This article asks whether there are lessons that can be drawn from the democratization of Iraq for the possible democratization of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in the wake of the 2010–2011 Arab uprisings. The paper draws on the democratization program in Iraq in 2003 and 2004 to demonstrate that focusing on the promotion of a liberal democratic model in Iraq translated into a lack of operational flexibility, which let democracy assistance unable to cope with socio‐economic demands, local realities and reactions to democratization. Taking into account a variation in the intensity of interventionism between Iraq and MENA, the article argues that there is sufficient similarities between both cases to point Western democracy promoters in the direction of models of democracy that offer a more comprehensive response to the current political transition in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya than the traditional focus on the promotion of liberal democracy does.

There is a general assumption in democracy promotion that liberal democracy is the panacea that will solve all political and economic problems faced by developing countries. Using the concept of "good society" as analytical prism, the analysis shows that while there is a rhetorical agreement as to what the "good society" entails, democracy promotion practices fail to allow for recipients' inclusion in the negotiation and delivery of the "good society". Contrasting US and Tunisian discourses on the "good society", the article argues that democracy promotion practices are underpinned by neoliberal parameters borne out from a reliance on the transition paradigm, which in turn leave little room to democracy promotion recipients to formulate knowledge claims supporting the emergence of alternative conceptions of the "good society". In contrast, the article opens up a reflective pathway to a negotiated democratic knowledge, which would reside in a paradigmatic change that consists in the abandonment of the transition paradigm in favour of a "democratic emergence" paradigm.

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This piece examines the substance of EU democracy promotion from a comparative point of view and from a perspective placing under inquiry the meaning of the idea of liberal democracy itself. Instead of assuming that the democratic ideal that the EU promotes (?liberal democracy?) has a clear, fixed meaning, the article examines in detail what actually constitutes the ?ideal of democracy? at the heart of EU democracy promotion, and compares this vision to that which informs the democracy promotion of the US. It argues that interesting differences, and shifts and oscillations, in the models of liberal democracy that the EU and the US promote exist and that these are important to note in order for us to fully appreciate how the substance of EU and US democracy support can be shaped by conceptual and ideological debate on the meaning of democracy. This dynamic is particularly relevant today, in the context of the recent attempts to develop transatlantic dialogue on democracy support. This dialogue, it is suggested, plasters over some subtle but important ideological cracks over what is meant by democracy in EU and US democracy support

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