Democracy promotion
Democracy promotion, also referred to as democracy building, can be domestic policy to increase the quality of already existing democracy or a strand of foreign policy adopted by governments and international organizations that seek to support the spread of
Much experience was gained after the Revolutions of 1989 resulted in the fall of the Iron Curtain and a wave of democratic transitions in former Communist states, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe. According to Freedom House, the number of democracies increased from 41 of 150 existing states in 1974 to 123 of 192 states in 2006.[5] The pace of transition slowed considerably since the beginning of the twenty-first century, which encouraged discussion of whether democracy was under threat.[6] In the early twenty-first century, a democratic deficit was noticed in countries where democratic systems already existed, including Britain, the US and the European Union.[7] In the financial sense, democracy promotion grew from 2% of aid in 1990 to nearly 20% in 2005.[8]
An open question for democracy promotion around the world, both in countries where it is already at the core of the system of governance and in those where it is not, is defining the terminology of promoting, supporting or assisting democracy in the post-Cold War situation.[9]
Definitions
The precise definition of democracy promotion has been debated for more than twenty-five years. The multiplicity of terms used is a manifestation of the plurality of opinions and approaches by international actors, be they governments,
This basic division between the political and developmental approaches has existed inchoately in the field of democracy support for many years. It has come into sharper relief during this decade, as democracy-aid providers face a world increasingly populated by countries not conforming to clear or coherent political transitional paths. [...] Some adherents of the developmental approach criticize the political approach as too easily turning confrontational vis-à-vis "host" governments and producing unhelpful counterreactions. Some adherents of the political approach, meanwhile, fault the developmental approach for being too vague and unassertive in a world where many leaders have learned to play a reform game with the international community, absorbing significant amounts of external political aid while avoiding genuine democratization.
Thomas Carothers, 2009, in Journal of Democracy[12]
At least part of the problem lies in the absence of a consensus on what
To date, the disagreement over definitions has seen some actors focus on supporting technical systems of democratic governance (elections, government structures and the like), while others take the bottom-up approach of promoting citizen participation and building strong civil and political society to prepare the ground on which systems of government can then be planted.The European Partnership for Democracy defines 'democracy support' as the political or financial "efforts to reinforce or create democratic development or to halt autocratisation", while 'democracy assistance' refers to financial flows "in the spirit of ‘international assistance". EPD further acknowledges that 'democracy promotion' is the term widespreadly used by academics but has a more active and often coercive connotation compared to ‘democracy support’. Support is something given to existing internal efforts for democratisation while promotion does not require any such internal (national) desire".[15]
Another definition of democracy support can be drawn from the OECD Development Assistance Committee's aid flow database. The classification makes the distinction between different types of aid flows relevant for democracy assistance, such as democratic participation and civil society, elections, legislatures and political parties, media and free flow of information, human rights, women's rights organisations and movement and government, decentralisation and support to subnational government institutions, and anti-corruption organisations and institutions.[16]
The types and objectives of democracy assistance aid delivered by international donors depend on the history of their own country with democracy, and may explain the diversity of democracy promotion contexts. If historically Western countries championed democracy promotion worldwide, new non-Western actors have emerged in the last decades with particular goals and geographical reaches, participating in the construction of a broad definition of democracy promotion.[17]
Foreign policy types
External democracy promotion has two main patterns that depend on the type of democratization a state is dealing with: external intervention and as a solution to civil war, or supporting an internal push for reform. Democracy promotion advocates are divided on which pattern tends to be most successful for the resources that democracy promotion programs invest; they are similarly divided on which components and factors of the democratization process are most important to the success of democratic consolidation.
Post-civil war democratization
Civil wars cause a number of problems for democratization. Laura Armey and Robert McNab found that the longer a civil war lasts, and the more casualties it produces, the more hostile the warring factions become to each other; this hostility in turn makes stabilization along terms of peaceful competition, required in a democratic
External intervention
External interventions see different levels of democratization success depending on the type of intervener, type of intervention, and level of elite cooperation prior to the intervention. The level of neutrality and geopolitical disinterest the intervener possesses is important, as is the severity of the intervention's infringement on sovereignty. The differences can be highlighted with several examples: a neutral, mostly unobtrusive monitor missions like UN election observers in Nicaragua in 1989; the multilateral NATO IFOR mission in Yugoslavia to enforce UN Security Council Resolution 1031 in 1995; the unilateral destabilizing intervention represented by the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the stabilizing intervention represented by United States invasion of Panama.[20][21][22] All these missions aimed on some level to promote democracy, with varying degrees of success. Michael Doyle and Nicholas Sambanis have found that the peacekeeping missions most successful at producing fledgling democracies have strong mandates backing them up, but tend not to revolve around military enforcement. Successful democratizing interventions consist of monitoring factions' adherence to their negotiated settlement, while the most successful ones include extensive state-building (such as improving government efficiency and professionalism, or classical infrastructure assistance)[23] or prior experience with democracy.[20]
Problems with external intervention
Interventions that fail to expend resources on state-building can sometimes be counter-productive to democracy promotion because, as McBride, Milante, and Skaperdas have proposed, a negotiated settlement to a civil war is based on individual factions' faith in the
Gradual reformism and the four-player game
Another school of thought on how democratization most successfully occurs involves an authoritarian regime transitioning to a democratic one as a result of gradual reforms over time. The basic mechanism for this is a four-player
Conflict over support for internal reform
Even beyond the question of what and whether external intervention is an effective democracy support strategy, a number of issues continue to divide the proponents of a democracy support-based international policy. Carles Boix and Susan Stokes advocate economic development aid, contending that the more advanced an economy, the less willing factions will be to break the peace; others, however, contend that this strategy is only useful at defending democratic consolidation, and not at encouraging democratization of regimes where one faction already dominates.[31] Still others fall in Freytag and Heckelman's camp, advocating the long-game, positing that although USAID programs have so far had little net effect on democratization, they have demonstrably improved basic democratic features, including civil society and the electoral process, in countries receiving aid.[32]
Not all CSOs will be helpful in promoting democracy—if the organization is too large to inspire its members, or its constituents' identity is too narrowly defined, the organization will fail to support four-player democratic transition pacts, and may even encourage divisiveness and civil war.[33] There is also some concern that the international community may be propping up NGOs to the point that they themselves become an unrepresentative elite.[34]
Domestic policy types
Domestic policies can improve the
See also
- Exporting the revolution
- Foreign funding of NGOs
- Democracy promotion by the United States
- Democratic backsliding
- United States involvement in regime change
Further reading
- USAID (Office of Democracy and Governance in the Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance), according to the National Research Council (2008, p. 28)
- ISBN 978-0-87003-209-7
- Nicolas Guilhot, The Democracy Makers: Human Rights and International Order, New York: Columbia University Press, 2005, ISBN 978-0-231-13124-7
- Thiel, Rainer (2010). "U.S. democracy assistance in the Polish liberalization process 1980-1989 (Chapter 6)". Nested games of external democracy promotion: The United States and the Polish liberalization 1980-1989. VS Verlag. pp. 179–235, especially 204 and 231. ISBN 978-3-531-17769-4.
References
- ^ see Peter Burnell, From Evaluating Democracy Assistance to Appraising Democracy Promotion, Political Studies Association, Political Studies 2008 VOL 56
- ^ "Democracy Building and Conflict Management: Overview". International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA). n.d. Archived from the original on February 9, 2006. Retrieved January 18, 2006.
- Hoover Digest. 2. Archived from the original on July 5, 2008. Also see this page.
- S2CID 51897214.
- ^ Lise Rakner, Alina Rocha Menocal and Verena Fritz (2008) Assessing international democracy assistance: Key lessons and challenges Archived March 7, 2012, at the Wayback Machine London: Overseas Development Institute
- ^ Azar Gat, The Return of Authoritarian Great Powers, in Foreign Affairs, July–August 2007, [1]
- ^ Saskia Sassen, Globalisation, the State and Democratic Deficit, Open Democracy, 18 July 2007, [2] Archived November 13, 2009, at the Wayback Machine; Patrice de Beer, France and Europe: the Democratic Deficit Exposed, Open Democracy, 4 June 2006, [3] Archived August 31, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
- ISSN 1094-2939.
- ^ Christopher Hobson & Milja Kurki, Democracy and democracy-support: a new era, Open Democracy, 20 March 2009, [4]
- ^ https://ca.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/types-of-promotions
- ^ https://brainly.in/question/12480
- ^ (PDF) from the original on December 1, 2021. Retrieved December 1, 2021.
- ^ Gallie (1956a), passim. Kekes (1977, p.71)
- ^ https://philpapers.org/archive/RUBWGA.pdf
- ^ "Louder than words ? Connecting the dots of European democracy support" (PDF). European Partnership for Democracy. Retrieved December 6, 2021.
- ^ "DAC and CRS code lists". OECD. OECD. Retrieved December 2, 2021.
- ^ Carothers, Thomas. "Non-Western Roots of International Democracy Support". Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Retrieved December 2, 2021.
- S2CID 218640409.
- S2CID 18062632.
- ^ a b Loxton, James. "The Puzzle of Panamanian Exceptionalism." Journal of Democracy 33.1 (2022): 85-99.
- ^ Democracy Report 2023, Table 3, V-Dem Institute, 2023
- ^ Saller, Paige. "The Panamanian Puzzle Successful Democratization and Foreign-Imposed Regime Change." The Commons: Puget Sound Journal of Politics 4.1 (2023): 1.
- S2CID 15961507.
- S2CID 1316278.
- ISBN 978-1555875602.
- ISSN 1360-2241.
- ISBN 978-0268012106.
- ISBN 9780801851582.
- ^ Jennings, Ray Salvatore (January 1, 2012). "Democratic breakthroughs: the ingredients of successful revolts". Peaceworks. US Institute for Peace.
- S2CID 55508252.
- S2CID 18745191.
- .
- S2CID 143546484.
- .
- S2CID 149640396.
- ^ "Book Review: Against Elections: The Case for Democracy by David Van Reybrouck". October 20, 2016. Retrieved March 10, 2019.
- ^ Wong, Alia (October 5, 2018). "Civics Education Helps Create Young Voters and Activists". The Atlantic. Retrieved September 17, 2020.
- JSTOR 1816288.
- OCLC 1053623603.
External links
- Michael McFaul, Democracy Promotion as a World Value, THE WASHINGTON QUARTERLY, WINTER 2004–05
- Paula J. campay and Thomas Carothers, Democracy Promotion, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2003
- Thomas Carothers, The Backlash Against Democracy Promotion, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2006
- Thomas Carothers, Repairing Democracy Promotion, Washington Post, Friday, September 14, 2007
- Paula J. Dobriansky, Under Secretary for Global Affairs, Strategies on Democracy Promotion, Remarks to the Hudson Institute, 2005
- Paul J. Saunders and Morton H. Halperin, Democracy Promotion as Policy, Online Debate at Council for Foreign Relations, May–June 2006
- Project on Middle East Democracy, [5], nonprofit committed to strengthen U.S. support for genuine democracies in the Middle East
- Jörn Grävingholt, Julia Leininger, Oliver Schlumberger: The three Cs of democracy promotion policy: context, consistency and credibility, Bonn: Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik /German Development Institute, (Briefing Paper 1/2009)
- Braathen, Einar; Henningsen, Erik; Holm-Hansen, Jørn and David Jordhus-Lier: The Dilemmas of Democracy Support, The NIBR International Blog 19.02.2010.