Democracy Promotion: The Elusive Quest for Grand Strategies

Abstract

Burnell, Democracy Promotion ipg 3/2004 s the lessons from the last decade or so become clearer it is increasingly obvious that the challenge of democratizing authoritarian regimes is far from easy. It is probably fair to say that we now think we understand more about how not to go about that challenge than we confidently know how to do it. In the social science literature on the most recent »wave« of democracy, the mood music now signals quite definitely that the party is over. The easy victories have been won; from here on progress will be far from assured, and if there is progress, it will not be anything like as dramatic as say a decade ago.With the benefit of hindsight, then, there is much still to learn both about democratization and about the means to democratize: the how far and the how fast, in what circumstances, and under what conditions, and where it will all lead to. There need be no embarrassment about this. Democratic political theory is as old as ancient Greece, but theorizing democratization, and practical endeavors by the international community to promote democracy, are both relatively new. This paper summarizes some of the principal lessons of experience, by reviewing a selection of major issues and themes. It compares the strengths and weaknesses of three main approaches the international community can take to democracy promotion: via economic relations, via the state, and via civil society.However it does not attempt to grapple with what some of the more philosophically inclined observers of democratization might think is an essential prerequisite to any such discussion, namely the specific idea, or ideas, of democracy that should frame the democracy promotion agenda. The conventional wisdom maintains that democracy is an essentially contested concept. That engaging in democracy promotion might be no less contentious is, perhaps, a less obvious finding, but one that is apparent once we see that even the simple question »how to democratize authoritarian regimes« raises the possibility of not just one but several different challenges, for the following reasons.

Political Strategies of External Support for Democratization

“…In contrast European democracy promoters are reported to 'lament the lack of overarching "systematic thinking"' that characterises the EU's own efforts (Youngs, 2003: 131). But if the quest for a grand strategy for promoting democratization has so far proved elusive (see Burnell, 2004a) then in politics the meaning of the very term strategy is not easy to pin down. The term may be ubiquitous but there is no substantial conceptual debate, game theoretic literature aside.…”

The good, the bad, and the ambitious: democracy and autocracy promoters competing in Belarus

“…The international context of democratization has been attracting growing scholarly attention since the end of the Cold War (e.g. Carothers, 1999, 2004; Burnell, 2004, 2006; McFaul, 2004). There has also been an upsurge of interest among scholars toward the European Union (EU) as a democracy promoter (e.g.…”