Democracy Promotion as Foreign Policy

Abstract

This book looks at democracy promotion as a form of foreign policy. Elliott asks why democracy was seen to be the answer to the 7/7 bombings in London, and why it should be promoted not in Britain, but in Pakistan. The book provides a detailed answer to these questions, examining the logic and the modes of thinking that made such a response possible through analysis of the stories we tell about ourselves: stories about time, history, development, civilisation and the ineluctable spread of democracy.Elliott argues that these narratives have become a key tool in enabling practices that differentiate selves from others, friends from enemies, the domestic from the foreign, civilisation from the barbarian. They operate with a particular conception of time and constitute a British, democratic, national identity by positing an "other" that is barbaric, alien, despotic, violent and backward. Such understandings are useful in the wake of disaster, because they leave us with something to do: danger can be managed by bringing certain people and places up-to-date. However, this book shows that there are other stories to be told, and that it is possible to read stories about history against the grain, and author alternative, less oppressive versions.Providing a genealogy drawing on material from colonial and postcolonial Britain and Pakistan, including legislation, political discourse, popular culture and government projects, this book will be of interest to scholars and students focusing on democracy promotion, genealogy, critical border studies, poststructural international relations, postcolonial politics, discourse analysis, identity/subjectivity, and the "war on terror".Cathy Elliott is a Senior Teaching Fellow at the School of Public Policy, University College London. She previously worked as a development manager in Pakistan. Her research interests include poststructural international relations; time, temporality and history; politics and aesthetics; and feminism and gender. InterventionsEdited by: Jenny Edkins, Aberystwyth University and Nick Vaughan-Williams, University of WarwickThe Series provides a forum for innovative and interdisciplinary work that engages with alternative critical, post-structural, feminist, postcolonial, psychoanalytic and cultural approaches to international relations and global politics. In our first 5 years we have published 60 volumes.We aim to advance understanding of the key areas in which scholars working within broad critical post-structural traditions have chosen to make their interventions, and to present innovative analyses of important topics. Titles in the series engage with critical thinkers in philosophy, sociology, politics and other disciplines and provide situated historical, empirical and textual studies in international politics.For a full list of available titles please visit https://www.routledge.com/series/INT.The most recent titles in this series are: Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Refugees in Extended Exile © 2017 Cathy Elli...