ research strongly suggests that,

though citizens in Western societies may like the idea of spreading peace and liberty

across the globe, in reality, for most charity begins at home . Domestic demand for

democracy promotion interventions cannot be assumed.

Polyarchic objectives and flawed justifications

What are the foreign policy objectives of democracy promotion? Clearly, the

objectives declared by Western policymakers are unrealistic and even deceptive.

Instead, at best, Western governments and organisations are aiming to promote the

growth of institutional polyarchy rather than any popular form of democracy and, at

worst, their unprincipled application of democracy promotion even serves to sustain

and strengthen authoritarian regimes. Furthermore, when scrutinised, the logic behind

the three main justifications for Western democracy promotion of principle, security,

and development and also the assumptions about both international and domestic

demand for such interventions proves highly flawed.

In the next section, I explore the reality of democracy promotion further by assessing

what we know about the actual nature and effects of Western democracy promotion as

aid strategy.

Democracy promotion: known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns

Following in the venerated footsteps of former US Defence Secretary and

existentialist poet Donald Rumsfeld, I consider in this section the ‘known knowns’,

‘the known unknowns’, and the ‘unknown unknowns’ of Western democracy

promotion in an attempt to offer some evaluation of democracy promotion’s merits

and perils as a form of aid intervention (Seely 2003).

The ‘known knowns’ of democracy promotion

What do we know that we know about the nature and effects of democracy promotion

aid interventions aimed at building the organisations and institutions of polyarchy in

targeted societies? In other words, what can we say with certainty, or at least

confidence, about democracy promotion as aid strategy?

‘Political’ democracy promotion

We know that American democracy promotion is largely underpinned by the strategy

of what Carothers (2009) calls ‘political democracy promotion’ which espouses a

Mannichaean understanding of democratisation as a domestic elite struggle, pitting

‘democrats’ against ‘autocrats’. This conceptualisation makes the mission of

democracy promoters clear and simple: assist the democrats and resist the autocrats or

at least try to convince them of the errors of their ways and the benefits of

‘democratic’ institutional reforms.

We also know the flaws in this strategy: that self-declared ‘democrats’ in opposition

may not turn out to rule so democratically once in power; that external interventions

can frustrate and anger those excluded from support and can thereby exacerbate

domestic political conflict; and that those supported can and do use foreign financial,

material, technical, and discursive support for their own particular political ends

(Carothers 2009; Burnell 2000; Spence 2008). We also know that this political

democracy promotion leads governments and other agencies to label new regimes as

‘democratic’ far too quickly and to switch the focus of their assistance from non-

government sectors to direct governmental support (USAID 2005: 12; Melia 2005;

Carothers 2009).

The methods and techniques of democracy promotion

Democracy promotion aid projects have three main targets for reform within non-

democratic societies: state institutions, political parties and legislatures, and ‘civil

society’. We know that the methods and techniques of democracy promotion in all

three areas are dominated by the provision of technical training and ‘expert’ advice

(Carothers 1999; Burnell 2000; de Zeeuw 2004). For example, with regard to ‘party

aid’ – aid projects aimed at building democratic political parties - Carothers (2006a:

120) identifies a ‘standard method’ characterised by programmes delivered according

to ‘preset, standardized designs not well-adapted to their particular context and

mechanistic methods of implementation’. Such programmes are largely universally-

applied ‘cookie-cutter’ approaches to what Carothers calls ‘institutional modeling’,

consisting predominantly of ‘ritualized methods of training’ such as workshops and

seminars.

We also know that the evidence that exists clearly shows that Western democracy

promotion projects have not succeeded in achieving any significant pro-democratic

outcomes in a single targeted society (e.g. Carothers 1999, 2004, 2006a; Burnell

2000, 2006; Kumar 2004; de Zeeuw 2004). The greatest achievements they point to

are successes in the increased technical efficiency and professionalisation of ‘civil

society’ (read the NGO sector), of state institutions, and of political parties (Burnell

2006; Carothers 2006; Kumar & de Zeeuw 2008).

Aid to state institutions

Democracy promotion aid focused on the reform of state institutions is supposedly

aimed at democratising processes of decision-making within government structures.

Carothers (2009: 14) lauds a ‘developmental’ approach to promoting democratic state

institutions that:

‘favors democracy aid that pursues incremental, long-term change in a wide range of

political and socioeconomic sectors, frequently emphasizing governance and the

building of a well-functioning state.’

He contrasts this with ‘political’ democracy promotion which, by espousing a more

agentic and short-termist conceptualisation of democratisation, promotes individuals

over institutions, thereby often exacerbating domestic political conflict. Yet, even

‘developmental’ democracy promoters working to ‘democratise’ governance

processes tend to support centralised and vertical power structures. To achieve their

targets, democracy promotion technocrats must secure as much of their reform agenda

as possible within the brief life of their specific project. Thus, they need to cultivate

close personal relationships with high-ranking individuals with the power to effect the

changes they seek. In Georgia, for example, the success of a USAID-sponsored

project required the identification of ‘potentially positive collaborators/supporters

within the decision-making body of the Government’ (DAI 2006: 13). Ironically,

technocratic reforms supposedly designed to depersonalise bureaucratic institutions

were themselves dependent on getting ‘the right Georgian’ in the right position of

authority (ibid: 14).

To succeed, democracy promoters need to operate within the order and predictability

of highly centralised governmental structures and cannot accommodate the lengthy

deliberation that comes with more horizontal, democratic practices. Thus, such a

technocratic approach to democracy promotion has also served to promote individuals

over institutions, thereby helping to centralise power in state institutions rather than

making decision-making processes more participatory and decentralised.

Political party aid

Carothers (2006a: 164) finds that ‘even some of [party aid’s] largest, most

concentrated undertakings have failed to produce many lasting positive results’ and

that party aid projects around the world have had ‘modest positive outcomes’ at best.

Carothers lists these modest positive outcomes as ‘better campaigning’ - the use of

increasingly sophisticated election campaign techniques by political parties in

targeted countries and in the general trend towards the ‘professionalization of election

campaigning’ (ibid: 185); ‘small steps on organizational development’; and ‘emergent

norms of party organization’. Yet, with regard to organisational development,

Carothers (2006a: 187) himself concedes that ‘it is hard to identify cases of parties

that as a result of externally funded assistance have made fundamental organizational

changes that have solved the core characteristics that drew party aid providers in to

work with them, such as establishing top-down, leader-centric organizational

structures or reducing significant corruption’. Similarly, with regard to the supposed

institutionalisation of democratic norms of party organisation Carothers (2006a: 189)

concludes that such international norms seem limited to the realm of rhetoric and, in

reality, remain ‘quite toothless and easy to ignore’. Thus, party aid’s one and only

significant contribution has been in the professionalisation of party politics. Yet, this

professionalisation has anti-democratic rather than pro-democratic effects since a

greater role for money in politics tends to favour incumbents in authoritarian regimes

with greater access to state and other resources. A professionalisation of and greater

political focus on election campaigning also means greater use of communications

technologies that allow party leaders to get their messages out to potential voters

without the need of nationwide networks of activists that link the party to society

(Burnell 2006). Thus, the professionalisation of politics is often shorthand for the

greater centralisation rather than democratisation of political party structures and

power.

Civil society aid

Almost two decades of Western development and democracy promotion aid designed

at building liberal civil societies able to advocate for their interests and hold their

governments to account have not only failed in these objectives, but have created

NGO sectors that are the antithesis of the liberal vision for civil society.8 Rather than

being autonomous, self-sufficient organisations based on voluntarism, they are

organisations dependent on continued Western funding run invariably by professional

English-speaking, well-educated, urban-based elites. Those elements of associational

life in many countries that have foundations considered ‘uncivil’ by Western donors,

such as ethnically-based or religiously-oriented organisations have been, until recently

at least, systematically excluded from receiving Western assistance.

The artificial nature of the creation and funding of NGOs makes such organisations

detached from and often maligned by rather than representative of and embedded

within their societies. The often intense competition for Western funds between

NGOs inhibits rather than promotes the tolerance and co-operation necessary for

political organisation and for a more democratic political culture. It has also led to the

growth of certain large NGOs favoured by donors to the detriment of more genuinely

grassroots organisations (Stewart 2009; Uhlin 2009).

Other ‘known knowns’ about democracy promotion

Other known knowns about the nature and effects of democracy promotion projects

include the phenomenon of reverse causality, the paradox at the heart of democracy

promotion aid interventions, and the institutionalisation of the democracy promotion

industry.

Reverse causality

By ‘reverse causality’, I refer to the fact that, rather than transforming the political

culture or the power relations in a targeted society, the institutions established by

8 See, for example, Carothers 1999; Baker 2001; Hearn 2001; Mendelson & Glenn 2002; Nordhold 2004; Gould 2005; Uhlin 2009.

Western democracy promoters become reflective of the current political reality. Thus,

for example, in Georgia, efforts by a Western NGO to establish fora to cultivate inter-

party dialogue only led to these fora becoming reflective of the personal conflict that

characterises inter-party relations in the country. Consequently, we can submit with

some confidence that, however well intentioned, external interventions aimed at

creating alternative institutions for dialogue, negotiation, and participation are

unlikely to succeed unless all sides, all parties are totally committed to the process.

The classic aid paradox

This final point leads me onto another ‘known known’. If all sides of a political

dispute are willing to engage constructively in dialogue, this, by definition, negates

the need for external projects aimed at building institutions for facilitating dialogue.

Hence, the classic paradox of foreign aid – if it can work in a country it is not needed

and if it is needed it cannot work. There may well be an arbitrating role for external

agents in such processes of dialogue, but these should be undertaken subject to

invitation rather than on the grounds of an assumption of the need and appropriateness

of such interventions.

The classic aid paradox extends into all realms of democracy promotion institution-

building. Democracy promotion can only facilitate the development of more

democratic forms of civil society, political parties, or state bodies if there is genuine

and broad commitment within society, parties, and state bodies to democratisation.

Yet, where such commitment exists, democratisation will come without external

assistance. Where it is absent, democracy promotion interventions seem unable to

build either democratic political institutions or consensus for reform.

Institutionalisation of the aid system

Another ‘known known’ is that the aid industry – the organisations comprising the

international development and democracy promotion apparatus – has become a

permanent and institutionalised part of the political and economic landscape in many

aid-dependent countries (Gould 2005; Whitfield 2006, 2009). This is a real concern

for many primarily because its presence and its resources orient its beneficiaries – be

they government ministers, civil servants, or NGO workers – upwards and outwards

rather than inwards and downwards. Accountability is to donors rather than to

citizens.

Aid as a source of power and patronage supports the creation, development, and

maintenance of dominant-party systems. When perceived ‘democrats’ are in power, it

helps the ruling party to build its capacity to dominate. When perceived autocrats are

in power, it works to destabilise the regime and bring perceived democrats to power.

In this way, it prompts all parties to first seek succour internationally rather than

domestically.

Aid as a source of financial support and dependence in society draws talented and

politically engaged people away from both the public sector and party politics.

Burnell (2006: 203) has argued that ‘endeavours that prompt parties to look upwards

and outwards should not mean neglect of renewed efforts to encourage parties to look

inwards and downwards, too’. Yet, as long as access to the state means access to

foreign resources vital to satisfying personal and political success or, in short, as long

as Western and other governments give financial aid, politicians will always suffer

from strained necks rather than stooped shoulders.

The known knowns of democracy promotion

With regard to the known knowns of democracy promotion, we know that nowhere

have democracy promotion interventions secured significant democratic successes in

targeted societies and we can state with confidence that its contribution to the

professionalisation of both civil societies and political parties have had more anti-

democratic than pro-democratic outcomes. We can also say that, rather than having

their desired transformative effects, the institutions established by democracy

promoters often become reflective of current power relations in a political system.

Finally, we are becoming increasingly aware of the permanent institutionalisation of

the aid apparatus, including the democracy promotion industry, within aid-receiving

societies and the damaging economic and political effects of this development.

The ‘known unknowns’ of democracy promotion

By ‘known unknowns’, I refer to issues and effects generated by democracy

promotion about which, as Rumsfeld himself would put it, we know that we do not

know. As social scientists investigating complex social phenomena populated by

path-dependent organisations and institutions, we are always grappling with the

unknown and unknowable, particularly when we are trying to understand effects on

political systems and societies that may not become manifest for years or longer.

Thus, Burnell (2008: 422) remind us that ‘[j]udgements about democracy assistance’s

impact that try to take in unintended and future consequences are bound to be more

speculative than commenting on a project’s more narrowly defined objectives or

expenditures alone. And yet impact is what matters most in the long run.’

Burnell, Carothers, and others have identified several potential and probable

detrimental effects of the various forms of democracy promotion interventions on

targeted political systems and societies. Let us here consider two specific and very

important issues for democracy promotion on which the jury is out.

Democratic socialisation

Common in the literature written by democracy promoters and advocates of

democracy promotion are claims about benefits of their interventions that are less

tangible, but potentially greatly significant. One prime example of this is the claim of

the effect of ‘democratic socialisation’: that, by exposing political elites and ordinary

citizens alike to democracy promotion projects, these projects inculcate liberal

democratic norms and values within the psyche of participants, leading to pro-

democratic changes in their behaviour. Ironically, this claim is also made by certain

critics of democracy promotion and development aid: that such interventions are a

‘technology of social control’ designed to co-opt elites and to establish consensus

around liberal forms of political and economic globalisation (Fraser 2005).

This claim is of crucial importance because, as Carothers (1999: 90) points out, the

‘institutional modelling’ approach that defines practical democracy promotion and the

training method that dominates it, are ‘founded on the idea that individuals in key

institutions can and should be taught to shape their actions and their institutions in line

with the appropriate models’.

In contrast to the promises of democracy promotion’s transformational socialising

power, Carothers’ (2006a: 189) offers pessimistic anecdotal observations about the

gulf between the words and actions of targeted political elites. Rather than

experiencing a more profound change in their political cultural disposition, it seems

that politicians participating in democracy promotion projects merely become well

versed in the discourse of ‘democracy’ as promoted by the West.

A recent survey-based study of politician participants in democracy promotion

projects in Morocco reinforces this skepticism about the ability of democracy

promotion to socialise political elites into liberal democratic values. Freyburg and

Richter (2010) find a positive significant correlation between participation in

democracy promotion projects and increased democratic values only in individuals

who have previously lived in other democratic societies.

Instead of the socialisation of political elites as promised by advocates of democracy

promotion, what democracy promotion seems to play a part in is the international

institutionalisation of the democratic rhetoric rather than the practices of political

elites. And it is ultimately actions that speak louder than words.

‘Aid interactions’: macro undermines micro

Bermeo (2009a) has recently highlighted another ‘known unknown’ for us, that which

she calls the effects of ‘aid interactions’. Both in everyday discussion and in academic

writings, we all too often refer to the many forms and mechanisms that comprise

‘foreign aid’ as one amalgamated whole. Yet, as Bermeo emphasises with regard to

the damaging effect that Western military support to a regime has on democracy

promotion efforts, different forms of Western aid can have different effects and,

moreover, the interactions between these different forms may well also have

differing, unintended, and detrimental effects. I would like to highlight one further,

damaging form of aid interaction.

Though it may be conceptually helpful, even logical to analyse the effects of

institution-building project interventions separately from the effects of foreign policy

and diplomacy when studying Western democracy promotion, in reality, this is a false

and misleading separation. What happens on a macro, foreign policy level directly

affects the efforts of democracy promoters on the ground working with governments,

political parties, and NGOs. Thus, the unprincipled and inconsistent application of

democracy promotion has direct and detrimental consequences for the endeavours of

democracy promoters working on the ground with civil society organisations or

political parties. In Georgia, for example, I found that it had the effect of undermining

faith both in the functional and normative power of the Western model of

‘democracy’.

Thus, we know that what happens at the macro level can greatly effect interventions

at the micro level. What exactly these effects may be we can say with far less

certainty. Hence, the issue of aid interactions is one of democracy promotion’s

‘known unknowns’.

The ‘unknown unknowns’ of democracy promotion

Unintended consequences are, by definition, unforeseen and often unforeseeable. We

can, therefore, speak of the existence of ‘unknown unknowns’ with relation to

democracy promotion and, by extension, all Western aid interventions. Such unknown

unknowns may have long-lasting effects on the political development of targeted

societies. Indeed, when we see evidence of the institutionalisation of the aid industry

in aid-dependent societies today and the retarding effects that this process may be

having on the development of these societies, we might identify this as a previously

‘unknown unknown’ in the sense that it seems highly unlikely that the original

architects of the aid system foresaw such consequences or anything approaching

them. Since unknown unknowns are, by definition, not presently known to us, we can

do no more than to speculate on their existence and perhaps try to trace back current

‘known knowns’ and ‘known unknowns’ to a time when they themselves were

unknown unknowns to prove the evolution of our knowledge in this field.

Known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns in democracy

promotion

When we reflect systematically on our knowledge about the effects of democracy

promotion interventions, we are not left feeling confident about the power of

democracy promotion either to do good in targeted societies or, at the very least, to do

no harm. Instead, we find evidence for the impotence and even damaging potential of

Western democracy promotion projects and we find reasons to be concerned about the

potential medium- and long-term political consequences of such interventions and

policies for targeted societies.

The state of democracy promotion today: a crisis of legitimacy

‘Systemic failures of democratic regimes to operate effectively could undermine their

legitimacy…[S]ustained inability to provide welfare, prosperity, equity, justice,

domestic order, or external security could over time undermine the legitimacy even of

democratic governments’ (Huntington 1996: 10).

Just as he linked ‘waves’ of democratisation with authoritarian regimes’ ‘inability to

maintain “performance legitimacy” due to economic…failure’ (Huntington 1996: 4),

Huntington predicts the possible collapse of democratic (read polyarchic) regimes on

the same grounds. By extension, this same existential threat applies to the Western

policy and practice of democracy promotion. To be able to continue, democracy

promotion ultimately requires some continued political legitimacy. In contrast, in the

following sections, I show how democracy promotion is facing a crisis of legitimacy.

I first show that poor performance has damaged the legitimacy of democracy

promotion worldwide. I then argue that this current ‘crisis of legitimacy’ is already

having tangible repercussions.

The damaged legitimacy of democracy promotion

‘Democracy’ as ‘debased currency’

‘…in the days of what used to be called ‘real existing socialism’ even the most

implausible regimes laid claim to it in their official titles, such as North Korea, Pol

Pot’s Cambodia, and Yemen. Today, of course, it is impossible, outside some Islamic

theocracies and Asian hereditary kingdoms and sheikhdoms, to find any regime that

does not pay official tribute, in constitution and editorial, to competitively elected

assemblies or presidents… This is why rational public discussion of democracy is

both necessary and unusually difficult’ (Hobsbawn 2007: 95)

As representatives of the very system they seek to promote, it is arguably Western

governments and international organisations that have inflicted more damage on the

‘D’ word than the likes of North Korea. Whilst all are aware that North Korea is not a

democracy, most expect Western governments to show far greater commitment and

consistency to the democratic cause. One main way in which Western governments

have damaged the international standing of ‘democracy’ is by ascribing the status of

‘democracy’ to far too many countries unworthy of the title. Almost 100 countries

were included by ‘exultant democracy promoters’ as part of democracy’s ‘Third

Wave’ in the 1990s, yet, according to Carothers (2004: 46), only ‘a small number

have succeeded in consolidating democracy’.

‘Regimes in Ghana, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Peru, Russia, Ukraine, and

Zambia were routinely labeled democracies during the 1990s (20). Even extreme

cases such as Belarus, Cambodia, Haiti, and Russia under Putin occasionally earned

a democratic label’ (Levitsky & Way 2010: 14).

As a consequence, ‘[f]or some time, the word democracy has been circulating as a

debased currency in the political marketplace’ (Schmitter & Karl 1996: 49). The

description is an apt one. When a central bank prints too much money, its currency

devalues and the bank loses legitimacy and credibility as an organisation. By being

applied too widely and too loosely, the word ‘democracy’ has lost a significant

amount of its symbolic power and those governments and organisations misusing the

word have also lost credibility and legitimacy.

‘Gun-barrel democracy promotion’

The abuse of the word in the context of the US strategies in both Iraq and Afghanistan

has, no doubt, further devalued ‘democracy’ as global currency. So well documented

is the ‘Iraq effect’ on the status of democracy promotion that I will not dwell on the

case for long here.9 Carothers (2008b: 132) laments the fact that the association with a

war that is ‘almost universally reviled, rejected and regretted around the world’ has

been ‘devastating to the legitimacy of the concept of democracy promotion. He also

regrets President Bush’s association of democracy promotion with regime change, his

‘reattachment of security interests with the democracy concept’, and the reality of the

‘War on Terror’ of closer co-operation between Western democratic governments and

Middle Eastern authoritarian regimes. Carothers, Traub (2007), and Bermeo (2009b) 9 For more on the effects of the American invasion of Iraq on democracy promotion, see Diamond 2005; Traub 2007; Carothers 2008.

all rightly recognise also the damage that American international legal and

humanitarian abuses abroad have inflicted on the legitimacy of democracy promotion

and the credibility of the United States as global promoter of democracy.

‘If, as Steven Fish argues, the success of democracy promotion depends on a people’s

“disposition toward the democratizers,” the efforts of U.S. democracy promoters have

been seriously compromised by these well documented deviations from the

democratic ideal’ (Bermeo 2009b: 14).

The vociferous and sustained condemnation of so-called ‘gun-barrel democracy

promotion’ and the swift moves by President Barack Obama to disassociate his new

administration from the greatest excesses of this policy may allow for some limited

rehabilitation, yet the damage done to the legitimacy of both democracy promotion

and the United States is undoubtedly great.

The socioeconomic foundations of legitimacy

‘The official truth, propagated by the dominant elite, usually has a great deal of

influence. But the firsthand life experience of ordinary people also counts – and

ultimately may have even greater credibility than the official truth’ (Inglehart 1997:

27).

Inglehart’s conclusion can be expressed in five short words: ‘Actions speak louder

than words’. Earlier in this concluding chapter, I offered evidence to show that, just as

Huntington posits here, individuals in societies in all countries and regions of the

world prioritise their material security and prosperity over greater individual political

freedoms. The ‘performance’ required for political legitimacy is, above all, economic

in nature. Yet, the consequences of neo-liberal globalisation have been a major

increase in inequalities in income and opportunity in all parts of the world open to its

effects. Since the birth of the development industry after the Second World War, the

only nations to have achieved long-term, sustainable, and socially transformational

economic development grounded in processes of industrialisation have been those that

have eschewed the support and policy prescriptions of Western aid donors. The

‘underdeveloped world’ remains underdeveloped and the majority of its citizens

remain poor. Citizens of even stable polyarchies are growing increasingly frustrated

by the worsening economic situations they face, situations greatly exacerbated by the

global financial crisis. In short, as Huntington predicted, ‘democracy’, or neo-liberal

capitalist polyarchy to be more precise, is facing a growing crisis of ‘performance

legitimacy’. By extension, democracy promotion too is ‘experiencing serious

questions about its very legitimacy’ (Carothers 2007: 114).

The backlash against democracy promotion

The consequence of democracy promotion’s ‘crisis of legitimacy’ has been to arouse

what has been called a ‘backlash’ or, more emotively, an ‘assault’ against the policies

and practices of democracy promotion and the governments and organisations behind

them (Carothers 2006b; Gerschman & Allen 2006). This backlash has been carried

out by authoritarian governments wise to the interventionist strategies of democracy

promoters, but is also evident in the growth of nationalist populism in Central and

Eastern Europe and socialist populism and social(ist) democracy in Latin America in

societies that have grown tired of and cynical towards Western promises of

development and democracy. This ‘social backlash’, I argue, constitutes a rejection of

neo-liberal capitalist polyarchy made manifest in accordance with local political

structural and cultural tendencies. Here, I explore these state-directed and societal

manifestations of the backlash.

The backlash by authoritarian governments

‘Like European monarchs after 1848, post-Soviet strongmen are now concerned

about the transnational spread of revolution to their fiefdoms’ (Beissinger 2006).

As Beissinger here reflects, a backlash against democracy promotion has been

implemented by authoritarian governments in response to the spate of Western-

backed ‘coloured revolutions’ that took place in former communist states from the

late 1990s to mid-2000s. Chief architect of the ‘political technologies’ behind this

‘strategy of pre-emption’ has been the Kremlin (Silitski in Saari 2009: 743; Ambrosio

2009; Kechaqmadze 2007). The strategy has both a domestic and international

dimension.

Domestically, many authoritarian governments have used their control over formal

institutions to repress and punish Western democracy promotion organisations and

their local partners. Some have passed often draconian new laws regulating

international and local NGOs, making it virtually impossible for unwelcome foreign

organisations to function or even to stay by outlawing foreign funding or making

excessive financial or administrative demands on organisations. Some have banned

international election observers or have made it impossible or very difficult for them

to conduct their missions freely. Though Russia is the prime example here, other post-

Soviet states, particularly Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan, have all

adopted such strategies (Kechaqmadze 2007; Ambrosio 2009). Beyond the post-

Soviet region, other Asian, African and Latin American governments have adopted

similar strategies. Countries including Ethiopia, Egypt, Nepal, Bahrain, and

Venezuela have all told some democracy promotion organisations to leave or

temporarily halt their activities (Carothers 2008: 133; Sharp 2006: 22).

Internationally, Russia has led a ‘counter-democracy promotion strategy’ that

‘simultaneously questions European democratic standards and norms as well as

European institutions and procedures set up for protecting those standards and

monitoring their practical implementation’ (Saari 2009: 745). Central here is the tactic

of highlighting the double standards of Western democracy promoting states.

A major focus for the Kremlin has been on opposing the current election monitoring

mechanisms of the OSCE and Council of Europe. In October 2007, Russia established

the Institute for Democracy and Cooperation, opening offices in Paris and New York,

in order to ‘intensify debate of the general public, NGOs and experts about the ways

of organizing the electoral process, electoral monitoring, to discuss the situation with

national minorities and migrants, rights of children and youth, and freedom of speech

[sic] (Lavrov in Saari 2009: 745). Thus, both at a practical level within specific

regimes and on a normative international level, democracy promoting states and non-

state organisations and the model they pedal are being confronted and challenged by

resilient and revitalised authoritarian regimes.

The backlash by societies

‘The liberal era that began in Central Europe in 1989 has come to an end. Populism

and illiberalism are tearing the region apart…The new hard reality in Central Europe

is political polarization, a rejection of consensual politics, and the rise of populism’

(Krastev 2007: 57).

At the heart of the ‘crisis of democracy’ that Krastev (2007: 62) identifies in Central

and Eastern Europe lies ‘the clash between the liberal rationalism embodied by EU

institutions and the populist revolt against the unaccountability of the elites’. This

‘clash’ equates to the ‘tension’ I describe that is generated in the interaction between

the unprincipled promotion of democracy worldwide and the promotion and

implementation of inequality-generating neo-liberal economic and political reform.

The clash is also a consequence of the technocratic good governance agenda

promoted by Western states and development aid and democracy promotion

organisations that seeks to eradicate petty, systemic forms of corruption, but does

little to inhibit and even facilitates, through privatisation and liberalisation reforms,

elite forms of corruption.

In Central and Eastern Europe, ‘large groups of citizens have chosen to refrain from

participation in newly established democratic institutions’ and ‘the remaining active

electorate has become radicalized’ (Greskovits 2007: 45). Seleny (2007: 156) points

to ‘the persistence across the postcommunist space of xenophobic, ethnocratic,

authoritarian, and often violent subcultures and movements’. Greskovitz (2007: 40)

highlights survey data that reveals ‘strong dissatisfaction with democracy’.

The clash that Krastev refers to in fact pits liberalism against democracy. The political

elites that have benefitted from liberalisation defend their privileged economic and

political status. The EU accession process that facilitated polyarchic stability also

sowed the seeds of future instability by demanding ‘macroeconomic convergence’

around economic liberalism (ibid: 41). Closing down the space for economic policy

debate means severely limiting the space for political debate per se. Instead, popular

frustrations at the costs of neo-liberal reforms are made manifest in more dangerous

and destabilising nationalist and xenophobic forms.

In Latin America, the rejection of the US model of neo-liberal capitalist polyarchy by

both social movements and governments throughout the continent has been more

emphatic and has taken more progressive forms. Social democratic or socialist

governments now dominate the continent’s political landscape and moves to create

regional organisations such as Mercosur, UNASUR (Union of South American

Nations), and the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA) that bypass the

United States and the free trade agreements it pushes are developing.

The end of the unipolar world and the rise of rival models

‘One sees a return in some places to the notion that development requires a strong,

i.e. non-democratic hand, which puts off democratisation until some indefinite future,

and focuses on economic development and perhaps a little rule of law development’

(Carothers 2008a: 130).

The backlash against democracy promotion is exacerbated by one other hugely

significant factor. The world order has changed decisively and irreversibly since the

end of the Cold War. The period of American hegemony is over. The rise of China in

particular allows it to project an alternative model of economic and political

development outwards to many societies wishing to emulate their success. Beyond

projection, China is particularly busy offering financial and material support and

assistance to peripheral countries in every continent. In contrast to the conditionality-

driven model of Western aid, China makes no domestic political demands in return

for its assistance. Thus, the Chinese model is far more appealing, of course, to

authoritarian ruling elites. Yet, Carothers (2008a: 131) also recognises that, ‘in many

places, citizens frustrated with the democratic experiments they have lived through

are going along with this new trend’. The inability of the neo-liberal model of

development and democracy to deliver tangible economic benefits for the majority of

citizens in targeted societies has begun to trigger a backlash against it just at a time

when the global hegemony of the model is ending and its future relevance is being

challenged by a powerful, rising alternative model.

The backlash against democracy promotion

Authoritarian governments, fearful of being dethroned by opposition protests funded

by Western governments and NGOs, are striking back, attacking the system of

democracy promotion domestically and challenging both the system and the model of

democracy promotion internationally. Societies in different regions of the world are

rejecting the developmental and democracy model pushed by American and European

states in different ways. The crisis of legitimacy is spawning a backlash, one greatly

exacerbated by the end of American hegemony and the attractiveness and growing

credibility of the Chinese authoritarian model of economic development in particular.

Considering prescriptions for reform

Facing such a crisis of legitimacy, what might the architects of democracy promotion

both as foreign policy and aid strategy, and the intellectuals whose thinking influences

these policies and strategies, do to reverse their fortunes and improve outcomes in

targeted societies? In this section, I consider several options open to them and

question the potential of success for such options. Again, I do not find much cause for

optimism.

Rejecting political engineering

The institution-building model dominates the thinking and language both of

democracy promoters and intellectual advocates of democracy promotion. Such

language is replete with metaphors of construction and engineering in relation to the

development of democratic political institutions. Thus, for example, the National

Democratic Institute (NDI) sees its goal as working to ‘build political and civic

organisations’,10 whilst the Westminster Foundation for Democracy (2004) speaks of

‘building better democracies’. In academic writings, democracies are also the object

of active construction. The title of Mainwaring and Scully’s influential edited volume

of 1995, for example, refers to a process of actively ‘building democratic institutions’.

Diamond (1997) talks of ‘consolidating the Third Wave democracies’. Arendt

Lijphart (1996: 164) sees his aim as offering ‘practical recommendations for

democratic constitutional engineers’.

The danger here is in the adoption and promotion of an excessive formal

institutionalism in which it is believed that ‘democratization is ultimately a matter of

political crafting’ and in which ‘democracy can be crafted and promoted in all sorts of

places, even in culturally and structurally unfavourable circumstances’ (Doorenspleet

2004: 310).

Democracy does not come flat-packed and ready for assembly. Constitutions are not

picked ‘off the shelf’ in a political vacuum. Instead, political institutions are reflective

of and embedded in a society’s relations of economic and political power. A society’s

ruling elite is constrained by these structural relations. For all his talk of constitutional

engineering, even Lijphart (1996: 164) recognises that proportional representation

(PR) systems in Europe were adopted ‘through a convergence of pressures from 10 http://www.ndi.org/about_the_institute. Accessed November 16th 2010.

below and from above. The rising working class wanted to lower the thresholds of

representation in order to gain access to the legislatures, and the most threatened of

the old-established parties demanded PR to protect their position against the new

waves of mobilized voters created by universal suffrage’. Politics is indeed the art of

the possible. What Lijphart here calls constitutional engineering is actually the

outcome of the political conflict produced by structural changes in the social order.

The dangers of excessive formal institutionalism expressed by this discourse of

political engineering are real. We are increasingly recognising that external or top-

down attempts at cultural change through formal institutional engineering generate

unintended consequences. McGlinchey (2007: 12) recalls how even Stalin’s

totalitarian attempts to change the culture of Soviet peoples were ‘captured and

adapted to meet the local interests of…regional elites’. Yet, this does not prevent him

from prescribing ‘a considerably more sustained presence in the regions…if

democracy assistance is to succeed in building grassroots constituencies for political

parties’. McGlinchey misses the irony that the logical endpoint of prescribing ever-

increasing and more invasive efforts to build democracy in targeted societies is

precisely the totalitarianism he rejects.

In conclusion, democracy promoters and academics must recognise the real limits of

formal institutionalism and rethink their use of the discourse of construction and

engineering in relation to democratisation. They must recognise both in word and

deed the often very slow pace of institutional change and heed the warning offered by

Przeworski et al (2004: 540):

We need to be skeptical about our belief in the power of institutions and we need to

be prudent in our actions. Projects of institutional reform must take as their point of

departure the actual conditions, not blueprints based on institutions that have been

successful elsewhere. As a former Brazilian minister, Luiz Carlos Bresser Pereira,

once put it, ‘Institutions can be at most imported, never exported’.

Ending the localist fallacy

At a rhetorical level, democracy promoters one and all do insist that democracy

cannot be exported, that there is no one universal democratic model that fits all

societies, and that democracy promoters exist only to facilitate local societies’ own

pro-democratic efforts. Thus, the ‘fundamental principle’ for the National Endowment

for Democracy (NED 2007) is that ‘democracy grows from within societies and

cannot be exported’ and that ‘democracy assistance is not an exercise in top-down

social engineering but a way to assist people fighting for increased human rights and

democratic participation’. The European Commissioner for External Relations and

European Neighbourhood Policy Benita Ferrero-Waldner insists that the European

Union recognises that ‘[t]here is no one-size-fits-all solution to democracy promotion’

and that ‘democracy can never be imposed from outside’. Similarly, USAID (2005: 3)

insists that ‘democracy must be home-grown. Thus, the centrepiece of our efforts

remains our strong and enduring partnership with local actors’. The Westminster

Foundation for Democracy (2004: 26) states that ‘[e]verywhere, the purpose should

be to provide support to local initiatives, not to export some model of a party or party

systems that may reflect an image that no longer exists – perhaps never did exist –

even in the well-established democracies. The goal is to share democracy’s values and

democratic principles, not to transfer party blueprints or models.’

This universal declaration of a recognition and respect for local cultural and political

context is not honoured in practice. In reality, as I have explored earlier in this paper,

the bureaucratic and technocratic nature of Western aid donor agencies and project

implementation organisations means the universal, top-down export of an idealised

‘mythic model’ of liberal democracy through a ‘standard portfolio’ of technical

project interventions (Carothers 1999: 90, 2006a: 123). Consequently, such a

declaration constitutes what I call the ‘localist fallacy’ of democracy promotion.

Recently, calls for democracy promoters to end this localist fallacy and develop

programmes truly tailored to local conditions have grown (de Zeeuw 2004; Burnell

2006; Carothers 2006a). And some smaller organisations are proving much more

adaptable in their activities. Yet, even if all donors and project implementation

agencies were to tailor more contextualised programmes to local conditions, would

this really achieve more significant outcomes? If the call is for the preparatory

analysis informing programme design to be more political in nature, that is to take far

greater account of political realities, then it follows that the prescriptions for action

generated should also be more political. Yet, setting aside the ethics of direct

intervention into another society’s political system, the prospect of prescribing overtly

political interventionist programmes seems both highly hazardous and unrealistic.

They seem unrealistic since those prescribing reforms invariably assume that the

organisations both funding and implementing projects can themselves change

internally enough to accommodate significantly new ways of operating. Such changes

involve institutional reforms within these organisations. Since the donor and project

implementation agencies operate the way they do both because of the political

pressures and obstacles they face both at home and in recipient countries and because

the expertise they possess lies specifically in areas of technical know-how, it is

unrealistic simply to assume that these organisations can make the kind of internal

changes needed to implement democracy promotion programmes in dramatically

different ways. Consequently, we should be skeptical of both the ability of democracy

promotion donors and agencies to reform and of the potential for new forms of

interventions to secure significantly more positive outcomes.

Ending political democracy promotion

What Carothers has called ‘political democracy promotion’ informs and defines much

of the activities of American governmental and quasi-governmental democracy

promotion organisations and the actual foreign policy practices of both American and

European states. Conceptualising democratisation as an elite battle between democrats

and autocrats facilitates expedient and hands-on policy prescriptions on the part of

democracy promoters, but by trivialising complex domestic political processes it

invariably leads to an exacerbation of domestic political conflict and of power

imbalances. The most salient strategic actions that this conceptualisation of

democratisation generates are: an excessive focus on individuals over institutions; an

excessive focus on elections as moments of potential ‘democratic’ openings; and

excessive support for new ‘democratic’ governments on their accession to power. All

three actions have far more deleterious than positive consequences for any potential

democratic political development in targeted societies. For democracy promotion

projects to have any chance of generating improved outcomes on the ground, this

simplistic conceptualisation of democratisation and the ‘political’ democracy

promotion actions it prompts must change. Yet, in many ways, this conceptualisation

and these actions are institutionalised strongly within American democracy promotion

aid donors and agencies. USAID (2005: 12) emphasises that:

‘[w]e support the democratization momentum. Assistance is most effective when it

responds rapidly to new opportunities. In particular, our support often shifts to a large

degree from the private sector and civil society to the new government to help

establish and strengthen institutions of democratic and accountable governance.

Specifically, we assist the new ministries, the key offices of the president and prime

minister, the newly empowered legislature, and the courts’.

Similarly, the first priority of the NED is to ‘continue to place great emphasis on

aiding democrats in authoritarian and closed political systems’ (NED 2007: 3). When

you have money to spend on supporting democrats you tend to find them.

At the level of international diplomacy, seeking to promote institutions over

individuals runs counter to the long-standing practices of the diplomatic arts. Thus,

Carothers (1999: 277) finds that ‘it is hard for many ambassadors and other senior

diplomats to give up old proconsul habits – to resist the view that promoting

democracy in a country means favoring friends and trying to nudge or push the

political process to ensure that those friends come to power and stay there’.

Ultimately, Western leaders still believe that the mission of democracy promotion is

to ‘support and encourage the forces of reform’ (Ferrero-Waldner 2006).

Yet, who are these ‘forces of reform’? How can external diplomats or democracy

promoters on the ground identify them? Spence (2008) rightly states that ‘[t]he

difficult lesson for democracy promoters today is to recognize that not all members of

the opposition to a particular government are necessarily supporters of democracy…

Opposition leaders are often not good democrats, and are highly imperfect messengers

for democracy’. Similarly, Burnell (2000: 8) recognises that ‘[i]t is not always easy to

judge in advance who is on the side of the angels. Yet, working with political elites,

ruling and oppositional, is an absolutely central and pivotal part of promoting or

‘building’ democracies. Here, then, is the internal contradiction. Working with elites

may be ‘essential to the success of democracy assistance’ (Bermeo 2009a: 16), yet,

since their track record is less than impressive, democracy promotion donors, project

workers on the ground, and Western leaders and diplomats alike can have little faith

in their own judgments regarding the sincerity of political leaders’ commitment to

democratic reforms. Furthermore, even when incumbents show positive signs,

rewarding them too much may actually act as a disincentive in undertaking further

reforms.

Principled and effective democracy promotion can only proceed from a basis of the

promotion of institutions over individuals. Currently, this does not seem a feasible

prospect for American democracy promotion agencies in particular and both

American and European foreign policy makers and diplomats. The continued

personalisation of democracy promotion means the continuation of political

democracy promotion and the continuation of political democracy promotion means

the continued excessive focus on elections and aiding competitive authoritarian

regimes dressed up as ‘democratic’ governments.

Greater conditionality as the key to greater effectiveness?

For Larry Diamond, the key to more effective democracy promotion is greater

‘conditionality’ in the strategies of Western aid donors. ‘By holding governments

accountable and making foreign aid contingent on good governance, donors can help

reverse the democratic recession’ (Diamond 2008: 37). Diamond’s optimism

regarding the power of conditionality to push political recipients of aid toward reform

is misplaced. In the world of development aid, conditionality is a largely discredited

strategy. For three decades, conditionality formed the foundation of World Bank and

IMF attempts to get client countries to implement the kind of neo-liberal reforms they

sought. Yet, by the late 1990s, even the World Bank (1998: 18) conceded that

conditionality ‘is unlikely to bring about lasting reform if there is no strong domestic

movement for change’. Where the rewards are tangible and great enough, for example

the promise of membership of the European Union, by generating huge and palpable

domestic incentives, conditionality can help push political systems towards

democratisation, or at least polyarchisation. Yet, such ‘easy cases’ are now long gone

and in the ‘true test’ countries of the wider European ‘neighbourhood’, neither the

rewards on offer nor the sanctions being threatened can alter incentives in anything

like the same way (Burnell 2007: 9).

Finally, even if effective conditionality were possible, it would require a highly

disciplined and coordinated effort on the part of aid donors. Diamond (2008: 36)

himself recognises that ‘[f]orcing change that leads to better governance will require

serious resolve and close coordination among the established bilateral and multilateral

donors’. Yet, according to the findings of a recent volume of country case studies, a

unified and coordinated policy response does not seem achievable even within the

European Union let alone among a wider group of allies (Youngs ed 2008). Indeed, it

would seem that the end of the unipolar world and of the liberal democratic hegemony

makes it all the more difficult, almost impossible, to orchestrate effective sanctions

among a nation’s major trading partners. Diamond (2008: 36) himself concedes that

‘[n]ow with the momentum going against democracy – resurgent and oil-rich Russia

flexing its muscles, and China emerging as major donor – it will be more difficult to

encourage reforms’. Conditionality, be it through increased rewards or threats, does

not seem a potent tool for pushing authoritarian regimes towards democratisation,

particularly in the world order of the early 21st Century.

A pessimistic prognosis for democracy promotion

In this section, I have considered prescriptions for reforming the ways in which

democracy is currently promoted by Western governments, international

organisations, and NGOs. I have explored the viability of democracy promoters

rejecting both the conceptualisation of democracy promotion as an exercise in

political and social engineering and the ‘localist fallacy’. I have argued that it is

unrealistic to expect either democracy promotion aid donors or implementation

agencies to dramatically transform the way they operate and that it is equally unlikely

that any new activities tailored more to local political conditions might generate

significantly improved outcomes. I have also argued that, whilst principled and

effective democracy promotion can only proceed from a basis of the promotion of

institutions over individuals, it is again unlikely that American democracy promotion

organisations and both American and European foreign policy makers and diplomats

will forsake the strategy of political democracy promotion in the foreseeable future.

Finally, I have argued that the prospects for increased conditionality as an effective

tool for democracy promotion are not at all bright. This necessarily leads me to

pessimistic conclusions about the future of democracy promotion as a foreign policy

objective and developmental model for export to see off the present existential threat

posed by the crisis of legitimacy and the backlash it currently faces.

Conclusion: no democracy without the demos

Democratisation is a social process of political and economic development. Since

ruling elites make the crucial landmark decisions in changing political systems, our

attention can be distracted too much away from the social pressures that tend to force

these decisions or the lack of social pressure that facilitate them. In turn, processes of

social development have a historical legacy: they are path-dependent.

‘The assumptions and strategies of democracy aid…have little to do with the history

of how American democracy was deepened and broadened over the 19th and 20th

Centuries. Bumps on the road like the Civil War and the Great Depression fit poorly

with the idea of a naturally unfolding sequence. Similarly, the often tortuous paths of

democratization in many Western European countries, involving embattled aristocrats

and landlords, a rising bourgeoisie, and a mobilized working class, seem to US

democracy promoters remote in time and of uncertain relevance’ (Carothers 1999:

91).

Whilst democratisation is an intrinsically domestic social process, polyarchisation –

the formal establishment and institutionalisation of multi-party political systems – can

be facilitated through external pressure. Yet, in its current form, by focusing on the

promotion of neo-liberal and technocratic forms of political and economic reform – or

‘good governance’ for short – democracy promotion is serving to exacerbate both

economic and political inequality globally, thereby acting an anti-democratic force on

targeted societies. It is here that Robinson’s theory of democracy promotion as

servant of transnational capitalist interests carries great weight. Yet, ultimately,

democracy promotion is failing and will fail in its mission to secure a consensual

hegemony for neo-liberal globalisation.

Perhaps the most fundamental and indispensible element of the democratic political

culture is that of tolerance of a plurality of visions of both the individual and the

common good. The culture of global democracy promotion is bereft of this vital

quality. In ideological terms, it does not tolerate alternative political visions and, in

practical terms, it cannot accommodate the expression of such alternative visions.

Ironically, one such vision that it excludes is that of a more social form of democracy.

Thus, Western democracy promotion detaches democracy from social justice. Herein

lies both the source of the tension it generates and the roots of its ultimate demise.

Only a model and system capable of generating greater social equality rather than

inequality is capable of facilitating the democratisation of polities worldwide.

Bibliography

Achard, David, and Luis Gonzalez. 2005. ‘A Challenge for Democracy: political parties in Central America, Panama & Dominican Republic’. Washington, D.C.: Inter-American Development Bank, International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, Organization of American States, United Nations Development Program.

Ambrosio, Thomas. 2009. Authoritarian backlash : Russian resistance to democratization in the former Soviet Union. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Amsden, Alice. H. 1989. Asia's next giant: South Korea and late industrialization. New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Aoki, Masahiko, Hyung-Ki Kim, and Masahiro Okuno-Fujiwara. 1997. The role of government in East Asian economic development : comparative institutional analysis. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Baker, Gideon. 1999. ‘The Taming of the Idea of Civil Society’. Democratization 6 (3).

Beissinger, Mark. 2006. ‘Promoting Democracy: Is Exporting Revolution a Constructive Strategy?’ Dissent Magazine.

Bermeo, Nancy. 2009. ‘Conclusion’. In Is Democracy Exportable? edited by Zoltan Barany & Robert Moser. New York: Cambridge University Press.

———. 2009. ‘Democracy Assistance and the Search for Security’. In New Challenges to Democratization, edited by Peter Burnell & Richard Youngs. London: Routledge.

Brown, Archie. 2001. ‘Ten Years After the Soviet Breakup: from democratization to "guided democracy"’. Journal of Democracy 12 (4): 35-41.

Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce and George Downs. 2004. ‘Why Gun-Barrel Democracy Doesn't Work’. Hoover Digest 2.

Burnell, Peter. 2000. Democracy assistance: international co-operation for democratization, Democratization studies. London: Frank Cass.

———. 2006. Globalising democracy: party politics in emerging democracies, Warwick studies in globalisation. London; New York: Routledge.

———. 2007. ‘Does International Democracy Promotion Work?’ Deutsches Institute fur Entwicklungspolitik.

———. 2008. ‘From evaluating democracy assistance to appraising democracy promotion’. Political Studies 56 (2): 414-34.

Carothers, Thomas. 1999. Aiding democracy abroad: the learning curve. Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

———. 2004. Critical mission: essays on democracy promotion. Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

———. 2006a. Confronting the Weakest Link: aiding political parties in new democracies. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: United Book Press.

———. 2006b. ‘The Backlash Against Democracy Promotion’. Foreign Affairs (Mar/Apr 2006).

———. 2007. ‘A Quarter-Century of Promoting Democracy’. Journal of Democracy 18 (4).

———. 2008a. ‘Democracy and Discontent’. Democracy: A Journal of Ideas (10):70-76.

———. 2008b. ‘Does Democracy Promotion Have a Future?’ Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

———. 2009. ‘Democracy Assistance: Political Vs Developmental?’ Journal of Democracy 20 (1): 5-19.

Chafer, Tony. 2002. ‘Franco-African Relations: No Longer So Exceptional?’ African Affairs, 343-63.

Chang, Ha-Joon. 2002. Kicking away the ladder? development strategy in historical perspective. London: Anthem.

———. 2008. Bad Samaritans: the guilty secrets of rich nations and the threat to global prosperity. London: Random House Business.

Choucair Visozo, J. 2008. ‘Lebanon’. In Is the European Union Supporting Democracy in its Neighbourhood?, edited by R. Youngs. Madrid: FRIDE (Fundación para las Relaciones Internacionales y el Diálogo Exterior).

Clement, Christopher. 2005. ‘Confronting Hugo Chávez: United States "Democracy Promotion" in Latin America’. Latin American Perspectives 142 (32):60-78.

Collier, David, and Steven Levitsky. 1997. ‘Democracy with Adjectives’. World Politics 49 (3):430-51.

Collier, Paul, and Dominic Rohner. 2008. ‘Democracy, Development, and Conflict’. Journal of the European Economic Association 6 (2-3):531-40.

Crawford, Gordon. 2005. ‘The European Union and Democracy Promotion in Africa: the case of Ghana’. European Journal of Development Research 17 (4): 571-600.

Dahl, Robert. 1971. Polyarchy : participation and opposition. New Haven: Yale University Press.

———. 1989. Democracy and its critics. New Haven: Yale University Press.Daily Telegraph. 2009. ‘US diplomat claims UN tried to gag him’. October 4th

2009.De Zeeuw, Jeroen. 2004. ‘Projects Do Not Create Institutions: the record of democracy assistance in post-conflict societies’. Paper read at UNU/WIDER Conference on ‘Making Peace Work’, at Helsinki.

Development Alternatives, Inc (DAI). 2006. ‘Final Project Report: Support to the New Government of Georgia’. Washington, D.C.: United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Diamond, Larry. 1997. Consolidating the third wave democracies. 2 vols, Journal of democracy book. Baltimore ; London: Johns Hopkins University Press.

———. 1999. Developing democracy: toward consolidation. Baltimore; London: Johns Hopkins University Press.

———. 2008. ‘The Democratic Rollback: the resurgence of the predatory state’. Foreign Affairs March/April 2008.

Diez, Thomas, and Michelle Pace. 2007. ‘Normative Power Europe and Conflict

Transformation’. In European Union Studies Association Annual Conference. Montreal.

Doorenspleet, Renske. 2004. ‘The Structural Context of Recent Transitions to Democracy’. European Journal of Political Research 43:309-335.

Doyle, Michael. 1986. ‘Liberalism and World Politics’. American Political Science Review 80 (4).

Echagüe, Ana. 2008. ‘Jordan’. In Is the European Union Promoting Democracy in its Neighbourhood:?, edited by Richard Youngs. Madrid: FRIDE.

Evans, Peter. 1995. Embedded Autonomy: states and industrial transformation. Princeton, N.J.; Chichester: Princeton University Press.

Ferrero-Waldner, Benita. 2007. ‘Speech by Benita Ferrero-Waldner, European Commissioner for External Relations and European Neighbourhood Policy’. In "The European approach to democracy promotion in post-communist countries". Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna.

Fraser, Alastair. 2005. ‘Poverty reduction strategy papers: Now who calls the shots?’ Review of African Political Economy 32 (104-105):317-340.

Freyburg, Tina, and Solveig Richter. 2010. ‘National Identity Matters: The Limited Impact of EU Political Conditionality in the Western Balkans’. Journal of European Public Policy 17 (2): 262-80.

Gahramanova, Aytan. 2009. ‘Internal and external factors in the democratization of Azerbaijan’. Democratization 16 (4):777-803.

Garton Ash, Timothy. 2008. ‘We need a benign European hydra to advance the cause of democracy’. The Guardian. April 17th 2008.

Gershman, Carl and Michael Allen. 2006. ‘The Assault on Democracy Assistance’. Journal of Democracy 17 (2): 36-51.

Gleditsch, Nils. 1992. ‘Democracy and Peace’. Journal of Peace Research 29 (4): 369-76.

Gould, Jeremy. 2005. The New Conditionality: the politics of poverty reduction strategies. London: Zed.

Greskovits, Bela. 2007. ‘Is East-Central Europe Backsliding? economic woes and political disaffection’. Journal of Democracy 18 (4): 40-6.

Haerpfer, Christophe. 2008. ‘Support for Democracy and Autocracy in Russia and the CIS, 1992-2002’. International Political Science Review 29 (4): 411-32.

Haggard, Stephan, and Robert R. Kaufman. 1995. The Political economy of democratic transitions. Princeton, N.J.; Chichester: Princeton University Press.

Halperin, Morton, Joseph Siegle, and Michael Weinstein. 2005. How Democracies Promote Prosperity and Peace. Edited by C. o. F. Relations. Abingdon: Routledge.

Hearn, Julie. 2001. ‘The Uses and Abuses of Civil Society in Africa’. Review of African Political Economy 87:43-53.

Hobsbawm, Eric. 2007. Globalisation, Democracy and Terrorism. London: Little, Brown.

Huntington, Samuel. 1996. ‘Democracy's Third Wave’. In The Global Resurgence of Democracy, edited by Larry Diamond and Marc Plattner. Baltimore; London: John Hopkins University Press.

Inglehart, Ronald. 1997. Modernization and postmodernization: cultural, economic, and political change in 43 societies. Princeton, N.J.; Chichester: Princeton University Press.

Johnson, Chalmers. 1982. MITI and the Japanese Miracle: the growth of industrial

policy, 1925-1975. Stanford, C.A.: Stanford University Press.Kasfir, Nelson. 1998. ‘Civil Society, the State and Democracy in Africa’.

Commonwealth and Comparative Politics 36 (2).Kausch, Kristina. 2008. ‘Morocco’. In Is the European Union Supporting Democracy

in its Neighbourhood?, edited by Richard Youngs. Madrid: FRIDE.Kechaqmadze, Mikheil. 2007. ‘Anti-Revolutionary Measures of the Post-Soviet

Regimes’. Tbilisi: Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies.

Khakee, Anna. 2007. ‘EU Democracy Promotion in Nigeria: between realpolitik and idealism’. Madrid: FRIDE.

Krastev, Ivan. 2007. ‘The Strange Death of the Liberal Consensus’. Journal of Democracy, 18 (4): 56-63.

Krupavicius, Algis. 2007. Political Parties and Multi-Party Systems in the Baltic Countries. In Political Parties in the Post-Soviet Space: Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, and the Baltics, edited by A. K. S. Pshizova: Praeger.

Kumar, Krishna. 2004. ‘International Political Party Assistance: an overview and analysis’. In Conflict Research Programme. The Hague: Netherlands Institute of International Relations ‘Clingendael’.

Kumar, Krishna, and de Zeeuw Jeroen. 2008. ‘International Support for Political Party Development in War-Torn Societies’. In Political Parties in Conflict-Prone Societies, edited by Benjamin Reilly. Tokyo: United Nations University Press.

Leftwich, Adrian. 1995. ‘Bringing Politics Back In: towards a model of the developmental state’. Journal of Development Studies 31 (3):400-27.

Levitsky, Steven, and Lucan Way. 2010. Competitive Authoritarianism: international linkage, organizational power, and the fate of hybrid regimes. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Lijphart, Arendt. 1996. ‘Constitutional Choices for New Democracies’. In The Global Resurgence of Democracy, edited by Larry Diamond and Marc Plattner. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.

Mainwaring, Scott, and Timothy Scully. 1995. Building democratic institutions: party systems in Latin America. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.

Manners, Ian. 2002. ‘Normative Power Europe: a contradiction in terms?’ Journal of Common Market Studies 40 (2):235-58.

Mansfield, Edward, and Jack Snyder. 2005. Electing to Fight: Why Emerging Democracies go to War. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

McGlinchey, Eric. 2007. ‘Foreign Assistance and Domestic Power: aiding political parties in Central Asia and the Caucasus’. In 48th Annual Convention of the International Studies Association. Chicago.

Melia, Thomas. 2005. ‘The Democracy Bureaucracy: the infrastructure of American democracy promotion’. In Princeton Project on National Security Working Group on Global Institutions and Foreign Policy Infrastructure. Washington, D.C.

Mendelson, Sarah, and John K. Glenn. 2002. The power and limits of NGOs: a critical look at building democracy in Eastern Europe and Eurasia. New York: Columbia University Press.

National Endowment for Democracy (NED). 2007. ‘Strategy Document’. Washington, D.C.: National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

Nikolaidis, Kalypso, and Rachel Kleinfeld. 2008. ‘Can a Post-Colonial Power Export the Rule of Law? Element of a General Framework’. In Relocating the Rule of

Law, edited by G. P. N. Walker. Oxford: Hart.Nordhold, Henk. 2004. ‘Decentralisation in Indonesia: Less State, More Democracy?’

In Politicising Democracy, edited by John Harriss, Ole Tornquist, Kristian Stokke. New York: Palgrave.

Olsen, Gorm Rye. 1998. Europe and the Promotion of Democracy in Post Cold War Africa: how serious is Europe and for what reason? African Affairs 97 (388):343-67.

Ottaway, Marina. 2008. ‘Democracy Promotion in the Middle East: restoring credibility’. In Policy Brief 60, May 2008: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Owen, John. 1994. How Liberalism Produces Democratic Peace? International Security 19 (2):87-125.

Przeworski, Adam, Jose Antonio Cheibub, and Fernando Limongi. 2004. ‘Democracy and Political Culture’. Democracia y cultura politica 8 (33):52-69.

Robinson, William I. 1996. Promoting polyarchy: globalization, US intervention, and hegemony. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Saari, Sinikukka. 2009. ‘European democracy promotion in Russia before and after the ‘colour revolutions’. Democratization 19 (4):732-55.

Sardamov, Ivo. 2007. ‘Burnt into the Brain: Towards a redefinition of political culture’. Democratization 14 (3):407-424.

Schmid, Dorothee, and Fares Braizat. 2006. ‘The Adaptation of EU and US Democracy Promotion Programmes to the Local Political Context in Jordan and Palestine and their Relevance to Grand Geopolitical Designs’. Paris; Amman: Institut français des relations internationales (Ifri), Paris & Center for Strategic Studies (CSS), Amman.

Schmitter, Phillipe, and Terry Karl. 1996. What Democracy Is...and Is Not. In The Global Resurgence of Democracy, edited by M. Plattner and L. Diamond. Washington, D.C.: John Hopkins University Press.

Seely, Hart. 2003. Pieces of Intelligence: the existential poetry of Donald H. Rumsfeld, compiled and edited by Hart Seely. London: Simon & Schuster.

Seleny, Anna. 2007. Communism's many legacies in East-Central Europe. Journal of Democracy 18 (3):156-170.

Sharp, Jeremy. 2006. ‘U.S. Democracy Promotion Policy in the Middle East: the Islamist dilemma’. In CRS Report for Congress. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service.

Spence, Matthew. 2008. ‘Reviving the Democracy Agenda in the Former Soviet Union’. In Century Foundation Report. Washington, D.C.: Century Foundation.

Stewart, Susan. 2009. ‘The interplay of domestic contexts and external democracy promotion: lessons from Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus’. Democratization 16 (4):804-24.

Traub, James. 2008. The Freedom Agenda: why America must spread democracy (just not the way George Bush did). New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux.

Tures, John. 2007. ‘The Democracy-Promotion Gap in American Public Opinion’. Journal of American Studies 41 (3):557-579.

Uhlin, Anders. 2009. ‘Which Characteristics of Civil Society Organizations Support What Aspects of Democracy? Evidence from Post-communist Latvia’. International Political Science Review 30 (3):271-95.

United States Agency for International Development (USAID). 2005. ‘At Freedom’s Frontiers: a democracy and governance strategic framework’. Washington,

D.C.: United States Agency for International Development (USAID).Wedel, Janine. 2001. Collision and collusion : the strange case of western aid to

Eastern Europe, 1989-1998. Updated ed. ed. New York: Palgrave.Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD). 2004. ‘Building Better Democracies:

why political parties matter’. London: Westminster Foundation for Democracy.

Whitefield, Stephen, Archie Brown, and St. Antony's College (University of Oxford). 2005. Political culture and post-communism, St. Antony's series. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, in association with St. Antony's College, Oxford.

Whitfield, Lindsay. 2006. ‘Aid’s Political Consequences: the embedded aid system in Ghana’. In Global Economic Governance Working Papers: University of Oxford.

Whitfield, Lindsay. 2009. The politics of aid : African strategies for dealing with donors. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press.

Woo-Cumings, Meredith. 1999. The developmental state. Ithaca, N.Y.; London: Cornell University Press.

World Bank 1998. Assessing aid: what works, what doesn't, and why. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Youngs, Richard. 2006. Survey of European Democracy Promotion Policies 2000-6. In Democratisation Working Papers. Madrid: FRIDE.

———, ed. 2008. Is the European Union Supporting Democracy in its Neighbourhood?: FRIDE & European Council for Foreign Relations.