Promoting Democracy and Promoting Autocracy: Towards A Comparative Evaluation

Abstract

Canada may be about to create a publicly-funded Centre for Advancing Democracy. However, at the present time there is international speculation that autocracy promotion is increasing, now that the global wave of democratisation has stalled or gone into retreat. Some prominent authoritarian and semi-authoritarian regimes have gained in confidence; their potential to influence politics in other countries attracts growing attention. If international democracy promotion is to measure up to the challenge that this could pose then comparative evaluations of the performance of international support for democracy and for autocratic rule should be undertaken. Evaluation endeavours across this political divide face shared similarities and major complicating differences too. These make meaningful comparisons problematic. Nevertheless, new democracy promotion initiatives should employ whatever can be learned from studying autocracy promotion, so as to maximise their chances of success. Canada's proposals for advancing democracy abroad offer a timely opportunity to address the challenge of comparing democracy and autocracy support, and in doing so become a world leader in the field.

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

“…In line with Burnell (2006), I differentiate between active and passive democracy promotion, as well as active and passive autocracy promotion.…”

“…Ambrosio, 2009Ambrosio, , 2010Burnell, 2010b;Burnell and Schlumberger, 2010;Jackson, 2010;Melnykovska et al, 2012;Vanderhill, 2012;Bader, 2013). However, in contrast with many countries and international organizations that promote democracy, autocracy promoters are only a handful, with Russia and China leading the list of suspects, along with regional organizations dominated by these countries (Ambrosio, 2008;Burnell, 2010a). 11 The existing literature on autocracy promotion highlights that both Russia and China mostly concentrate their autocracy-promotion efforts on countries in their geographic proximity.…”

“…Key concepts I build on the concept of democracy promotion and counter-promotion (Burnell, 2006) and on the theory of positive and negative external actors (Tolstrup, 2009). In line with Burnell (2006), I differentiate between active and passive democracy promotion, as well as active and passive autocracy promotion.…”

“…Carothers, 1999Carothers, , 2004Burnell, 2004Burnell, , 2006McFaul, 2004). There has also been an upsurge of interest among scholars toward the European Union (EU) as a democracy promoter (e.g.…”

External Political Actors and Influences in the South Caucasus

“…Approaches to inducing change of the major actors are also different indeed [6] and vary everywhere but in particular in the case of different South Caucasus states. They may also change in time.…”