The Conceptual Politics of Democracy Promotion 9780415596879, 9780203804803

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The Conceptual Politics of Democracy Promotion

Edited by Christopher Hobson and Milja Kurki

Democratization Studies

The Conceptual Pol­itics of Demo­cracy Pro­mo­tion

How do different meanings of the concept of ‘demo­cracy’ operate in demo­cracy pro­mo­tion? How do conceptual de­cisions influence real polit­ical events? How is pol­icy and reflection on demo­cracy pro­mo­tion shaped by the way different practitioners and scholars understand demo­cracy? The Conceptual Pol­itics of Demo­cracy Pro­mo­tion ex­plores the way in which the meaning, con­tent and con­text of ‘demo­cracy’ are in­ter­preted by different actors in demo­cracy pro­mo­tion, and how these influence polit­ical de­cisions. Introducing a the­or­etically new approach to the study of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion, the volume shows how the alternate ways that demo­cracy can be understood reflects specific in­ter­pretations of polit­ical and norm­ative ideals, as well as being closely tied to social power relations, inter­ests, and struggles between polit­ical actors. With ori­ginal con­tri­bu­tions from some of the most prominent specialists on demo­cracy pro­mo­tion and demo­crat­isation, the book examines a number of concrete cases of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion and contestation over demo­cracy’s meaning. Re-­examining demo­cracy pro­mo­tion at its time of crisis, this book will be of inter­est to scholars and students of demo­cracy and demo­crat­isation, pol­itics and inter­na­tional relations, inter­na­tional law, de­velopment studies and polit­ical theory. Christopher Hobson is a Research Associate in the Peace and Security section, Institute for Sustain­ability and Peace, United Nations University, Japan. Milja Kurki is a Lecturer in Inter­na­tional Relations Theory in the Inter­na­tional Pol­itics De­part­ment at Aberystwyth University, UK, and the Prin­cipal Investigator of ‘Polit­ical Eco­nom­ies of Demo­crat­isation’ (Euro­pean Research Council, 2008–2012).

Demo­crat­ization studies (formerly demo­crat­ization studies, Frank Cass)

Demo­crat­ization Studies combines the­or­etical and comparative studies with detailed ana­lyses of issues central to demo­cratic pro­gress and its performance, all over the world. The books in this series aim to encourage debate on the many aspects of demo­crat­ization that are of inter­est to policy-­makers, administrators and journ­al­ists, aid and de­velopment personnel, as well as to all those involved in education.   1 Demo­crat­ization and the Media Edited by Vicky Randall   2 The Resilience of Demo­cracy Persistent practice, durable idea Edited by Peter Burnell and Peter Calvert   3 The Internet, Demo­cracy and Demo­crat­ization Edited by Peter Ferdinand   4 Party De­velopment and Demo­cratic Change in Post-­communist Europe Edited by Paul Lewis   5 Demo­cracy Assistance Inter­na­tional co-­operation for demo­crat­ization Edited by Peter Burnell   6 Opposi­tion and Demo­cracy in South Africa Edited by Roger Southall   7 The Euro­pean Union and Demo­cracy Pro­mo­tion The case of North Africa Edited by Richard Gillespie and Richard Youngs   8 Demo­crat­ization and the Judiciary Edited by Siri Gloppen, Roberto Gargarella and Elin Skaar

  9 Civil So­ci­ety in Demo­crat­ization Edited by Peter Burnell and Peter Calvert 10 The Internet and Pol­itics Cit­izens, voters and activists Edited by Sarah Oates, Diana Owen and Rachel Gibson 11 Demo­crat­ization in the Muslim World Changing patterns of authority and power Edited by Frederic Volpi and Francesco Cavatorta 12 Global Demo­cracy: For and Against Ethical theory, institutional design and social struggles Raffaele Marchetti 13 Constructing Demo­cracy in Southern Europe A comparative ana­lysis of Italy, Spain and Turkey Lauren M. McLaren 14 The Consolidation of Demo­cracy Comparing Europe and Latin Amer­ica Carsten Q. Schneider 15 New Challenges to Demo­crat­ization Edited by Peter Burnell and Richard Youngs 16 Mul­tiple Demo­cra­cies In Europe Polit­ical culture in new member states Paul Blokker 17 Globality, Demo­cracy and Civil So­ci­ety Edited by Terrell Carver and Jens Bartelson 18 Demo­cracy Pro­mo­tion and Conflict-­based Reconstruction The United States and demo­cratic consolidation in Bosnia and Afghanistan Matthew Alan Hill 19 Re­quis­ites of Demo­cracy Conceptualization, meas­ure­ment, and explanation Jørgen Møller and Svend-­Erik Skaaning 20 The Conceptual Pol­itics of Demo­cracy Pro­mo­tion Edited by Christopher Hobson and Milja Kurki

The Conceptual Pol­itics of Demo­cracy Pro­mo­tion

Edited by Christopher Hobson and Milja Kurki

First published 2012 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2012 Christopher Hobson and Milja Kurki for selection and editorial mat­ter, indi­vidual con­trib­utors; their con­tri­bu­tions The right of Christopher Hobson and Milja Kurki to be identified as the authors of the editorial mater­ial, and of the authors for their indi­vidual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copy­right, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mech­anical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any in­forma­tion storage or retrieval system, without per­mis­sion in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or re­gis­tered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Pub­lication Data A catalogue record for this book is avail­able from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Pub­lication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-0-415-59687-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-80480-3 (ebk) Typeset in Times by Wear­set Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear

Con­tents



Notes on con­trib­utors Ac­know­ledgements Foreword

ix xii xiii

T homas C aroth e rs



Introduction: the conceptual pol­itics of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion

1

C hristoph e r H obson and M il j a K urki

Part I

Orientations

17

  1 On ‘cultivating’ demo­cracy: enlivening the im­agery for demo­cracy pro­mo­tion

19

L aur e nc e W hit e h e ad

  2 Conceptualizing demo­crat­ization and demo­cratizing conceptualization: a virtuous circle

38

P iki I sh - S halom

  3 Lib­eralism and demo­cracy pro­mo­tion

53

B e at e Jahn

  4 The past and future of social demo­cracy and the con­sequences for demo­cracy pro­mo­tion

68

S h e ri B e rman

  5 Demo­cracy pro­mo­tion: neolib­eral vs social demo­cratic telos

85

H e ikki P atom ä ki

  6 Mis­under­stand­ing the maladies of lib­eral demo­cracy pro­mo­tion R ichard Y oun g s

100

viii   Contents Part II

Cases

117

  7 The conceptual pol­itics of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion in Bolivia

119

Jonas W olff

  8 Lib­eral demo­cracy pro­mo­tion and civil so­ci­ety strengthening in Ghana

131

Gordon C rawford and A bdul - ­Gafaru A bdulai

  9 Concepts of demo­cracy among donors and recipients of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion: an empirical pilot study

151

V al e ri e J . B unc e and S haron L . W olchik

10 Arab demo­crat­ization and the de-­imagining of author­it­arian com­mun­ity: beyond Orientalism and Occidentalism

171

L arbi S adiki

11 The conceptual pol­itics of demo­cracy in inter­na­tional law

189

H ilary C harl e sworth

12 From ‘fortunate vagueness’ to ‘demo­cratic globalism’: Amer­ican demo­cracy pro­mo­tion as imperialism

201

T ony S mith



Conclusion: reflections on a new approach in a new era of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion

215

C hristoph e r H obson and M il j a K urki



Bibliography Index

224 245

Con­trib­utors

Abdul-­Gafaru Abdulai is a PhD candidate at the Institute for De­velopment Pol­icy and Management (IDPM), University of Manchester, UK. He holds an MPhil in De­velopment Studies from the University of Cam­bridge, UK, and worked as a Research Officer at the Institute for Demo­cratic Governance (IDEG), Ghana, from March 2007 to Septem­ber 2009. Sheri Berman is Associate Professor of Polit­ical Science at Barnard College, Columbia University. She is the author, most recently, of The Primacy of Pol­itics: Social Demo­cracy and the Making of Europe’s Twentieth Century and is currently working on a pro­ject re-­examining Euro­pean polit­ical de­velopment in order to figure out what relev­ance and lessons the Euro­pean ex­peri­ence has for coun­tries struggling to estab­lish well-­functioning states and polit­ical systems today. Valerie J. Bunce is Professor of Gov­ern­ment and the Aaron Binenkorb Chair of Inter­na­tional Studies at Cornell University. She is the co-­author (with Sharon L. Wolchik) of Defeating Author­it­arian Leaders in Postcommunist Coun­tries (Cam­bridge University Press, 2011). Hilary Charlesworth is an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow and Professor of Inter­na­tional Law at the Australian National University. She has been a visiting professor at a number of Asian, Euro­pean and United States universities. Gordon Crawford is Professor of De­velopment Pol­itics in the School of Pol­itics and Inter­na­tional Studies, University of Leeds, UK, where he also directs the University’s Centre for Global De­velopment. He is the co-­editor of Demo­crat­ization and aca­demic lead in the World Universities Network (WUN) research group on ‘Transform­at­ive Justice’. Christopher Hobson is a Research Associate in the Peace and Security section, Institute for Sustain­ability and Peace, United Nations University. His research focuses prim­arily on the various ways in which demo­cracy intersects with inter­na­tional pol­itics.

x   Contributors Piki Ish-­Shalom is a Senior Lecturer at the De­part­ment of Inter­na­tional Relations, the Hebrew University of Jeru­salem. He has published art­icles in different schol­arly journals such as Inter­na­tional Studies Quarterly, Euro­pean Journal of Inter­na­tional Relations, Polit­ical Science Quarterly, and Per­spec­ t­ives on Pol­itics. Beate Jahn is Professor of Inter­na­tional Relations at the University of Sussex. Her pub­lications on lib­eral inter­na­tionalism and classical theory appear in Inter­na­tional Organ­iza­tion, the Review of Inter­na­tional Studies, Inter­na­tional Theory, and the Journal of Inter­ven­tion and Statebuilding. Milja Kurki is a lecturer in the Inter­na­tional Pol­itics De­part­ment at Aberystwyth University and currently the Prin­cipal Investigator of ‘Polit­ical Eco­nom­ies of Demo­crat­isation’, a four-­year Euro­pean Research Council funded pro­ject based at the same de­part­ment. She is the author of Causation in Inter­na­tional Relations: Reclaiming Causal Ana­lysis (Cam­bridge University Press, 2008) and co-­editor of Inter­na­tional Relations Theories: Dis­cip­line and Diversity (2007, 2009). Heikki Patomäki, b.1963, is Professor of Inter­na­tional Relations at the University of Helsinki, Finland. In 2011, he is also Visiting Professor at the Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, Japan. Patomäki’s research inter­ests include philo­sophy and methodology of social sciences, peace research, futures studies, global polit­ical eco­nomy and global polit­ical theory. His most recent book is The Polit­ical Eco­nomy of Global Security: War, Future Crises and Changes in Global Governance (Routledge, 2008). Larbi Sadiki teaches Middle East pol­itics at the University of Exeter, UK, specializing in Arab demo­crat­isation, and is a columnist with Al-­Jazeera (English). Tony Smith is the Cornelia M. Jackson Professor of Polit­ical Science at Tufts University. A new edition of his book Amer­ica’s Mission: The United States and the Worldwide Struggle for Demo­cracy will be published by Princeton University Press in 2012. He is currently working on a book on the religious fundamentals of Woodrow Wilson’s ideas behind demo­cracy pro­mo­tion. Laurence Whitehead is an Official Fellow in Pol­itics at Nuffield College, Oxford University, and Senior Fellow of the College. In March 2011 he takes up a one-­year post as Senior Proc­tor of the University. His most recent books are Latin Amer­ica: A New In­ter­pretation (Palgrave, 2006 and 2010) and Demo­crat­ization: Theory and Ex­peri­ence (OUP, 2002). Recent art­icles include: ‘Losing “the Force”? The “Dark Side” of demo­crat­ization after Iraq’, Demo­crat­ization (2009) and ‘The Crash of “08” ’, Journal of Demo­cracy (2010). He is editor of an Oxford University Press series, ‘Studies in Demo­ crat­ization’, and Pres­id­ent of the Conseil Scientifique of the Institut des Ameriques in Paris.

Contributors   xi Sharon L. Wolchik is Professor of Polit­ical Science and Inter­na­tional Affairs at George Washington University. She is the co-­author, with Valerie J. Bunce, of Defeating Author­it­arian Leaders in Postcommunist Coun­tries (Cam­bridge University Press, 2011). Jonas Wolff is Chairman of the Research Council and Senior Research Fellow at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF ), Ger­many. His research inter­ests include Latin Amer­ican pol­itics, demo­crat­isation and inter­na­tional demo­cracy pro­mo­tion. Richard Youngs is Dir­ector of FRIDE, Madrid, and Associate Professor at the University of Warwick, UK. His latest book is Europe’s Decline and Fall: the Struggle against Global Irrelev­ance (Profile Books, 2010).

Ac­know­ledgements

This book was initially conceived by the editors as part of their work on the ‘Polit­ical Eco­nom­ies of Demo­crat­isation’ (PEoD) pro­ject, based at the Inter­na­ tional Pol­itics De­part­ment, Aberystwyth University since 2008. We would like to first express gratitude for the generous fin­an­cial assistance of the Euro­pean Research Council in facilitating the conception of this volume. Funded under the auspices of the Seventh Framework Programme (ERC grant agreement 202 596), the PEoD pro­ject has not only provided the resources for the editors to conceive of and de­velop the core themes of this book, but it also funded ‘The Conceptual Pol­itics of Demo­cracy Pro­mo­tion’ workshop held in Aberystwyth, 27–29 July 2010. This workshop allowed most of the con­trib­utors to come together to present initial versions of their chapters and to discuss the central ideas of the volume. In addition to the con­trib­utors, Thomas Carothers, Carole Pateman and Phil Cerny visited Aberystwyth to parti­cip­ate in the workshop, and we are deeply appreciative of the in­valu­able advice and comments they provided about the dir­ec­tion of the pro­ject. The meeting proved to be a great success and would not have been pos­sible without the in­valu­able assistance of Jeff Bridoux and Anja Gebel in its organ­isa­tion and management. Jeff went above and beyond the call of duty, and we are especially grateful for all his help. We would also like to thank Mike Foley for his de­part­mental support for the workshop. In par­ticu­lar, we would like to thank the con­trib­utors for responding so pos­it­ively to our invitation to ex­plore the theme of ‘conceptual pol­itics’ in regards to demo­cracy pro­ mo­tion and demo­crat­isation. Finally, we are extremely grateful to the editors at Routledge for their support of this pro­ject, and to Eric Fong for his hard work in helping to prepare the final manuscript. Christopher Hobson and Milja Kurki Tokyo and Aberystwyth, Janu­ary 2011

Foreword

Inter­na­tional demo­cracy pro­mo­tion rushed out of the gates in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Events in the world were moving fast – author­it­arian regimes were collapsing with startling rapidity and frequency and attempted demo­cratic transitions were multiplying in their wake. The rel­at­ively small com­mun­ity of organ­isa­tions and persons engaged in supporting demo­cracy across borders threw themselves into the breech, infused with a strong sense of certainty about the im­port­ance of their mission and the uni­ver­sal validity of lib­eral demo­cracy. Twenty years later the pic­ture has changed. The inter­na­tional demo­cracy pro­ mo­tion com­mun­ity is much larger now, comprising a pan­oply of pub­lic, private, and multi­lateral actors based in many coun­tries. Their ac­tiv­ities are present in something like 100 coun­tries around the world. Despite this growth, the op­tim­ ism and momentum of earl­ier years are much tempered and a strong sense pervades the com­mun­ity of a need for recon­sidera­tion and renovation. Sobering changes in the inter­na­tional polit­ical landscape are in part behind this change. Demo­cracy’s spread has been replaced by fears of a demo­cratic recession – the first decade of this century saw no net gain in the number of demo­cra­cies in the world, though recent de­velopments in the Arab world now raise the pos­sib­il­ity of a better decade ahead. Assertive challengers to demo­cracy, including but not limited to China and Russia, have cracked the as­sump­tion that this century will neces­sar­ily be lib­eral demo­cracy’s extended moment. The estab­lished demo­cra­cies of North Amer­ica and Europe are less self-­confident about their own success, buffeted as they have been by eco­nomic woes and also socio-­ political tensions over how to balance their demo­cratic norms with concerns over security and various in­ternal issues. The practice of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion itself has also ex­peri­enced prob­lems. The close asso­ci­ation of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion with the US inter­ven­tion in Iraq and with the broader regime change as­pira­tions of Pres­id­ent George W. Bush significantly damaged the legitimacy of the enterprise. These controversial US pol­icies fueled a backlash against demo­cracy support ac­tiv­ities in many recipient coun­tries, caused many Euro­peans to disassociate themselves from the topic, and weakened US pub­lic support for it as well. More broadly, demo­cracy support – traditionally focused on polit­ical institutions and pro­cesses – has found itself struggling to respond to the widespread disappointment of cit­izens in many new

xiv   Foreword demo­cra­cies with the lack of improvement that pluralistic pol­itics have brought to their socio-­economic con­dition. This new con­text is very much on the minds of policy-­makers and aid practitioners in Western gov­ern­ments, multi­lateral organ­isa­tions, and private aid groups, prompting many of them to search for new and better ways forward. This present volume is thus well timed. It is the most ser­ious effort yet coming from the schol­arly research com­mun­ity to raise hard questions about the conceptual bases of inter­na­tional demo­cracy support, about models and methods, prin­ ciples and practices, entry points and end points. The editors have steered their crit­ical enterprise with care, avoiding the pitfalls that could easily undermine such a venture. The book avoids the trap of hewing to just one narrow line of critique that would seek to dismiss the whole enterprise as ill-­intentioned and ill-­ conceived, what the editors refer to as ‘the neo-­Gramscian critique’, and instead usefully pursues a plur­al­ism of crit­ical per­spect­ives, including a strong chapter that critiques what some practitioners view as a crit­ical orthodoxy. It also avoids the trap of hermitic ab­straction. The volume boasts a strong set of case studies well-­informed by research on demo­cracy pro­mo­tion in practice and all of the authors are attentive to prac­ticalities of the demo­cracy support enterprise. And it avoids the trap of predetermined answers, preferring instead to estab­lish the legitimacy of a range of im­port­ant, neg­lected questions about both methods and goals. The result is a volume that could play a valu­able role in the larger effort to recon­sider and renovate inter­na­tional demo­cracy support. The exact nature of this will itself be the subject of inter­esting debates ahead as scholars and practitioners take up the arguments contained within and react to them in diverse ways, very much in keeping with the overall spirit of this lively book. Thomas Carothers Carnegie Endowment for Inter­na­tional Peace

Introduction The conceptual pol­itics of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion Christopher Hobson and Milja Kurki1

Consensus and contestation in demo­cracy pro­mo­tion Demo­cracy pro­mo­tion quickly emerged as one of the defining charac­ter­istics of the post-­Cold War inter­na­tional order. The con­text within which it appeared has shaped and argu­ably warped it in ways that are only now becoming more evid­ ent. Crucially, the practice of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion became embedded within inter­na­tional pol­itics at a unique his­tor­ical moment, a time in which there was unusually little discussion over alternate forms of rule. Com­mun­ism followed fascism into the dustbin of his­tory, and demo­cracy was left as the most legitimate and accepted method of gov­ern­ment. The lib­eral Zeitgeist was perfectly captured in Francis Fukuyama’s ‘end of his­tory’ thesis, which confidently announced ‘Western lib­eral demo­cracy as the final form of human gov­ern­ment’ (Fukuyama 1989: 3). Looking back on this period, the faith placed in lib­eral demo­cracy undoubtedly appears excessive and overly op­tim­istic. It may not be ac­cur­ate to equate the failure of com­mun­ism with the success of lib­eral demo­ cracy, but this is what many did. This confidence in lib­eral demo­cracy prevailed within the nascent demo­cracy pro­mo­tion com­mun­ity. Furthermore, after com­ mun­ism, more experimentation was the last thing people wanted in many target coun­tries of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion. Above all, there was a deep desire for normality and prosperity, which was thought to mean lib­eral demo­cracy in the polit­ical sphere and free market capit­al­ism in the eco­nomic realm. In this regard, Timothy Garton Ash (2009) has recently suggested that the Velvet Revolu­tions of 1989 heralded a new form of regime change, one that is ‘typically anti-­utopian, or at the very least non-­utopian. In a given place, it aspires to create polit­ical and legal institutions, and social and eco­nomic ar­range­ments, that already exist elsewhere (for example, in estab­lished lib­eral demo­cra­cies)’. One key con­sequence of this non-­revolutionary attitude was that there were few questions about forms of rule: lib­eral demo­cracy was widely accepted as the answer. As Krastev (2010: 117) observes, ‘the pol­itics of “normalization” replaced deliberation with imitation’. This impacted not only on trans­itional states in East Central Europe, but also more gen­erally on the way demo­cracy pro­mo­tion was being conceptualised and instituted: lib­eral market demo­cracy became the consensus end point being worked towards.

2   C. Hobson and M. Kurki 1989 and its imme­diate aftermath is distinctive for the unusual lull in debate and discussion over demo­cracy’s meaning and value. This exceptional period has been mis­takenly taken for the norm, how­ever, with con­sequences for the way demo­cracy pro­mo­tion and demo­crat­isation has been subsequently understood. Notably, demo­cracy’s lack of systemic challengers significantly shaped perceptions about the role external actors could, and should, play in assisting its spread across the globe. In this regard, Michael McFaul (2004–5: 148) suggested that not only has, ‘the norm of demo­cracy . . . achieved striking uni­ver­sality in the current inter­na­tional system’, but that the pro­mo­tion of demo­cracy ‘has also become an inter­na­tional norm’. This claim now appears distinctly premature, given the growing ‘backlash’ against these practices (Carothers 2010). On a deeper level, such de­velopments are reflective of the end of the lib­eral interregnum of the 1990s, as there is again more contestation surrounding the meaning and value of demo­cracy. This is the his­tor­ically more regu­lar situ­ation, one that needs to be recog­nised and adjusted to by those involved in assisting the global spread of demo­cracy (Hobson 2009a). Recent aca­demic liter­at­ure has highlighted some of the prob­lems and dilemmas demo­cracy promoters now face, and have sought to devise new ways of tackling these issues (Diamond 2008; Burnell and Youngs 2010; Barany and Moser, 2009; McFaul 2010). Yet, these responses have remained limited in crucial respects. The focus has been almost exclusively on questions of pol­icy and implementation, with insufficient con­sidera­tion given to the the­or­etical and conceptual frameworks that inform these practices. The starting point for this volume is to examine precisely what so many classical pol­icy frameworks and aca­demic accounts have taken for granted: demo­ cracy’s meaning in demo­cracy pro­mo­tion. We suggest that the consensus view of what is meant by ‘demo­cracy’ when it is advanced and supported abroad needs to be ana­lysed systematically and, where neces­sary, challenged and re­thought. Indeed, the view that demo­cracy need not be conceptually probed and questioned any more may be rather deceptive. With more conceptually nuanced tools we might discover that there may in fact be con­sider­able dif­fer­ences in how various actors involved in demo­cracy pro­mo­tion actu­ally understand this contested idea. One should not presume that all the different actors involved – external donors, target popu­la­tions, inter­na­tional organ­isa­tions, NGOs and other intermediary bodies etc – conceive of demo­cracy in a com­par­able manner. For instance, do the United States, the Euro­pean Union and the United Nations really work with the same notion of demo­cracy? Do these actors even employ a clear and static idea of demo­cracy, or are there shifts and contestations within their own conceptual frameworks? And how do understandings of demo­cracy held by external actors relate to localised conceptions? Rather than taking demo­cracy’s meaning as a constant across a wide variety of actors and con­texts, this volume identifies it as an open question in need of careful and reflective study. In so doing, we seek to initiate more empirically ac­cur­ate and the­or­etically pen­et­rating ana­lyses of con­tempor­ary practices of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion. Conceptual pol­ itics, it will be seen in the various chapters presented here, play an im­port­ant role in the practice of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion; and we contend that it is better to tackle

Introduction   3 these conceptual pol­itics directly, rather than sideline or ignore them, despite their complexity and the occasionally discomforting un­cer­tainty that they may raise. This introduction is divided into three parts, and provides a basic framework for the detailed ana­lyses and case studies that follow. First, the conceptual pol­ itics approach is outlined. Second, a number of core themes and issues that arise from adopting such a per­spect­ive are discussed. Third, a brief summary of the chapters within the volume is provided.

Conceptual pol­itics and demo­cracy pro­mo­tion Before outlining what the conceptual pol­itics approach entails, it is helpful to briefly clarify what this framework is being applied to, namely, demo­cracy pro­ mo­tion. Both within the aca­demic liter­at­ure and in pol­icy discourse there are some dif­fer­ences over what the term ‘demo­cracy pro­mo­tion’ is seen to cover. Demo­cracy pro­mo­tion is understood here in a broad, overarching manner: it means the pro­cesses by which an external actor intervenes to install or assist in the institution of demo­cratic gov­ern­ment in a target state. Demo­cracy pro­mo­tion incorp­or­ates a wide variety of strategies and actions, operating across a spectrum from peaceful to forceful means. It can entail co­er­cive actions, polit­ical con­ ditionalities, eco­nomic or fin­an­cial concessions or sanc­tions, as well as various ‘soft’ meas­ures such as grass roots civil so­ci­ety support (see Burnell 2000). It should be noted that today co­er­cive demo­crat­isation is rel­at­ively rare, even if the prominence of the Bush administration’s beha­vi­our has encouraged a view that links demo­cracy pro­mo­tion with the exercise of milit­ary force (Carothers 2010: 64). Reflecting the wide range of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion ac­tiv­ities that exist, the chapters in this volume also engage with many of the different actors that constitute the demo­cracy pro­mo­tion com­mun­ity: states, inter­na­tional organ­isa­tions, NGOs, polit­ical founda­tions, contractors and more. Having identified how ‘demo­cracy pro­mo­tion’ is understood, it is neces­sary to explain what exactly is meant by the notion of ‘conceptual pol­itics’. A crucial first step is clarifying this framework, as well as outlining its value for the study of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion. ‘Conceptual pol­itics’ de­scribes the ways in which con­ tested concepts – like demo­cracy – are in­ter­preted, used, and fought over by actors, and how certain meanings and definitions come to influence real world phenomena. From this per­spect­ive, the way concepts are understood is not somehow prior to, or removed from, pol­itics, but is an un­avoid­able com­pon­ent, and thus form a neces­sary part of our study. Connolly (1993: 3) expresses the point well: ‘since the discourse of pol­itics helps to set the terms within which that pol­itics proceeds, one who seeks to understand and to assess the structure of polit­ical life must deliberately probe the conventions governing those concepts’. The suggestion that pol­itics extends to the way the ‘real’ world is conceived and de­scribed builds on in­ter­pretivist and constructivist scholarship, which has strongly argued that language is fundamental in constituting social reality. As Koselleck (1996: 61) explains, ‘concepts are both in­dic­ators of and factors in

4   C. Hobson and M. Kurki polit­ical and social life. Put meta­phoric­ally, concepts are like joints linking language and the extra-­linguistic world.’ Concepts are not epiphenomenal: the manner in which they are understood and used by both practitioners and scholars has an im­port­ant role in giving substance to the world that is being observed. In essence, what ‘conceptual pol­itics’ conveys is the way key concepts are debated, transposed and imposed, and how these outcomes impact upon, and help shape, reality. The conceptual pol­itics approach is one that is well suited for studying demo­ cracy, a term that is both polit­ically power­ful and heavily contested. Guizot’s (1849: 2–3) observation rings true: ‘such is the power of the word Demo­cracy, that no gov­ern­ment or party dares to raise its head, or believes its own exist­ence pos­sible, if it does not bear that word inscribed on its banner’. These words were written in the middle of the nine­teenth century, but are equally applic­able to con­ tempor­ary pol­itics. One element that unites coun­tries as diverse as the United States, South Africa, Congo, Russia, and Sweden is that all pub­licly define themselves – in one form or another – in relation to demo­cracy. Yet despite the ubiquitous ref­er­ences to demo­cracy, what is meant by the concept is far from clear or uncontested – and indeed in many instances ref­er­ences to demo­cracy may be more rhet­orical than substantive. The contested nature of demo­cracy has been widely docu­mented and commented upon by polit­ical theorists. W. B. Gallie (1956) famously suggested that demo­cracy is best understood as an ‘essentially contested concept’. It is the aim of this volume to take ser­iously Gallie’s con­tention and, as a result, directly tackle the nature and con­sequences that this contested-­ness involves for demo­ cracy pro­mo­tion. But do polit­ical theory insights neces­sar­ily apply to the much more concrete realm of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion? Within the existing liter­at­ure, a majority of scholars would suggest that it does not. The common pattern is to define demo­cracy at the outset: it is a precursor to the ana­lysis, rather than constituting part of the study itself (Kurki 2010). This reflects the over­whelm­ing tendency in this field to adopt an objectivist view of pol­itics and language. As such, the discussion that has taken place over defining demo­cracy has done so within a largely positivist framework, which regards definitional issues as separate from practice and ana­lysis. In scholarship on demo­crat­isation and demo­cracy pro­mo­tion, the near uni­ver­sal starting point for conceiving of demo­cracy has been, and to a significant extent still is, the influ­en­tial definition of demo­cracy espoused by Joseph Schumpeter (1943) and extended by Robert Dahl (1971). From their per­spect­ive, demo­cracy is viewed in pro­ced­ural terms, with elections and related pro­ced­ural elements of representative gov­ern­ment taken as the ‘sine qua non’ of demo­cracy (Huntington 1993: 9). While this approach con­tinues to have a strong group of adherents, it should also be noted that schol­arly consensus has been refined in response to the so-­called ‘elect­oral fallacy’, whereby elections and demo­cracy are equated, something the minimalist pro­ced­ural approach is susceptible to. By themselves, elections have come to be seen as insufficient; a functioning, consolidated demo­cracy also requires a supportive lib­eral demo­cratic ‘culture’: freedom of speech and

Introduction   5 asso­ci­ation and the protection of other basic rights. This has given rise to an im­port­ant distinction between ‘elect­oral’ and ‘lib­eral’ demo­cra­cies (Diamond 1996). The former accords with the minimalist approach, while the latter is a more extensive understanding that incorp­or­ates lib­eral consti­tu­tionalism, culture and rights. There is now a remark­able level of agreement on the view that both aspects of the two-­part definition of demo­cracy are essential to demo­crat­isation. Peter Burnell (2010a: 2), for example, has recently concluded that, ‘demo­cracy is of course a much-­contested concept. But in most of the discourse on demo­crat­ization and in the understandings held by demo­cracy promoters also there are certainly widely accepted notions of elect­oral demo­cracy and lib­eral demo­cracy’. This position is echoed by Michael McFaul (2010: 28–32), a leading scholar in the field and now a member of the Obama administration: ‘broad agreement in academia and the pol­icy com­mun­ity has emerged on both a minimalist definition of demo­cracy and the kinds of institutions and attributes needed to transform elect­oral demo­cra­ cies into more robust demo­cratic systems of gov­ern­ment.’ The widespread schol­arly agreement over demo­cracy’s meaning is bene­fi­cial insofar as it allows for a greater level of comparability between studies, and thus it creates the pos­sib­il­ity for the further generation of know­ledge in this area. Measuring demo­cracy and success of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion – and indeed demo­ cracy pro­mo­tion practice itself – is easier when an agreed-­upon set of cri­teria for what constitutes demo­cracy can be worked with. On another level, how­ever, the tendency to decontest demo­cracy’s meaning and remove in­ter­pretive aspects from this field of study can actu­ally impair our understanding. Indeed, a key claim of this volume is that in examining demo­cracy pro­mo­tion and demo­crat­ isation it is essential to ser­iously engage with the way the idea of demo­cracy is defined and employed by different actors in order to better understand and explain the dy­namics and effects of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion practices and dialogues. Thus, con­tri­bu­tions by Laurence Whitehead, and Valerie J. Bunce and Sharon L. Wolchik, for example, illus­trate how engaging with the conceptual founda­tions of these practices can be harnessed in producing stronger explan­at­ ory accounts of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion and demo­crat­isation. Given that this sub-­ field has been strongly criticised for its failure to generate a larger body of know­ledge (Geddes 2007, 2009), expanding its remit to expli­citly include such conceptual and the­or­etical issues has con­sider­able potential. Simultaneously, a conceptual pol­itics per­spect­ive has strong affinities with crit­ical theory and post-­positivist approaches amongst which not only better understanding but also norm­ative questions and critique can be an im­port­ant aim of study. For instance, Ish-­Shalom’s con­tri­bu­tion here illus­trates how a conceptual pol­itics framework can bring to light hidden norm­ative and polit­ical positions embedded in demo­cracy pro­mo­tion practices. From this per­spect­ive, defining and understanding demo­cracy is an un­avoid­ably polit­ical and norm­ative act, with ser­ious ramifications both for demo­cracy pro­mo­tion and the role of scholars studying the subject. This volume is premised on the belief that engaging with the conceptual pol­itics of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion is a fruitful and neces­ sary exercise for both mainstream ‘explan­at­ory’ scholars and ‘crit­ical’ theorists.

6   C. Hobson and M. Kurki It is im­port­ant to emphasise that the approach adopted in this volume is expli­citly pluralist, and should be distinguished from the existing neo-­Gramscian liter­at­ure on the conceptual dimensions of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion. These scholars have argued that demo­cracy pro­mo­tion is dominated by a narrow, elitist model of lib­eral demo­cracy, one that is limited strictly to the polit­ical sphere and does not extend to, or challenge, the socio-­economic order. Noting its close corres­ pond­ence to the influ­en­tial definition of Robert Dahl, Robinson (1996) suggests that what is being promoted is not demo­cracy, but ‘poly­archy’: an impoverished replica that serves the inter­ests of a transnational elite. Gills, Rocamora and Wilson (1993) make a sim­ilar argument, proposing that the United States seeks to institute ‘low in­tens­ity demo­cracy’, a kind of regime geared towards their eco­nomic inter­ests. What these vocal critics have illus­trated is that the way demo­cracy is conceived of has real and significant con­sequences. Indeed, given some of the im­port­ant insights gen­er­ated by this scholarship, it is surprising the work done in the 1990s has not been consolidated and extended. This volume certainly has some points of overlap with these neo-­Gramscian studies: it concurs with the need to investigate the conceptual founda­tions of these practices, and it also appreciates the im­port­ance of recognising how norm­ative systems of meaning are tied in complex ways to the inter­ests of actors. Nonetheless, there are also crucial dif­fer­ences. First, a strongly pluralistic per­spect­ive is adopted here. While the conceptual pol­itics framework is informed by a minimal set of in­ter­pretivist as­sump­tions (see also Whitehead 2002), this volume is not based on one the­or­etical approach, neo-­Gramscian or other­wise. Rather, it incorp­ or­ates con­tri­bu­tions from different norm­ative standpoints, the­or­etical traditions, regional specialities and aca­demic dis­cip­lines. Second, the neo-­Gramscians do successfully highlight certain conceptual aspects of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion, but the pic­ture painted often seems too black and white. For instance, to talk of a transnational bloc of ruling elites simply does not accord with a far more complicated reality, in which there is con­sider­able dif­fer­ence between different demo­cracy promoters (Guilhot 2005: 15–17). As some con­tri­bu­tions to this volume suggest, the dominance of a lib­eral demo­cratic model should not blind us to the conceptual – and polit­ical – diversity and vari­ation that exist now­adays within and around demo­cracy pro­mo­tion practice. As Richard Youngs argues, in the case of the EU, for example, the conceptual pol­itics of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion are far more complex and multi-­faceted than the neo-­Gramscian per­spect­ive has allowed for. Third, in the neo-­Gramscian liter­at­ure there is a tendency to present an overly bin­ary reading of demo­cracy, opposing a stylised version of lib­eral demo­cracy against a vague model of participatory demo­cracy. This volume supports expanding discussion on different forms of demo­cracy, but seeks to venture much further in pluralising the debate, examining a wide variety of conceptions of demo­cracy.

Ana­lyt­ical themes Having provided an outline of what a conceptual pol­itics approach to demo­cracy pro­mo­tion entails, it is neces­sary to con­sider in more detail exactly how this can

Introduction   7 be applied. To provide a broad ana­lyt­ical framework for the chapters that follow, a two-­fold cat­egor­isation is provided here. First, three kinds of conceptual debate are distinguished. Second, three different con­texts within which conceptual contestation can occur are identified. This cat­egor­isation is, of course, in part arbit­ rary – for example, the three kinds of conceptual debate overlap and speak to each other in complex ways – and further kinds of ana­lyt­ical distinctions could be de­veloped. Yet, we argue that it is ana­lyt­ically useful to separate these basic kinds of debate and sites of conceptual contestation as a framework within which the reader can position the indi­vidual chapters in the volume. Kinds of conceptual debate 1  Models of demo­cracy The most fundamental axis around which the conceptual pol­itics of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion operates is the basic question of what demo­cracy means. Within polit­ ical theory, this issue has crystallised around debates between different ‘models’ of demo­cracy (Macpherson 1977; Held 2006). For example, in clear contrast to the demo­crat­isation liter­at­ure, which gen­erally refers only to ‘elect­oral’ and ‘lib­ eral’ demo­cracy (e.g. Diamond 2008: 20–6; McFaul 2010: 28–32), David Held (2006) identifies a much wider range of demo­cratic models: classical, repub­lican, lib­eral, direct, elitist, pluralist, socialist, deliberative and cosmo­pol­itan. These forms are distinguished by the way the nature, scope, and purpose of demo­cracy are understood. Debates between alternate models reflect the fact that throughout demo­cracy’s his­tory there has been an uneasy coexist­ence between two central prin­ciples: lib­erty and equality. Lib­eral theories have prioritised the former, emphasising core civil and polit­ical rights of indi­viduals, as well as certain polit­ ical institutions and pro­ced­ures. In contrast, social demo­crats have placed more weight on equality, which has led to a concern with protecting socio-­economic rights and regulating the eco­nomic realm. Lib­eral and social demo­cratic models are perhaps the most well known and commonly practised (and also made ref­er­ ence to most often in this volume) but these are by no means the only conceptions that exist. Participatory and deliberative demo­crats draw upon the legacy of ancient Greece to call for greater involvement by people in decision-­making pro­ cesses. Meanwhile, rad­ical and cosmo­pol­itan demo­crats reject the traditional bound­ar­ies of demo­cratic pol­itics, arguing for transnational and global forms of demo­cracy. These various understandings, and the many others that exist, may share certain points of overlap or agreement, but all have differing visions of the core values, institutions and pri­or­ities of demo­cratic governance. Most existing scholarship on demo­cracy pro­mo­tion has consciously rejected the kinds of questions that animate discussions over models of demo­cracy. These are instead seen as being about the way demo­cracy performs and functions, rather than composing part of the actual definition. To the extent that vari­ations in demo­cracy are con­sidered, these tend to be understood in institutional terms, i.e. parlia­ment­ary versus pres­id­en­tial (McFaul 2010: 32–4). The discussion over

8   C. Hobson and M. Kurki different models of demo­cracy in polit­ical theory is in ref­er­ence to deeper ideo­ logical, norm­ative and polit­ical dy­namics, how­ever. Of inter­est are not merely specific institutional forms, but also the underlying values and ideas that give them life and meaning. Given the extensive contestation and discussion in polit­ ical theory between different models of demo­cracy, it is remark­able how little of this has filtered through to debates in demo­cracy pro­mo­tion and demo­crat­isation. The result is that when con­sidering demo­cracy pro­mo­tion, we are left with an incomplete and impoverished understanding of the most im­port­ant com­pon­ent: demo­cracy. By expli­citly engaging with different models of demo­cracy, this volume seeks to initiate deeper reflection on what exactly actors are doing, and should be doing, when they engage in or with demo­cracy pro­mo­tion. 2  Vagueness versus precision Con­sidering different models of demo­cracy is perhaps the most obvious entry point to the conceptual pol­itics approach. Nonetheless, a central purpose of this volume is to dem­on­strate the multiplicity of ways conceptual and the­or­etical issues shape demo­cracy pro­mo­tion. Another axis around which contestation takes place is over the way demo­cracy is defined. Within existing liter­at­ure there has been an ongoing debate about whether demo­cracy and autocracy should be meas­ured in a dichotomous or graded fashion. The latter viewpoint has largely prevailed in recent years, partly due to the empirical reality of a con­sider­able amount of ‘semi-­demo­cra­cies’ or ‘hybrid regimes’, which have complicated attempts to draw strict distinctions. Notably, influ­en­tial data sets, such as the annual Freedom House surveys and the Polity index, work with a graded scale. Both are widely utilised by policy­makers and aca­demics in assessing the amount of demo­cra­cies in the world. As such, how these surveys understand demo­cracy is not without con­sequence, and the polit­ical effects of these definitional practices need to be con­sidered. The degree of specificity in demo­cracy’s meaning has con­sequences for how demo­cracy pro­mo­tion pol­icies are conceived. Certain actors may seek to keep demo­cracy’s meaning vague, thereby allowing a wider range of regimes and beha­vi­our to be labelled ‘demo­cratic’. This is hardly a new phenomenon. Con­ sidering the meaning of demo­cracy in 1920, Brown (1920: v) complained that ‘the word has come to mean nothing; or rather it means so much that it means nothing at all’. Writing shortly before the onset of the Cold War, partly defined as a conflict between lib­eral and people’s demo­cra­cies, George Orwell (1946) offered a scep­tical per­spect­ive: In the case of a word like demo­cracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost uni­ver­ sally felt that when we call a coun­try demo­cratic we are praising it: con­ sequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a demo­cracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning.

Introduction   9 The con­sider­able polit­ical capital gained from being associated with the demo­ cratic label encourages actors to use it when attempting to legitimate themselves or their actions. One of many examples is that states lacking lib­eral demo­cratic institutions, such as China, Iran, North Korea and Russia, all still employ the language of demo­cracy. Speaking to the 17th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in 2007, Gen­eral Secretary Hu Jintao used the term ‘demo­cracy’ no less than sixty-­one times (McFaul 2010: 38). Whether or not attempts at employing or extending the term are successful will depend largely on how closely new meanings relate to received understandings, as there are limits on how broadly a concept can be stretched (Skinner 2002). In this regard, against those seeking to keep its meaning rel­at­ively indeterminate, other polit­ical actors may instead aim to fix and restrict demo­cracy’s definition in a manner that accords with their own inter­ests. Just as being able to claim the demo­cratic label is im­port­ant, actors can bene­fit from defining it in such a way that they are included within the definition, while others are excluded. The resulting situ­ation is contestation between, on the one hand, those that seek to keep the idea of demo­cracy as broad and indeterminate as pos­sible, and on the other, those that try to limit its definition to something far more precise and seek to prevent conceptual ‘stretching’. These opposing positions represent an inter­esting point of ana­lysis when con­ sidering the conceptual pol­itics of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion: do actors seek to render precise the meaning of demo­cracy, or do they gravitate towards vagueness? Definitional practices are reflective of the polit­ical con­text within which these actors are operating, and the specific goals they seek to achieve. Thus, the United States may push for a specific understanding in terms of lib­eral demo­ cracy, so as to bolster its uni­versal­ist justifications for demo­cracy pro­mo­tion and to have an unquestioned model to advance on the ground. In contrast, in her con­ tri­bu­tion, Charlesworth illus­trates how the United Nations has tended towards a more open and vague definition of demo­cracy, in part because of con­sider­able conflict between member-­states from the north and south. Both definitional tactics offer strategic ad­vant­ages and dangers; and both have different kinds of polit­ical con­sequences. A fixed route narrows debate on the meaning of demo­ cracy, and potentially adds to the value of the label, but at the same, also increases the chances of hypocrisy, which can be especially prob­lematic for external actors trying to support demo­cracy. Vagueness also allows for the pos­ sib­il­ity of reconciling and managing potentially contra­dict­ory pol­icies or approaches, but this may come at the expense of being able to maintain clarity of purpose or justification for demo­cracy pro­mo­tion. Argu­ably, the EU’s conceptually ‘fuzzy’ approach to demo­cracy pro­mo­tion is characterised by some of these dy­namics (Kurki forthcoming a). 3  Pro­cess versus product On a more ab­stract level there is the question of how to conceive of demo­cracy. Is demo­cracy best seen as a specific set of institutions, such as elections, the rule of law, transparent and ac­count­able rule? This is gen­erally how it has been

10   C. Hobson and M. Kurki defined by those working within the Schumpeter/Dahl tradition. Or is demo­cracy something diffuse, identified more by a culture or ethos than any par­ticu­lar set of governing pro­ced­ures? This is not a purely aca­demic question, as the answer has im­port­ant con­sequences for the possib­il­ities of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion. Ish-­ Shalom (2006) has argued elsewhere that if demo­cracy is understood in institutional terms it can suggest that it is readily exportable, as opposed to a cultural approach, which is much harder to directly trans­fer. More often than not, there has been a tendency to view demo­cracy as a finished product that can be transported to other locales. As Václav Havel (1995: 7) caustically observes, ‘demo­ cracy is seen as something given, finished, and complete as is, something that can be exported like cars or television sets.’ In contrast, if demo­cracy is seen more as an ideal to strive towards, it potentially suggests a different framework for demo­cracy pro­mo­tion. For instance, scholars as diverse as Guillermo O’Donnell (2007), John Keane (2009) and Jacques Derrida (2005) all propose that demo­cracy can never be finished, it is always ‘yet to come’. Indeed, it is notable that one of the leading figures of demo­crat­isation scholarship, Guillermo O’Donnell (2007: 5–11) proposes that ‘what is best and most distinctive about demo­cracy’ is the never-­ending gap between what it promises and what it delivers. From this per­spect­ive, demo­cracy is given meaning and substance through the ongoing attempt to de­velop it further. Demo­cracy is not simply a con­dition, but an open-­ended pro­cess. In this regard, Havel (1995: 7) argues that it is more productive to see demo­cracy as an ‘open system that is best able to respond to people’s basic needs – that is, as a set of possib­il­ities that con­tinu­ally must be sought, redefined, and brought into being’. Is this per­spect­ive incom­pat­ible with demo­cracy pro­mo­tion? Or, conversely, does it provide a more dialogic and open form of engagement, where learning is a two-­way pro­cess, such as Teivainen (2009) has argued for? As Whitehead suggests in his con­tri­bu­tion, these two understandings are not completely separate, one can often find demo­cracy simultaneously being understood and ref­er­enced as both an ideal and a set of institutions. Con­texts and sites of conceptual pol­itics Having set out a number of axes around which conceptual contestation occurs, it is neces­sary to con­sider the different con­texts and locales within which these types of contestation occur. 1  Conceptual pol­itics in and between demo­cracy pro­mo­tion actors The United States may have once held somewhat of a mono­poly on supporting demo­cracy abroad, but this is certainly no longer the case with a wide range of states, inter­na­tional organ­isa­tions, NGOs and TNCs all participating in these practices (McFaul 2004–5). Given the con­sider­able size the demo­cracy pro­mo­ tion com­mun­ity has grown to, one clear realm of conceptual pol­itics is the issue of how sim­ilar or different the conceptions of demo­cracy held by various

Introduction   11 external actors are. Is there a hege­monic conception of demo­cracy? If dif­fer­ence does exist, how great is it? For instance, do the United States and the Euro­pean Union both operate with an essentially sim­ilar lib­eral demo­cratic model? Or are there con­sider­able dif­fer­ences between the way these actors understand both demo­cracy and pro­cesses of demo­crat­isation, as Kopstein (2006) suggests? What role do inter­na­tional organ­isa­tions play? Is the conception of demo­cracy the World Bank holds, for instance, simply reflective of its largest stakeholders? In examining the different (or sim­ilar) conceptions of demo­cracy held by various actors, to what extent do these reflect certain polit­ical inter­ests or ideo­lo­gies? Contestation may not only occur between demo­cracy pro­mo­tion actors, but also within them. In this regard, perhaps the most obvious example is the Euro­ pean Union. Composed of 27 member-­states, there is con­sider­able vari­ation in the way different coun­tries conceive of, and practice, demo­cracy and demo­cracy assistance. For example, the United Kingdom has a lib­eral demo­cratic model much closer to that found in the United States, whereas Scan­din­avian coun­tries have sought to defend and maintain their tradition of social demo­cracy. The work of different de­velopment institutions, not to even mention polit­ical founda­ tions, can be directed by very different ideo­logical models of demo­cracy, even if these dif­fer­ences are moderated by the depoliticising background discourses which facilitate debate on ‘Euro­pean’ demo­cracy pro­mo­tion today (Kurki forthcoming a). Divergences of views on demo­cracy are not unique to the complex Euro­pean scene, how­ever. In an im­port­ant report on the Amer­ican demo­cracy pro­mo­tion ‘bur­eau­cracy’, Melia (2005) has argued that it is far more fragmented and pluralist than is gen­erally portrayed. This suggests that it is worth con­ sidering whether various agencies within the United States – State de­part­ment, USAID, the NED and so on – are working with the same conception of demo­ cracy (Bridoux 2011). Given how heavily contested the concept of demo­cracy is, and its simultaneous position as both an institution and an ideal, there is con­ sider­able room for vari­ation between and within demo­cracy pro­mo­tion actors, with potentially significant ramifications for the way pol­icies are formulated and implemented. 2  External agents and local conceptions One of the most im­port­ant sites of contestation over demo­cracy’s meaning takes place between the conceptions of demo­cracy held by local and external actors. Opinion polls suggest widespread support for demo­cracy across the globe, but there is con­sider­able vari­ation over how this term is actu­ally understood, depending on which part of the world you are in. There may be widespread consensus in Western aca­demic and pol­icymaking circles over what demo­cracy entails, but it is far from certain how far this understanding extends. For example, fol­low­ing the end of com­mun­ism in East Central Europe, lib­eral demo­cracy was widely desired and supported as the successor regime. Yet lib­eral demo­cracy was often equated simply with eco­nomic prosperity and now, two decades later, the fact that lib­eral demo­cracy has meant something else has given rise to con­sider­able

12   C. Hobson and M. Kurki dissatis­fac­tion with the idea of demo­cracy more gen­erally. A false sense of confidence in the uni­versal­ism of demo­cracy has often encouraged potential disjunctures between how demo­cracy is understood by the demo­cracy pro­mo­tion com­mun­ity and by target popu­la­tions. It is time to ser­iously ex­plore this gap, and also to con­sider ways of bridging it. Here Valerie J. Bunce and Sharon L. Wolchik, Jonas Wolff, Larbi Sadiki, and Gordon Crawford and Abdul-­Gafaru Abdulai ex­plore such tensions and dif­fer­ences. In con­sidering the way local conceptions of demo­cracy align (or not) with those held by external actors, it is also im­port­ant to con­sider whether this may prevent the re­cog­ni­tion of existing demo­cratic practices. Put in more concrete terms, the way demo­cracy is conceived of by demo­cracy promoters may inhibit an aware­ness of local practices that are understood within that specific con­text as demo­cratic but may not be labelled as such by external actors. A clear example of this can be found in the Middle East, where there is a strong tradition of broadly demo­cratic practices, but these are regu­larly missed by external agents operating with an ill-­fitting conception of demo­cracy, an issue Sadiki ex­plores in his con­tri­bu­tion. At the very least, these kinds of issues complicate suggestions that demo­cracy is a ‘uni­ver­sal value’, and challenge the Western-­centrism that often dominates the discourse on demo­cracy pro­mo­tion, whereby demo­cracy is unproblem­at­ically equated with the specific ex­peri­ence of Western Europe and North Amer­ica. In looking at potential dif­fer­ences between the conception of demo­cracy held by external actors and that held by local agents, one needs to be careful not to essentialise these positions. As Richard Youngs points out in his chapter, there is potential for just as much conceptual contestation to take place between local actors as there is between external and local agents. Indeed, as Bunce and Wolchik con­sider in their chapter, the manner in which outside funding has given rise to a culture of externally supported NGOs could result in there being con­sider­able sim­ilar­ity in the viewpoints held by certain local actors and external agents. Sim­ilarly, the gov­ern­ment may understand demo­cracy in a way that differs from elements of civil so­ci­ety. 3  The conceptual pol­itics of academia and pol­icy making Scholarship on demo­cracy pro­mo­tion and demo­crat­isation is undoubtedly one part of polit­ical science that has a real and direct influence on pol­icymaking and practice. Over the years, many leading aca­demics have moved between the two realms. It is notable that argu­ably the leading journal in the field – the Journal of Demo­ cracy – is closely associated with the National Endowment for Demo­cracy, a prominent demo­cracy pro­mo­tion actor created and funded by the US gov­ern­ment. Looking at pol­icy docu­ments, it is evid­ent that schol­arly de­velopments have been picked up: most clearly the distinction between transition and consolidation, as well as arguments for a fuller conception of demo­cracy that entails more than just elections. These are just a few examples of the close linkages that exist between the scholars and policy­makers in this field (Guilhot 2005; Robinson 1996).

Introduction   13 More gen­erally, much of the aca­demic work in this area is geared towards pol­icy relev­ance. What this means is that the way demo­cracy is understood, used and debated by aca­demic ob­ser­vers can have direct real-­world con­sequences. As such, it is par­ticu­larly im­port­ant that as scholars we reflect on the role (real and potential) our ideas and theories can play. Can theories be simply ob­ject­ive? Is it pos­sible to ana­lyse demo­cracy pro­mo­tion practices removed from our norm­ative com­mit­ments and polit­ical biases? Or do these un­avoid­ably influence our findings? These questions encourage us to think about whether existing research on demo­cracy pro­mo­tion and demo­crat­isation facilitates the hege­mony of certain conceptions of demo­cracy. Or al­tern­atively, does it open up space to broaden the way demo­cracy is thought about? These issues are addressed across this volume, most notably in the con­tri­bu­tions from Laurence Whitehead, Piki Ish-­Shalom, and Richard Youngs.

Chapter outline The con­trib­utors to the volume engage with a wide range of examples of conceptual contestation in the thought and practice of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion. The chapters in the first section do so through engaging with some of the core the­or­ etical, norm­ative and his­tor­ical dimensions of the conceptual pol­itics of demo­ cracy pro­mo­tion. The authors ex­plore a variety of mo­tiva­tions that may drive engagement with conceptual pol­itics, and examine what such an approach is capable of revealing about demo­cracy pro­mo­tion practice. Building on these studies, the second section focuses on con­tempor­ary empirical cases where the conceptual pol­itics of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion can be witnessed. In the first part, Laurence Whitehead guides our initial orientation towards conceptual pol­itics by investigating the stakes – the­or­etical and prac­tical – involved in how we conceptualise the core ideas of demo­cracy, demo­crat­isation and demo­cracy pro­mo­tion. He suggests a shift towards more dynamic biological over mech­anical conceptions in demo­crat­isation and demo­cracy pro­mo­tion, illustrating the need to engage with the conceptual dimensions in more open and innov­at­ive ways. His opening gambit is followed by Piki Ish-­Shalom’s attempt to set down a norm­ative case for taking account of the contested nature of demo­ cracy in demo­crat­isation and demo­cracy pro­mo­tion scholarship. He argues that aca­demics specifically are norm­atively obligated to challenge the de-­contesting trends charac­ter­istic of current debates and to actively reflect on and pluralise how demo­cracy is understood and discussed. The fol­low­ing three chapters set the scene for debates on models of demo­cracy in demo­cracy pro­mo­tion. They especially ex­plore in more detail the nature and role of the lib­eral and social demo­cratic models. Beate Jahn focuses on the relationship between lib­eralism and demo­cracy, an issue that has been hotly debated as a result of Zakaria’s (see 2003) ‘illib­eral demo­cra­cies’ argument. Revisiting the thinking of Locke, a founda­tion figure for lib­eralism, Jahn argues that a misreading of the his­tor­ical and the­or­etical relationship between lib­eralism and demo­cracy has given rise to mis­under­stand­ings about how successful demo­crat­isation occurs and what role

14   C. Hobson and M. Kurki external forces and actors play in these pro­cesses. Adopting a historical-­ theoretical approach to conceptual pol­itics, Sheri Berman argues in her chapter that much of demo­cracy’s successes in the twentieth century have been misattributed to lib­eral demo­cracy. The consolidation of stable demo­cratic regimes in post-­Second World War Europe is actu­ally a story of the de­velopment of social demo­cracy. This, she suggests, has im­port­ant con­sequences for what models of demo­cracy the West should ad­voc­ate and how: in the long term, social demo­ cracy may offer a much greater chance of stability and wealth. Building on these discussions of lib­eral and social demo­cracy, Heikki Patomaki examines the politico-­economic con­text of demo­crat­isation and demo­cracy pro­mo­tion, pointing to the need to recog­nise the politico-­economic underpinnings of different conceptions of demo­cracy in demo­cracy pro­mo­tion. Contrasting the the­or­etical and prac­tical premises of neolib­eral and social demo­cratic models as potential blueprints for demo­cracy pro­mo­tion, he argues that what is needed today, in order to achieve genu­ine demo­crat­isation, is movement towards a global social demo­cratic model. In contrast to the first five chapters, which ex­plore the variety of mo­tiva­tions – the­or­etical, prac­tical, norm­ative, his­tor­ical – for engaging with conceptual pol­ itics of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion, Richard Youngs strikes a more cautionary note. He warns against the tendency in some crit­ical liter­at­ure to as­sume that a narrow set of conceptual founda­tions are involved in demo­cracy pro­mo­tion, and argues that some crit­ical accounts are not sufficiently empirically grounded. In practice, demo­cracy promoters can be more reflexive and re­act­ive than some critics enthralled by a conceptual pol­itics approach (especially of a crit­ical theory orientation) may suggest. His chapter provides an im­port­ant caution to those studying conceptual pol­itics: key prob­lems in demo­cracy pro­mo­tion today may lie less in the failures in the way demo­cracy is conceptualised and have more to do with an inconsistent and unprin­cipled com­mit­ment to promoting demo­cracy – lib­eral or other­wise. Responding in part to some of the concerns raised by Youngs, the second section of the volume is composed of a strong set of empirical studies on the conceptual pol­itics of con­tempor­ary demo­cracy pro­mo­tion. Jonas Wolff con­ siders the recent ex­peri­ence of Bolivia, an exemplar case of how a conceptual pol­itics approach can shed light on the way demo­crat­isation and demo­cracy pro­ mo­tion operates. Conceptual dis­agree­ment and contestation stands at the heart of the dy­namics of the Bolivian demo­cratic experiment today, a fact which raises unique challenges for external actors involved in the complex pro­cesses of the demo­crat­isation taking place. In the fol­low­ing chapter, Abdul-­Gafaru Abdulai and Gordon Crawford focus on one core com­pon­ent of lib­eral demo­cracy – civil so­ci­ety – and how external support for it has manifested in Ghana. Far from being a conceptually innocent or insignificant site, the civil so­ci­ety support programmes that they examine tell a power­ful story of the kind of lib­eral civil so­ci­ ety that is advanced and the role conceptual choices play in defending specific inter­ests of external actors, often at the expense of ‘holistic’ or ‘truly representative’ demo­crat­isation. In their chapter, Valerie J. Bunce and Sharon L. Wolchik

Introduction   15 examine the conceptual pol­itics of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion in East and Central Europe. They apply a comparative empirical per­spect­ive to the examination of conceptions of demo­cracy that demo­cracy promoters in this con­text work with, finding an unexpected set of conceptual dy­namics at work here, which they argue warrant further detailed examination. Larbi Sadiki’s chapter ex­plores the conceptual pol­itics of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion in the Middle East, interrogating the Orientalist and Occidentalist as­sump­tions embedded in these practices. He power­fully illus­trates the way as­sump­tions about demo­cracy and its possib­il­ities limit both the implementation and reception of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion. Departing from the way demo­cracy pro­mo­tion operates in specific regional con­texts, Hilary Charlesworth con­siders the larger inter­na­tional framework provided for these practices by inter­na­tional law, and specifically how demo­cracy is understood within the structures of the United Nations. She examines the way demo­cracy has become increasingly prominent in the UN, even though – or because of – a con­sider­able degree of vagueness in the way demo­cracy is defined and used. Building on this theme, Tony Smith argues that US demo­cracy pro­mo­ tion since the 1990s has lost its ‘fortunate vagueness’. It has instead become defined by a rigid and decontested set of conceptual founda­tions, which, he argues, facilitate the pro­jection of Amer­ican imperialism and corrupt the pos­it­ive role the United States could play in supporting demo­cracy in world pol­itics. The volume finishes with a conclusion that reflects on the larger con­sequences of adopting a conceptual pol­itics approach to the study of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion. We argue that engagement with a conceptual pol­itics approach provides an inter­ esting new the­or­etical avenue for scholars (both crit­ical and mainstream) studying demo­crat­isation and demo­cracy pro­mo­tion, as well as having potential to help in re-­orienting pol­icy practice at a time when demo­cracy pro­mo­tion is increasingly contested and questioned.

Note 1 The research leading to these results has received funding from the Euro­pean Research Council under the Euro­pean Com­mun­ity’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7 ⁄ 2007–2013) ERC grant agreement no 202 596. All views remain those of the authors.

Part I

Orientations

1 On ‘cultivating’ demo­cracy Enlivening the im­agery for demo­cracy pro­mo­tion Laurence Whitehead

The conceptual pol­itics of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion This chapter – and indeed this whole volume – is concerned with demo­cracy pro­mo­tion at the conceptual level. Other levels of ana­lysis are also essential in order to gain a full understanding of the topic, and some of the other con­tri­bu­ tions included here incorp­or­ate more comparative his­tor­ical, empirical, and policy-­based con­sidera­tions. This chapter tries to take such insights into account, but its focus lies elsewhere. It rests on an initial as­sump­tion that the conceptual level has been understudied or taken for granted, and that recent ex­peri­ence has underscored the costs that can arise from in­ad­equate reflexivity. It was written during a period of rather dark days for demo­cracy pro­mo­tion, a pol­icy ob­ject­ive that has been in retreat for some time now. While the most notable disappoint­ ments and reversals have been in Afghanistan, the post-­Iraq Middle East, and perhaps Paki­stan, there have also been setbacks in Africa (the Ivory Coast and Kenya, among others), and more gen­erally. Such de­velopments should not be dis­regarded in a pro­ject of this kind. But neither should they take centre stage, especially since they could prove fleeting. Indeed, just as this chapter was about to go to press, an unanticipated pop­ular revolt in Tu­nisia abruptly reintroduced the question of demo­cracy support onto the agenda of hitherto inattentive Western policy­makers.1 Standing back from such contingencies, a ‘conceptual pol­itics’ approach to the topic of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion invites deeper probing into the background as­sump­tions and underlying com­mit­ments of its practition­ ers, meriting con­sidera­tion re­gard­less of whether the imme­diate con­text is atypi­ cally favour­able and enthusiastic (as in the late 1990s) or perhaps overly negat­ive (as may have been the case one decade later). Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall there has been no shortage of hopeful initiatives pursued by activist agencies, and there now exists a very extensive liter­at­ure on the prac­ticalities of supporting, encouraging, stimulating and even imposing what the inter­na­tional com­mun­ity classifies as demo­cratic polit­ical ar­range­ments in the many post-­Cold War coun­tries where such systems are not as yet in place or are not fully secure. In this sense, ‘demo­cracy pro­mo­ tion’ is an estab­lished sub-­field of policy-­relevant investigation and comparative study. But neither the the­or­etical founda­tions nor the practitioner distortions of

20   L. Whitehead this branch of activity have received adequate attention in this liter­at­ure, the focus of which has been mainly pragmatic, applied, and heavily process-­ oriented.2 Despite the proliferation of liter­at­ure referring to ‘demo­cracy pro­mo­tion’, it is far from clear that the schol­arly com­mun­ity has yet settled on a unified and coherent consensus about what the term must en­com­pass or exclude, or on who owns it and how boundary disputes over its meaning are to be arbitrated. Still less is there agreement on how, or indeed even whether, it is supposed to work. Among the diverse elements that could fall within its ambit, there are inter­na­ tional conventions; national gov­ern­ment programmes and agencies; non-­ governmental agencies such as party founda­tions and human rights monitors; elect­oral observation missions; solidarity networks; some journ­al­ism and blog­ ging ac­tiv­ities; and perhaps even a wider range of ‘inter­na­tional civil so­ci­ety’ exchanges and initiatives.3 With such a wide range of ac­tiv­ities under con­sidera­tion, the question arises about how they might be co­ordinated (or might conflict) and which aspects should be viewed as central rather than in­cid­ental. There is also the question of where the resources come from to support effect­ive ‘pro­mo­tion’ ac­tiv­ities, and what pos­sibly hidden con­ditions might be associated with such financing. Since the pro­mo­tion of demo­cracy has been widely viewed – at least in the West since 1990 – as a pub­lic good, there is also the pos­sib­il­ity that this polit­ical capital might be appropriated by actors pursuing less noble ob­ject­ives. This is where the question of ownership and monitoring becomes im­port­ant, indeed increasingly so in recent years as evid­ence has accu­mu­lated that eco­nomic sanc­ tions, invasions and covert inter­ven­tions may also be undertaken in the name of this cause. As the evid­ence has accu­mu­lated that a multitude of sins could be sanc­ tified under this rubric, the need for more ana­lyt­ical precisions, including more conceptual clarification, has become more urgent. But the demo­cracy pro­mo­tion com­mun­ity is a network of competing and partially overlapping institutions pursu­ ing mul­tiple agendas at the behest of a diverse set of sponsors, and it may not be easy for them to stand back and reflect dispas­sion­ately on what they are col­lect­ ively trying to achieve, or on what the outcomes actu­ally amount to. This is readily under­stand­able, and not to their discredit – the situ­ations they confront often require urgent responses, and too much self-­criticism could easily demoralise and re-­direct the resources of backers. Even when best efforts are made to evalu­ate outcomes, pro­cess tracing remains a debatable art, while causal attribution and the identification of cri­teria for success are also difficult and often disputed. This may help to explain why pub­lic opinion in many long-­established demo­cra­cies has begun to get restive about what can be portrayed as a substantial mismatch between what was promised and what is being delivered. In this con­text, the case for a revision of the first prin­ciples involved seems quite compelling. This chapter pursues one approach out of several al­tern­ative possib­il­ities. It investigates the im­agery deployed to explain and jus­tify the demo­cracy pro­mo­ tion enterprise. In par­ticu­lar, it reflects on the background as­sump­tions underpin­ ning the two key terms: ‘demo­cracy’ and its ‘pro­mo­tion’. It does so from a

On ‘cultivating’ democracy   21 specific and perhaps idiosyncratic standpoint. Elsewhere I have suggested that the demo­crat­ization sub-­field has been too de­pend­ent on vivid im­agery – meta­ phors and analogies – drawn from the phys­ical sciences, with their as­sump­tions of tightly speci­fied causal linkages between sharply delineated interacting enti­ ties. I have argued for an ‘enlivening’ of this conceptual toolkit, through the introduction of an al­tern­ative set of analogies drawn from biology and the life sciences.4 This chapter recapitulates some of my arguments in this respect, and argues that demo­cracy pro­mo­tion is best conceptualised not as the engineering or imposition of an al­tern­ative set of polit­ical design prin­ciples, but rather as a cooperative pro­cess of ‘cultivating’ or even ‘nurturing’ locally pre-­existing demo­cratic potentialities. The bulk of the chapter is concerned to dem­on­strate how this shift in concep­ tualization might con­trib­ute to a revision of estab­lished as­sump­tions about demo­cracy pro­mo­tion. Clearly, this is not the only avenue worth pursuing. The terminology and the­or­etical founda­tions of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion can also be re-­ examined from other standpoints, notably through comparative his­tor­ical enquiry. More­over, conceptual in­nova­tion should be grounded on the avail­able evid­ence. Con­tri­bu­tions from these other per­spect­ives can help us select the most appropriate sources of analogical reasoning, and can steer us away from vivid but misleading metaphors and theorizations. The second section looks at an enlivening metaphor drawn from biology that could open the way to a more rel­ev­ant and illu­min­ating conceptualization than the pre­val­ent terminology of ‘demo­cracy pro­mo­tion’. The title to this chapter suggests ‘cultivating’ demo­cracy, an ana­logy derived from agri­cul­ture and gar­ dening. But this is not the only option. Equally valid would be ‘nurturing,’ a metaphor drawn from nutrition and healthcare. Other images – such as ‘trans­ planting’ – are also con­sidered below. These three suggestions each amplify and reconceptualise the activity usually designated as ‘pro­mo­tion’. Section three then turns to the practices to be promoted (what do biological analogies suggest about the re-­conceptualization of ‘demo­cracy’?), and argues for a more con­textualised understanding of demo­crat­ization pro­cesses. In light of these suggestions, section four reflects more broadly on the morphology of core polit­ical concepts and how it pertains to demo­cracy and demo­crat­ization. Section five elaborates on the resulting bene­fits derived from the incorporation of biological rather than mech­anical sources of conceptual in­nova­tion, but also recog­nises the associated risks and lim­ita­tions of such a pro­ced­ure. The concluding section six offers a fuller statement of the im­plica­tions of the ‘enlivening’ per­spect­ive for the re-­ conceptualization of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion and support as core pub­lic pol­icy ob­ject­ives.

‘Pro­mo­tion’ or ‘nurturing’? What unites the large array of initiatives and ac­tiv­ities conventionally en­com­ passed by the terminology of ‘pro­mo­tion’? In what relationship do these ac­tiv­ities stand to currently ongoing pro­cesses of demo­crat­ization ob­serv­able

22   L. Whitehead around the globe? From a mech­anical per­spect­ive, all demo­cracy pro­mo­tion ac­tiv­ities are designed to increase the prob­ability of durable demo­cratic regime outcomes.5 From the same pre­val­ent per­spect­ive, successful demo­cracy pro­mo­ tion ac­tiv­ities are those that demonstrably deliver such outcomes. Would it get us any closer to reality if we substituted with the im­agery of ‘cultivation’ or ‘nurturing’ the straightforward and easily intel­li­gible causal attribution associ­ ated with ‘pro­mo­tion’? Here it seems best to bring in some illustrations. Let us start with an extreme case, chosen not because it is representative, but because it indicates the non-­consensual status of some major pub­lic pol­icy claims about demo­cracy pro­mo­tion, and highlights the contrast between al­tern­ ative underlying conceptualizations of the subject. In its own terms, the Helms-­ Burton law enacted by the US Congress and signed into effect by Pres­id­ent Clinton in 1996 constitutes a clear attempt at ‘demo­cracy pro­mo­tion,’ even though fif­teen years later it has yet to deliver on its promised outcome. There is far more scope for doubt as to whether, even in its declaratory intentions, it can be clas­si­fied as an effort to ‘cultivate’ or ‘nurture’ Cuban demo­cracy. The idea is to impose such over­whelm­ing sanc­tions – unilateral in origin, even if extra-­ territorial in effect – that insular resistance to its Washington-­determined demands is either crushed or disintegrates. This is an example of ‘co­er­cive’ demo­crat­ization, the imposition of an externally crafted institutional design re­gard­less of local choices or pref­er­ences. The engineering design is what vali­ dates the structure, not any in­ternal response or rootedness. In fact, it is probable that this method of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion has maximised the chances of resist­ ance and rejection owing to its perceived arrogance and illegitimacy. Certainly Helms-­Burton is an outlier among demo­cracy pro­mo­tion initiatives (although other examples of the ‘co­er­cive’ approach can also be cited), but it belongs within that diverse family of initiatives, at least so long as mechanistic as­sump­tions persist about what is to count as demo­crat­ization, and how it may be caused. In a sim­ilar vein, one might conclude that over-­mechanical and intru­ sive conceptions of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion in various parts of the Middle East have underestim­ated the centrality of local agency and consent, with the result that their as­sump­tions about causation have proved un­reli­able and potentially more fruitful strategies have been pushed aside. How­ever, the contrast between phys­ical and biological images of how to support demo­cracy is not reducible to a ‘coercion vs. per­sua­sion’ dichotomy: it is more complex and cross-­cutting than that (a ‘transplant’ is a drastic external imposition), and em­braces mul­tiple dimensions of pol­icy vari­ation. Between the two extremes of intense local resistance to demo­cratic in­nova­tion and irresistible local enthusiasm for the same, there exists a wide gamut of inter­medi­ate situ­ ations. This is where inter­na­tionally co­ordinated initiatives are most likely to alter the balance of probabilities and may potentially shift finely balanced polit­ ical trajectories – at least temporarily – in a pro-­democracy dir­ec­tion. But such inter­medi­ate con­texts are not uniform or mono-­causal. They are not, therefore, promising sites for the applica­tion of ‘one-­size-fits-­all’ demo­cracy pro­mo­tion formulae. Mech­anical and de-­contextualised approaches of the kind often

On ‘cultivating’ democracy   23 favoured by pre­val­ent conceptualizations are therefore unlikely to engage with the crucial parti­cip­ants at the strategic sites in the moments of crit­ical choice. To switch to the gardening metaphor for a moment, the skilled cultivator is very attentive to the soil, the micro-­climate, and the specific survival charac­ter­ istics of the species she wishes to propagate. Such ‘cultivation’ skills may be more valu­able to the demo­cracy pro­mo­tion com­mun­ity than the horsepower avail­able to an undiscriminating mech­anical digger. In a sim­ilar vein, from the healthcare per­spect­ive, an effect­ive inter­ven­tion may require an ac­cur­ate dia­ gnosis of a specific case, together with well-­timed action based on a detailed understanding of the specific syndrome involved. Such attributes tend to be undervalued by mechanistic conceptions of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion and support. Proponents of ‘large N’ causal models are liable to object that these hypo­thet­ ical cases of skilled cultivation and con­textually sensitive doctoring are unsci­ent­ ific, because they are not easily validated by statistical corroboration. At the extreme, they may be dismissed as travellers’ tales, or unrepresentative anecdotes. This is not a debate that can be resolved in ab­stract – the rival evid­ential claims need to be compared, and in some areas it may well turn out that mechanistic models work as well as, or better than, some biological al­tern­atives. The case being made here is not for the wholesale abandonment of all existing methods, but only for openness to a wider range of pos­sible strategies, approaches, and concep­ tualizations. After all, skilled gardening or good medical practice are also evidence-­based approaches informed by sci­ent­ific gen­eral laws. And on the evid­ ence of the past twenty years one should not be too confident that any ‘large N’ findings in the area of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion and support can be relied upon to deliver consistent and reli­able results in all con­texts. Indeed, at the simplest ag­greg­ate level it would seem worthwhile to check whether most demo­cracy pro­ mo­tion ac­tiv­ities since 1990 can be rated as leading (i.e. causally rel­ev­ant precur­ sor) factors, or whether, on the contrary, they re­gis­ter mostly as lagging in­dic­ators (i.e. when the pro­spects for demo­cracy advance for other reasons, that is when demo­cracy pro­mo­tion agencies respond by becoming more active). After all, demo­cracy promoters will be rewarded for associating with success, whether or not they are respons­ible for it. And it is they – if anyone – who have the know­ ledge and resources to undertake the fullest evalu­ations of the outcomes they are aiming for. On this basis, it could be concluded that there is still scope for methodo­logical plur­al­ism and conceptual in­nova­tion when assessing what is con­ ventionally referred to as the ‘demo­cracy pro­mo­tion’ com­mun­ity of inter­ests.

‘Enlivening’ and con­textualizing demo­cracy: a conceptual in­nova­tion If the ‘pro­mo­tion’ half of this binomial can bene­fit from re-­conceptualizations derived from biological sources of reasoning, so too can the ‘demo­cracy’ half, as we shall now see. Polit­ical theory, polit­ical his­tory, polit­ical science, compara­ tive pol­itics, polit­ical sociology, and polit­ical eco­nomy have all studied the concept of demo­cracy topic exhaustively and from every con­ceiv­able angle. So

24   L. Whitehead what level (or levels) of ana­lysis are appropriate for testing or investigating the diverse claims gen­er­ated by the concept of demo­cracy? There is also a broader issue at stake. In the phys­ical sciences, know­ledge mostly pro­gresses through accumulation and refinement, within conceptual frameworks that are so uni­ver­ sally accepted that they rarely require re-­examination. But in the human sciences, the objects under observation are also the ob­ser­vers, and the concepts used to frame ana­lysis of their ex­peri­ences may not match their self-­understandings. Con­ sequently, the consensual, stable, and externally given framing devices that underpin most ‘hard’ sci­ent­ific reasoning (henceforth referred to as ‘stipulatively defined’ concepts) may be exposed to periodic challenge (Shapiro 2005). This is especially likely with highly ab­stract or norm­ative polit­ical concepts, which draw significance from socially constructed asso­ci­ations that are external to the formal definition (‘tacit’ know­ledge in Polanyi’s (2009) sense).6 The concept of ‘polit­ical demo­cracy’ currently meets all these con­ditions, and its prac­tical instantiations (‘conceptions’) encounter intense feedback from a global array of rapidly changing his­tor­ical real­it­ies. Demo­cracy is a para­digmatic example of an ‘essentially contested’ concept and differentiates the comparative study of demo­crat­ization from the model of sci­ent­ific specialization that works so well in the phys­ical sciences. It may be pos­sible to generate a stipulative defi­ nition of such a demo­cracy and thus derive a small number of empirically verifi­ able in­dic­ators by which to meas­ure the ‘state of demo­cracy’ in a succession of polit­ical entities. But if demo­cracy is a deontological and an ‘essentially con­ tested’ concept, then it is both a really existing set of pro­ced­ures and practices and a desired ideal. Analysts therefore must recog­nise that there will always be at least some aspects of demo­cratic as­pira­tions that are not yet fully realised. The discrepancy between actual and ideal con­ditions is what drives all pro­cesses of ‘demo­crat­ization,’ and it also obliges empirical comparativists to incorp­or­ate ‘quality of demo­cracy’ con­sidera­tions into their exercises in calibration. To evalu­ate vari­ations in the ‘quality’ of demo­cracy requires both some uniformity of underlying cri­teria and also due re­cog­ni­tion that dif­fer­ences in per­ formance may be partially determined by local con­text. More­over, prevailing con­ ceptions of ‘demo­cracy’ also vary con­sider­ably according to setting. Iceland has one ex­peri­ence of it, Switzerland another, and Zim­babwe a third. Beyond con­ tempor­ary nation states, the city of São Paulo practises demo­cracy in a somewhat different manner to that of Stockholm or Salt Lake City. What Fox News viewers understand by demo­cracy is not quite what most BBC viewers have in mind. More his­tor­ically, demo­cracy has been ‘invented’ on mul­tiple occasions and in a wide variety of con­texts (Goody 2006: 247–56; Keane 2009). Over time and space, demo­cracy has as­sumed many guises (from Athenian direct self-­rule in city states to French Repub­licanism), and in each place, demo­crat­ization is associated with different constitutive pro­cesses (apartheid in South Africa, Zionism in Israel, for example) that are heavily charged with local con­textual asso­ci­ations. Different understandings derive in good meas­ure from unana­lysed preconcep­ tions7 and tacit as­sump­tions about the nature of the polis, the demos, and polit­ ical order. Traditionally, British cit­izens are liable to ‘free associate’8 polit­ical

On ‘cultivating’ democracy   25 demo­cracy in terms of Labour versus Con­ser­vat­ive; first past the post constitu­ encies; party polit­ical broadcasts and doorstep leaflets; and parlia­ment­ary major­ ities. These ‘Westminster’ features are highly specific and are not core com­pon­ents of the ab­stract concept of demo­cracy, but they have been shared and taken for granted so widely and for so long that they frame the British col­lect­ive understanding of the gen­eral cat­egory. In the US, free asso­ci­ation would invoke some sim­ilar features but also some contrasts such as fed­eral­ism, the Supreme Court, the fixed elect­oral calendar, and the right to bear arms. British and Amer­ ican attitudes to demo­cracy and demo­crat­ization elsewhere will also be shaped by these con­textual presuppositions. In Belgium or Canada, the demos would have to be pluri-­lingual, whereas in Britain and France mono-­lingualism is typic­ ally as­sumed. When demo­cratic nations estab­lish ‘demo­cracy pro­mo­tion’ programmes or institutions they each tend to institutionalise features that (perhaps without reflection) incorp­or­ate their own tacit national as­sump­tions about the nature of demo­cracy. Thus, Ger­many has highlighted doc­trinal party linkages and divi­ sions, the National Endowment for Demo­cracy has stressed elect­oralism, the Westminster Founda­tion has had a parlia­ment­ary focus, and Sweden has privi­ leged social solidarity – although over time coopera­tion and exchange between these national entities have produced a somewhat pooled approach. Features uncovered by ‘free asso­ci­ation’ are held together by an integ­rat­ive nar­rat­ive that links a specific con­textual vari­ant of demo­cracy with a par­ticu­lar col­lect­ive identity and his­tor­ically constructed account of how it emerged. The con­textual background informs, colours or distorts successive conceptions of polit­ical demo­cracy, challenges the concept of polit­ical demo­cracy as timeless, stable, and uni­ver­sal, and opens the way for a more hermeneutic (in Gadamer’s sense) apprehension of demo­crat­ization. Thus free asso­ci­ation around the concept of demo­cracy in Mexico, China or Iraq will not produce an easy conver­ gence around the US conception, and there is scope for mis­under­stand­ing and contestation because of contrasting his­tor­ical memories and tacit asso­ci­ations. The point can be further illus­trated by ref­er­ence to the demo­cracy vs. totalitarianism bin­ary of the Cold War period, now replaced by the demo­cracy vs. rad­ical Islamism bin­ary. These schema pit a timeless and ab­stract conception of demo­cracy – best exemplified by Western polit­ical institutions and practices – against another, equally ab­stract, model, which is seen as in­cap­able of evolution because of its self-­reinforcing negat­ive properties. Bin­ary social classifications are often as much about identity-­formation as ob­ject­ive description and can be misleading. Totalitarianism covered sins as diverse as Nazism, Stalinism, and Maoism; and the demo­cratic world exemplified ‘virtues’ such as those of Franco’s Spain or the Shah’s Iran (but not Gomulka’s Poland or Allende’s Chile). By the 1980s, as the extreme polarity of the Cold War years began to fade, total­ itarianism was supplanted by the broader and looser ‘author­it­arian regimes’ classifi­ cation and the bin­ary schemas ceased to be de rigueur within the ‘transitions to demo­cracy’ frame of in­ter­pretation. But there emerged what we can call a ‘step-­ change’ view of the Spanish transition to demo­cracy (1975–81), which became the

26   L. Whitehead basis for a gen­eralised account of the logic of demo­crat­ization, and which preserved the essence of the bin­ary ana­lysis. How­ever, the ‘step-­change’ as­sump­tion has proved a poor guide to the real­it­ies confronting most demo­cracy pro­mo­tion opera­ tives in the post-­Cold War period. One clue to its lim­ita­tions can be derived from the attempt to translate it out of the English ori­ginal. On math­emat­ical prin­ciples it might be rendered as an ‘inflection point,’ or in mater­ial science as a ‘phase trans­ ition’, but both these images convey the idea of a categorical contrast between before and after, with little scope for evolutionary continuities. Biology might provide a more helpful source of guidance for most cases, but even here it would be neces­sary to choose between rival possib­il­ities – was the Spanish transition a ‘change of skin’ rather than a completely bin­ary metamor­ phosis? In gen­eral, it has proved more ac­cur­ate to conceptualise con­tempor­ary demo­crat­izations as incremental, partial, and potentially reversible (i.e. evolu­ tionary) pro­cesses, rather than as rad­ical discontinuities. Regime change is more complex, protracted, erratic, and diverse in its pos­sible trajectories than this bin­ary model suggests. Its widespread acceptance owed much not just to its par­ simony and moral convenience, but also to the fact it dovetailed with the ‘end of his­tory’ discourse that flourished as the West won the Cold War. Twenty years after the dis­mant­ling of the Berlin Wall, that receptive inter­na­ tional envir­on­ment has dissipated, and de­velopments in coun­tries like Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Thailand, Colombia, and even Italy are outpacing and destabilising existing frameworks. The convergence between Western hege­monic require­ ments and the ‘step-­change’ model of demo­crat­isation has come to an end, as the ‘war on terror’ fills the void left by the disap­pear­ance of the Soviet menace. A ‘step-­change’ that questions Western security in Egypt or Palestine or Afghani­ stan or Paki­stan – or perhaps even Mexico – would show that not all good things neces­sar­ily go together when demo­crat­ization gets underway. Demo­cracy pro­mo­tion only occurred sporadic­ally and hesitantly during the Cold War, but it has since been undertaken on a much larger and less discrimi­ nate scale. Old scruples about ‘non-­inter­ven­tion’ and respect for the sover­eignty of nation states were largely set aside by inter­na­tional agreements and under­ standings that have widened the dis­cre­tionality avail­able to self-­described estab­ lished demo­cra­cies, whenever they judge it appropriate to intervene in the polit­ical affairs of non-­approved regimes. Since Septem­ber 11, 2001, such inter­ ven­tions have often conflated broader security concerns with the inter­na­tional demo­cracy pro­mo­tion agenda and taken a harsher and more co­er­cive form.9 So, control over what counts as a demo­cracy and demo­cracy pro­mo­tion has become a major site of polit­ical contestation and dispute, once again highlighting the essential contestability of the terminology. In these circumstances, it seems appropriate to revisit some old debates about concept-­stretching.

Morphology and metaphor A changing his­tor­ical and con­textual envir­on­ment is not the only reason why col­lect­ive understandings of such core polit­ical concepts as ‘demo­cracy’ and

On ‘cultivating’ democracy   27 ‘demo­crat­ization’ change; the in­ternal charac­ter­istics of the enterprise of con­ ceptualization, rather than contingent external factors, is also crucial. Michael Freeden’s (1996: ch. 2) account of the ‘morphology’ of major polit­ical concepts in gen­eral and demo­cracy and lib­eralism in par­ticu­lar, helps to explain why, at the very least, demo­crat­ization – and in his account the concept of demo­cracy as well – is so prone to elude the stipulative constraints of a fixed definition, how­ ever skilfully crafted.10 For Freeden, although there has to be some ‘inelimin­ able’ element at the heart of a concept (prob­ably ‘rule of the people’ in the case of demo­cracy), that may be too thin or underspeci­fied to stabilise the idea. A key feature of Freeden’s morphological approach which is crucial for our purpose here is that he does not view each concept as a freestanding and self-­ sufficient entity. Instead, a succession of concepts combine and interact in any polit­ical discourse (or ideo­logy), and overlap with each other. Thus, one par­ticu­lar version of demo­cracy will be very closely associated with one version of lib­ eralism – each supporting and influ­en­cing the other. But other versions would be equally tenable, such as some form of repub­lican, socialist, or capitalist demo­ cracy. In each case, the optional additional features of the concept of demo­cracy would be ordered in a par­ticu­lar way to accommodate the appropriate adjacent concept. The acceptance of this view would raise some challenging issues for con­ tempor­ary practitioners of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion, since it could imply the em­brace of not just lib­eral, but also repub­lican – and even socialist or religiously orthodox – ideo­logical options, provided they were also genu­ine demo­cratic choices. At this point it is appropriate to bring in a discussion of analogies and meta­ phors as the – often hidden – devices that serve to rationalise the selection of conceptual vari­ants and to render plaus­ible the nar­rat­ive or discursive sequences in which our key polit­ical concepts are normally embedded. The underlying rationale for such expressions is to evoke an image imported from a different domain in order to elucidate an other­wise less access­ible social pro­cess. Although all language (even the most arid – note the metaphor – social science) is impregnated with such metaphorical allusions, only a limited range of these are capable of structuring ana­lyt­ical social thought. These may be called ‘consti­ tutive metaphors’ (Klamer and Leonard 1994: 21). Since metaphors are con­ densed analogies, ‘the first step in making sense of a metaphor is to unpack the implicit ana­logy’ (Murphy 1994: 542). As regards demo­crat­ization, it is not so much the sense of an indi­vidual metaphor that needs to be unpacked as the overall analogical structure within which a sequence of constitutive metaphors has been embedded. The ‘step-­change’ bin­ary model (analogical structure) of a demo­cratic transition, for instance, invokes not just one or two but a whole con­ tinu­ous sequence of phys­ical metaphors. Below, I consciously substitute a com­par­able sequence of biological meta­ phors. The rationale for this is two-­fold. It makes expli­cit what is currently hidden – the metaphorical structure of the prevailing characterization of the concept. And it deliberately sets out to elucidate an other­wise difficult-­to-grasp social pro­cess by the deployment of a more rel­ev­ant, appropriate, and flex­ible analogical structure than the one currently in use.

28   L. Whitehead

The bene­fits – and limits – of biological analogies The toolkit of demo­crat­ization studies is replete with phys­icalist im­agery (waves, snowballs, elect­oral mech­an­isms, institutional design, consti­tu­tional engineering, among others). Even ‘transition’ (change of state, as from liquid to gas) and especially ‘consolidation’ invoke implicit analogies with phys­ical pro­cesses. Biological pro­cesses offer an al­tern­ative source of rel­ev­ant analogies. They refer to ‘the dia­lec­tic of specificity and plasticity during de­velopment, the dia­lec­tic through which the living organism constructs itself. The central prop­erty of all life is the capa­city and necessity to build, maintain and preserve itself, a pro­cess known as autopoiesis’ (Rose 2005: 18). In that spirit, I suggested two metaphors drawn from the life sciences: contagion and viability. In contrast to Huntington’s snowballing, the contagion metaphor aimed to separate the various specific pro­ cesses through which the estab­lishment of demo­cracy in one coun­try might alter the prob­ability of a sim­ilar de­velopment in adjacent coun­tries. Three of the possib­il­ities I proposed (control, con­ditionality, and consent) involved inter­na­ tional and organ­ised strategic action by identi­fi­able polit­ical actors; contagion was included to allow for the pos­sib­il­ity of the unorgan­ised influence of a demo­ cratizing neigh­bour (the example I had in mind was the impact of the Portuguese revolu­tionary transition on Franco’s Spain). Contagion couples with ‘consent’ – an active pro­cess of self-­organisation which can be viewed as broadly autopoi­ etic. Fol­low­ing the biological ana­logy, contagion involves a micro-­level transmission that activates a chain of indi­vidual responses, which reverberates through the ‘body politic,’ destabilising the pre-­existing homeostasis. This involves a ‘dia­lec­tic of specificity and plasticity’, not causal reductionism (Rose 2005: 18). The contrasting presuppositions of consolidation and viability also illus­trate my argument. I introduced the concept of viability to demo­crat­ization studies, arguing that consolidation as­sumes too much about the neces­sary com­pon­ents of an eventual stable post-­democratization regime (Whitehead 2001: 3). Viability concerns more than mere persistence, as a demo­cracy can lose viability even while its institutional forms persist. Like a plant in inhospitable soil, a demo­cratic regime may be able to adapt and survive, but only by account­ability to local real­it­ies [. . .] viability at least allows us to ex­plore the extent to which such a vari­ant of demo­crat­ isation may be able to reproduce and defend itself. (Rose 2005: 7) Con­sider how such a shift in sources of ana­logy might relate to two crucial topics that are currently prominent in comparative demo­crat­ization studies and therefore also to concepts of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion and support: assessing the rel­at­ive ‘quality’ of different demo­crat­ization pro­cesses; and the question of ‘hybrid’ regimes (the only example I can think of in the mainstream liter­at­ure that makes use of a biological metaphor) (Morlino 2009). A static phys­icalist

On ‘cultivating’ democracy   29 vocabulary is ill-­equipped to tackle these issues. By contrast, a biological per­ spect­ive directs attention to the adaptive pro­cesses and de­velop­mental potential that can generate diversity within a lifeline; and it offers guidance about the pos­ sible emergence of new organisms only partially related to estab­lished types. As regards ‘quality’, the obvious biological ana­logy would be with a ‘healthy’ organism. There are various potential sources of ill-­health, and different afflic­ tions are countered in different ways. There is ageing and degeneration. This would cor­res­pond to the ‘cyclical’ or three generation model of demo­cracy pop­ ular among the ancient Greeks. Here the source of decline or threat to good health arises from a weakening of the organism’s capa­city to maintain and pre­ serve itself over time – perhaps, because vital defences are not preserved since they seem no longer needed; or perhaps because the organs are patched and renewed, the replacements are less efficient than the ori­ginals. It could be productive to ex­plore these pos­sible analogies as sources of vari­ ation in demo­cratic quality over time. There is infection by hostile bacteria or parasites. This connects with arguments over demo­cratic quality of the ‘enemy within’ type. Since even the healthiest organism is in constant inter­action with potentially harmful assailants, disinfection and isolation are insufficient to contain such dangers. The healthy organism/demo­cracy is the one best organ­ised to absorb or do­mesticate threats rather than to survive behind an artificial cordon sanitaire. Ill-health can also arise from a breakdown of the required harmony between the major specialised organs. Dysfunctional inter­actions between exec­ utive and legis­lat­ive or judiciary and security forces seem plaus­ible counterparts in a demo­cratic system. It is worth highlighting a parallel treatment of the state by Sven Steinmo (2008: 166), which also expli­citly takes on board the bene­fits of adopting bio­ logical metaphors. His­tor­ical institutionalists, he notes are something like the envir­on­mental biologist who believes that in order to understand the specific fate of a par­ticu­lar organism or beha­vi­our, she must expli­citly examine that organism or beha­vi­our in the ecology or con­text in which it lives. This implies a different sci­ent­ific ontology than that com­ monly found in the hard sciences of physics and chemistry. At the root of evolutionary biology is the as­sump­tion that the objects of ana­lysis – living organisms – are funda­ment­ally different from inanimate mat­ter. While objects in the phys­ical world often adhere to constant ‘laws’ of nature, bio­ logical organisms often defy attempts to reduce them to their essential com­ pon­ents because of their complexity. Steinmo cites evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayer, who makes the point that ‘the de­velopment of biology as a science has required an investigation of “additional prin­ciples” that applied only to living organisms. He argues, “This required a restructuring of the conceptual world of science that was far more fundamental than anyone had ima­gined at the time” ’. Sim­ilarly, in his­tor­ical institutionalism.

30   L. Whitehead to understand his­tor­ically specific events and long term polit­ical outcomes, one could not strictly apply methods and epistemologies drawn from the study of invari­ant vari­ables that have fixed relationships across space and time. This, of courses, does not mean that it is not science – unless one’s definition of science would exclude biology as well; rather, it implies that the sci­ent­ific methods applied should fit the subject being studied. (Steinmo 2008: 167; see also Steinmo 2010) This being the case, why have social scientists come to resist the import of biologi­ cal metaphors? During much of the twentieth century, the kind of biology that inspired the last generation of polit­ical metaphors was often deeply con­ser­vat­ive and indeed even anti-­democratic in its im­plica­tions (see Whitehead 2010). But while it is vital to guard against the hidden as­sump­tions that can get smuggled into any model of a social explanation, there is no reason in prin­ciple why metaphors and analogies drawn from current biological thinking need to carry anti-­democratic connotations. The sequence of biological metaphors outlined above – viability, contagion, health, and hybridity – can all be deployed to illuminate features of demo­crat­ization that concern inter-­subjective deliberation between free cit­izens. A demo­cratic polit­ical system can be modelled in biological terms without under­ mining the demo­cratic postulates of indi­vidual choice and com­mit­ment. Indeed, the master concept in biology and the life sciences is no longer based on a static equilibrium: it has been ‘punctuated’ by Stephen Jay Gould, sidelined by evolu­ tionary de­velopment (Carroll), challenged by homeody­namics (Rose) and negat­ive entropy (James Lovelock) (Gribbin 2004: 196–7), and pushed aside by co-­ evolution and adaptation ‘to the edge of chaos’ (Kauffman 1993). Kauffman offers a source of biological analogies for modelling the spread, and also the reversal, of demo­crat­ization pro­cesses both within and between polit­ical com­munit­ies, and sharply contrasts this with the ‘system-­maintenance’ functionalism that character­ ised mid-­twentieth century con­ser­vat­ive social theory. What these con­tri­bu­tions to modern biology share is that they identi­fy regu­ latory prin­ciples that generate change in order to explain the diversity, complex­ ity, interconnectedness and dir­ec­tional thrust of living organisms. They recog­nise that life is dynamic, de­velop­mental and in a permanent pro­cess of emergence. Thus, modern biology differs from the version practised during the fas­cist era: the organism could then be pic­tured as a hierarchical control system, whereas differentiation, complementarity, interdependence, and adaptability are the hall­ marks of autopoiesis. The author­it­arian model of the healthy organism was always a distorted way to ana­lyse polit­ical life. It is how com­pon­ent cells and organs de­velop, specialise, com­munic­ate, and cooperate that largely determines the viability of the whole organism (Rose 2005: ch. 8). This im­agery bears some limited comparison with the modern understanding of demo­cracy as a col­lect­ive enterprise founded on the creativity, adaptability and capa­city for coopera­tion and specialization of the indi­vidual cit­izens who constitute the in­dis­pens­able basis of all demo­cratic polit­ical organ­iza­tion. At any rate, this comparison is fresher and more flex­ible that the phys­icalist metaphors that currently

On ‘cultivating’ democracy   31 prevail in an ossified form. It may therefore serve to ‘enliven’ concept formation in a field where aca­demic ‘flight from reality’ would be par­ticu­larly harmful. Metaphors such as demo­cratic ‘transition’ and ‘consolidation’ belong to a subset that has been called ‘constitutive,’ in the sense that they become ‘an irre­ placeable part of the linguistic ma­chinery of a sci­ent­ific theory; cases in which there are metaphors which scientists use in expressing the­or­etical claims for which no adequate literal paraphrase is known’ (Boyd 1979: 360). A systemati­ cally elaborated sequence of such metaphors can generate a constitutive analogi­ cal structure, and it is my claim here that the polit­ical science of demo­crat­ization has indeed been constructed around such a sequence of phys­ical analogies. Constitutive analogies and their related metaphors typically generate or inspire further ‘heur­istic’ metaphors (metaphors that work by motivating enquiry into the prin­cipal subject by juxta­posing attributes or relationships of the subsidi­ ary subject). ‘Waves’ and ‘snowballs’ provide rel­ev­ant illustrations in our field. Because ‘heur­istic metaphors are not lit­er­ally true, reasoning as if they were implies that (the associated) models are fictions’ (Klamer and Leonard 1994: 46).11 How­ever, over time, the fictional nature of such a metaphorical in­ter­ pretation may become forgotten – both constitutive and heur­istic metaphors can become ‘ossified’. And the accumulation of empirical evid­ence and the advance of detailed enquiry may expose the lim­ita­tions of an initial metaphorical device. It may therefore cease to be irreplaceable. Whereas in Boyd’s account the advance of science could permit the replace­ ment of an initial metaphor by a literal paraphrase, at least in the case of con­ tempor­ary demo­crat­ization studies no such vocabulary has yet emerged. Indeed, it seems that the accumulation of evid­ence and cases is serving only to destabil­ ise existing theorizations and not to ground more precise and rigorous sci­ent­ific cat­egor­ies and reli­able laws. In view of that, my approach has been to seek to improve on the estab­lished ana­lyt­ical framework by consciously substituting a more flex­ible and appropriate analogical structure in place of our currently exhausted and ossified sequence of metaphors. But just like other social images drawn from biological thought (‘survival of the fittest,’ ‘the selfish gene’), there are also limits to the trans­ferability of this conception. Although biological analogies are more illu­min­ating than their phys­ ical precursors, they are still only analogies, and it is im­port­ant to keep in mind their lim­ita­tions as well as their insights. Since ana­logy is not homology, the trans­fer of ref­er­ence from, say, biology to pol­itics can only be partial and never uncrit­ical. Metaphors derived from the phys­ical world and from engineering tend to pic­ture an idealised piece of ma­chinery – something that can be as­sumed to be timeless and given. So, by as­sump­tion rather than demonstration, the outcome of a demo­crat­ization is taken to be a permanent and fully opera­tional demo­cratic regime. The biological ana­logy brings that hidden as­sump­tion into the open for inspection. All living organisms are finite. They either perish, or evolve into something quite different. Thus, metaphors derived from this source – including the open-­ended self-­construction inherent in autopoiesis – invite us to con­sider the ‘life cycle’ or at least the tem­porality of demo­cracy and demo­crat­ization.

32   L. Whitehead Ar­is­totle (1976: 64–5) asserted that ‘pol­itics is not an exact science: our account of this subject mat­ter will be adequate if it achieves such clarity as the subject mat­ter allows; for the same degree of precision is not to be expected in all discussions’. Ar­is­totle thus warns against the abandonment of ser­ious enquiry into those topics that do not respond well to ultra-­precision. He also cautioned against any as­sump­tion that, once estab­lished, a demo­cracy would be self-­ perpetuating. ‘We shall know not to regard as a demo­cratic [. . .] meas­ure any meas­ure that will make the whole as demo­cratic [. . .] as it is pos­sible to be, but only that meas­ure which will make it last as a demo­cracy [. . .] for as long as pos­ sible’ (Ar­is­totle 1981: 373). This portrays demo­crat­ization as a precarious under­ taking, and accords with a biological image of ‘viability’ rather than with a phys­icalist as­sump­tion of permanence and purity. One reaction to the diversity of ideas associated with a core concept could be to stand back from all con­texts and seek to isolate the timeless truth or essential meaning that underlies them all. The hermeneutic al­tern­ative would be to ex­plore the range of meanings that have been attached to a par­ticu­lar ab­stract term, enriching their connotations by teasing out the unspoken as­sump­tions on which they rest in each specific discursive envir­on­ment. The third pos­sib­il­ity would be to take that con­textualizing logic to its extreme. What the term means to each user in each con­text could be differentiated. From there it is a short step to deconstructing (or destabilizing) all polit­ical discourse, and thereby cancelling the subject of this pre­senta­tion – and this conference – in its entirety. It is a legitimate intellectual activity to pursue any one of these paths and to ex­plore with care and clarity where it might lead. But, from my pluralist per­ spect­ive, it is not intellectually respectable to resolve on a priori grounds that only one of these routes can be allowed, while the results of the al­tern­ative ex­plora­tions are shut down. Thus one should resist on prin­ciple the demand that all sci­ent­ific work on demo­crat­ization must be conducted only within the con­ fines of a single disciplinary-­imposed stipulative definition of the concept. On the same prin­ciple, one should resist the counter-­claim that all discourses about demo­crat­ization are entirely ungrounded in personal subjectivity and therefore merely instruments of social control. Equally, it would be unaccept­able to limit the field of enquiry to the kind of conceptual morphology pursued here. All three approaches deserve ex­plora­tion and can be productively tested against each other. That is what methodo­logical plur­al­ism re­com­mends, whenever a singular method leaves core issues unresolved and seeks to conceal its failings by disqual­ifying productive al­tern­ative approaches on a priori grounds. Above all, we need to keep open the avenues of dialogue and communication between these fragmenting epistemic com­munit­ies.

‘Cultivating’ and ‘nurturing’ demo­cracy This conceptual discussion also has im­plica­tions for the practice of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion. Thomas Carothers (2007a) has already introduced the notion of ‘decontamination’ to the discussion of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion. His shift in

On ‘cultivating’ democracy   33 terminology from ‘pro­mo­tion’ to ‘support’ for demo­cracy also captures the thought behind the idea of ‘cultivation’. After Iraq it has become much harder to convince ob­ser­vers that co­er­cive meas­ures adopted in the name of spreading demo­cracy can be relied on to deliver their purported bene­fits. Indeed, the true motives, as well as the actual effect­iveness, of such forceful inter­ven­tions have been brought into doubt. After all, those willing to expend such efforts in the transmission of demo­cracy to Euphrates – and to Afghanistan – had not taken so much trouble to perfect elect­oral pro­ced­ures in Florida in the pres­id­en­tial elec­ tion of 2000; nor in informing cit­izens ac­cur­ately about the evid­ence concerning ‘weapons of mass destruction’ allegedly deployed by the Baghdad regime. Given such antecedents, the only way strong claims about com­mit­ment to the course of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion might be restored to inter­na­tional cred­ib­il­ity was if both the motives and the evalu­ation of results associated with subsequent initiatives of this kind were thoroughly insulated from such extraneous distortions. In a word, demo­cracy pro­mo­tion after Iraq would need to be ‘decontaminated’. In what follows we shall make the sim­plifying – albeit heroic – as­sump­tion that demo­cracy pro­mo­tion can henceforth be assessed on its own terms, rather than judged for its asso­ci­ation with other causes. On that as­sump­tion, any genu­ine programme of support for demo­cracy elsewhere would have to be founded on an initial com­mit­ment to protect and sustain demo­cratic potentialities at home. This could be asserted as a purely ethical argument, but it is also a mat­ter of cred­ib­il­ity and intellectual coher­ence. A plaus­ible biological ana­logy would be that the introduction of healthy crop into a virgin field pre­sup­poses the  accom­panying ob­serv­ance of good agricultural practice on estab­lished farmlands. Among other biological analogies that come to mind in this con­text one might discuss ‘transplant’; ‘do­mestication’ (Australia, New Zealand, Commonwealth Carib­bean); ‘symbiosis’ (demo­crat­ization and national liberation in South Africa); and ‘mimicry’ (the estab­lishment of so-­called ‘façade’ demo­cra­cies aimed at flattering external powerbrokers without neces­sar­ily dis­mant­ling tradi­ tional local structures of social control). Other, less pos­it­ive, sources of biologi­ cal ana­logy might include dismemberment (Kosovo, Timor); predation (Sierra Leone); and even scavenging (Somalia). This miscellany of examples may suffice to dem­on­strate that there is a topic here worth ex­plor­ing further. One uncomfortable implication that requires brief ac­know­ledgement here is that a full repertoire of biological analogies would extend far beyond such gentle and bene­fi­cent ac­tiv­ities as plant breeding and healing. Fiercely destructive possib­il­ities also exist, and the defence of demo­cracy can en­com­pass possib­il­ ities of confrontation as much as of cultivation. Hybridity and adaptive viability complicate the pic­ture further, since they raise difficult questions about which charac­ter­istics are to be clas­si­fied as demo­cratic potentialities and which must be understood as threats to demo­cracy. Farmers and physi­cians also confront such dilemmas, but they are at least trained, unlike engineers, to make finely discrimi­ nating, con­textual judgements about such mat­ters. In any case, this section focuses on a par­ticu­lar subset of biological analogies concerning demo­cracy

34   L. Whitehead pro­mo­tion as a specialised activity, rather than on the survival of demo­cracy as an overarching concern. If the dominant mode of theorising about demo­crat­ization is inappropriately mechanistic, this is likely to be magnified when such theory is drawn on to deliver ‘demo­cracy pro­mo­tion’ solutions. The ‘step-­change’ model and ideas about ‘consti­tu­tional engineering’ convey the image that the estab­lished Western demo­cra­cies are in possession of a reli­able and uni­ver­sally applic­able toolkit of techniques for bringing about unques­tion­ably appropriate polit­ical outcomes wherever their inherently bene­fi­cent influence can be extended. The al­tern­ative im­agery sketched in this chapter subverts that conceit. The notions of adaptive viability, hybridity, contagious transmission and reactions to it, and demo­crat­ isation as an autopoietic (self-­organised) undertaking all question such under­ lying as­sump­tions. Biological analogies for demo­cracy pro­mo­tion such as the ‘cultivation’ or ‘nurturing’ of potentially demo­cratic tendencies abroad highlight the merit of approaches that support and reinforce locally rooted demo­cratizing impulses, and that allow them sufficient auto­nomy to flourish in their own ways. This per­ spect­ive contrasts with phys­icalist ‘institutional design’ and blueprint im­agery which tends to impose an externally validated model without regard for its en­do­ geneity or adaptability to con­textual con­ditions. So let us con­sider more closely a biologically informed al­tern­ative per­spect­ ive on demo­cracy pro­mo­tion. The starting point would be that, like any complex living organism, a demo­cracy is a purposive enterprise. It therefore requires a capa­city for co­ordination from within to determine its col­lect­ive ob­ject­ives (sur­ vival, reproduction, and adaptation to its envir­on­ment), and to execute the con­ sequent responses. The organism/polit­ical entity in question is not secure so long as its purposes are set from outside, or if its capa­city to co­ordinate responses is over-­ridden by external dir­ec­tion. A demo­cracy pro­mo­tion programme that seeks to substitute the promoters’ purposes for those of the collectivity is a colonising rather than a liberating enterprise, since the indi­viduals who make up the col­lect­ ive do not own it. In the absence of sover­eignty, such a demo­cracy is a sham. (As a rough biological ana­logy, in the absence of a queen bee a swarm is a dir­ec­ tionless mass). Any complex living organism – and any demo­cracy – requires not only an in­ternal capa­city for co­ordination of its com­pon­ents for basic shared purposes, but also a time horizon. It needs a capa­city for auto­nom­ous action that persists long enough to make its purposes attainable. Demo­cracy pro­mo­tion therefore requires a significant degree of self-­denial by the promoters. Like parents with the power to intrude on their de­pend­ent offspring, they must grant leeway for their charges to make their own mis­takes and as­sume respons­ib­ility for their own de­cisions. Only thus can an emerging demo­cracy acquire autopoiesis. Effect­ive demo­cracy pro­mo­tion requires acceptance that the new entity cannot be a mere replica of an existing demo­cratic regime. Like all living organ­ isms it will combine many familiar features with some distinctive charac­ter­istics, responding to its distinctive his­tory and envir­on­ment, and consequential set of

On ‘cultivating’ democracy   35 purposes. Sean Carroll’s (2006) observation that nature works by cobbling together and re­arran­ging already existing mater­ials is rel­ev­ant here. Carroll high­ lights four separate features of the evolution of new forms in nature: tinkering, multi-­functionality, redundancy, and modularity. All of these contrast with the optimization ideals of the mech­anic and the eco­nom­ist and can alert demo­cracy promoters to the dangers of a ‘tabula rasa’ engineering blueprint approach. All of them can also con­trib­ute to the viability not only of living organisms but argu­ ably of demo­cratic regimes as well. Take modularity, as when demo­cratic assemblies are replicated across a large territory (e.g. in federal systems), so that the destruction of one would be insuffi­ cient to elim­in­ate all; or take multi-­functionality, as when elected representatives not only choose gov­ern­ments and write laws, but also conduct constituency sur­ geries and serve as conduits between their party’s rank and file and its leader­ ship. The balancing of such competing functions is not something that can be pre­scribed in detail in advance, and it can easily be destabil­ised by ill-­advised ‘efficiency’ reforms, but without it a demo­cracy can be hollowed out or never fully estab­lished. Redundancy is also crit­ical for evolutionary success, since it provides back­up resources to provide flex­ib­il­ity and to cope with shocks and disasters. Two hands, ten digits, two legis­lat­ive chambers may seem wasteful and inefficient to an optimising designer, but may never­the­less improve the long-­term survival pro­spects of organisms/organ­iza­tions prone to occasional dismemberment. Few of the stipulative definitions of demo­cracy relied upon by professional polit­ical scientists give much weight to such super­fi­cially sub-­optimal features of polit­ical repres­enta­tion and, accordingly they can easily fall below the radar of the demo­ cracy promoters. From a biological per­spect­ive, the essence of demo­cratic via­ bility is successful in­nova­tion and adaptation, whereas from the engineering per­spect­ive, the leanest, toughest, most freestanding and rigid structures are those which are expected to endure. There is a substantial his­tory of what may be termed the wholesale ‘trans­ plant’ of demo­cratic institutions from one jurisdiction to another – most famously to Japan after Hiroshima. The biological ana­logy does allow for the pos­sib­il­ity of ‘root and branch’ trans­fer of an in­teg­rated system into a hitherto unfamiliar setting. With skill and ex­peri­ence it is pos­sible to ‘graft’ a plant with desir­able charac­ter­istics onto the trunk of a less favoured specimen. Modern genetic and cellular biology is rapidly extending the range of manipulations avail­able. Modern demo­cracy pro­mo­tion may also be proceeding along an upward learning curve. But some major caveats are also in order. A successful transplant or graft requires a receptive host organism. Even a bene­fi­cial organ transplant can fail if the recipient misidentifies and rejects the implant as an intruder. Many complex organisms operate on the basis of elaborate systems of symbiosis with a large variety of related living creatures, from digestive bacteria to pollinating insects. So it is insufficient to transplant a single structure; the newcomer must also be capable of co-­existing and co-­evolving in its new envir­ on­ment. This helps explain why most successful breeding programmes still

36   L. Whitehead involve small incremental modifications selected over successive generations, rather than one-­shot overhauls. There is also the biological phenomenon of mimicry. If an organism (or a polit­ical regime) is threatened by power­ful pred­ ators which have identified some visible charac­ter­istic as grounds for attack, a common defensive strategy is to copy the external features most likely to deflect this unwelcome attention. Hence a butterfly may display false eyes on its wings, or a pharaonic ruler may stage a simulacrum of an election in order to secure Western acquiescence in the perpetuation of his dynasty. This illus­trates the potential insights that can be derived from a biological per­spect­ive on demo­cracy pro­mo­tion, but some of the im­agery sketched above also has the potential to be refined into fairly precise and even empirically test­ able pro­posi­tions. Those who require demo­cracy pro­mo­tion pol­icies to be ‘evidence-­based’ do not need to limit their conceptualizations to mech­anical accounts of causation, which are in any case prone to mis-­describe the dy­namics of their inter­ven­tions. We can ob­ject­ively assess plant breeding and grafting techniques over time; sim­ilarly, like their engineering rivals, biologically inspired models of demo­cracy assistance can be meas­ured and validated. In both cases, a con­sider­able lapse of time may be required before the results are visible. And, as the ‘tinkering’ ana­logy suggests, the rel­ev­ant practice may con­ sists of mul­tiple, partial, tent­at­ive, and reversible inter­ven­tions, rather than a one-­off checklist of best practices (such as the Copen­hagen cri­teria applied by the EU). Rather than assuming the neutrality of the scientist, the biological models help us to recog­nise that the demo­cracy promoters are themselves potentially flawed moral agents with their own distorting inter­ests and ques­tion­ably demo­ cratic identities. For this reason – and in light of the adverse con­sequences of some recent inter­ven­tions – demo­cracy promoters should be held to the ‘do no harm’ prin­ciple that governs medical science.

Notes   1 On 15 Janu­ary 2011 the Elysée Palace in Paris pro­claimed its ‘determined support’ for the demo­cratic will of the Tunis­ian people. It remains to be seen how this will be received by those who ex­peri­enced twenty-­three years of seedy French support for Pres­id­ent Ben Ali’s kleptocratic police state, including the pro­vi­sion of training and equipment to the forces of repression, support renewed as recently as one week before his ignominious flight to Saudi Arabia. The EU’s moribund ‘Barcelona Pro­cess’ may also require some agile retouching.   2 The big exception is, of course, Thomas Carothers (1999). But that is over a decade old and has not spawned many imitators. More recently, how­ever, Philippe C. Sch­ mitter has published an insightful chapter about what he terms the ‘theory vacuum’, which includes a set of ‘scep­tical pro­posi­tions’ that help to explain ‘why demo­cracy pro­mo­tion is such a difficult and paradoxical activity’, and which attempts to test a model suggesting that suitably speci­fied demo­cracy pro­mo­tion ac­tiv­ities could have some pos­it­ive effects re­gard­less of cultural con­text or stage of regime change. But he also speculates that demo­cracy pro­mo­tion may be better at protecting demo­cracy than at promoting it (Schmitter 2008: 32).   3 One useful source of guidance, albeit partial, is Youngs (2006).

On ‘cultivating’ democracy   37   4 See Whitehead (2011). This is an extension of earl­ier work (Whitehead 2001b) where I argued for ‘viability’ as pre­fer­able to the now stand­ard terminology ‘demo­cratic consolidation’.   5 See section two on what that might refer to, either on engineering prin­ciples, or from the standpoint of a biological ana­logy.   6 Polyani (2009) says ‘we can know more than we can tell’ because tacit know­ledge – prejudgments and implied values, tradition and inherited practices – is crucial in human know­ledge.   7 What Gadamer (1989) calls ‘pre­ju­dices’.   8 Paul Jorion (2009: 102) reminded me of the utility of the technique of free asso­ci­ation as a device for uncovering the unstated presuppositions that stand behind all formal ana­lysis.   9 See the chapters by Bermeo, Carothers and Whitehead in Burnell and Youngs (2010). 10 I have therefore characterised demo­crat­ization as a ‘floating but an­chored’ idea; Leon­ ardo Morlino (2005) has also inde­pend­ently elaborated his notion of ‘demo­cratic an­choring’. 11 They discuss eco­nomic models, but the same prin­ciple applies to models of demo­crat­ ization.

2 Conceptualizing demo­crat­ization and demo­cratizing conceptualization A virtuous circle Piki Ish-­Shalom Introduction In the yet uninstitutionalized Olympics of polit­ical concepts, demo­cracy along with other polit­ical concepts such as power, freedom, equality, sover­eignty, and state, would surely be a gold medal favorite in the contested-­ness match. The meanings attached to demo­cracy are many and varied, ranging from the pro­ced­ ural, through the participatory, all the way to the direct. This paper addresses the contested-­ness of the concept of ‘demo­cracy’, and pre­scribes a consti­tu­tion for the com­mun­ity of students of demo­cracy and demo­crat­ization (and other contested polit­ical concepts); consti­tu­tion both in­ternal and external. To say that a concept is essentially contested implies it has several meanings, each of them accept­able and legitimate, and each of them having a complete moral and ideo­logical groundwork. There is something a priori in the moral and ideo­logical groundwork each of us holds, and this a priori dimension also affects the meanings we attach to our concepts. This dimension is what makes polit­ical concepts essentially contested, and what makes pol­itics ‘conceptual pol­itics’. As a social science philo­sophy, posit­iv­ism is not well equipped to study conceptual pol­itics as it has an inbuilt rationale for finding a single true and ob­ject­ive meaning that doesn’t hinge upon subjective traits and/or intersubjective moral com­mit­ments. This rationale is evid­ent from the attitude of posit­iv­ism towards definitions; from its attempt to fixate definitions. In other words, posit­iv­ism, cannot fathom the phenomenon of essentially contested concepts. On the other hand, mainstream constructivism lacks sensitivity to pol­itics and hence cannot but fail in identi­fying and analysing the polit­ical pro­cesses operative in conceptual pol­itics. To study conceptual pol­itics most efficiently I propose the the­or­etical framework of polit­ical constructivism, a Gramscian-­inspired ana­lysis of the socio­political world’s socio-­political construction. Through its sensitivity to pol­itics and to polit­ical mech­an­isms and pro­cesses, polit­ical constructivism is best equipped to study the essential contested-­ness involved in conceptual pol­itics. In what follows, I will examine the phenomenon of essentially contested concepts, in par­ticu­lar with regard to the concepts of demo­cracy and demo­crat­ ization, and ana­lyse the mech­an­isms for attaching essentially contested concepts with meaning. There are two such (ideal-­type) mech­an­isms: first, polit­ically

Conceptualizing democratization   39 fixating a meaning on the pub­lic and framing the pub­lic commonsense (the Gramscian mech­an­ism); second, conducting a dynamic and crit­ical pub­lic examination of those avail­able meanings in the pub­lic sphere (the Habermasian mech­ an­ism). The Gramscian mech­an­ism is too common a feature of the daily practice of pol­itics. But this observation should not lead us to despair. On the contrary, it should encourage theorists to cultivate a dual ana­lyt­ical gaze involving both a Gramscian sensitivity to how conceptual pol­itics is routinely practiced and a Habermasian-­inspired respons­ib­ility for changing the way present-­day conceptual pol­itics is practiced. This, I argue, is a social respons­ib­ility all theorists bear, and it is also an epistemological upshot of understanding and fathoming the phenomenon of the essential contested-­ness of polit­ical concepts. Having estab­lished polit­ical constructivism as the appropriate the­or­etical framework for conceptual pol­itics, I will propose several meas­ures to improve our capa­city to study and morally engage with conceptual pol­itics. These meas­ ures are: self-­reflexivity, locating research in com­munal setting, encouraging plur­al­ism, a com­mit­ment to transparency, and civic engagement outside academia. These are of significance in con­sidering aca­demic engagements with demo­cracy pro­mo­tion. I will conclude by discussing the virtuous circle in which my argument is trapped through being based on a participatory and deliberative conceptualization of demo­cracy, which it tries to help to actualize.

Polit­ical constructivism Polit­ical constructivism is that vari­ant of constructivism which takes pol­itics ser­ iously – pol­itics, that is, as the mundane human and social realm in which lofty ideals are truthfully and honestly pursued alongside earthly inter­ests which require (at times) dirty little means; pol­itics as the social sphere in which agents and structures intermingle, producing some con­sequences that are intended, and some that are not. Pol­itics, that is, as the subject mat­ter of our study really is (Ish-­Shalom 2010, forthcoming a). Constructivism theorizes about the way our known social world came to be as it is, and the constructivist con­tention is that it became this way through social know­ledge and social construction (Adler 1997; Guzzini 2000; Weldes 1996). Social know­ledge is the people’s intersubjective understanding of their phys­ical and human envir­on­ment. This intersubjective understanding forms the building blocks in the construction of social reality. This is because people act according to their understanding of their world and their expectations based on those understandings. Polit­ical constructivism concurs with those con­tentions, yet emphas­izes the polit­ical dimensions of social construction. It is not that pol­itics is the only dimension involved in social construction, but it plays an im­port­ant and (among constructivists) insufficiently appreciated role. Polit­ical constructivism tries to amend this the­or­etical lack, for example by focusing on polit­ical concepts and their contested-­ness. Fol­low­ing Antonio Gramsci’s theory of hege­mony, the thrust of the polit­ical constructivist argument is that framing the pub­lic commonsense is the most

40   P. Ish-Shalom efficient polit­ical tool of mobil­iza­tion (Gramsci, 2007, 1996, 1992). On Gramsci’s introduction to the study of Inter­na­tional Relations, see Bieler and Morton 2001; Cox and Sinclair 1996; Davidson 2008; Gale 1998; Gill 1990, 1993; Joseph 2008; Puchala 2005. Framing the pub­lic commonsense shapes how people intersubjectively understand their world, the expectations they de­velop about the world and the pro­cesses in which they are involved and parti­cip­ate. In other words, pub­lic commonsense is an essential ap­par­atus for constructing social know­ledge and social reality. And because pub­lic commonsense is at times framed polit­ically, so the construction of social know­ledge is partially polit­ical, and social reality should be better understood as a constructed socio-­ political reality. Furthermore, framing the pub­lic’s commonsense shapes the repertoire of pub­lic actions that people hold to be pos­sible, legitimate, and effect­ive. Accordingly, rather than use brute force, a sophisticated, resourceful politician will use the third face of power, and if successful will set the polit­ical agenda and thence pub­lic beha­vi­our (Lukes 2004). Gramsci, the Marxist, theorized hege­mony as a totalistic state of affairs in which the commonsense of the (almost) entire pub­lic is framed, and stupefies the people into conceding to capitalist inter­ests. The pub­lic en masse, including the proletariat, unwittingly betrays its own ob­ject­ive inter­ests for the inter­ests of a small, sec­tar­ian segment of so­ci­ety, the capitalists. My understanding of hege­mony is less ideo­logical, hence less dog­matic and totalistic. Hege­mony is partial and transient. It is partial re­gard­ing its grip on the pub­lic. Usually, it has an effect­ive grip on certain groups, not the pub­lic en masse, and its con­tent is restricted, not totalistic. It is transient in the sense that it comes and goes, influenced, for example by successful polit­ical cam­paigning. This understanding is more suit­able to a pluralistic so­ci­ety segmented along different cleavages lines and inter­ests. Hence, I prefer using a different term to Gramsci’s ‘hege­mony’, namely ‘pub­lic convention’, to denote that partial and transitory framed commonsense (Ish-­Shalom forthcoming a, Ish-­Shalom 2010). Still, polit­ical constructivism shares with Gramsci’s theory of hege­mony the appreciation of the polit­ical effect­iveness and power­fulness of framing the commonsense, even when its effect is only partial and transitory.

Essentially contested concepts A concept is ‘a mental repres­enta­tion of an element or phenomenon of the phys­ ical, social, or psychological world’ (Davis 2005: 12). As mental repres­enta­tions, concepts are inherently vague, ambiguous, and fuzzy (Davis 2005: 5–6). Polit­ ical concepts are not only inherently fuzzy, they are also charac­ter­istically and essentially contested (Gallie 1956). Three con­ditions must be met for a concept to be contested. First, the concept must have several pos­sible meanings. Second, there must be dis­agree­ments over the appropriate meaning of the concept. Third, these dis­agree­ments are im­port­ant enough to some par­ties to become politicized. Such politicized concepts play a fundamental role in the socio-­political construction of reality (Ish-­Shalom 2010).

Conceptualizing democratization   41 Polit­ical concepts play an im­port­ant role in polit­ically framing the pub­lic commonsense. As a mental repres­enta­tion of the world, a concept’s meaning is one of the ways people understand the world. To attach meaning to concepts is to conceptualize the world: form an understanding of the world, appropriate aims in it, and the most efficient means to secure them. Therefore, pol­itics involves constant effort in conceptualizing polit­ical concepts and attach meaning to them. By fixating a meaning on a contested polit­ical concept politicians can frame the pub­lic commonsense in order to mobilize the pub­lic into action unhindered by crit­ical reflection. In other words, committing the pub­lic to an unreflected conceptualization, making the pub­lic adhere to a certain set of pub­lic conventions, can act as navigational roadmaps. Thus, decontesting polit­ical concepts is an exemplar polit­ical act. But as polit­ ical concepts are contested by their essence, pol­itics turns out to be (among other things) an effort to decontest that which cannot be decontested. To be able to fixate a polit­ical concept with meaning, politicians try to present it as neutralized, beyond ideo­logical debate: having only one nat­ural meaning. Ian Lustick sim­ilarly characterized Gramsci’s hege­mony as ‘pol­itics nat­uralized to be ex­peri­ enced as culture’ (1999: 339). This is the Gramscian route via which pub­lic conventions are created, and it is this pro­cess of socio-­political construction of the socio-­political world that polit­ical constructivism theorizes. It is here that the contested-­ness of polit­ical concepts plays such a fundamental and founda­tional polit­ical role, being both a polit­ical arena to win over and a tool for achieving it. Think of demo­cracy, for example. How­ever intricate and contested a polit­ical concept it is, in the pub­lic arena it becomes quite a cliché, evalu­ated and meas­ ured with a set of fixed cri­teria. Those fixed cri­teria are propagated by, for example, think tanks such as Freedom House and Transparency Inter­na­tional, which then use them as benchmarks for comparing coun­tries and defining them as demo­cra­cies or non-­democracies (Löwenheim 2008; Steele 2010: 63). Furthermore, the fixated meaning of demo­cracy was used as a polit­ical yardstick to determine who is with ‘us’ and who is against ‘us’ in the Bush administration’s declared global war on terrorism. This is an example of how a pub­lic convention of demo­cracy and its merits was converted into a polit­ical conviction and thence the strategic necessity to promote demo­cracy, at gunpoint if needs be. The Bush administration dem­on­strated that fixating meanings on polit­ical concepts bears with it a number of grave polit­ical im­plica­tions. The adventurism of the Bush administration in Iraq and Afghanistan exemplifies a second conceptual phenomenon. Fixating the concept of demo­cracy with meaning spills over into its deriv­at­ive concept of demo­crat­ization; the conceptualization of demo­crat­ization and the pol­icies of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion dovetail with fixating the meaning of demo­cracy. If demo­cracy is understood as a structure, demo­cracy pro­mo­tion will be understood as building the structural attributes of demo­cracy, a rel­at­ively easy and swift polit­ical act. Al­tern­atively, if demo­cracy is understood as a moral and cultural polit­ical phenomenon, demo­cracy pro­mo­tion will be understood as spreading demo­cratic norms and values—an intricate, slow, and daunting pro­cess. It was the fixated structural

42   P. Ish-Shalom understandings of both demo­cracy and demo­crat­ization that prevented the Bush administration from seeing the dif­ficult­ies of trying to demo­cratize Iraq and Afghanistan, and significantly con­trib­uted to its bogged down adventurism. This Gramscian reading of pol­itics and constructivism may elicit feelings of pess­im­ism re­gard­ing human and social exist­ence. It may provoke the argument that humans are merely captives of their own irration­al­ity and that human so­ci­ ety will forever be locked in power struggles where the pub­lic is just a tool ex­ploited by manipulative pol­itics and sec­tar­ian inter­ests. Personally, I do not subscribe to this pess­im­ism, and polit­ical constructivism should by no means promote it. Hence the Gramscian reading should be supplemented with a Habermasian per­spect­ive. Polit­ical constructivists should be encouraged to adopt an ana­lyt­ical dual gaze. This is a duality of gaze that is difficult yet crucial to attain. Polit­ical constructivists should cultivate both a Gramscian sensitivity to how pol­itics is practiced and a Habermasian-­inspired respons­ib­ility for changing how present-­day pol­itics is practiced. This is a social respons­ib­ility that all theorists bear, and it is also an epistemological upshot of understanding the contested-­ ness of polit­ical concepts, of conceptual pol­itics. Introducing Habermas’ theory of communicative action can help to check Gramscian pess­im­ism and enable us to cultivate the aforementioned duality of gaze (Habermas 1987, 1989, 1984). For his introduction to the study of Inter­ na­tional Relations, see Anievas 2005; Checkel 2001; Diez and Steans 2005; Müller 2004; Mitzen 2005; Risse 2000; Weber 2005. Habermas’ theory introduces a different strategy for decontesting polit­ical concepts, one that is committed to human reason­able­ness, at least to the potentiality of realizing it. As discussed above, meaningful polit­ical concepts are the building blocks of social know­ledge. According to the Habermasian ideal, meaningful polit­ical concepts do not hinder rational argumentation, rather they help produce rational arguments and the ensuing pub­lic elucidation of aims and means, values and facts. According to the Habermasian ideal, the pro­cess of attaching meaning to polit­ical concepts is both reflective and crit­ical and, in this pro­cess, the meaning of polit­ical concepts is able to withstand the trial of reason and be elucidated in the ideal speech situ­ation through ideal speech acts. Accordingly, the meanings of polit­ical concepts are not fixated into pub­lic conventions. They con­tinu­ously undergo crit­ical pub­lic scrutiny and clarification. The communicative ration­al­ity, reason, criticism, and reflectivity that Habermas summons both enable the ideal speech situ­ation and are enabled by it, and con­ sequently empower the parti­cip­ants of pub­lic deliberation to scrutinize and elucidate the polit­ical concepts’ meanings without accepting them at face value. The pub­lic deliberation parti­cip­ants engage in is a sincere and pub­lic dialogue that allows them to achieve a mutual understanding of each interlocutor’s understanding of the meaning and conceptualization of the polit­ical concepts under debate. Sec­tar­ian inter­ests and power con­sidera­tions are put aside, and hence, so the Habermasian argument goes, social know­ledge is intersubjectively and truthfully constructed, paving the way to a reason­able pub­lic understanding of the pub­lic good and efficient and moral polit­ical action.

Conceptualizing democratization   43 But how can the gap between the Gramscian and Habermasian understandings of conceptual pol­itics be re­con­ciled? How can the pess­im­ism and op­tim­ism be bridged? Is there a strategy for salvaging human so­ci­ety and pol­itics from fixating meanings on polit­ical concepts, from pub­lic conventions accepted without reflection? Is there a group that can help to implement this strategy? Is there, in Hegelian (1942: 197–8) and Marxian terminology (1975: 243–57; see also Avineri 1972: 155–61, 1968: 41–64), a uni­ver­sal class with the potentiality of transcending human so­ci­ety’s Gramscian fixation of one meaning and to achieve the Habermasian dynamic elucidation of many meanings? The answers to these questions, I would argue, lie in academia and the nature of the aca­demic discussion (or at least the ideality of aca­demic discussion) re­gard­ing polit­ical concepts, their contested-­ness, and their different meanings. Especially rel­ev­ant are the meanings of the polit­ical concepts ex­plored in this volume: demo­cracy and demo­crat­ization. Academia has the the­or­etical resources to understand the essential contested-­ness of polit­ical concepts, and hence may potentially be equipped to defend against the polit­ical manipulation of fixating meanings. If it succeeds, academia can serve as the uni­ver­sal class. How­ever, to achieve this it has to realize its potential, and for that several meas­ures are needed. Two caveats are in order. The first is that academia is not immune to the ramifications of decontesting what is essentially contested. As standpoint epistemologists rightly point out, aca­demics have blind spots (see below). They can be (and sometimes are) captives of a hegemonized commonsense. Fem­in­ists excel in exposing the masculine blind spots so operative in academia (Carroll and Zerilli 1993). The same can be said of nationalistic and chauvinistic trends. The point is not that academia does not suffer from those maladies, but rather that it is better equipped in engaging with those maladies and blind spots, and aca­ demics should indeed be committed to engage with them. As discussed later, it is the positivist philo­sophy of social science that is least equipped for this task. The second im­port­ant caveat is that accepting the contested-­ness of concepts does not imply moral or analytic relativism. By embracing an anything-­goes attitude, relativism dodges any sort of engagement, polit­ical or moral, with the essence of contested-­ness. Relativism is the sidestepping of moral judgment necessitated by the fact of contested-­ness. What I will call for later is plur­al­ism. Plur­al­ism recog­nizes the exist­ence of a variety of legitimate meanings, and accepts them within the limits estab­lished by the cri­teria of reason­able­ness. Additionally, plur­al­ism is retained only when one does not discard the com­mit­ment to one’s own moral grounding. Plur­al­ism, that is, does not relinquish the ethical respons­ib­ility of having to morally evalu­ate different meanings. Plur­al­ism, contrary to relativism, accepts contested-­ness, respects it, and values the reason­able meanings people hold fairly. Relativism sidesteps meaningful dialogue. Plur­al­ism practices it.

Definitions The aca­demic equi­val­ent of meanings and conceptions is definitions. In academia, meanings are attached through definition – a neces­sary and

44   P. Ish-Shalom fundamental phase in conducting research. Definitions are taken ser­iously in academia and it is demanded that they be as exhaustive, exclusive, and opera­ tionalizable as pos­sible. Standing up to these demands, a definition would supposedly be ac­cur­ate in the sense of covering all the cases and concepts which are rel­ev­ant to the research, and not including the cases and concepts which are not research-­relevant. Definitions are also supposed to provide the founda­tion for the research, which is why definitions require opera­ tionalization. Opera­tionalization gives us the ability to collect, meas­ure, and compare data, and even to repeat a study by other researchers. Definitions allow us to work and com­munic­ate our work with our colleagues. It is when we ac­cur­ately define the cat­egor­ies we work with that our studies and our theories become meaningful. That is to say, although definitions are more precise than meanings, and though they operate in different arenas, their function is sim­ilar. In other words, meanings and definitions convene.1 The convening of meanings and definitions indicates that the same set of questions that were raised re­gard­ing the attachment of meanings to concepts is also rel­ev­ant for aca­demic definitions of cases, cat­egor­ies, and concepts. Inasmuch as polit­ical concepts are contested, they will have several legitimate aca­ demic definitions, just as they have several legitimate pub­lic meanings. This contested-­ness is the source of the different definitions of demo­cracy and demo­ crat­ization employed in the aca­demic liter­at­ure. Demo­cracy can legitimately and reasonably be defined structurally or norm­atively, as lib­eral or elect­oral, as an elitist pro­ject or a participatory pro­ject, and so on. And as is the case in the pub­lic and polit­ical arena, so it is in academia: as we will define demo­cracy so we will define demo­crat­ization. If demo­cracy is defined as the structure of elections, the division of powers, and of checks and balances, so demo­crat­ization is conceptualized as building this structure; that is, emphasizing the formal, the pro­ced­ural, and the structural. Policy-­oriented scholars will take this conceptualization as an invitation to focus on the state ap­par­atus, on ‘old’ or institutional pol­itics. If, on the other hand, demo­cracy is defined as a culture and morality of the sort that creates a civic com­mun­ity, demo­crat­ization will be conceptualized as constructing this com­mun­ity; that is, as involving the socialization and dissemination of demo­cratic values in order to encourage a demo­cratic so­ci­ety and culture, mainly by empowering do­mestic agents of polit­ical and social transformation in the target coun­try. And policy-­oriented scholars will take this conceptualization as an invitation to invest effort at the social and indi­vidual levels, in an attempt to construct a civil so­ci­ety of informed, involved, and participating cit­izens. These are indeed familiar and legitimate dis­agree­ments. What is inter­esting is not so much the exist­ence of the dis­agree­ments, but rather the way academia approaches them. The dis­agree­ments are far too starkly present to be overlooked or ignored. Instead, there are two additional, and overlapping, questions which are im­port­ant and worth ex­plor­ing: where do the dis­ agree­ments arise? And, what are their founda­tions? Re­gard­ing the first question, there are two pos­sible answers. Definitional dis­agree­ments can either emerge at the opera­tionalization layer of the definition, or can be located in the more

Conceptualizing democratization   45 substantive layer. The substantive layer is the one which comprises the exhaustiveness and exclusiveness requirements of definitions. That is the layer which ensures the definition is ac­cur­ate and helps us identi­fy cases that fall under the studied concept and those that fall outside it. The question of the founda­tions of the definitional dis­agree­ments, though overlapping with the question of the location, runs deeper and also has two al­tern­ative answers. The first is that the dis­ agree­ments, which are located at the opera­tionalization layer, arise from inaccuracy and faulty sci­ent­ific pro­ced­ures. That is, they are caused by technical errors and can thus be easily corrected. The second answer is that the different definitions arise in the same way that different pub­lic meanings arise – from different and unre­con­ciled norm­ative and ideo­logical founda­tions. Put differently, a plethora of definitions employed in the aca­demic world is legitimate, and, more­ over, is a neces­sary con­dition which is due to the essentially contested nature of the polit­ical concepts studied and used in academia. Definitional dis­agree­ments are here to stay. Contested-­ness is a legitimate and neces­sary state of affairs in academia, just as it is outside it. After stating the different answers avail­able to the two overlapping questions and their underlying rationales, it becomes clear that the four answers group into two par­ties. Furthermore, it is quite easy to identi­fy which par­ties they are. The first party consists of adherents to the positivist philo­sophy of social science. The second party comprises adherents to post-­positivism, especially in­ter­pretivists and crit­ical theorists (preferably merged under polit­ical constructivism). In­ter­ pretivists and crit­ical theorists are concerned with issues of morality and ideo­ logy and are aware of their constitutive role in conducting research. If the present ana­lysis is correct, the positivists fail to understand correctly the contested-­ness in which social reality and social research are embedded. Accordingly, they confine themselves to fixating definitions, along with the errors that were indicated above re­gard­ing this strategy of attaching meanings to concepts. They deny the essential contested-­ness of the concepts they study and employ, and thus accept their own selected definitions in a way very sim­ilar to fixated pub­lic conventions. Positivists can fuss around technical mat­ters of definitions, but do not argue about them morally (for a sim­ilar argument see the introduction to the volume). The in­ter­pretivists and crit­ical theorists, on the other hand, understand the contested essence of polit­ical concepts – that the definitional dis­agree­ments are irresolvable – and its inherent ideo­logical and norm­ative groundwork. Linking this to the focus of this book, demo­cracy and demo­crat­ization, crit­ ical theory understands what posit­iv­ism cannot but fail to understand. The different aca­demic definitions of demo­cracy and demo­crat­ization are firmly grounded in different norm­ative and ideo­logical groundwork. The minimalist and structural aca­demic definition of demo­cracy is embedded in a con­ser­vat­ive scep­ti­cism about human faculties, which argues that a mix of perennial desires, instincts, and com­munal traditions underlies human action; an extrarational mix, which pushes human beings to seek power. The skep­tical con­ser­vat­ive view warns of two major con­sequences. First, because every­one is inter­ested in power there is always a danger of destabilization in the social and polit­ical

46   P. Ish-Shalom order. Second, there is a constant threat of a dic­tatorial concentration of power in the hands of those who succeed in gaining power. The con­ser­vat­ive solution for these two dangers is minimal, structural demo­cracy. On the one hand, regu­ lar demo­cratic elections guarantee that no power will last forever and there will be no dic­tatorial concentration of power. On the other hand, by confining polit­ ical parti­cipa­tion to elections, structural demo­cracy prevents polit­ical and social destabilization. The norm­ative and cultural aca­demic definition of demo­cracy is more comprehensive than this, being based on an op­tim­istic lib­eral view of human ration­ al­ity. According to this lib­eral op­tim­ism, human beings are rationally driven creatures. It is not that they lack emotions, desires, or com­munal attachments: they have them, but are largely controlled by ration­al­ity. More­over, this view sees the rational indi­vidual as the locus of indivisible civic rights. Thus, this norm­ative and cultural definition of demo­cracy centers on the concepts of parti­ cipa­tion, deliberation, and rights, seeking to enlarge the scope of cit­izens’ polit­ ical parti­cipa­tion. There is little fear of destabilizing the polity because polit­ical parti­cipa­tion and deliberation are believed to be rationally based. Aca­demic definitions, that is, are intrinsically and un­avoid­ably constituted on a norm­ative and ideo­logical groundwork (as are their pub­lic conceptualizations). But as soon as we add polit­ical constructivism’s the­or­etical sensitivity toward conceptual pol­itics to the in­ter­pretivists and crit­ical theorists’ understanding of the constitutive role of norm­ative and ideo­logical groundwork in theory-­making, then we get theorists who are well equipped to escape fixated definitions and engage in Habermasian-­like deliberation – deliberation which helps to breed plur­al­ism and the elucidation of what each interlocutor means by the definitions she employs.2

Looking ahead Polit­ical constructivism is thus well positioned epistemologically and well equipped to cope with and study conceptual pol­itics and use it to theorize the socio-­political world. In what follows I propose several meas­ures and prin­ciples that will help in realizing the epistemological potential in polit­ical constructivism. The most im­port­ant prin­ciples that should be em­braced and implemented are self-­reflexivity, com­munal setting, plur­al­ism, a com­mit­ment to transparency, and civic engagement. A social science that is committed to these prin­ciples can fully engage conceptual pol­itics and improve both aca­demic research and the world outside academia. As ex­plored extensively in fem­in­ist epi­stemo­logy (see for example Engelstad and Gerrard 2005: 6; Harding 1998: 188, 1986: 137–8, 1991: 163; Potter 2006: 140; Smith 1987: 92), reflexivity, or strong reflexivity, is characterized as a crit­ical aware­ness of the norm­ative and ideo­logical as­sump­tions and social and cultural com­mit­ments comprising the standpoint from which each theorist studies and ana­lyzes the social world. Self-­reflexivity is looking inward, ex­ploiting all those extra-­theoretical mech­an­isms which, while confining

Conceptualizing democratization   47 theorizing, also enable it (Ish-­Shalom 2011). Being crit­ically aware of the norm­ative and ideo­logical as­sump­tions operative in theorizing ensures aware­ ness of the essential contested-­ness of our definitions. Therefore, self-­ reflexivity by its very essence works against the strategy of fixating meanings on concepts and definitions, against attempting to decontest that which is essentially contested. Accordingly, self-­reflexivity is a vital com­pon­ent of studying and employing conceptual pol­itics. How­ever, there is a prob­lem with self-­reflexivity. As committed as fem­in­ist epi­stemo­logy is to self-­reflexivity, its adherents are also aware of the dif­ficult­ ies in achieving it. As Mary Hawkesworth (1996: 92) justly argues, ‘The notion of transparency, the belief that the indi­vidual knower can identi­fy all his/her pre­ju­dices and purge them in order to greet an unobstructed reality has been rendered suspect.’ She further explains that ‘the per­spect­ive of each knower contains blind spots, tacit presuppositions, and prejudgments of which the indi­ vidual is unaware’ (Hawkesworth 1996: 96). Despite the demands of both the fem­in­ist standpoint epi­stemo­logy pro­ject and polit­ical constructivism, self-­ reflexivity may prove unachievable. This is due to the blind spots that prevent theorists (and other indi­viduals) from being aware of the norm­ative and ideo­ logical as­sump­tions and social and cultural com­mit­ments on which their views are based. If this is indeed the case, then how can we achieve our goal of self-­ reflexivity? The answer to this difficulty is in setting research com­munally. Yes, it is difficult for indi­viduals to identi­fy and overcome their own blind spots and to recog­nize the as­sump­tions and com­mit­ments that form part and parcel of their theorizing. But overcoming blind spots is pos­sible within the com­mun­ity of researchers as a com­mun­ity. Research is com­munally embedded and to a large extent it is also com­munally conducted (Engelstad and Gerrard 2005; Weldon 2006). It is not that we all conduct our research jointly, but even those of us who research and write alone are re­li­ant on the com­mun­ity of researchers. We study and train in aca­demic in­tu­itions under ex­peri­enced professors, and in due course teach future generations of researchers, all the while engaging with our colleagues’ studies. This is how research works. We circulate our work-­in-pro­gress to our colleagues, seeking their useful comments, and comment on their work when asked. On another level, we peer-­review art­icles and research proposals and are peer-­reviewed in turn. We hope and expect that this peer-­review pro­cess is in good faith. The notion of ‘peers’ itself suggests a com­munal setting and these practices and others embed our research in a com­mun­ity. And it is this com­munality that helps in solving the prob­lem of blind spots, because although we may be blind to the specificities of our own as­sump­tions and com­mit­ments, we can and should be aware of their exist­ence and their constitutive role, and of their function in generating the essentially irresolvable contested-­ness of the concepts we study and use in our research. Con­sequently, there are two levels of self-­reflexivity (Ish-­Shalom 2011). The first is a gen­eral aware­ness that theorizing involves the use of as­sump­tions and social and cultural com­mit­ments and that these have a crucial and

48   P. Ish-Shalom constitutive function in conceptual pol­itics. The second is a specific aware­ness of the precise con­tent of those as­sump­tions and com­mit­ments and the intricate ways by which they produce contested-­ness. The first is attainable by the indi­ vidual theorist. Each theorist, including those con­sidering demo­cracy pro­mo­ tion and demo­crat­ization, can be crit­ically aware of the exist­ence and im­port­ance of as­sump­tions and com­mit­ments in theorizing. The second, more specific level of self-­reflexivity is avail­able to the com­mun­ity of researchers working in a common field of either empirical or the­or­etical inter­est. As a mat­ter of fact, this second level is achieved quite regu­larly. Theorists (crit­ical theorists at least) for example usually scrutinize crit­ically their colleagues’ theories and point out the as­sump­tions and com­mit­ments embedded in them. Thus, we can safely argue that the com­mun­ity of theorists is well equipped to employ self-­reflexivity, which is one of the crucial epistemological prin­ciples of studying conceptual pol­itics. An im­port­ant note of clarification is neces­sary. The theorists’ com­mun­ity is not a homogenous group sharing a complete belief system. Theorists do not share all norms, values, as­sump­tions, com­mit­ments, and expectations. As the discussion of the contested-­ness of concepts and definitions shows, this is im­pos­ sible. The research com­mun­ity is a group of people loosely united by certain core beliefs, but diverging on many other im­port­ant beliefs. It is a pluralistic com­mun­ity joined by norms, values, com­mit­ments and expectations which centre on truth-­seeking and done pub­licly, openly, and with a sense of healthy scep­ti­cism. Yet it is also a com­mun­ity that diverges on numerous as­sump­tions and com­mit­ments, such as how to reach that truth, the con­tent of that truth, and what to do with that truth once it is attained. The combination of agreement and dis­agree­ment is part and parcel of the in­ternal pluralist composition of the com­ mun­ity of IR theorists. Dis­agree­ments between members of this com­mun­ity are tightly linked to the contested-­ness of the concepts we study and the definitions we employ, and may raise concerns as to incommensurability of theories. One could argue that, if indeed different theorists em­brace different definitions due to irresolvable as­sump­tions and com­mit­ments, it might impede fruitful discussion and prevent understandings across theories. If this were the case there would not be much point in talking about a com­mun­ity of theorists, because instead there would be a number of separate and distinct com­munit­ies, each united by its own set of complete belief-­systems. Perhaps what we really have in Inter­na­tional Relations, for example, is a realist com­mun­ity, a lib­eral com­mun­ity, a Marxist com­mun­ity, a constructivist com­mun­ity, an English school com­mun­ity, etc. Perhaps these com­munit­ies are subdivided still further into classical realism, structural neo-­ realism, neoclassical realism, and let us not forget, offensive and defensive realism, each or­gan­ized around its par­ticu­lar shared set of belief system. And the same in­ternal subdivisions can be applied within the lib­eral, Marxist, constructivist, English school, etc. com­munit­ies. And how about com­munit­ies that are or­gan­ized not around the­or­etical as­sump­tions but around subject mat­ter? Is it not sensible to talk about com­munit­ies of theorists who study inter­na­tional polit­ical

Conceptualizing democratization   49 eco­nom­ics, conflict res­olu­tion, human rights, demo­crat­ization and demo­cracy pro­mo­tion, transitions to peace, transitions to war, globalization, global justice, integration, identity formation, civic-­military relations, and the rest? And then we have the methodology cri­terion, generating separate quantitative and qualit­ at­ive com­munit­ies each of which can nat­urally be subdivided again. And we can con­tinue dividing theorists along even more axes, to the logical yet absurd end of having countless com­munit­ies, each of a single theorist (if, indeed, each of us is a coherent entity, entitled to be addressed as a [com­munal] indi­viduality). And that would not just be absurd, but sense­less. Sense­less because, underneath it all, these groups can and do share the abovementioned norms, values, com­mit­ments, and expectations of seeking truth and doing it pub­licly, openly, and with a sense of healthy skep­ti­cism. These are the ideals at the heart of the the­or­etical endeavor which allow theorists to overcome their dif­fer­ences and dis­agree­ments – at least potentially and if plur­al­ism is adopted as an organ­izing prin­ciple of theorizing. Plur­al­ism, or more ac­cur­ately, polit­ical plur­al­ism, is associated with lib­ eralism. John Rawls (1993), entitling it reason­able plur­al­ism, championed plur­ al­ism as constitutive of his polit­ical lib­eralism. For Rawls, polit­ical lib­eralism ac­know­ledges that values and virtues will always be polit­ically contested. And reason­able plur­al­ism allows polit­ical lib­eralism to function as a polit­ical scheme for attaining a just, fair, and cooperative coexist­ence between different reason­ able doctrines. It allows regulating and guiding demo­cracy with its ‘Fact of Demo­cratic Unity in Diversity’, which is the fact ‘that in a consti­tu­tional demo­ cratic so­ci­ety, polit­ical and social unity does not require that its cit­izens be unified by one comprehensive doctrine, religious or nonreligious’ (Rawls 1999: 124). For Rawls (1999: 59) tolerating, under the dictate of reason­able plur­al­ism, is to ac­know­ledge and respect the moral wor­thi­ness of different stands or doctrines. At least, that is, those doctrines that are reason­able, namely those which themselves em­brace reason­able plur­al­ism. According to Rawls (1993: 44), this reason­able plur­al­ism works towards ‘a fair and stable system of coopera­tion between free and equal cit­izens who are deeply divided by the reason­able comprehensive doctrines they affirm’. And the same holds true for coopera­tion between theorists with different (reason­able) sets of belief systems. Plur­al­ism as an organ­izing prin­ciple of the diverse com­ mun­ity of theorists can facilitate exactly that, a fair and stable system of coopera­ tion. Accordingly, it will enable this com­mun­ity to function in fruitful and enriching ways, overcoming – even utilizing – the dis­agree­ments arising from the contested-­ness of the concepts we study. Plur­al­ism is a necessity in an arena such as the aca­demic arena, in which diversity is a fact, and a welcome fact. But another prin­ciple is neces­sary for the proposed plur­al­ism to operate, namely a com­mit­ment to transparency in the sense of disclosing and acknowledging the moral com­mit­ments that are at the founda­tion of theorizing. Understood thus, a com­mit­ment to transparency is a prere­quis­ite for truthful deliberation between theorists, whether in the form of John Rawls’ ori­ginal position, or Habermas’ Ideal speech situ­ations (Dryzek and List 2003: 26), and as such it can help clarify agreements, dis­agree­ments, and their sources: that is of the moral groundwork of the

50   P. Ish-Shalom contested-­ness of the concepts studied and employed in the the­or­etical studies. Without a com­mit­ment to transparency, fol­low­ing the indi­vidual and com­munal exercise of self-­reflexivity, we have no sound basis for fruitful and enriching deliberation. Self-­reflexivity, is insufficient by itself. Self-­reflexivity centers excessively on the self (even the com­munal self ), and therefore to facilitate bridges between reason­able, yet contesting, theories, researchers have to disclose those things they discovered while engaged in self-­reflexivity. Transparency is making pub­lic that which was private, and making it pub­lic enables the sought-­after truthful deliberation; it renders theorists into interlocutors, and a com­mit­ment to transparency forces our the­or­etical reflections into an aca­demic com­munal pub­lic sphere in which we can honestly strive towards elucidating the phenomenon of contested-­ ness, its sources, and its im­plica­tions. Put differently, and in line of this chapter’s thrust, a com­mit­ment to transparency based on self-­reflexivity and com­mun­ity and or­gan­ized around plur­al­ism would help theorists ac­know­ledge the contested-­ness of the concepts they study, and deal with it fruitfully, both for the sake of their research and their wider so­ci­ety. Scanlon (1998) wrote about ‘substantive respons­ib­ility’, which he defined as the things people are required to do for each other. Theorists are not above substantive respons­ib­ility. And just as this respons­ib­ility binds other people, so it binds theorists in an obli­ga­tion toward wider so­ci­ety. Substantive respons­ib­ility calls on theorists to use their ad­vant­ageous resources for the bene­fits of so­ci­ety, which in this paper’s framework includes their (potential) capa­city to act as a uni­ver­sal class and enhance understanding of the essential contested-­ness of polit­ical concepts. As already discussed, this understanding, especially in the con­text of addressing conceptual pol­itics in polit­ical constructivism, has the bene­fit of both avoiding the polit­ical manipulation of fixating meaning and facilitating pub­lic Habermasian-­like deliberation, which helps breed plur­al­ism and construct reason­able and demo­cratic understandings. In so far as theorists enjoy this capa­city, they are bound by substantive respons­ib­ility to share it with the wider so­ci­ety. Yet, there is one point that needs addressing before we can em­brace this norm­ative conclusion. The ana­lysis so far may imply an inherent and essential dif­fer­ence between theorists and the wider so­ci­ety. And it also might imply an elitist, even paternalistic, conceptualization of demo­cracy. If the elitist reading is correct, and the dif­fer­ences between theorists and the wider pub­lic are indeed inherent and essential, theorists simply cannot spread their (potential) bene­fi­cial capa­city. If this reading of so­ci­ety and demo­cracy is correct, then theorists should enclose themselves in their ivory tower and be shielded from the Gramscian-­like tactics of fixating meanings. Bringing down the walls surrounding the ivory tower would not encourage a Habermasian-­style of pub­lic deliberation but undermine the serenity of academia and the privileged standing of the theorists working on conceptual pol­itics. I cannot fully de­velop here an argument refuting the elitist reading of so­ci­ety. It is part of the norm­ative debates surrounding the understanding of so­ci­ety and demo­cracy. Put differently, it is itself part of the conceptual pol­itics surrounding the irresolvable dif­fer­ences in

Conceptualizing democratization   51 conceptualization of demo­cracy: whether it is elitist and structural or participatory and deliberative. I would limit myself to the argument that an elitist reading of demo­cracy shows lack of respect for the humanity and soci­ab­ility, the reason­ able­ness of judgment, and for the polit­ical faculties all people en­com­pass (or at least potentially en­com­pass). As Avner de-­Shalit (1997: 74) argues so forcefully in his justification of participatory and deliberative demo­cracy, ‘we value parti­ cipa­tion itself, not simply as a means of reaching de­cisions’. Parti­cipa­tion and deliberation are the polit­ical ap­par­atuses that duly respect the above human traits and faculties and help to actualize them by nourishing and de­veloping an aware­ ness of the essential contested-­ness of concepts and the polit­ical mech­an­isms avail­able to address this contested-­ness. According to this reading, the potential ad­vant­age of theorists to understand and address the contested-­ness of concepts does not stem from an intrinsic charac­ter­istic the rest of so­ci­ety does not share. It is rather due to the institutional settings of academia and research, and the the­or­etical competence theorists acquire through are training. As such it can be shared, albeit with difficulty, with so­ci­ety at large. It is not something that by nature is secluded in academia and nat­urally possessed by theorists. It is rather a social privilege provided, among other things, by pub­lic resources. Con­sequently, theorists should seek for civic engagement and, acting as theoretician-­citizens (Ish-­Shalom 2008), try to cultivate the prin­ciples of self-­reflexivity, com­munal setting, plur­al­ism, transparency, and civic engagement with the wider pub­lic. Their aim should be to raise pub­lic aware­ness of the contestedness of concepts and the ensued competence of commanding Habermasian-­like ways of openly and dynamically attaching meaning to polit­ical concepts, en route to achieving pub­lic deliberation. This is what the dual ana­lyt­ical gaze requires: cultivating both a Gramscian sensitivity to how conceptual pol­itics is practiced and a Habermasian-­inspired respons­ib­ility for changing the way present-­day conceptual pol­itics is practiced. This should be taken into account in debates on demo­cracy pro­mo­tion. What it means in practice remains for the aca­demic com­mun­ity to work out; the focus here is on making the norm­ative case for the im­port­ance of this move.

Conclusions This chapter ana­lysed conceptual pol­itics, meaning a depiction of pol­itics as that pub­lic domain in which concepts are essentially contested. It suggests that polit­ ical constructivism is the most appropriate the­or­etical framework for analysing conceptual pol­itics. Polit­ical constructivism is a Gramscian-­minded constructivism sensitive to the polit­ical aspects of social constructions: how meanings are purposefully fixated by crafty politicians to secure a polit­ical agenda, by framing the commonsense and manipulating it into pub­lic conventions and polit­ical convictions. Analysing the positivist attitude to definitions, which are the aca­demic equi­val­ent to meanings, I argued that positivists are captivated by the Gramscian mode of approaching concepts. They are fixated on fixating definitions; they

52   P. Ish-Shalom seek to fix one definition on each of the concepts they work with, often unaware that they are essentially contested. Hence they miss a fundamental aspect of pol­ itics, and offer a mis­takenly static pic­ture of the social world. Accordingly, I argue for a post-­positivist reading of the social world, especially polit­ical constructivism. I also argue, how­ever, for a dual ana­lyt­ical gaze: a Gramscian sensitivity to how conceptual pol­itics is practiced, and a Habermasian-­inspired respons­ib­ility for changing how present-­day conceptual pol­itics is practiced. To actualize this dual gaze I put forward several prin­ciples for conducting research: self-­reflexivity, com­munal setting, the encouragement of plur­al­ism, a com­mit­ ment to transparency, and civic engagement. I suggest these should be con­ sidered in aca­demic work on demo­crat­ization and demo­cracy pro­mo­tion. Yet, and with this cau­tious remark I wish to conclude the chapter, these prin­ ciples quite tightly follow the deliberative and participatory understanding of demo­cracy and demo­crat­ization. Hence the title of the paper. In a sense, my proposal is circular, but not – I hope – tauto­lo­gical. It is circular since it is founded on a participatory and deliberative conceptualization of demo­cracy, which it then attempts to help actualize. How­ever, it is a virtuous circularity and a logical and reason­able outcome of embracing conceptual pol­itics that demo­cracy and demo­ crat­ization are essentially contested, drawing from different moral backgrounds. Those who adhere to a structural and elitist conceptualization of demo­cracy will prob­ably find my proposed meas­ures unattractive. This is the sort of dis­agree­ ment we expect when we understand pol­itics according to the para­meters of conceptual pol­itics. Accordingly, it is a dis­agree­ment I can live with, even welcome for the plur­al­ism it represents.

Notes 1 Elsewhere (Ish-­Shalom forthcoming a) I treated definitions too loosely, and argued erroneously that defining is a feature of the wider pub­lic. I believe the the­or­etical move suggested here of distinguishing between aca­demic definition and the looser pub­lic act of decontesting is appropriate. 2 It should be noted, though, that by being ideo­logically committed, many crit­ical theorists fall into the same trap as positivists and are fixated on one definition. Hence, they fail to ac­know­ledge the contested-­ness of concepts and become dog­matically attached to one fixated definition. Indeed, many crit­ical theorists dog­matically engage in such conceptual pol­itics, demonizing all those who dare define concepts differently to the way they do themselves. To escape dogmatism and fixation, plur­al­ism should accom­ pany the sensitivity to morality, ideo­logy, and conceptual pol­itics.

3 Lib­eralism and demo­cracy pro­mo­tion Beate Jahn

Introduction Demo­cracy pro­mo­tion constitutes a core aspect of the foreign pol­icy of lib­eral states today. Though it has a long his­tory, at least in the foreign pol­icy of the US (Cox et al. 2000: 10), it has gained par­ticu­lar prominence since the end of the Cold War, with roughly US$2 billion per year spent on democracy-­related aid pro­jects (Carothers 2004: 2). And this amount is, since the end of the Cold War, even outweighed by the spending of other inter­na­tional actors like the EU (McFaul 2004–05: 156). Despite these efforts, how­ever, demo­cracy pro­mo­tion pol­icies have, at best, ‘very modest’ success and frequently fail to produce the ‘hoped-­for dramatic results’ (Finkel et al. 2006: 86; Carothers 2004: 5; Diamond 1999: 23). Such failure may, as Hobson and Kurki imply, be attributed to an unsatis­fact­ ory conception of ‘demo­cracy’. More specifically, some authors argue that it is the lib­eral nature of the demo­cracy being promoted that accounts for the failure of these pol­icies (Robinson 1996); a position which is countered by the argument that demo­cracy pro­mo­tion pol­icies in practice now do not focus enough on key lib­eral prin­ciples (see Youngs’ chapter). In contrast to these positions, this chapter, which approaches the demo­cracy pro­mo­tion debates from a polit­ical theory-­informed per­spect­ive, argues that unsatis­fact­ory outcomes of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion pol­icies frequently have their roots in a poor understanding of lib­ eralism and its relation to demo­cracy. In order to substantiate this claim, I will show first that in the demo­cracy pro­ mo­tion liter­at­ure, lib­eralism is associated either with private prop­erty or indi­ vidual freedom. This separation of the eco­nomic and polit­ical dimensions of lib­eralism lead to different and, indeed, contra­dict­ory accounts of the relationship between lib­eralism and demo­cracy which, in turn, provide the basis for contra­dict­ory demo­cracy pro­mo­tion pol­icies. The second step of the argument introduces the work of John Locke in order to resolve this prob­lem. Locke, I will show, posits a dynamic and constitutive relationship between eco­nom­ics and pol­itics as the definitive core of lib­eralism. More­over, Locke’s account of the estab­lishment and demo­crat­ization of lib­ eralism highlights the constitutive role of relations between inter­na­tional actors

54   B. Jahn for the pro­mo­tion of ‘lib­eral demo­cracy’, a crucial dimension of demo­cracy pro­ mo­tion largely neg­lected in the con­tempor­ary liter­at­ure. In a third step I will show that this Lockean theory resolves some of the contra­dic­tions of the present demo­cracy pro­mo­tion liter­at­ure and provides an explanation for the core weaknesses of con­tempor­ary demo­cracy pro­mo­tion pol­ icies. The chapter concludes by setting out three core con­ditions for a successful pro­mo­tion of lib­eral demo­cracy.

Lib­eralism and demo­cracy The goal of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion pol­icies has predominantly been the estab­ lishment of ‘modern, representative, lib­eral, polit­ical demo­cracy as practiced within nation-­states’ (Schmitter 1995a: 15) – that is, of lib­eral demo­cracy. Yet, it was only the recent ‘rise of illib­eral demo­cracy’ (Zakaria 1997) that led to the re­cog­ni­tion that lib­eralism and demo­cracy do not neces­sar­ily go hand in hand (Bova 1997: 112; Plattner 2008: 10–11). The pro­mo­tion of lib­eral demo­cracy thus requires an account of the con­ditions under which lib­eralism and demo­cracy reinforce each other. Yet, attempts to specify these con­ditions have led, I will now show, to contra­dict­ory results. In the con­text of the demo­cracy pro­mo­tion liter­at­ure, demo­cracy is gen­erally understood as the rule of the people which, in the con­tempor­ary world, is expressed in the election of legis­lat­ive representatives by virtually uni­ver­sal adult suffrage. Demo­cracy, thus, determines who rules and ‘elections . . . are regarded as embodying the pop­ular or majoritarian aspect of con­tempor­ary lib­ eral demo­cracy’ (Plattner 2008: 48). Lib­eralism, in contrast, is not concerned with who rules but how rule is exercized. It ‘is essentially a doctrine devoted to protecting the rights of the indi­vidual to life, lib­erty, prop­erty, and the pursuit of hap­pi­ness’ (Plattner 2008: 60). This definition of lib­eralism, combining the rights to lib­erty and prop­erty as it does, is indeed widely accepted. All the more surprising, then, is the fact that the stand­ard accounts in the demo­cracy pro­mo­ tion liter­at­ure fail to reflect this relationship and instead rest on a separation of these two core dimensions of lib­eralism – leading to a contra­dict­ory, a com­ plement­ary, and a contingent conceptualization. The claim that lib­eralism and demo­cracy are potentially contra­dict­ory is most frequently based on the as­sump­tion that the protection of private prop­erty is a ‘sacred’ prin­ciple of lib­eralism (Plattner 2008: 67). Yet, this protection of private prop­erty may run counter to the inter­ests of a majority of the popu­la­tion if the latter is poor and does not hold any private prop­erty. His­tor­ically, lib­erals widely resisted the introduction of demo­cracy precisely on these grounds. Uni­ver­sal suffrage, they argued, would result in the plunder of the rich by the poor and hence suffrage could be extended only to those social groups ‘which cannot be supposed to have an inter­est in overturning the right to prop­erty’ (Ricardo cited in Przeworski 1992: 53; Macaulay cited in Plattner 2008: 64–5). His­tor­ically, this assessment was shared by socialists and communists who fought for polit­ical power precisely in order to overturn – to a greater or lesser extent – this lib­eral

Liberalism and democracy promotion   55 prin­ciple of private prop­erty. The asso­ci­ation of lib­eralism with the prin­ciple of private prop­erty thus gives rise to the thesis that lib­eralism and demo­cracy are potentially incom­pat­ible. In contrast, the asso­ci­ation of lib­eralism with indi­vidual rights and polit­ical freedom provides the basis for the claim that lib­eralism and demo­cracy are ultimately com­plement­ary. Here, indi­vidual freedom is seen as a ‘neces­sary con­ dition’ for demo­cracy (Sartori 1995: 101–2). Indi­viduals are not just sover­eign ‘within the legal framework of the private law so­ci­ety’ but also sover­eign at the consti­tu­tional level, the level ‘at which the “rules of the game” are chosen’ (Vanberg 2008: 143). Since the consti­tu­tional ar­range­ments can only be chosen by the voluntary consent of indi­viduals, ‘consti­tu­tional lib­eralism is . . . nat­urally “demo­cratic” ’ (Vanberg 2008: 143). In other words, lib­eralism understood as the ‘freeing of the people’ provides the basis for demo­cracy understood as ‘empowering the people’ (Sartori 1995: 101–2). The con­sequence of this line of argument is that in the demo­cracy pro­mo­tion liter­at­ure the widely agreed understanding of demo­cracy as majority rule based on uni­ver­sal suffrage is redefined. If the freedom of the indi­vidual is a precon­ dition for demo­cracy, then the latter must not be confused with majority rule (Vanberg 2008: 146f.). After all, ‘there is reason to fear that a gov­ern­ment responsive to pop­ular majorities will be tempted to violate the rights of unpop­ ular indi­viduals or minor­it­ies’ (Plattner 2008: 60). In this view, only lib­eral demo­cra­cies are demo­cra­cies – even if they limit the franch­ise (Sartori 1995). His­tor­ically, the fact that lib­eralism was in most cases estab­lished before demo­ cracy is cited in support of this thesis. Both the contra­dict­ory and com­plement­ary conceptions of the relationship between lib­eralism and demo­cracy, how­ever, are, in their strict version, undermined by his­tor­ical evid­ence. The insight that ‘lib­eralism, either as a conception of polit­ical lib­erty or as a doctrine about eco­nomic pol­icy, may have coincided in some coun­tries with the rise of demo­cracy, but has never been immutably or unambiguously linked to its practice’ (Schmitter 1995: 16) thus provides the basis for the third account, that con­siders the relationship between lib­eralism and demo­cracy as contingent upon certain circumstances – at a first glance combining the eco­nomic and polit­ical dimensions of lib­eralism. ‘Few relationships between social, eco­nomic, and polit­ical phenomena are stronger than that between the level of eco­nomic de­velopment and the exist­ence of demo­cratic pol­itics’ (Huntington 1991: 30; Przeworski et al. 2000: 273). Conversely, ‘pov­erty is a prin­cipal – prob­ably the prin­cipal – obs­tacle to demo­cratic de­velopment’ (Huntington 1991: 31). And yet, eco­nomic de­velopment, or capit­ al­ism as the source of this de­velopment, are widely seen as a ‘neces­sary – though not sufficient – con­dition for demo­cracy’ (Berger 1992: 11; Schmitter 1994: 66; Bhagwati, 1992: 40; Diamond 1990: 50, 59). Other helpful con­ditions mentioned in the liter­at­ure include Western culture and values (Huntington 1996: 4) as well as state capa­city, lib­eral and rational eco­nomic structures, a secure social and polit­ical order, horizontal account­ability and the rule of law, lack of corruption, strong polit­ical par­ties linked to social groups, a non-fragmented party system,

56   B. Jahn auto­nom­ous capa­city and pub­lic account­ability of legislatures and local gov­ern­ ments, and a vigor­ous civil so­ci­ety (Diamond 1996: 33). Though these lists entail some polit­ical charac­ter­istics, they fail to estab­lish, first, which of these features are ‘neces­sary’ for the de­velopment of lib­eral demo­cracy and which are contingent. After all, not all illib­eral states suffer from corruption, fragmented party systems, or the absence of civil so­ci­ety – just as not all stable lib­eral demo­cra­cies argu­ably fulfill all these cri­teria (O’Donnell 1996: 166). Second, the liter­at­ure does not provide a the­or­etical account of the relationship between the ‘neces­sary but not sufficient’ eco­nomic and additional polit­ical factors. It empirically identifies certain polit­ical features in addition to the eco­nomic con­ditions as widely present in lib­eral demo­cra­cies (or, conversely, absent in non-­liberal states) and it draws on a connection between the eco­nomic and polit­ical dimensions of lib­eral demo­cracy in its his­tor­ical nar­rat­ive, as I will show in the third part below. But it fails to integrate the two dimensions the­or­ etically. In effect, this account thus slips right back into the previously outlined contra­dict­ory thesis which simply focuses on eco­nomic de­velopment. Hence, ‘for those coun­tries whose eco­nom­ies are unsuccessful, demo­cracy is bound to be precarious in any case’ (Plattner 2008: 81). The polit­ical strand of the contingency thesis perfectly mirrors the fate of its eco­nomic counterpart. It identifies certain polit­ical features – the protection of indi­vidual rights, limited gov­ern­ment – as at the core of lib­eralism and then appears to add to these some socioeco­nomic con­ditions such as pre-­existing social structure and eco­nomic de­velopment (Bova 1997: 116; Fukuyama 1992a: 108). Fukuyama offers ‘the desire for re­cog­ni­tion’ as ‘the missing link between eco­nomic de­velopment and demo­cracy’ (Fukuyama 1992a: 107). Yet, while eco­ nomic de­velopment is designated as ‘very helpful’, it is ‘neither a neces­sary nor a sufficient con­dition for stable demo­cracy’ (Fukuyama 1992a: 108). This status of eco­nomic de­velopment as, in fact, un­neces­sary is expli­citly stressed when it is argued that lib­eralism, a hundred years ago, was not at all associated with providing eco­nomic bene­fits – and thus ‘a “poor demo­cracy” is equally con­ceiv­able and pos­sible’ (Sartori 1995: 105). Hence, while eco­nomic de­velopment is seen as ‘helpful’, it is neither distinguished in its im­port­ance from other additional factors such as Western culture and values, religion, and eth­ni­city (Bova 1997: 116; Fukuyama 1992a: 108), nor is a satis­fact­ory the­or­etical link between the polit­ical and eco­nomic dimensions of lib­eralism estab­lished. On the contrary, eco­nomic de­velopment is presented as ultimately un­neces­sary for the de­velopment of lib­eral demo­cracy. Like its eco­ nomic counterpart, in effect this thesis thus slips back into the previously outlined com­plement­ary position which holds ‘that the philo­sophy of lib­eralism contains within itself the seeds of its own demo­crat­ization’ (Plattner 2008: 60). In effect, then, the three avail­able the­or­etical accounts of the relationship between lib­eralism and demo­cracy boil down to two: an eco­nomic account which is based on the asso­ci­ation of lib­eralism with private prop­erty and fails to the­or­etically estab­lish its link to indi­vidual freedom; and a polit­ical account which associates lib­eralism with indi­vidual freedom and fails to provide a

Liberalism and democracy promotion   57 the­or­etical link to private prop­erty. This separation of the eco­nomic and polit­ical dimensions of lib­eralism, in turn, provides the ground for different, and at times contra­dict­ory, demo­cracy pro­mo­tion pol­icies. Modernization pol­icies focused on the pro­mo­tion of eco­nomic de­velopment which was expected, eventually, to lead to polit­ical demo­crat­ization. In contrast, demo­cracy pro­mo­tion pol­icies in the post-­Cold War period initially focused more on polit­ical reform. The widespread failure of both (Rose 2000–01: 191–3; Jahn 2007: 94–102), in the meantime, has led to a situ­ation in which a host of different actors (states, IGOs and NGOs) pursue a multitude of different pol­icies – ranging from support for eco­nomic de­velopment through polit­ical demo­crat­ ization and institutional support, to the de­velopment of civil so­ci­ety – in a variety of different settings, with successive changes of strategy as well as ‘genu­ine doubt over the most suit­able paths forward’ (see Youngs’ chapter). In short, demo­cracy pro­mo­tion pol­icies are today characterized by a lack of co­ordination between actors, integration of pol­icies, consistency over time – drawing in an ‘ad hoc fashion’ on a rich menu of pol­icy options that lacks, how­ever, a ‘systematic’, ‘common’, or ‘comprehensive’ core (see Youngs’ chapter). This inconsistency, I argue, has its roots in the failure to understand the relationship between the polit­ical and eco­nomic dimensions of lib­eralism and their im­plica­tions for demo­crat­ization. Thus, while most authors agree that polit­ical and eco­nomic de­velopment provide the best con­ditions for demo­crat­ization, the failure to estab­lish the nature of their relationship allows policy-­makers to pick and choose from pol­icies in any one of these areas – without con­sidering the precon­ditions for, and con­sequences of, such pol­icies for other areas.

The Lockean account An answer to the question of how the polit­ical and eco­nomic dimensions of lib­ eralism relate to each other, I will now show, can be found in the work of John Locke, in which ‘the central elements of the lib­eral outlook crystallized for the first time into a coherent intellectual tradition expressed in a power­ful, if often divided and conflictual, polit­ical movement’ (Gray 1986: 11). It is thus not surprising that Locke is widely mentioned in the demo­cracy pro­mo­tion liter­at­ure (Sartori 1995: 101–2; Ake 1992: 33–4; Plattner 2008; see Youngs’ chapter). For the most part, how­ever, these ref­er­ences to Locke are fairly cursory and do not entail a ser­ious engagement with his theory. Such an engagement is never­the­less fruitful because Locke offers a the­or­etical account of the relationship between the core lib­eral prin­ciples of private prop­erty and indi­vidual freedom. More­over, Locke himself was confronted with the challenge of promoting ‘lib­eralism’ in a largely non-­liberal envir­on­ment. His solution to this prob­lem accords a crucial role to inter­na­tional oppor­tun­ities for the pro­mo­tion of do­mestic lib­eralism – and the his­tor­ical emergence, expansion, and eventual demo­crat­ization of lib­eralism largely followed the trajectory outlined by Locke. Like most classical authors, Locke begins his reflections on gov­ern­ment with as­sump­tions about the state of nature. This state of nature of all men, he argues,

58   B. Jahn is ‘a State of perfect Freedom to order their Actions, and dispose of their Possessions, and Persons as they think fit’ (Locke 1994: 269). Yet, upholding this freedom requires self-­preservation (Locke 1994: 271). And it is this requirement, Locke argues, that can only be fulfilled if ‘every Man has a Prop­erty in his own Person’ and ‘the Labour of his Body and the Work of his Hands’ (Locke 1994: 287f.). Self-­possession, prop­erty in one’s person and the fruit of one’s labor, thus allows indi­viduals ‘the taking any part of what is common, and removing it out of the state Nature leaves it in, which begins the Prop­erty’ (Locke 1994: 289). The right to private prop­erty therefore exists already in the state of nature, and it is this right that underpins and upholds the nat­ural freedom of the indi­vidual who would other­wise perish (Locke 1994: 289, 294). Locke supports this the­or­etical argument with ref­er­ence to the his­tor­ical origins of gov­ern­ment largely based on in­forma­tion about indi­gen­ous com­munit­ies in Amer­ica (Inayatullah and Blaney 2004: 35–43; Jahn 2000). ‘Men are nat­urally free, and the Examples of His­tory shewing, that the Gov­ern­ments of the World . . . had their beginning laid on that founda­tion, and were made by the Consent of the people’ (Locke 1994: 336). And since this freedom is based on prop­erty, the ‘great and chief end therefore (of gov­ern­ment) is the Preser­va­tion of their Prop­erty’ (Locke 1994: 351). For Locke, then, both the freedom of the indi­vidual and its right to private prop­erty already exist in the state of nature. Yet, they do not simply coexist. Private prop­erty provides the neces­sary basis for indi­vidual freedom; such free indi­viduals then demand gov­ern­ment by consent which in turn has to protect private prop­erty as the basis for their freedom. In short, Locke argues that indi­ vidual freedom is and must be based on private prop­erty, for without private prop­erty the indi­vidual is neces­sar­ily de­pend­ent on others for its survival and thus not free. Yet, this ideal formu­la­tion did not reflect the social and polit­ical con­ditions at the time of Locke’s writing. In fact, it was precisely because most gov­ern­ments in Locke’s time and throughout his­tory had not been gov­ern­ments by consent, and because private prop­erty had not neces­sar­ily been protected, that Locke de­veloped this theory and propagated it against the prevailing polit­ical positions, such as Filmer’s defense of paternal gov­ern­ment which he attacks in the first treatise (1994).1 In practice, he thought it ‘evid­ent that there is a dif­fer­ence in degrees in men’s understandings, apprehensions, and reasonings to so great a lat­ it­ude, that one may, without doing injury to mankind, affirm, that there is a greater dif­fer­ence between some men and others in this respect, than between some men and some beasts’ (Locke 1959, II: 446). A lib­eral polity could therefore not be estab­lished by simply introducing elections. Locke thus had to show how so­ci­ety could be based on the prin­ciples of private prop­erty and gov­ern­ment by consent in the absence of a majority of indi­viduals supporting such de­velopments or, conversely, how the majority of the popu­la­tion could be made sufficiently rational to estab­lish and maintain such a polity. In other words, Locke saw himself confronted with the task of promoting ‘lib­eralism’ in a non-­ liberal envir­on­ment.

Liberalism and democracy promotion   59 Locke’s solution to this prob­lem was faithful to the fundamental premises of his theory – and in par­ticu­lar to the linkage between freedom and private prop­erty. If private prop­erty was the basis of indi­vidual freedom, Locke argued, prop­erty owners would demand that gov­ern­ment protect private prop­erty and hence their freedom. He thus ad­voc­ated the extension of full polit­ical rights to prop­erty owners only – and the concomitant denial of these rights to those who did not own prop­ erty. ‘Paternal Power is . . . where Minor­ity makes the Child in­cap­able to manage his prop­erty; Polit­ical where Men have Prop­erty in their own disposal; and Des­ potical over such as have no prop­erty at all’ (Locke 1994: 384).2 Yet, such rule by a rel­at­ively small and wealthy elite clearly did not satisfy his claim that, in prin­ciple, all people were born free and equal and thus had a right to consent to gov­ern­ment. More­over, Locke saw the tiny minor­ity of prop­ erty owners, ‘the rich’, who would have been accorded full polit­ical rights, as ‘mostly corrupt’ (Dunn 1969: 217). Hence, Locke was inter­ested in extending the franch­ise and, perfectly in line with his theory that private prop­erty provides the basis for indi­vidual freedom and the rights that follow from this, he argued that an extension of the franch­ise could be achieved by turning more, and ideally all, sections of so­ci­ety into prop­erty owners. This was a neat the­or­etical solution, but in practice it threw up the prob­lem of where all this additional prop­erty was to come from. After all, having committed himself to the protection of private prop­erty, redis­tribu­tion was not an option. So, Locke argued that private prop­ erty was more productive than common prop­erty and thus of greater bene­fit to all of humankind (1994: 296–8). It was therefore justified to turn common into private prop­erty: God gave the land ‘to the use of the Industrious and Rational’ (Locke 1994: 291). People could simply attain prop­erty by mixing their indi­ vidual labor with the ori­ginal common prop­erty. The privatization of common prop­erty was thus the solution to the prob­lem. But there was simply not enough common land – at the time the most im­port­ ant additional source of wealth – left in England to provide the vast and rising number of poor with prop­erty. Locke thus looked abroad: ‘Yet there are still great Tracts of Ground to be found, which (. . .), lie waste, and are more than the People who dwell on it, do, or can make use of, and so still lie in common’ (Locke 1994: 299). It was this common land in Amer­ica which could be used, at least in prin­ciple, to furnish all indi­viduals with prop­erty and thus make them eli­gible to full polit­ical rights. In short, ‘Locke . . . was offering the New World, specifically the co­lo­nial settlements of Amer­ica, as validation of his sociopolit­ ical philo­sophy’ (Lebovics 1986: 577). According to this theory, the expansion of lib­eralism and its subsequent demo­crat­ization required three steps: first, polit­ ical rights were to be given only to prop­erty owners who would estab­lish a lib­ eral so­ci­ety; sec­ondly, common prop­erty could then be expropriated and transformed into private prop­erty thus increasing the number of prop­erty owners; and thirdly, on the basis of this wider distribution of prop­erty, polit­ical rights could be extended.3 His­tor­ically, the estab­lishment of lib­eralism and its eventual demo­crat­ization broadly followed the trajectory outlined by Locke. First, land owners and

60   B. Jahn merchants who had become rich from the trade with the colonies – among them Locke’s own long-­time patron, the Earl of Shaftesbury – increasingly demanded polit­ical rights with direct ref­er­ence to their prop­erty which led to a huge increase in the members in the House of Commons (Perelman 2000: 175; Acemoglu and Robinson 2006: 350). And these men subsequently used their polit­ ical power to estab­lish a lib­eral state characterized by the trans­ference of de jure polit­ical power into the hands of commercial and capitalistic inter­ests and the stabilization of prop­erty rights in seventeenth century Britain (Acemoglu and Robinson 2006: 349–50).4 Once in power, how­ever, these men were not con­tent with securing the existing prop­erty ar­range­ments but systematically engaged in the transformation of common into private prop­erty – both in the do­mestic and the inter­na­tional sphere. Thus, Locke’s work was frequently cited in Par­lia­ment in support of private enclosure acts which, between 1710 and 1815, trans­ferred 6.5 million acres or 20 percent of the total land from common into private prop­erty (McNally 1988: 62, 8–9; Perelman 2000: 175).5 These do­mestic pol­icies were accompanied by the propagation of co­lo­nialism in which the Earl of Shaftesbury and also Locke himself played a crucial role. Locke was secretary to the Lord Proprietors of Caro­lina (1668–71), secretary to the Council of Trade and Plantations (1673–4), a member of the Board of Trade (1696–1700), he invested in the slave-­trading Royal Africa Com­pany (1671) and the Com­pany of Merchant Adventurers to trade with the Bahamas; he was a Landgrave of the proprietory gov­ern­ment of Caro­lina, wrote parts of the Fundamental Consti­tu­tions of Caro­lina, handled the day-­to-day corres­pond­ence with the colonists in Caro­lina, and Edisto Island was origin­ally called Locke Island. His writings, polit­ical and the­or­etical, cover all aspects of co­lo­nialism and consistently defend it (Tully 1993: 140–1; Tuck 1999: 167). And it was these writings, par­ticu­larly Locke’s theory of prop­erty, that ‘preachers, legal theorists, and politicians’ used to base first the land claims of the British colonists and then those of Amer­ican cit­izens for the enclosure and cultivation of land (Arneil 1996: 169). The same argument was also influ­en­tial in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada throughout the eight­eenth and well into the ninteenth century (Ivison 2003: 93). These pol­icies thus allowed Euro­pean colonists to acquire prop­erty and, perfectly in line with the dynamic outlined by Locke, it was in settler soci­ eties like New Zealand, the USA, and Australia that the promise based on such wider distribution of prop­erty – the introduction of uni­ver­sal franch­ise – was first realized. In Europe, meanwhile, the gradual demo­crat­ization of lib­eralism was sim­ ilarly in line with Locke’s theory. Until well into the nineteenth century, voting rights were limited by prop­erty qualifications and lib­erals widely and pas­sion­ ately resisted the extension of the franch­ise on precisely the grounds that Locke had set out: namely that those who did not own prop­erty could not be expected to support and maintain laws protecting private prop­erty. Such resistance was neces­sary because the poorer sections of so­ci­ety vociferously demanded polit­ical rights. Upheavals, rebellions, and the threat of revolu­tion were widespread and

Liberalism and democracy promotion   61 in­teg­ral features of so­ci­ety: rulers had to be forced to give up power (Tilly 2004; Kim 1992: 24). Yet, it was precisely the ruling elite’s resistance to extending the franch­ise which ultimately guaranteed the lib­eral character of Western demo­ cracy (Bova 1997: 116; Ake 1992: 33–4). For the enclosure of commonly owned land do­mestically, co­lo­nial appropriation of land inter­na­tionally, and the industrial revolu­tion all con­trib­uted to the eco­nomic growth that led to a wider distribution of prop­erty in so­ci­ety – in line with the widely noted link between eco­nomic de­velopment and lib­eral demo­cracy (Przeworski et al. 2000; Acemoglu and Robinson 2006: 58). In other words, a sizable middle class slowly emerged and allowed lib­erals to lower the prop­erty threshold for voting rights gradually, thus extending the franch­ise – but only to those sections of so­ci­ety that had actu­ally achieved a meas­ure of indi­vidual freedom based on private prop­erty and who therefore had a stake in upholding the lib­eral character of gov­ ern­ment. Thus, gen­eral evid­ence suggests that a successful demo­crat­ization of lib­eralism requires the inviolability of prop­erty rights (Acemoglu and Robinson 2006: 82; Chirot 2009: 107). More­over, the transformation of common into private prop­erty remains at the core of lib­eral strategies to foster eco­nomic growth today. The last two decades have seen a remark­able revival of lib­eralism in the form of market eco­nom­ics, the privatization of state-­owned industries, and the trimming of wel­fare bene­fits by lib­eral demo­cra­cies (Plattner 2008: 68). This latest round of ‘privatization’ and ‘lib­eralization’ targeted com­munal ownership of water and electricity supplies, education, and health care and the estab­lishment of ‘new enclosures’ in the form of intellectual prop­erty rights over nat­ural products and their uses (May 2000). Pol­icies of privatization and marketization also lie at the core of the de­velopment pol­icies of inter­na­tional organ­iza­tions like the IMF and World Bank as well as those of indi­vidual lib­eral states. Locke’s theory thus provides two crucial insights concerning the estab­ lishment and demo­crat­ization of lib­eralism that are missing from con­tempor­ary accounts. The first is that private prop­erty constitutes indi­vidual freedom. The expansion and demo­crat­ization of lib­eralism, according to this theory, requires a wider distribution of private prop­erty in so­ci­ety, which in turn constitutes indi­ viduals as free in the lib­eral sense and thus disposed towards pursuing lib­eral pol­icies: gov­ern­ment by consent, the protection of private prop­erty and indi­ vidual liberties. Second, Locke’s theory highlights the constitutive role of inter­na­tional pol­ itics for the estab­lishment and demo­crat­ization of lib­eralism. For it was the appropriation of foreign prop­erty – in addition to do­mestic privatization – that provided the neces­sary resources for a wider distribution of prop­erty in do­mestic so­ci­ety. Amer­ica (and subsequently other colonies) offered common land (as well as cheap labor, access to nat­ural resources, and (captive) markets) for capital accumulation that was simply not avail­able in Europe. Co­lo­nialism, in short, is now widely regarded as having played a crucial role in eco­nomic de­velopment in Europe (Marks 2007; Washbrook 1997). But co­lo­nialism also allowed the ruling elite to pursue a large part of its eco­nomic goals abroad and

62   B. Jahn thus relieve polit­ical pressure at home. It provided the do­mestic poor and polit­ ically disenfranch­ised with the option to emig­rate and allowed the gov­ern­ment to export its poor, its criminals, its orphans, as well as offer employment in the administration of the colonies. In short, co­lo­nialism provided the eco­nomic and polit­ical means to resist demands for polit­ical rights in Europe long enough for a sizable middle class to emerge – and common polit­ical inter­ests in the appropriation of indi­gen­ous peoples’ land for rich and poor alike in the settler com­munit­ ies themselves. The very pos­sib­il­ity of co­lo­nialism in turn depended on unequal power relations in the inter­na­tional sphere. Inter­na­tional pol­itics thus played a constitutive role in the estab­lishment and demo­crat­ization of lib­eralism.

Lib­eral demo­cracy pro­mo­tion These two dimensions of the estab­lishment and demo­crat­ization of lib­eralism – the constitutive role for private prop­erty in indi­vidual freedom, and for inter­na­tional pol­itics in do­mestic lib­eralization and demo­crat­ization – are variously dis­regarded in con­tempor­ary demo­cracy pro­mo­tion liter­at­ure. In contrast to Locke, the polit­ical nar­rat­ive of the relationship between lib­eralism and demo­cracy in the con­tempor­ ary liter­at­ure as­sumes that lib­eralism, both polit­ical and eco­nomic, arises out of a par­ticu­lar polit­ical culture characterized by secularization, tolerance, and the ‘taming of pol­itics’ (Sartori 1995: 104, 106; Fukuyama 1992b). The subsequent his­tor­ical expansion of lib­eralism is explained by ‘the spread of lib­eral ideas of the nat­ural freedom and equality of all human beings’ which ‘doomed any special and substantial privileges enjoyed on the basis of heredity’ and ‘eventually undermined any effort to exclude people from polit­ical parti­cipa­tion on the basis of such factors as race, religion, or sex’ (Plattner 2008: 67). Demo­cracy pro­mo­tion pol­icies based on this nar­rat­ive therefore identi­fy a traditional polit­ical culture as the main barrier to the de­velopment of lib­eral demo­ cracy. They as­sume that (the Nietzschean) ‘slave must be educated slowly and painfully to understand that he or she is a human being with a unique dignity that can best be recog­nized by certain kinds of social and polit­ical institutions’ (Fukuyama 1992a: 107) and con­sequently propagate pol­icies focusing on the spread of lib­eral ideas and institutions: issues of cit­izen­ship and civil so­ci­ety in current demo­cracy pro­mo­tion programs are designed to address precisely this polit­ical backwardness (Plattner 2008: 53). The Lockean theory highlights, how­ever, that this nar­rat­ive puts the his­tor­ical cart before the horse. The period before the emergence of lib­eral ideas at the end of the seventeenth century was neither characterized by a ‘tame’ polit­ical culture nor by secularism and tolerance but instead by the bloodiest civil war in English (and Euro­pean) his­tory – a war, no less, which was in large part religious. Indeed, Locke’s work and with it the de­velopment of lib­eral thought can be understood as an attempt to find a solution to the prob­lem of religious viol­ence (Inayatullah and Blaney 2004: 35). This solution lay in the ‘privatization’ of religion, in a clear distinction between the private and the pub­lic sphere. The pub­lic sphere, or ‘polit­ical so­ci­ety’, as Locke terms it, ‘is instituted for no other

Liberalism and democracy promotion   63 end but only to secure every man’s Possession of the things of this life’ and thus has no right to adju­dic­ate on mat­ters of the afterlife (1983: 48). Conversely, while indi­viduals may follow their par­ticu­lar faiths in the private sphere, they may not ‘obtrude those things upon others, unto whom they do not seem to be the indubitable Doctrines of the Scripture’ (Locke 1983: 57). This ‘privatization’ of religion, how­ever, required the protection of the private sphere based on the protection of private prop­erty. In short, a secular, tolerant6 and ‘tame’ polit­ical culture was not a precon­dition for the de­velopment of lib­eralism but rather a result of this de­velopment. His­tor­ical evid­ence also contradicts the claim that the spread and demo­crat­ ization of lib­eralism required the undermining of a traditional polit­ical imagination by lib­eral ideas (Plattner 2008: 62). Instead, rad­ical polit­ical demands were voiced by the popu­la­tion throughout this entire period – attesting not to a traditional but rather to a rad­ical polit­ical imagination (Tilly 2004; Ake 1992: 33–4). Instead of originating in the ideo­logical de­velopment of ruling elites (Plattner 2008: 66), his­tor­ical evid­ence shows that ‘most moves toward demo­cracy happen in the face of significant social conflict and pos­sible threat of revolu­tion. Demo­cracy is usually not given by the elite because its values have changed. It is demanded by the disenfranch­ised as a way to obtain polit­ical power and thus secure a larger share of the eco­nomic bene­fits of the system’ (Acemoglu and Robinson 2006: 29; Kim 1992: 24). The constitutive role of private prop­erty in the de­velopment of lib­eral pol­icies and polities, more­over, also explains the earl­ier demo­crat­ization in Euro­pean settler soci­eties like Amer­ica. In such soci­eties, the transformation of common into private prop­erty that would eventually turn the majority of the popu­la­tion into prop­erty owners, was based on the expropriation of indi­gen­ous – that is, ‘foreign’ – polit­ical com­munit­ies. Instead of pitching different sections of so­ci­ety against each other, as in Europe, this pro­cess created an alli­ance of inter­ est between all settlers in the expropriation of the indi­gen­ous com­munit­ies. Hence, ruling elites had nothing to fear, but a lot to gain, from extending the franch­ise in settler com­munit­ies. The demo­crat­ization of lib­eralism was thus not achieved by a simple spread of lib­eral ideas and institutions, but rather by a spread of the eco­nomic con­ditions that ensured that these ideas meaningfully reflected the con­ditions of the people’s exist­ence and their inter­ests. The failure to attend to these eco­nomic founda­tions of lib­eral ideas and institutions explains the ironic results of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion pol­icies focusing on the latter: for while such pol­icies often succeed in estab­lishing lib­eral institutions – demo­cratic elections, a free press, civil so­ci­ety organ­iza­tions – the pol­icies subsequently pursued through these institutions are frequently highly illib­eral (Berman 2009; Carothers 2004; De Zeeuw and Kumar 2006). In the absence of a sufficient spread of private prop­erty in so­ci­ety, the survival of indi­viduals and their real existing freedom depends on com­munal prop­erty and redis­tribu­tion (ethnic, religious, or other­wise). In such circumstances, ‘lib­eral’ institutions facilitate the defense of com­munal rather than indi­vidual rights – as nation-­building pro­cesses have shown his­tor­ically (Chirot 2009: 101).

64   B. Jahn This intimate link between the eco­nomic and polit­ical dimensions of lib­ eralism is at least empirically – if not the­or­etically, as I have argued above – recog­nized by the eco­nomic nar­rat­ive and reflected in debates about shock-­therapy or the ad­vant­ages of author­it­arian regimes in pushing through rad­ ical eco­nomic reforms (Zakaria 1997; Geddes 1994). Such reforms involve ‘significant social costs’ (i.e., the expropriation of com­munal prop­erty) and thus raise the question how best to manage the polit­ical con­sequences of these costs (Przeworski 1992: 56). And yet, the eco­nomic nar­rat­ive fails to recog­nize the centrality of the inter­ na­tional for the emergence and demo­crat­ization of lib­eralism. All his­tor­ical attempts at modernization, it holds, ‘conceived of de­velopment as a pro­ject linked to national eco­nomic and polit­ical inde­pend­ence’ (Przeworski 1992: 55). Hence, Amer­ican and Euro­pean eco­nomic and polit­ical de­velopment are seen as separate and radic­ally different cases of lib­eralization and demo­crat­ization. While Amer­ica was blessed with abundant land, a small popu­la­tion, and the absence of a traditional propertied class, Europe was characterized by the oppos­ ite: a limited supply of land, a large popu­la­tion, and a traditional propertied class. The fact that, in spite of these dif­fer­ences, both successfully estab­lished lib­eral demo­cra­cies underpins the claim that such de­velopment is, in prin­ciple, pos­sible anywhere (Plattner 2008: 68; Huntington 1991: 33). And even al­tern­ ative in­ter­pretations of these cases, giving rise to al­tern­ative models – such as social rather than lib­eral demo­cracy – treat eco­nomic and polit­ical de­velopment as an entirely en­do­genous pro­cess (see Berman’s chapter). Demo­cracy pro­mo­ tion pol­icies based on this nar­rat­ive therefore aim to trigger eco­nomic de­velopment by fol­low­ing the Euro­pean and Amer­ican example, that is, by propagating privatization and marketization (more or less rapidly and with varying degrees of social redis­tribu­tion). Yet, such pol­icies show extremely uneven results – ranging from highly successful to apparently hopeless cases (Przeworski et al. 2000: 277). This disjuncture between theory and practice has lately been explained with ref­er­ence to the unprecedented ‘inter­na­tional­ization’ of modernization pro­cesses in the con­text of globalization (Przeworski 1992: 55; Acemoglu and Robinson 2006: 347–8). The Lockean theory and subsequent his­tory show, how­ever, that even in the West eco­nomic and polit­ical de­velopment never was a largely en­do­genous, national, or do­mestic phenomenon. Instead, inter­na­tional pol­icies of co­lo­nialism played a constitutive role and intimately linked the emergence and demo­crat­ ization of lib­eralism in Europe and Amer­ica. And such pol­icies, in turn, depended on unequal power relations within the inter­na­tional system which enabled Euro­peans to deny indi­gen­ous com­munit­ies rights to sover­eignty, to suppress their resistance, and to export a large part of the negat­ive con­sequences of privatization to these weaker com­munit­ies. Attention to this early and constitutive role of inter­na­tional pol­itics explains why eco­nomic de­velopment in ‘late, late de­veloping coun­tries (mainly in Africa)’ is so much more difficult (Huntington 1991: 33). Unlike Europe at the beginning of its de­velopment, con­tempor­ary poor states are also weak states

Liberalism and democracy promotion   65 within the inter­na­tional order. They do not enjoy the oppor­tun­ity of privatizing other com­munit­ies’ prop­erty or of exporting the negat­ive con­sequences of do­mestic privatization pol­icies into the inter­na­tional sphere. On the contrary, they operate within an inter­na­tional eco­nomic and polit­ical system that has been set up in the inter­ests of the rich and power­ful lib­eral demo­cratic states. And these inter­ests, precisely because the latter have become demo­cratic, con­tinue to lie in growth neces­sary to provide eco­nomic bene­fits to their own popu­la­tions. Hence, these states have a strong incentive to keep the terms of the inter­na­tional eco­nomic and polit­ical order in their favor. The inter­na­tional order thus provides the framework demarcating the possib­il­ities and limits of polit­ical and eco­nomic de­velopment for indi­vidual states, and thus the possib­il­ities and limits of demo­cracy. This inter­na­tional con­text is equally im­port­ant for, albeit neg­lected in, the polit­ical nar­rat­ive. Lib­eralism and demo­cracy are gen­erally, and correctly, understood to be attributes of a do­mestic or national socio-­political system. Yet, in light of the his­tor­ical account guided by Locke’s theory, the pro­cess of lib­ eralization and demo­crat­ization was not a do­mestic or en­do­genous one. It depended on the eco­nomic oppor­tun­ities avail­able in the inter­na­tional sphere whose ex­ploita­tion, in turn, was made pos­sible by unequal power relations. In other words, the extension of polit­ical rights in the do­mestic sphere ultimately required the denial of polit­ical rights to weaker com­munit­ies in the inter­na­tional sphere. More gen­erally, the Lockean theory explains why demo­cracy pro­mo­tion pol­ icies modeled on previously successful cases fail to produce sim­ilar results. The constitutive nature of the relationship between private prop­erty and indi­vidual freedom, as well as between do­mestic and inter­na­tional pol­itics, leads to a dynamic pro­cess in which de­velopments in one of these areas lead to fundamental changes in the others. That is, the wider distribution of prop­erty in so­ci­ety constitutes actors with new and different polit­ical and eco­nomic inter­ests and con­sequently also a do­mestic and inter­na­tional envir­on­ment shaped by different polit­ical and eco­nomic forces. The constraints and oppor­tun­ities provided by these new con­ditions should not be ignored by demo­cracy pro­mo­tion pol­icies designed to emu­late his­tor­ically successful cases.

Conclusion On the basis of this Lockean theory, the pro­spects for con­tempor­ary demo­cracy pro­mo­tion pol­icies depend on three core reforms. First, if private prop­erty is indeed constitutive of indi­vidual lib­erty and thus also of lib­eral pol­icies and polities, demo­cracy pro­mo­tion pol­icies must aim to support a wider distribution of prop­erty in so­ci­ety (where such con­ditions do not yet exist). Second, this aim to produce a wider distribution of prop­erty within so­ci­ety, the Lockean account shows, was crucially de­pend­ent on the ability to appropriate prop­erty within the inter­na­tional sphere and to export the negat­ive con­sequences of do­mestic privatization. Since such oppor­tun­ities do not exist for eco­nomic­ally

66   B. Jahn and polit­ically weak states in the con­tempor­ary inter­na­tional system, demo­cracy pro­mo­tion pol­icies, if they are to be successful, have to focus on creating equi­ val­ent oppor­tun­ities for capital accumulation as well as for the inter­na­tional­ ization of the negat­ive con­sequences of do­mestic privatization. In other words, successful demo­cracy pro­mo­tion pol­icies must replace their traditional focus on bi­lat­eral relations between sponsors and targets with attention to the ‘macro-­ multi­lateral’ pol­icies that ‘affect the systematic constraints’ provided by the inter­na­tional system (see Youngs’ chapter). For these wider pol­icies may, indeed, ‘work at cross purposes’ with the aim to promote lib­eral demo­cracy – as in the case of ‘US support for neo-­liberal eco­nomic reforms . . . that undercut the polit­ical reforms’ promoted by demo­cracy assistance (Bermeo 2009: 259). In other words, successful demo­cracy pro­mo­tion pol­icies require that at least as much attention is paid to the World Trade Organ­iza­tion as to assistance for elections or support for civil so­ci­ety (Rose 2000–1: 201). Third, the dynamic nature of the de­velopment of lib­eralism and its demo­crat­ ization his­tor­ically calls for reform of the methodo­logical approach in designing demo­cracy pro­mo­tion pol­icies. The conventional approach – comparative ana­lysis providing models for emu­la­tion – ignores the dynamic nature of the pro­cess of (lib­ eral) demo­crat­ization which funda­ment­ally reconstitutes the polit­ical con­text and its constraints and oppor­tun­ities. Successful demo­cracy pro­mo­tion pol­icies thus have to be based on an ana­lysis of the specific do­mestic and inter­na­tional oppor­tun­ities and constraints that par­ticu­lar target states face (Rose 2000–1: 189).

Notes 1 Locke de­veloped a philo­sophy of his­tory explaining such counterevid­ence. In a nutshell, he argued that while states had origin­ally been estab­lished on the basis of consent, over time rulers ex­ploited their position and justified author­it­arian gov­ern­ment with ref­er­ence to illib­eral custom and tradition that gradually shaped the polit­ical imagination of the people (Locke 1994: 329, 343). 2 This does not mean that the eman­cip­atory potential of Locke’s thought is strictly limited to prop­erty owners. Locke simply aims to exclude those deemed unable or unwilling to uphold this prin­ciple as founda­tional for so­ci­ety from polit­ical rights. Once based on this prin­ciple, so­ci­ety could curtail indi­vidual prop­erty rights for purposes of inter­na­tional com­peti­tion and defense and in order to allow every indi­vidual to fulfill its rights and obli­ga­tions to God – that is, to work for its upkeep (Arneil 1996: 159; Tully 1982: 63; Dunn 1969: 246; Laslett 1994: 105). Sim­ilarly, polit­ical rights could be extended to non-­property owners well socialized into the prin­ciples and practices of such a so­ci­ety. 3 Expropriation and polit­ical oppression were, of course, not Locke’s goals but side effects of his theory, or more appropriately, of the use that was made of his theory. For Locke (1994: 288) argued that the transformation of common into private prop­erty was justified only ‘where there is enough, and as good left in common for others’. This lim­ita­tion on the practice of transforming common into private prop­erty can be, and has been, used to jus­tify a lib­eral ‘wel­fare state’ with quite con­sider­able lim­ita­tions on private prop­erty (for example, Tully 1982). Locke’s work thus lends itself to the justification of radic­ally ‘neolib­eral’ as well as more ‘social demo­cratic’ pol­icies. Debates over which norm­ative in­ter­pretation of Locke is more appropriate, how­ever, fall outside the remit of this chapter, which uses Locke’s theory only for explan­at­ory purposes.

Liberalism and democracy promotion   67 4 This role of co­lo­nialism in the de­velopment of lib­eralism is com­pat­ible with accounts that see its roots in the plutocratic nature of English so­ci­ety which forced the rich to invest abroad for lack of a do­mestic market. It was, after all, precisely those plutocrats who demanded polit­ical rights in order to protect their prop­erty; yet, doing so they were confronted with the polit­ically volatile nature of an eco­nomic­ally deeply divided so­ci­ety and consciously propagated co­lo­nialism not only as a good investment but also as an eco­nomic oppor­tun­ity for the do­mestic poor. 5 McNally reports that in 1710 the first private enclosure act was presented in Par­lia­ ment, followed by 100 between 1720 and 1750, 139 between 1750 and 1760, 900 between 1760 and 1779, and 2000 between 1793 and 1815 (1988: 11). 6 Argu­ably, how­ever, this solution did not lead to tolerance but rather ‘elided the prob­ lem of tolerance, obviated the necessity to be tolerant, rather than make people tolerant’ (Seligman 2009: 125).

4 The past and future of social demo­cracy and the con­sequences for demo­cracy pro­mo­tion Sheri Berman

During the nine­teenth and first half of the twentieth century, Europe was the most turbulent region on earth, convulsed by war, eco­nomic crises and social and polit­ical conflict. Yet, during the second half of the twentieth century it was among the most stable, a study in demo­cracy, social harmony and prosperity. How can we understand this remark­able transformation? The answer, of course, lies in changes that occurred after 1945. Among the most im­port­ant of these changes was a dramatic shift in understandings of what it would take to ensure demo­cratic consolidation in Europe. Across the polit­ical spectrum people recog­nized that bringing stable, well functioning demo­cra­cies to Europe would require much more than merely elim­in­ating dic­tatorships and changing polit­ical institutions and pro­ced­ures; it would necessitate revising the relationship that existed among states, markets and so­ci­ety as well. After World War II, in other words, a new understanding of demo­cracy de­veloped in Western Europe, one that went beyond what we think of today as ‘elect­oral’ or even ‘lib­ eral’ demo­cracy (Schumpeter 1954; Diamond 2009, 1999; Collier and Levitsky 1997) to what is best understood as ‘social demo­cracy’ – a regime type which entails dramatic changes not merely in polit­ical ar­range­ments, but in social and eco­nomic ones as well. Although it seems odd to us today, it is im­port­ant to remember that before 1945 it was widely believed that demo­cracy could not in fact be re­con­ciled with capit­al­ism and social stability. Indeed, this was one point on which classical lib­ erals and traditional Marxists agreed. From J. S. Mill to Alexis de Tocqueville to Friedrich Hayek, lib­erals have lived in constant fear of the ‘egal­it­arian threats of mass so­ci­ety and demo­cratic . . . pol­itics, which, in their view, would lead, by necessity, to tyranny and “class legis­la­tion” by the prop­ertyless as well as unedu­ cated majority’ (Offe 1983: 225–66). Karl Marx, meanwhile, expressed skep­ti­ cism about whether the bourgeoisie would actu­ally allow demo­cracy to function (and workers to take power), but felt that if they did, demo­cracy might con­trib­ ute to bringing about an end to capit­al­ism – a potential, of course, that he, unlike his lib­eral counterparts, welcomed (Offe 1983: 225–6). And indeed such pess­im­ ism found ample support in Euro­pean his­tory. During the nineteenth through the mid twentieth centuries Europe had undergone several demo­cratic waves, all of which had been failures. Indeed, not only had the continent proved unable to

The past and future of social democracy   69 consolidate its myriad demo­cratic experiments, conflicts over regime type had directly con­trib­uted to large-­scale viol­ence, including the most brutal dic­ tatorships and deadliest wars the world had ever ex­peri­enced. Understanding how Europe overcame this past and finally managed during the post-­World War II era to change its polit­ical trajectory is a story with im­port­ant im­plica­tions for how we think about demo­cratic de­velopment and demo­cracy pro­mo­tion today.

The de­velopment of demo­cracy in Europe Europe’s first demo­cratic experiment came with the French revolu­tion.1 After the overthrow of what had hitherto seemed Europe’s most power­ful mon­archical dic­tatorship, various groups in French so­ci­ety proved unable to agree on pre­ cisely what type of regime should follow it. The first attempt to create a new polit­ical order out of the ashes of the old was in 1791, when a form of consti­tu­ tional mon­archy was proposed. This fairly moderate regime received little support, and conflict between more rad­ical and con­ser­vat­ive forces con­tinued until 1793, when the rad­icals emerged tri­umph­ant. The king, Louis XVI, was sent to the gallows and a repub­lic with uni­ver­sal suffrage declared. Despite the initial excitement greeting this unprecedented demo­cratic experiment, the new regime soon faltered. The Repub­lic believed it was circled by enemies both within and without and embarked on a cam­paign of in­ternal repression and external war. Between 1793 and 1794, France’s demo­cracy descended into a ‘Reign of Terror’, during which approximately 20,000–40,000 French cit­izens were ex­ecuted for ‘counter-­revolutionary ac­tiv­ities’ and the coun­try plunged into war against much of the rest of the continent. This turmoil was not what most French people had hoped for when the ancien régime collapsed and by 1799 the coun­try, exhausted from its battles, submitted to a coup by a strongman promis­ ing a return to order – Napoleon Bonaparte, the ori­ginal ‘man on horseback’. In the space of a decade France had gone from a hereditary dic­tatorship, to demo­ cracy, to war and do­mestic chaos, and then back to dic­tatorship, but of a new variety: milit­ary dic­tatorship. In the decades after the revolu­tion debates about its meaning and the implemen­ tation of its ideals – lib­erty, equality, fraternity – and about how to deal with the nationalist and demo­cratic forces unleashed by it divided Euro­pean pub­lics, ren­ dering France as well as the rest of the continent polit­ically divided and prone to polit­ical in­stab­il­ity. To these polit­ical divisions, eco­nomic and social ones were added, since during the early nine­teenth century the industrial revolu­tion had begun sweeping across Europe, increasing the size of the working and middle classes and generating new forms of eco­nomic dislocation (Sperber 2005; Stearns 1974). One result was a growing frustration on the part of these groups with polit­ ical regimes that were neither responding to their needs nor allowing them influ­ ence commensurate with their growing numbers and eco­nomic power. As Eric Hobsbawm (1996: 356) put it, by 1848 Euro­pean pol­itics was ‘out of balance’. Just as in 1789, it was events in France that got the ball rolling. When the gov­ern­ment attempted to pro­hibit a reform banquet that had been called for

70   S. Berman Febru­ary 1848 to discuss the polit­ical situ­ation, protests broke out. And when the gov­ern­ment responded to these protests with force, barricades began to appear in the streets; within short meas­ure another French polit­ical regime was headed for the dustbin of his­tory. These events sent shock waves across Europe: from north to south, east to west, Euro­peans took to the streets demanding an end to the dic­tatorships that ruled their lands. At first, these uprisings were remark­ably effect­ive. Dic­tatorships began to totter even in what had seemed some of the continent’s strongest regimes (e.g., Austria and Ger­many). But almost as soon as the old order began to crumble, fis­sures began to open up in the opposi­tion camp. In coun­try after coun­try it became clear that although there was massive discon­tent with existing dic­tatorships, there were also massive dis­ agree­ments about the nature of the polit­ical regimes that should replace them. In par­ticu­lar two divisions that had appeared first in 1789 returned to shape the outcome of the demo­cratic wave in 1848. The first was between what we might broadly call lib­erals and demo­crats – that is, between people who wanted to reform the old regime while also ensuring safeguards against unchecked mass parti­cipa­tion and those who insisted that nothing less than a transition to full demo­cracy would be accept­able. To some degree this was a class division, with middle-­class groups largely in the former camp and the emerging working class in the latter (Langer 1969; Jones 1991; Stearns 1974; Kranzberg 1959). The second division that shaped the fate of the 1848 wave, especially the further east one traveled, involved national and com­munal issues. Nationalism had appeared as a power­ful polit­ical force with the French revolu­tion and spread across Europe with Napoleon’s armies. Since then, eco­nomic de­velopment, along with the social discon­tent, polit­ical mobil­iza­tion and new forms of com­ munication that it brought in its wake, helped bring identity issues further to the forefront of many peoples’ consciousness. Thus, as the old order began to weaken in 1848, not only did frustration with unrepresentative and unresponsive regimes ex­plode, suppressed national, ethnic and linguistic conflicts also came to the fore. These conflicts, in turn, made it difficult to keep opposi­tion to the old order unified. This dynamic was par­ticu­larly clear in the lands of the Habsburg Empire where different national groups spent almost as much time fighting each other as the reigning polit­ical order. The Hun­gar­ians, for example, demanded auto­nomy from the Germans but refused to grant their own Croatian, Serbian and Romana­ nian minor­it­ies sim­ilar privileges, thereby alienating the latter from the former. The Czechs, meanwhile, also longed to be free of German domination and so refused to join with German reformers, despite their joint inter­est in polit­ical lib­ eralization. The result, as Jonathan Sperber (Sperber 2005: 138) notes, was that, although ‘the Austrian Empire was the very heart of nationalist con­tention in 1848–9 . . . rather than a crescendo of nationalist demands tearing the realm to pieces, the different national movements fought each other, and cancelled each other out’. We can also see how deadly the confluence of polit­ical and national divisions could be when we turn to perhaps the most consequential polit­ical experiment in

The past and future of social democracy   71 1848 – that of the Frankfurt par­lia­ment. Representatives from across central Europe’s German states met in Frankfurt’s Paulskirche to try to draft a consti­tu­ tion for a new lib­eral unified Ger­many. Once they began negotiating, how­ever, conflicts quickly emerged over which groups/peoples should actu­ally be included in the new Ger­many (with debate about the inclusion of Cath­olic Austria proving par­ticu­larly difficult) and over how far polit­ical reform should actu­ally go. With regard to the latter, this was once again to some degree a class conflict, with middle-­class lib­erals beginning to fear what they viewed as working-­class rad­ icalization. By 1851, little was left of the demo­cratic wave that had swept through Europe in 1848. Several features of the 1848 wave are striking. First: how rapid the emergence and how extensive the reach of the demo­cratic wave was. Second: how quickly and completely many long-­standing dic­tatorships collapsed in the face of the mass pressures that produced the wave. And third: how soon after­ wards divisions within Euro­pean soci­eties appeared – over national/com­munal issues and over regime type – and how difficult it was to maintain momentum once these dis­agree­ments appeared. As a result of such divisions, 1848 became – in the words of the great his­tor­ian G.M. Trevelyan – ‘the turning point at which modern his­tory failed to turn’ (Kranzberg 1959: xi). In 1848 as in 1789, although Europe did not ‘turn’ per­man­ently towards demo­cracy, the unfinished business of the time, polit­ically and nationally, did not disappear with the receding of the demo­cratic wave. Indeed, the issues and dy­namics that emerged in 1848 drove polit­ical de­velopment in Europe during the decades to come. In Italy and Ger­many, for example, the second half of the nine­teenth century was taken up with trying to complete the national pro­jects that had been started in 1848. After the liberal-­led attempt at German unification failed in 1848, the second, successful, attempt took place under the leadership of a con­ser­vat­ive author­it­arian – Otto von Bismarck. Polit­ically, the new German Reich formed in 1871 tried to square a polit­ical circle, mixing mon­archical and demo­cratic elements in an attempt to satisfy the forces of the ancien régime and the masses. This polit­ical mishmash proved increasingly difficult to sustain as the polit­ical as­pira­tions of the middle and working classes increasingly ran up against the intransigence of con­ser­vat­ives. By the beginning of the twentieth century, conflict over the polit­ical future of Ger­many was making it difficult for the national gov­ern­ment to function, breeding polit­ical frustration, and feeding the rise of nationalist and other extremist organ­iza­tions that peddled increasingly vociferous and violent criticisms of the reigning order (Berman 2001; Eley 2001). Indeed, by 1914 the polit­ical system was so deadlocked and polit­ical dissatis­fac­tion was so high that some scholars have asserted that German elites rushed the coun­try head-­long into war in a vain attempt to head off the polit­ical ex­plo­sion that seemed bound to come (Fisher 1975, 1967; Kehr 1983). In Italy, meanwhile, a not dissim­ilar trajectory was evid­ent as the polit­ical system of the newly unified coun­try excluded most cit­izens from meaningful parti­cipa­tion and became mired in an institutionalized system of corruption known as Trasformismo. Partly as a result, the state proved unable to deal

72   S. Berman satis­fact­orily with the new coun­try’s myriad prob­lems, especially growing class conflict and the immense divisions that existed between the poor and underde­ veloped South and the more advanced North. The con­sequence was that by the end of the nine­teenth century polit­ical frustration was on the rise in Italy, as was the draw of nationalist and other extremist movements that fed off dissatis­fac­ tion with the reigning polit­ical order (Salome 1991; Patrucco 1992). This gen­eral pattern – rising class conflict, growing nationalist mobil­iza­tion, and increasing polit­ical in­stab­il­ity – characterized most of Europe during the late nine­teenth and early twentieth centuries. Returning to France, for example, the coun­try underwent another transition to demo­cracy in 1871, but not before having to endure another revolu­tionary uprising (the Paris Commune) that cost perhaps 20,000 French cit­izens their lives. (Reflecting the frequency of polit­ical upheaval in France, a long-­standing joke had it that the National Library kept its copies of the consti­tu­tion in the ‘periodicals’ section [Bell 2010: 32]). The Third Repub­lic that emerged from this chaos was the only real demo­cracy that existed in Europe at the time. Although it achieved many im­port­ant successes, in today’s terms we would prob­ably not con­sider it fully consolidated since significant groups on both the left and right rejected the demo­cratic ‘rules of the game’ (Linz and Stepan 1996), with the nationalist right growing par­ticu­larly rejection­ ist, anti-­semitic and even violent over the course of time. The divisions that weakened the Third Repub­lic were, of course, nothing new, but they had become so deep that many wondered whether France would ever be able to achieve polit­ ical stability. The his­tor­ian Au­gustin Thierry, for example, mused ‘We think we are one nation, yet we are two nations in the same land; two nations, hostile in their recollections of the past, ir­re­con­cil­able in their pro­jects for the future’ (Theirry 1856: xiii; Bell 2010: 32). Thus, by the eve of World War I, Europe already had behind it several decades of rising polit­ical in­stab­il­ity, mobil­iza­tion and conflict. The end of the war unleashed yet another demo­cratic wave, bringing polit­ical change to places as diverse as Ger­many, Austria, Sweden and Poland. Many of these new demo­ cra­cies were, how­ever, burdened with a huge number of prob­lems gen­er­ated by the war, including eco­nomic devestation, high debt, inflation, and in those coun­ tries on the losing side (like Ger­many), a sense of national humiliation. In addi­ tion, the war and its aftermath worsened many prob­lems inherited from the prewar period. Class conflict, for example, increased during the interwar period as a result of eco­nomic dif­ficult­ies and the rise of com­mun­ism. Communist par­ ties not only fed off and ex­acer­bated existing class resentments and divisions, they also injected into Euro­pean polities power­ful anti-­democratic actors, able and willing to use terrorism and other forms of insurrectionary activity to achieve their goals. Another prob­lem inherited from the prewar period was nationalism. After 1918 a number of new coun­tries were created in central and eastern Europe out of the wreckage of the Habsburg empire. Many of these new coun­tries had deeply divided and very mixed popu­la­tions, with borders that did not cor­res­pond to their cit­izens’ sense of identity or his­tory. These new demo­cratic, multiethnic

The past and future of social democracy   73 states were beset by ethnic and social conflict almost from the moment of their birth; many ex­peri­enced significant amounts of viol­ence during the interwar years; none survived the interwar years and the Nazi onslaught. Nationalism was not, how­ever, a degenerative force only in Europe’s new states. The continent’s older nations had to deal with nationalist movements carried over from the prewar period that grew even more violent and pop­ular after the war; many of these groups provided the founda­tion upon which fas­cist and national socialist par­ties were built during the interwar years. These par­ties were much stronger and more dangerous than their predecessors, mobilizing large, cross-­class con­ stituencies around an anti-­democratic but mass mobilizing ideo­logy that mixed elements from both the left and right and directly targeted the growing number of Euro­peans who felt frustrated and alienated by the rapidly changing world around them (Berman 2007; Sternhell 1995a, 1995b). Thus, by the time of the Great Depression, many of Europe’s young demo­cra­ cies were already in ser­ious trouble, weakened by deep divisions in their soci­ eties and attacked by extremists on the left and right. The eco­nomic suffering and social chaos gen­er­ated by the Depression simply pushed many of these regimes over the edge. By 1940 the demo­cratic wave of 1918 was but a dim memory across much of the continent and Britain was standing alone against the Nazi dic­tatorship. Not only had demo­cracy once again failed in Europe, this time failure led to the rise of pos­sibly the most brutal regime and the most destructive war the world had ever known. If there was ever a time and place where demo­ cracy seemed to be a lost cause, Europe in 1940 was it.

Consolidating and reshaping demo­cracy in (Western) Europe It was only after the most destructive war his­tory that (Western) Europe was finally able to put an end to the long-­standing polit­ical and national struggles that it had suffered through since 1789.2 In retrospect, we can see that this was because many of the prob­lems that had helped foil demo­cratic consolidation in the past were solved during the postwar period. Some of this, ironically, was a con­sequence of the war itself. The old order, for example, was discredited by the collapses of the interwar years and the war that followed, and certain groups that had supported anti-­ democratic regimes and movements in the past were elim­in­ated by the chaos and destruction of the 1940s. As Mark Mazower (2000: 213) has noted, ‘Wartime losses tore gaping holes in the social and phys­ical fabric; they provoked bitter memories and angry emotions, but also new challenges and oppor­tun­ities’. This was par­ticu­larly true in Ger­many, where old social hierarchies were shattered by the Nazis (Dahrendorf 1969; Kogan 1968; Schoenbaum 1967) and the old con­ser­ vat­ive and Junker elites were disproportionately killed off in large numbers during the war (and then dispossessed by the Communist regime in the East after it). In addition to elim­in­ating many social obs­tacles to demo­cratic consolidation, the war also helped deal with another long-­standing impediment to consolidation

74   S. Berman in Europe: nationalism. One way it did this was through the ethnic cleansing that happened during the war – between them, Stalin and Hitler uprooted, trans­ planted, expelled, deported and dispersed some 30 million people in the years between 1939–43 (Wimmer 2002; Naimark 2001). And after the war, ethnic cleansing and popu­la­tion trans­fer con­tinued, rendering many of the coun­tries of central and Eastern Europe in par­ticu­lar more ethnically homogenous than they had ever been. To quote Mazower once again, ‘War, viol­ence and massive social dislocation had turned Versailles’s dream of national homo­gen­eity into real­it­ies’ (2000: 218). Also im­port­ant, of course, in promoting demo­cratic consolidation in Western Europe after 1945 was the changed inter­na­tional situ­ation and the role of the United States. A rel­at­ively long-­term occupation helped set the continent’s most prob­lematic coun­try – Ger­many – firmly on the path to demo­cracy. And with the Soviet Union and the de­veloping Cold War prodding it forward, the United States, the world’s strongest demo­cracy, made a firm com­mit­ment to ensuring that Western Europe would be both a polit­ical and eco­nomic success. How­ever crit­ical these factors were in promoting both demo­crat­ization and consolidation in Western Europe after 1945, without socioeco­nomic stability, the whole pro­ject would have come crashing down. As we have seen, class, social and com­munal conflicts had been an ongoing source of polit­ical in­stab­il­ity and viol­ence throughout modern Euro­pean his­tory. In addition, the ex­peri­ence of the Great Depression – where the collapse of capit­al­ism had led to social chaos, dis­ illusionment with demo­cracy and a widespread em­brace of extremism – led many to recog­nize that finding a way to ensure both eco­nomic prosperity and social peace was abso­lutely neces­sary if demo­cracy were to succeed in Europe after 1945. On top of all this, the con­dition the continent found itself in after the war heightened fears that socioeco­nomic in­stab­il­ity might quickly return and scuttle demo­cratic experiments. The war itself had been the most destructive in his­tory, flattening the conti­ nent’s urban and industrial areas and generating postwar inflation, migration and other prob­lems that left Europe’s eco­nom­ies incapacitated in 1945. As the 1947 Report of the Committee of Euro­pean Eco­nomic Coopera­tion declared, ‘The scale of destruction and disruption of Euro­pean eco­nomic life was far greater than that which Europe had ex­peri­enced in the First World War. . . . The dev­ast­ ated coun­tries had to start again almost from the beginning’ (Clough et al. 1968: 328). In addition, the commanding position of the Soviet Union after the war and the heroic role played by many communist resistance movements during it (combined with a sense that capit­al­ism had failed during the 1930s), led many at the time to fear that com­mun­ism rather than capitalist demo­cracy was the wave of the future. And indeed, communist par­ties in Western Europe did get off to an auspicious start after the war, receiving much higher shares of the vote almost everywhere than they had before the war and being included in a number of postwar gov­ern­ments as a result. Such con­ditions, in short, reinforced the belief that ensuring socioeco­nomic stability and drawing people away from the siren song of (communist) extremism would be abso­lutely neces­sary if the demo­cratic

The past and future of social democracy   75 wave of 1945 was not to meet the same fate as its predecessors. So ‘how did Western Europe achieve polit­ical and social stability after two great destructive wars and the intervening upheaval’ (Maier 1981)? Or to put it another way, ‘What made capit­al­ism and demo­cracy com­pat­ible after 1945 when they had proven incom­pat­ible before’ (Offe 1983)? To a large degree, the answer to these questions lies in the way in which the relationship between states, markets and so­ci­ety was restructured after World War II. After 1945, actors across the polit­ical spectrum came to recog­nize that if demo­cracy was finally going to work in Europe, not merely a change in polit­ical forms and institutions but also a restructuring of social and eco­nomic structures and relationships would be neces­sary. Such views had long been championed by many par­ties on the demo­cratic left; what changed after 1945 is that they were em­braced by other key groups as well. The 1947 program of the German Chris­tian Demo­crats, for example, declared that, ‘The new struc­ ture of the German eco­nomy must start from the realization that the period of uncurtailed rule by private capit­al­ism is over’ (Sassoon 1998: 140). In France, meanwhile, the Cath­olic Mouvement Repub­lican Populaire declared in its first ma­ni­festo in 1944 that it supported a ‘revolu­tion’ to create a state ‘liberated from the power of those who possess wealth’ (Sassoon 1998: 140). Even the Amer­icans, least affected by the war and most committed to the restoration of a global free-­trade order, recog­nized that their com­mit­ment to stability and demo­cracy in Europe meant that there was no going back to the socioeco­nomic status-­quo ante. Reflecting this, in his opening speech to the Bretton Woods conference, U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau noted, ‘All of us have seen the great eco­nomic tragedy of our time. We saw the worldwide depres­ sion of the 1930s. . . . We saw bewilderment and bitterness become the breeders of fascism and finally of war.’ To prevent a recurrence of this phenomenon, Morgenthau argued, national gov­ern­ments would have to be able to do more to protect people from capit­al­ism’s ‘malign effects’ (Ikenberry 1992; Kapstein 1996). After 1945, accordingly, West Euro­pean nations began constructing a new order, one that could ensure eco­nomic growth while at the same time protecting soci­eties from capit­al­ism’s destructive and destabilizing con­sequences (Arm­ strong et al. 1945; Marglin and Schor 1991). This order repres­ented a decisive break with the past: states would not be limited to ensuring that markets could grow and flourish, nor would eco­nomic inter­ests be given the widest pos­sible leeway. Instead, the state was to become the guardian of so­ci­ety rather than the eco­nomy, and eco­nomic imperatives would often have to take a back seat to social ones. This shift to a ‘social demo­cratic’ understanding of the relationship between states, markets, and soci­eties (Berman 2007) was based on a re­cog­ni­ tion that, for demo­cratic consolidation to finally succeed in Western Europe, the social conflict and divisions that had helped scuttle demo­cratic experiments in the past would have to be confronted head-­on. After 1945, therefore, demo­cratic gov­ern­ments in Western Europe expli­citly committed themselves to pursing pol­ icies designed to foster social solidarity and stability.

76   S. Berman The two most oft-­noted manifestations of this change were Keynesianism and the wel­fare state. Keynesianism’s significance lay in its rejection of the view that markets operated best when left to themselves and its re­cog­ni­tion that substantial state inter­ven­tion might be neces­sary in eco­nomic affairs. Keynes argued that state action was often neces­sary to help avoid eco­nomic crises that could threaten both demo­cracy and the capitalist system itself. Having ex­peri­enced the rise of the Soviet Union and the Great Depression, Keynes understood that unchecked markets could be socially and polit­ically dangerous. As his biogra­ pher Robert Skidelsky has noted, ‘Keynes was quite conscious in seeking an al­tern­ative to dic­tatorship . . . a programme on which to fight back against facism and com­mun­ism’ (Skidelsky 1989: 35–6). It is im­port­ant to stress that Keynes favored a more active role for the state not only for eco­nomic but also for polit­ ical reasons: he understood the power of com­mun­ism’s insistence that capit­al­ism could not be rescued from its flaws and that a large part of fascism’s appeal had stemmed from its critique of lib­eralism’s ineffect­iveness in the face of eco­nomic crisis, combined with its own anti-­socialist solutions to the Great Depression (Skidelsky 1989: 35–6). Keynes hoped that by designing a ‘system that held out the pro­spect that the state could re­con­cile the private ownership of the means of production with demo­cratic mangement of the eco­nomy’ (Przeworksi 1985: 207) he could convince people that there was a demo­cratic solution to capit­al­ism’s prob­lems. Like Keynesianism, the wel­fare state helped transform the relationship among states, markets and soci­eties during the postwar era in ways that helped promote demo­cratic consolidation. As C.A.R. Crosland (1967: 98) noted, after 1945, ‘it was increasingly regarded as a proper function and indeed obli­ga­tion of Gov­ern­ ment to ward off distress and strain not only among the poor but almost all classes of so­ci­ety’. West Euro­pean wel­fare states were significant not only because they protected indi­viduals from eco­nomic distress – they were also crit­ ical because they gave renewed im­port­ance to mem­ber­ship in a national com­ mun­ity, since they both required and fostered a sense of kinship and solidarity among cit­izens: wel­fare states could only be sustained if indi­viduals believed that ensuring a basic level of well-­being for all cit­izens was a worthy goal. Wel­ fare states thus mark a significant break with a lib­eral gesellschaft – the anomie, dislocation and atomization that proved so polit­ically destabilizing in Europe – and a move towards a more communitarian gemeinschaft where soci­eties were committed to taking care of their own. This move towards expanding wel­fare states after the war was thus not merely a reflection of a desire to rectify past mis­takes but also a deliberate attempt to undercut the support of extremist ideo­ lo­gies on the left and right that had played off anomie, dislocation and atomiza­ tion in the past in order to undermine support for demo­cracy. Of course, Keynesianism and wel­fare states were not the only ways in which postwar Euro­pean polit­ical eco­nom­ies changed. Each Euro­pean nation de­veloped its own set of pol­icies that used the power of the state to protect so­ci­ety from capit­al­ism’s most destructive effects and promote social solidarity and stability. In France, for example, the Fourth Repub­lic engaged in significant nationalization

The past and future of social democracy   77 and planning, which were designed, among other things to ensure not merely eco­nomic growth but also that ‘the main sources of common wealth [were] worked and managed not for the profit of a few indi­viduals, but for the bene­fit of all’ (De Gaulle, quoted in Shennan 1989: 251). In Italy, a large state sector was carried over from the fas­cist period and was viewed as part of a broader strategy for using the state to ensure eco­nomic growth as well as gen­eral social health and well-­being. The idea that demo­cratic gov­ern­ments were respons­ible for both steering the eco­nomy and protecting cit­izens was enshrined in Italy’s postwar consti­tu­tion, which which declared the coun­try a demo­cratic repub­lic ‘founded on labor’ and promised that all ‘eco­nomic and social obs­tacles’ to workers’ advancement would be demolished. Recognizing the primacy of certain societal goals and needs, the consti­tu­tion refrained from according private prop­erty the status of ‘abso­lute right . . . instead emphasiz[ing] its social obli­ga­tions and lim­ ita­tions’ (Di Scala 1998: 283; James 2003: 257). In Ger­many, the pic­ture was more complicated, since largely in reaction to the extreme statism of the Nazis and the more direct influence of the the U.S. there was a clearer com­mit­ment to eco­nomic lib­eralism than in most other parts of Europe. But even in postwar Ger­many, the state intervened in the eco­nomy in myriad ways and made a firm com­mit­ment to social protection and the pro­mo­tion of social peace and stability. Alongside an expansion of the wel­fare state, Ger­many de­veloped a number of innov­at­ive pol­icies, including codetermination, which gave workers the ability to oversee, and in some cases even help direct, business de­cisions and activity. In the decades after the war this system proved very successful in helping workers and management come to view themselves as ‘social partners’ rather than adversaries, thus breaking a pattern that had con­trib­uted to eco­nomic, social and polit­ical in­stab­il­ity in the past. Not surprisingly, such changes went furthest in Sweden, where the wel­fare state became more generous and more uni­versal­istic than in most other Euro­pean coun­tries and the state’s com­mit­ment to growth as well as social solidarity and protection even more expli­cit (see Patomäki’s chapter). What is also notable about the Swedish case is the expli­cit emphasis on the com­plement­ary rather than contra­dict­ory nature of these goals. As Gunnar Adler-­Karlsson, a well-­ known theorist of the postwar Swedish order, noted: All the par­ties of the eco­nomic pro­cess have realized that the most im­port­ ant eco­nomic task is to make the national cake grow bigger and bigger, because then every­one can satisfy his demanding stomach with a greater piece of that common cake. When instead, there is strong fighting between the classes in that so­ci­ety, we believe that the cake will often crumble or be destroyed in the fight, and because of this every­one loses. (Adler-­Karlsson, 1967: 18) Across Europe, in short, the postwar order repres­ented something his­tor­ically unusual: capit­al­ism remained, but it was capit­al­ism of a very different type from that which had existed before the war – one tempered and limited by the power

78   S. Berman of the demo­cratic state and often made subservient to the goals of social stability and solidarity, rather than the other way around. As we know, this social demo­ cratic order worked remark­ably well: despite fears after the war that it would perhaps take decades for Europe to recover eco­nomic­ally,3 by the early 1950s most of Europe had easily surpassed interwar eco­nomic figures and the thirty years after 1945 were Europe’s fastest period of growth ever. This eco­nomic growth, in turn, helped legitimize capit­al­ism and show that it was com­pat­ible with both demo­cracy and social stability. The restructured polit­ical eco­nom­ies of the postwar era seemed to offer something to every­one and this in turn helped to elim­in­ate the belief – long held by lib­erals, Marxists and others – that demo­ cratic states could not or would not protect par­ticu­lar groups’ inter­ests. As a result, both workers and employers (and the organ­iza­tions and par­ties that catered to them) underwent a remark­able derad­icalization after 1945 and became more willing to work together to achieve what came to be seen to many as common inter­ests. As Claus Offe noted, What was at issue in class conflicts [after 1945] was no longer the mode of production, but the volume of distribution, not control but growth, and this type of conflict was par­ticu­larly suited for being pro­cessed on the polit­ical plan through party com­peti­tion because it does not involve ‘either/or’ ques­ tions, but questions of a ‘more or less’ or ‘sooner or later’ nature. Overarch­ ing this limited type of conflict, there was a consensus concerning basic pri­or­ities, desirabilities and values of the polit­ical eco­nomy, namely eco­ nomic growth and social . . . security. (Offe 1983: 237) In short, by reshaping the relationship between states, markets and so­ci­ety the social demo­cratic postwar order helped underpin the consolidation of demo­cracy in Western Europe after 1945. It helped prove that lib­eral fears that demo­cracy ‘would lead by necessity to tyranny and expropriation by the poor and unedu­ cated’ (Offe 1983: 225–6), Marxist assertions that giving the poor and workers the vote would lead inexorably to the end of bourgeois so­ci­ety, and fascism’s and National Socialism’s claim that demo­cracy stood in direct contra­dic­tion to national cohesion and social solidarity, were false. The emergence of ‘social’ demo­cracy in postwar Western Europe showed that, under the right con­ditions, demo­cracy, capit­al­ism and social stability could, in fact, be combined.

Lessons learned Although we tend to take social stability and demo­cracy in Europe today for granted, his­tor­ically they are anomalous. Up through the second half of the twen­ tieth century Europe had not been able to sustain stable, well-­functioning demo­ cra­cies despite a century and a half of attempts. The silver lining to Europe’s final collapse into barbarism during the interwar years is that leaders and pub­lics emerged from the ex­peri­ence with a greater appreciation of the virtues of

The past and future of social democracy   79 demo­cracy and an understanding that social peace and stability were neces­sary if it was to work. After World War II a fairly broad consensus therefore reigned in Europe that the continent needed to not merely rebuild demo­cratic institutions and pro­ced­ures, but also revamp the relationship that existed among states, markets and so­ci­ety. Eco­nomic and social reform was thus recog­nized as im­port­ ant as polit­ical reform in promoting demo­cratic consolidation since it addresed the social and polit­ical divisions that had scuttled so many demo­cratic experi­ ments in the past. In the years after 1945, in other words, a new understanding of demo­cracy de­veloped in Western Europe, one that went beyond what we think of today as ‘elect­oral’ or even ‘lib­eral’ demo­cracy (Schumpeter 1954; Diamond 1999, 2009; Collier and Levitsky 1997) to what is best understood as ‘social’ demo­ cracy. Scholars have long recog­nized that this new order repres­ented both a decisive break with the past, most often focusing on its (perhaps surprising) repu­di­ation of the rad­ical left’s hopes for an end to capit­al­ism (Maier 1981; Offe 1983). What they have often failed to appreciate, how­ever, is just how much of a repu­di­ation it was of traditional lib­eralism as well. Core features of the new system, especially its re­cog­ni­tion that states would need to do a better job of controlling and reshaping social and eco­nomic de­velopment in order to ensure social peace and polit­ical stability, went against key tenets of classical lib­eralism’s theory and its long-­standing practice. The most common term used to de­scribe the postwar system, Ruggie’s (1982) concept of ‘embedded lib­ eralism’, is thus a misnomer. If lib­eralism can be stretched to en­com­pass an order that saw unchecked markets as dangerous, that had pub­lic inter­ests trump private prerogatives, and that granted states the right to intervene in the eco­ nomy to protect the common inter­est, then the term is so elastic as to be nearly useless. In fact, rather than a modified and updated form of lib­eralism, what spread like wildfire after the war was really something quite different: ‘social’ demo­cracy (Berman 2007). As we know, this new ‘social demo­cracy’ worked remark­ably well: for the first time in modern his­tory, Europe managed to combine rapid eco­nomic growth, social stability and demo­cracy. Euro­peans, for the most part, with a well-­developed sense of their own his­tory, recog­nize what an unprecedented achievement the postwar order was and how difficult, more gen­erally, overcom­ ing his­tor­ical divisions and creating social peace actu­ally is. Amer­icans, on the other hand, despite exhibiting some re­cog­ni­tion of these prob­lems imme­diately after World War II, seem to have forgotten those lessons. Indeed, by the time the next demo­cratic wave erupted at the end of the twentieth century, a widespread as­sump­tion reigned in the U.S. that demo­cracy, capit­al­ism and social stability went nat­urally together. Such beliefs seem to be based on an overly simplistic reading of the U.S.’s distinctive past (where class and ethnic conflicts – with the glaring exception of slavery – are not seen as having ser­iously threatened demo­ cracy) and a failure to remember some key lessons from the interwar and postwar periods; they have, as we have seen, little to do with either Euro­pean his­tory or the ex­peri­ence of much of the rest of the world.

80   S. Berman Beyond making us re­think what it took to finally ensure demo­cratic consoli­ dation in Europe, a recon­sidera­tion of Europe’s polit­ical de­velopment should be of inter­est to students of demo­crat­ization and consolidation more gen­erally as the continent’s ex­peri­ence also has broad conceptual, the­or­etical and prac­tical im­plica­tions. Conceptually, the Euro­pean ex­peri­ence makes clear the im­port­ance of adding ‘social demo­cracy’ to our list of demo­cracy’s varied forms. For the most part, the existing liter­at­ure focuses on the contrast between elect­oral and lib­eral demo­cracy (see Youngs’ chapter for the prob­lems with this). The former defines demo­cracy by its key pro­ced­ure – elections. The classic modern state­ ment of this view belongs to Joseph Schumpeter, who argued that the ‘demo­ cratic method is that institutional ar­range­ment for arriving at polit­ical de­cisions in which indi­viduals acquire the power to decide by means of a com­petit­ive struggle for the people’s vote’ (Schumpeter 1943). The ad­vant­ages of this concept are that it is narrowly focused on concrete polit­ical pro­ced­ures and refreshingly simple, thereby facilitating comparisions and the charting of polit­ ical pro­gress across time and space. For ad­voc­ates of the elect­oral view, what differentiates polit­ical systems is the way leaders are chosen: ‘free and fair’ elec­ tions (and those civil and polit­ical freedoms that make such elections pos­sible) are the essence of demo­cracy. Not surprisingly, many scholars find this definition too restrictive and argue that, by equating free and fair elections with demo­cracy, ad­voc­ates of the elect­ oral view ignore the pos­sib­il­ity that elections can bring to power undemo­cratic leaders (e.g., Napoleon, Hitler) or put in place gov­ern­ments that support extremely illib­eral if not undemo­cratic pol­icies (e.g., com­munal discrimination, anti-­labor laws). In addition, critics argue that elect­oral definitions of demo­cracy are too ‘thin’ because they ignore the neces­sary connection between lib­eralism and demo­cracy. Such critics therefore ad­voc­ate a ‘lib­eral’ definition of demo­ cracy and argue that in order to be con­sidered truly demo­cratic a polit­ical regime must not only have free and fair elections but also be able and willing to protect the broad range of polit­ical and civil liberties and rights that we associate with lib­eralism (Zakaria 2007). Even a brief recon­sidera­tion of Euro­pean polit­ical de­velopment makes clear the dif­fer­ence between these two forms of demo­cracy: although there were a significant number of experiments with elect­oral demo­cracy from 1789 on, very few of these experiments pro­gressed to the point where they could be con­sidered ‘lib­eral’ demo­cra­cies as well. Prob­ably partially because of this, these elect­oral demo­cra­cies proved very weak, often giving way fairly quickly to dic­tatorships. But a recon­sidera­tion of Euro­pean his­tory makes clear that elect­oral and lib­eral demo­cracy do not exhaust the list of pos­sible demo­cratic forms. As we have seen, what de­veloped in Europe after 1945 went ‘beyond’ both elect­oral and lib­ eral demo­cracy: not only did it include free and fair elections and expli­cit pro­ tections of indi­vidual rights and liberties, it was also committed to ensuring certain social and eco­nomic rights and outcomes as well. This new ‘form’ of demo­cracy was based on an expli­cit re­cog­ni­tion that the state must take respons­ ib­ility for heading off social divisions and conflict and actively work to promote

The past and future of social democracy   81 the sense of com­mun­ity and legitimacy that are the neces­sary prere­quis­ites for well-­functioning demo­cracy. It was only this ‘social’ form of demo­cracy that was finally able to ensure demo­cratic consolidation in Europe. An ana­lysis of different concepts of demo­cracy segues nat­urally into a con­ sidera­tion of their the­or­etical im­plica­tions. There is, of course, a huge debate among both scholars and practicioners of what it takes to make demo­cracy ‘work’ – i.e., what it takes to move coun­tries from demo­crat­ization to consolida­ tion. Here too the Euro­pean ex­peri­ence with different forms of demo­cracy seems to offer some intriguing lessons. As we have seen, a key reason why demo­cracy was not able to consolidate in Europe before the second half of the twentieth century has to do with social divi­ sions and conflicts. This dynamic, of course, is not limited to Europe. Indeed, the need to deal with the polit­ical in­stab­il­ity gen­er­ated by the social divisions and conflict that accom­pany eco­nomic de­velopment is a prob­lem many scholars have long recog­nized. Samuel Huntington’s Polit­ical Order in Changing Soci­eties remains the classic ana­lysis of this dynamic, and more recent scholarship has also docu­mented a close connection between social divisions/in­equal­ity and polit­ical in­stab­il­ity/demo­cratic failure (Boix 2003; Przeworski 1991; Houle 2009; Kapstein and Converse 2008). We do not, of course, need to look very far to see concrete examples of this dynamic today. In Thailand, for example, polit­ical in­stab­il­ity has been caused by social ten­ sions gen­er­ated by eco­nomic de­velopment. As one ob­ser­ver notes, ‘instead of polit­ical calm, growth . . . has brought increased tension’. The coun­try is ‘beset by polit­ical in­equal­ity’ and as the gap between rich and poor has widened the ‘fortunes and expectations of [the latter] have risen, [and] so too has their frus­ tration’. As one supporter of the Red Shirt protests notes, ‘We now know what is going on. . . . We know what we want and don’t want.’ And what they don’t want is a ‘gov­ern­ment that only looks after the rich, instead of ordinary people’. Another Red Shirt supporter de­scribed Thailand as a ‘nation divided between hard-­working but impoverished serfs and an oppressive greedy aristocracy’. In this person’s view, the cause of conflict in Thailand lies in ‘gov­ern­ment bur­eau­ cracy out of touch with an increasingly well-­informed and better-­off popu­la­tion that now demands much more than before’ (Higgins 2010). We can see a sim­ilar dynamic in what is clearly the most im­port­ant and inter­ esting case of polit­ical de­velopment today – China. The coun­try has recently been beset by increasing labor protests and other expressions of social discon­ tent. For example, in response to a recent horrific attack on school chil­dren, the Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao, stated, ‘We need to pay attention to the root causes of these prob­lems. . . . That includes dealing with social conflicts and dispute res­olu­tion at the grassroots level’. It is precisely fear of increased social divisions and conflict that the Chinese regime uses to jus­tify its con­tinued rule. Given China’s his­tory and the rise in social in­stab­il­ity that recent eco­nomic growth has brought, it is perhaps not surprising that the emphasis on the need to maintain a ‘har­moni­ous so­ci­ety’ above all else resonates with many cit­izens. As one ob­ser­ver notes: ‘China’s so­ci­ety is entering a high-­risk phase. The unfair

82   S. Berman distribution of wealth, official corruption, the failure to safeguard people’s basic needs, the inability to solve all these prob­lems has created an inhar­moni­ous envir­on­ment’ (Hille 2010). Although every coun­try and each era is different, one lesson modern Euro­ pean his­tory makes clear is that polit­ical stability in gen­eral and demo­cracy in par­ticu­lar requires dealing forthrightly with the social divisions and con­ flict gen­er­ated by eco­nomic de­velopment. All scholars recog­nize that guaran­ teeing free and fair elections is a neces­sary com­pon­ent of demo­cracy; increasing numbers have come to accept that a state willing and able to ensure civil liberties and human rights is fundamental to demo­cracy too. What the Euro­pean ex­peri­ence seems to suggest is that, especially in coun­ tries prone to deep social divisions and conflicts, a state willing and able to deal with the destabilizing con­sequences of eco­nomic de­velopment in par­ ticu­lar and modernity in gen­eral may be a prere­quis­ite for a consolidated, well-­functioning demo­cracy as well. Social demo­cracy, this chapter has argued, was an attempt to do just this – to come up with a form of demo­cracy expli­citly focused on dealing with the social and eco­nomic dy­namics that had scuttled demo­cratic experiments in the past. It was, of course, only with social demo­cracy that consolidation finally occurred in Europe and there is every reason to believe that this is likely to be true in many other parts of the world as well, since Europe’s polit­ical ex­peri­ence is prob­ably much more common than that of the U.S., where (with the glaring exceptions of slavery and the civil war) social tensions and divisions have not presented a major threat to demo­cracy. A re­cog­ni­tion of the relev­ance of social demo­cracy to debates about con­ solidation has some nat­ural prac­tical or pol­icy im­plica­tions. As Hobson and Kurki note, the manner in which demo­cracy is understood by different actors – such as demo­cracy pro­mo­tion agencies, target popu­la­tions, and scholars – shapes their judgment on the pos­sib­il­ity of ‘exporting’ demo­cracy, the demo­ cracy pro­mo­tion pol­icies and instruments they prefer, and the manner in which they wish to see pol­icies implemented. Analysts need, in other words, to recog­nise the polit­ical con­sequences of the way demo­cracy is conceived in demo­cracy pro­mo­tion (see Introduction). What the Euro­pean ex­peri­ence seems to show is that a focus on social demo­cracy might make demo­crat­ ization not only more likely to succeed but also more attractive to popu­la­tions across the globe. The Bush gov­ern­ment’s fiasco in Iraq had the one pos­it­ive effect of showing that a shift in polit­ical pro­ced­ures and institutions is merely the beginning rather than the end of a transition to demo­cracy. What Iraq’s collapse into chaos after the removal of Sadaam Hussein made painfully clear was the im­port­ance of dealing forthrightly with the broader polit­ical, social and eco­nomic prob­lems that can scuttle fledgling demo­cratic experiments. Although Iraq might be an extreme example, it is gen­erally the case that many coun­tries that made transitions to demo­cracy during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centu­ ries were beset by deep social and com­munal divisions (as well as dysfunctional

The past and future of social democracy   83 eco­nom­ies). As we have seen, in Europe’s case such divisions scuttled demo­ cratic experiments for over a century and a half. It was only when Euro­pean gov­ern­ments proved both willing and able to deal with them, that demo­cratic consolidation was finally able to occur. The Euro­pean ex­peri­ence makes clear that building social demo­cracy is no easy task. It took the Euro­peans until the second half of the twentieth century until they were willing and able to forthrightly address the social and eco­nomic prob­lems that had led their continent to ruin in the past. Although social demo­ cracy as a polit­ical movement is on the defensive in Europe, this does not mean the demo­cratic model most closely associated with it – ‘social’ demo­cracy – is in decline. Euro­peans have themselves shown time and time again that they are uncomfortable with prescriptions of lib­eralism, fearful of what it would do to their soci­eties and demo­cracy. Indeed, so embedded is social demo­cracy in Europe that even par­ties of the center (and even rad­ical) right do not, for the most part, questions the need for social protection and stability. Instead, what they differ on is the extent and nature of and best way to ensure these things. In addition, it would be wrong to see social demo­cracy as a purely Euro­pean phe­ nomenon. Social demo­cracy does exist in the ‘global periphery’ (Sandbrook et al. 2007) and it is no coincidence that some of the best functioning demo­cra­cies in the de­veloping world (e.g., Costa Rica, Mauritius, Brazil) are those that scholars most often recog­nize as the closest approximations to ‘Euro­pean’ social demo­cratic models. In short, demo­cracy promoters have lessons to learn from Europe’s ex­peri­ ence: when thinking about what it will take to make demo­cracy work in many de­veloping coun­tries, it is as im­port­ant to pay attention to social and eco­nomic as it is polit­ical reform and the institutionalization of lib­eralism. Such con­sidera­ tions are not merely a luxury for the rich. A concern for social protection, equal­ ity and com­mun­ity should be built into con­sidera­tions of polit­ical and eco­nomic de­velopment in order to ensure the stability that is a basic pre­quis­ite of both. While it is surely the case that promoting social demo­cracy is more complicated and more difficult than fostering elect­oral or even lib­eral demo­cracy, it is also more likely to ultimately succeed. In addition to its potential to con­trib­ute to demo­cratic consolidation, social demo­cracy also has the ad­vant­age of providing a more attractive rallying cry than elect­oral or lib­eral demo­cracy in many parts of the de­veloping world. Too many people have ex­peri­enced meaningless elections or elections that have eventuated in corrupt and even despotic rulers to wish to invest in them alone. In addition, lib­eralism has unfortunately become associated with ‘Westernization’ or an as­sault on indi­gen­ous traditions in many parts of the non-­Western world and reforms associated with a move towards lib­eral demo­cracy are therefore greeted with sus­pi­cion by many. Social demo­cracy, on the other hand, by expli­citly addressing social justice, in­equal­ity, and need and desirability of social solidarity may appeal to people in many parts of the world where such things are desperately desired. By showing that demo­cracy is not just com­pat­ible with, but actu­ally de­pend­ent on, the solving of social and eco­nomic prob­lems, social

84   S. Berman demo­cracy holds out the promise of not merely making demo­cracy work better but also making people across the globe understand that it is, in fact, the best polit­ical game in town.

Notes 1 This may not be entirely true if one con­siders the Commonwealth produced by the English civil war, Europe’s first major attempt at demo­cracy; nonetheless, the outcome of this demo­cratic experiment was more or less the same as that of the French first repub­lic. 2 This was not of course true of Eastern Europe, which had to suffer through another four-­plus decades of co­lo­nial rule before achieving its own (hopefully stable) demo­ cratic outcomes. 3 German residents polled in the Amer­ican zone after World War II expected that it would take at least twenty years for the coun­try to recover. De Gaulle had sim­ilarly informed French cit­izens that it would take twenty-­five years of ‘furious work’ before France would be back on its feet again (Judt 2005: 89).

5 Demo­cracy pro­mo­tion Neolib­eral vs social demo­cratic telos Heikki Patomäki

Introduction What is the aim of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion? Is there a goal, end or telos of his­tory that can be understood in terms of demo­cracy? I defend a weak version of tele­ olo­gical reasoning: human his­tory has been directed towards the ethico-­political goal of realising demo­cratic self-­determination. How­ever, ethico-­political pro­ gress is contingent. Col­lect­ive learning occurs via polit­ical debates and struggles under circumstances in which asymmetric relations of structural power tend to favour a par­ticu­lar outcome. More­over, his­tory is open-­ended; even if a set end point has been achieved, the future must remain open, so there is nothing final about any telos. From this kind of post-­Nietzschean tele­olo­gical position it is easy to ac­know­ledge that demo­cracy is also about contestation over the meaning and substance of demo­cratic self-­governance. It follows that the goal of demo­crat­ization is constituted by different models of demo­cracy, prim­arily neolib­eral and social-­democratic. In the neolib­eral model, private prop­erty rights are pri­mary. Only free markets can provide eco­ nomic freedom, the key ingredient of demo­cracy; thus commodification emerges as a key goal. For a social-­democratic model, the wel­fare state provides an insti­ tutional form for further demo­crat­ization and, eventually, realization of demo­ cratic socialism. I argue that the social-­democratic model is more in line with col­lect­ive human learning and thus more advanced and pro­gressive than the neolib­eral model, but not confinable to a national state. A parallel argument is that also reflexively consistent transnational demo­cracy pro­mo­tion implies global demo­cracy. There­ fore, my conclusion is that at this world-­historical conjuncture, a plaus­ible telos of demo­crat­ization is critical-­reflexive global social democracy, promoted demo­ cratically.

Con­sidering the teleology of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion When it is stated that ‘for the vast majority of the world, demo­cracy is either the practice or the stated goal’ (McFaul 2004–5: 149), it is as­sumed that some nation-­states have already reached the gen­eral goal of his­tory, while others are

86   H. Patomäki getting there. Demo­cracy pro­mo­tion is about facilitating the pro­cess of getting there. It is usually not speci­fied whether demo­cracy in this sense is supposed to be the ultimate goal of his­tory or its deep intrinsic purpose, but the underlying as­sump­tion appears clearly tele­olo­gical. The question is: is there really an end point to world his­tory? A strong version of teleology claims that there is an inherent, uni­ver­sal purpose or final cause for human his­tory as a whole and that we can see this purpose, or final cause, already. In philo­sophy and social theory, the strong version of teleology has faced so much criticism (e.g., Adorno and Horkheimer 1979; Popper 1960; Foucault 1984, 2001; Lyotard 1984) that many scholars were taken by total surprise by the pop­ularity of Francis Fukuyama’s (1989, 1992) neo-­Hegelian argument, according to which world his­tory has now come to an end in eco­nomic and polit­ical lib­eralism. In order to make the argument that lib­eral demo­cracy is indeed the ultimate goal, Fukuyama had to fuse norm­ ative arguments about the best prin­ciples for organ­izing so­ci­ety with a linear account of actual world his­tory. In this chapter, I am not arguing against tele­olo­gical reasoning per se, although I think the strong version of geo-­historical teleology is wrong. It is wrong to the degree in which human his­tory is not pre-­determined and things can be other­wise in the future. All social events, actions and pro­cesses take place within open systems, in which a diversity of actions, mech­an­isms, fields and forces interact. Neither intrinsic nor extrinsic con­ditions of events, actions and pro­cesses remain constant. Social-­historical systems change qualit­at­ively, including through human learning, and new norm­ative viewpoints and valid reasons can emerge. At mul­tiple levels, the future is open-­ended. Yet, not every­thing is contingent. There is a case for what I call critical-­reflexive tele­ ology, which provides a vantage-­point for understanding and jus­tifying the pro­cess of demo­crat­ization. There are good – and empirically confirmed – reasons to think that certain kinds of structures emerge in a logical order that constitute what can be called ‘stages’ (seen as iconic models of generic structures, idealized and ab­stracted from complex and in some ways also vague and ambiguous reality). Stages are inner generative of cognitive pro­cessing embodied in the habitus of indi­viduals. Each stage is able to answer questions or prob­lems unsolved at the previous stage. A partial ana­logy can be made between indi­vidual and col­lect­ive learning, although there are also decisive ontological and norm­ative dif­fer­ences between the two. As far as the valid part of the ana­logy is concerned, in both cases the sequence of cognitive stages is conceptual-­logical rather than just empirically correct. This explains why an indi­vidual can reach higher stages in a sufficiently en­ab­ling con­text spon­tan­eously and why the order of learning must be roughly the same in both cases. The generative structures of reasoning can come to be embedded in social practices and institutions, although this is always contingent on many things, including polit­ical struggles. Col­lect­ive learning concerns both (i) nat­ural laws, mech­an­isms and pro­cesses and (ii) social relations and human his­tory.1

Neoliberal vs social democratic telos   87 Col­lect­ive human learning explains the quest for demo­crat­ization. Rules are not anymore taken as something external to indi­vidual actors and thus sacred or conventional in the author­itat­ive sense, but rather come to be felt as the free product of mutual agreement and an auto­nom­ous conscience. In other words, actors come to understand that col­lect­ive rules are the product of their auto­nomy and free, mutual agreement (Piaget 1977: 24–5; Kohlberg 1971: 164–5). Given this learning pro­cess, human his­tory can be argued to be directed towards the ethico-­political goal of realizing demo­cratic self-­determination, even if only in terms of logically ordered potentials. Thus understood, demo­cracy is not the only purpose or the ultimate end point of his­tory, but it provides a norm­atively compelling long-­term dir­ec­tion to world his­tory. Col­lect­ive learning occurs via polit­ical debates and struggles that can take the form of: consensus or compromise agreements; dialogues and debates; majority-­decisions; manipulation of the background con­text; outright force; or a combination of these. Typically asymmetric relations of structural power sys­ tematically favor a par­ticu­lar outcome. More­over, his­tory is open-­ended: even if an end point should have been achieved, the future must remain open. In this critical-­reflexive sense, there is nothing final about any par­ticu­lar his­tor­ical telos such as demo­cracy. Within this framework (see also Patomäki forthcoming), I argue that when col­lect­ive rules are understood as the free product of mutual agreement and an auto­nom­ous conscience, the precise telos of demo­crat­ization must also be the free product of mutual agreement. Demo­cracy is thus also about contestation and co-­operative argumentation over the meaning and substance of demo­cratic self-­ governance. It follows that the precise telos of demo­crat­ization can be consti­ tuted in different ways, in terms of different models of demo­cracy, whether actual or just potential. More­over, consistent demo­cracy pro­mo­tion must itself comply with the prin­ciple of free, mutual agreement. From this point of view, I focus on, and compare crit­ically, two existing models of demo­cracy, namely the neolib­eral and social-­democratic models.2 I argue that when applied to the practices of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion, the generic lessons of col­lect­ive learning can yield conclusions that go against the conven­ tional wisdom of the Western powers-­that-be. Instead of his­tory ending in neolib­eralized nation-­states, it points towards global social demo­cracy, which itself is also unlikely to be more than a temporary end point.

The neolib­eral model Stand­ard lib­eral modernization theory has taken Britain and the US as the end point of linear pro­gress in his­tory (Rostow 1960). The most im­port­ant prac­tical prob­lem of de­velopment, polit­ical and milit­ary ‘aid’ has been to get others there too. Since the 1980s, this starting point has often been replicated in accounts of demo­crat­ization and demo­cracy pro­mo­tion. A cau­tious ad­voc­ate of the neolib­ eral model may of course qual­ify the basic idea in various ways:

88   H. Patomäki U.S. practice of demo­cracy is itself flawed, tainted by antiquated practices such as the use of the elect­oral college, ser­ious charges of disenfranch­ isement during the 2000 pres­id­en­tial election, and seemingly illib­eral pol­ icies including the con­tinued use of the death pen­alty. For many around the world, several demo­cra­cies have become strong al­tern­ative and more attrac­ tive models to the U.S. practice of demo­cracy. (McFaul 2004–05: 152) Also in this case, how­ever, the ‘more attractive model’ is provided by an already-­existing ‘demo­cracy’, usually a North-­Western Euro­pean one. Euro­pean states too have been neolib­eralized and are struggling with the im­plica­tions of Euro­peanization for demo­cracy. These kinds of qualifications thus amount to rel­ at­ively small dif­fer­ences within the same basic model. Sim­ilarly, Richard Youngs (2005) aims at illu­min­ating the diversities and complexities of promot­ ing Western-­style demo­cracy. Youngs’ account of the variety of opinions and positions among his inter­viewees is indeed useful to many students of demo­crat­ ization. Yet, Youngs’ image of demo­cracy essentially replicates the estab­lished demo­cra­cies. It takes for granted a narrow conception of demo­cracy that is limited mostly to regu­lar multiparty elections and confined within the borders of nation-­states (Patomäki 2006; Eds: for Youngs’ view on debates on demo­cracy see his chapter in this volume). What is neo­liberalism? The term neo­liberalism first appeared in Ger­many in the interwar era 1919–1933, when a number of intellectuals and politicians wanted to qual­ify classical eco­nomic lib­eralism in order to make it more viable. In the 1960s, some pro-­market Latin Amer­ican intellectuals found these writings and started to talk about neo­liberalismo, in admiration of the post-­war ‘German eco­nomic miracle’. The early neolib­erals coined the term social market eco­ nomy. For these people, neo­liberalism was a quali­fied form of eco­nomic lib­ eralism that should as­sume primacy after the failure and mar­ginalization of the classical eco­nomic lib­eralism after 1914 and especially from the early 1930s. (See Boas and Garse-­Morse 2009, especially 145–50). Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek were more con­ser­vat­ive, how­ever, and ad­voc­ated a return to what they con­sidered pure classical eco­nomic lib­eralism. ‘We neither can wish nor possess the power to go back to the reality of the nine­ teenth century, [how­ever], we have the oppor­tun­ity to realize its ideals . . .’ (Hayek 1944: 240; cf. Friedman 1955). It is in this sense that the term is now­ adays used. Neo­liberalism is a program of resolving the prob­lems of, and de­veloping, human so­ci­ety by means of com­petit­ive private markets. Com­petit­ ive markets are as­sumed to be efficient and just and maximize freedom of choice. Com­petit­ive markets can be private and actual, or they can be simulated within organ­iza­tions, whether private or pub­lic. Neo­liberalism is comprised of in some ways contra­dict­ory theories, all of which can be de­veloped in different dir­ ec­tions; and yet all posit com­petit­ive markets as superior in terms of efficiency, justice or freedom, or a combination of them. Neolib­eral theories also constitute a framework for identi­fying things and pro­cesses and seeing them as note­worthy

Neoliberal vs social democratic telos   89 prob­lems (e.g., inflation and state ‘com­petit­iveness’ as the most im­port­ant politico-­economic prob­lems). In neo­liberalism, as in classical eco­nomic lib­eralism, private prop­erty rights are fundamental and pri­mary. They define the essence of freedom and the rule of law. Any devi­ation from the rule of law would violate nat­ural law or sacred social conventions. Gov­ern­ment should do nothing without the consent of property-­owners/cit­izens.3 The basic thrust of this idea can be seen as demo­ cratic, but many forms of lib­eralism have been, and remain, ambivalent about the ultimate value of demo­cracy. Charac­ter­istically for the elitist model of demo­cracy, Joseph Schumpeter rein­ ter­preted the idea of representative gov­ern­ment in terms of replacing the ruling group or party with another section of the elite. Schumpeter went so far as to maintain that elites in effect create the will of the people: ‘[. . .] the will of the people is the product and not the motive power of the polit­ical pro­cess.’ (Schum­ peter 2008: 263) The meaning and significance of demo­cracy is first and fore­ most in the guarantee that the national ruling elite can be replaced via elections, i.e., that there is elect­oral com­peti­tion within states. How­ever, stability of the capitalist socio-­economic order is the main goal. In the Lockean-­Schumpeterian tradition, stability is preferred over uninformed and potentially dangerous parti­ cipa­tion of people or ‘mobs’. Followers of Schumpeter have argued that it is good if people belonging to lower socio-­economic groups are detached from pol­itics (Almond and Verba 1963). Related criticism of demo­cracy includes the ideas that social choice, as ag­greg­ated from indi­vidual pref­er­ences, is prob­lematic; bur­eau­cra­cies and politi­ cians maximize their own inter­ests and tend to make pol­itics a negative-­sum game, which is detrimental to gen­eral wel­fare; and many demo­cratic demands have exceeded the capa­city of states (for criticism, see Mackie 2003). How­ever, especially since the expli­citly ideo­logical days of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, things have become more complex. Neolib­ eralization has often been realized in incremental and technical terms. Actors involved in implementing the day-­to-day program of neolib­eralization, espe­ cially in the OECD coun­tries but also elsewhere, have usually taken for granted the background of lib­eral demo­cratic institutions and related human rights. Often they fail to see the big pic­ture that emerges from their own actions; and they tend to as­sume that neolib­eral theories, or memorandum and news­paper versions of them, are com­pat­ible with fostering values not reducible to neo­liberalism. This is the background con­text of the mainstream attempts to promote demo­ crat­ization, whether in its US or Western Euro­pean vari­ation. For constitutive reasons, then, the third wave of demo­crat­ization has resonated dia­lec­tically with the penetration of the neolib­eral ‘new world order’ into every part of the world. The claim to global legitimacy is based on the repres­enta­tion of the idea of liberal-­democracy and basic human rights (including prop­erty rights) as uni­ver­ sally valid. One aspect of this reson­ance is the expli­cit demo­cracy pro­mo­tion by the US, the EU and a number of inter­na­tional organ­iza­tions such as the OECD and various parts of the UN system. Mostly these Western or West-­led actors

90   H. Patomäki have been promoting ‘poly­archy’ (Robinson 1996), or ‘low-­intensity demo­ cracy’, or what Held (1996: 157–98) calls ‘com­petit­ive elitist demo­cracy’ (for an al­tern­ative account, see Youngs in this volume). For instance, many spontaneous demo­cratic civic movements have found exter­ nal (Western) support, which has often been translated, once the demo­cratic move­ ment has entered gov­ern­ment, into a full-­scale program of neolib­eral restructuration. How­ever, the program of transforming state and so­ci­ety into private markets, in the con­text of rapid inter­na­tional­ization of many aspects of state governance (Gill 2008 talks about ‘neoconsti­tu­tional locking-­in of eco­nomic lib­ eralism’), tends to reduce the sphere of pol­itics and demo­cratic self-­determination. Thus the pro­cesses of neolib­eralization and liberal-­democratization have been accompanied by a multi-­faceted pro­cess of depoliticization (e.g., Teivainen 2002). The fact that at one point the IMF directly controlled the eco­nomic pol­icy of every third sover­eign state is another case in point. IMF governance has always been repres­ented as technical, not polit­ical (Swedberg 1986). When demo­cracy pro­mo­ tion means neolib­eralization, parti­cipa­tion through civil so­ci­ety is seen as espe­ cially worthy of support if it is based on the prin­ciple of private char­ity, thus reinforcing the primacy of private prop­erty; or if it promotes, directly or indirectly, eco­nomic freedoms (for an empirical example, see the chapter from Crawford and Abdulai).

Prob­lems with the neolib­eral model How would it be pos­sible to jus­tify the idea that private prop­erty rights come before anything else; or are fundamental to any so­ci­ety; or are somehow beyond demo­ cratic pol­itics, for one reason or another? Alfred Marshall, in his classic Prin­ciples of Eco­nom­ics, discussed charac­ter­istic justifications of the private ownership of the means of production. Before the time of French and Industrial Revolu­tions, authors defending private prop­erty rights tended to appeal to God or Nature (Marshall 1959: 625). In the nine­teenth century, the appeal was made instead to Science. Marshall argued that the ‘authority of the science has been wrongly as­sumed by some of who have pushed the claims of vested rights to extreme and antisocial uses’ (Marshall 1959: 40). Marshall’s own approach was open-­minded but (warily) pro-­capitalist: [. . .] in the past [the rights of private prop­erty] have been in­sep­ar­able from solid pro­gress; and that therefore it is the part of respons­ible men to proceed cau­tiously and tent­at­ively in abrogating or modifying even such rights as may seem inappropriate to the ideal con­ditions of social life. (Marshall 1959: 40) The rhet­orical strategies identified by Marshall have also prevailed in the twenti­ eth century. Neolib­erals such as Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman and Robert Nozick came close to assuming that rights of private prop­erty – as applied to means of production – are not merely customary but can be justified as given by nature or something equally metaphys­ical.

Neoliberal vs social democratic telos   91 In the absence of space for a comprehensive discussion of all rel­ev­ant thinkers, I focus, briefly, on Nozick’s argument. Nozick (1974: 6) starts by asserting that the only complete and full explanation of the realm of pol­itics is to explain it in terms of the non-­political (he does not explain why an explanation would have to be reductionist in this sense). He further argues that the explanation and thereby norm­ative justification of the state can be based on a logic that has nothing to do with real his­tor­ical pro­cesses. What mat­ters for Nozick are uni­ver­sal moral con­ straints and per­miss­ible and imper­miss­ible actions that would be valid also in a ‘state of nature’ (Nozick 1974: ch. 2). Nozick maintains that certain prin­ciples must rise from gen­eralized reci­pro­city, especially rights of private prop­erty. These rights are fundamental; any devi­ation from them would be ‘redistributive’. Only ‘returning stolen money or compensating for violations of rights’ (Nozick 1974: 27) are not redistributive but fundamental or ‘nat­ural’. Nozick asserts strongly that we must respect the separate exist­ence of each person: [. . .] there is no moral outweighing of one of our lives by others so as to lead to a greater overall social good. There is no justified sacrifice of some of us for others. (Nozick 1974: 33) To reach this conclusion, Nozick appeals to (the state of ) non-­political nature and uses loaded ways of posing the question, amounting to merely declaring that private prop­erty rights are uni­ver­sally and categorically valid inde­pend­ently of any real his­tor­ical social pro­cesses. Departing from Nozick’s nat­ural rights lib­eralism, neoclassical eco­nom­ics appeals to Science. A good example is Kenneth Arrow and Frank H. Hahn’s Gen­eral Com­petit­ive Ana­lysis (1971). This tries to show, with math­emat­ical cer­ tainty and precision, that the basic conclusion of Walras and other neo-­classicists is valid: (i) com­petit­ive markets can yield an efficient Pareto-­optimal equilib­ rium, and (ii) prices of factors can equal mar­ginal productivity. This is more a theory of justice than of eco­nomic efficiency in any meaningful, realistic or empirical sense. As a theory of justice, it is an attempt to show in a mathematical-­technical way that private prop­erty rights lead inev­it­ably, through com­petit­ive markets, to an outcome that is the best pos­sible world for all parti­cip­ants concerned. It is inter­esting to note how Arrow and Hahn jus­tify their ana­lysis. ‘At the moment the main justification [. . .] is that there are results to report on the tâtonnement [tent­at­ive proceedings] while there are no results to report on what most eco­ nom­ists would agree to be more realistic constructions’ (Arrow and Hahn 1971: 322). In line with Nozick, their argument is built on a fictional account of a pos­sible world, not on facts about complex reality. By a ‘result’ they mean a math­emat­ical pos­sib­il­ity that a market system can solve a system of equilibrium prices. From the point of view of the demo­cratic prin­ciple that societal rules and prin­ciples are the free product of mutual agreement and the auto­nom­ous con­ science of actors, the neolib­eral pro­ject is contra­dict­ory and self-­defeating. The

92   H. Patomäki nat­ural rights and gen­eral equilibrium approaches are clearly critical-­reflexive attempts to define morality and ethico-­political prin­ciples which have validity and applica­tion apart from the authority of the groups or persons holding these prin­ciples, and apart from the indi­vidual’s own identification with these groups. At the same time, how­ever, the point is to prove that the existing lib­eral capi­ talist and – pos­sibly – demo­cratic institutions are non-­political and beyond dis­ cussion. To prove that the rights of private prop­erty are ‘nat­ural’, the authors must presuppose what they are trying to prove or appeal to pre-­moral reci­pro­city which is a mat­ter of ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’, not of gen­ eralized loy­alty or gratitude or prin­ciples of justice. Al­tern­atively, as in gen­eral equilibrium models, the authors must prove, in a manner that is beyond any doubt – that is, with the authority of math­emat­ical Science – that free markets can be har­moni­ous and just – even at the expense of conflating a fantasy world with the really existing, complex his­tor­ical world. While all complex soci­eties tend, for good reasons, to associate personal belongings to one’s personhood, the question is: how should we or­gan­ize the mech­an­isms of control and regulation over the means of production? Any attempt to articulate pub­lic norm­ative arguments in nat­uralist or pre-­moral terms can only result in paradoxes and contra­dic­tions (e.g., Fried 2005). Attempts to an­chor private prop­erty rights in Nature, Science or the Sacred also imply potential for anti-­democratic and author­it­arian practices, Chile 1973 being a case in point. Hence, it seems to me that the neolib­eral model of demo­ cracy involves regressive moral learning and is ambivalent about the im­port­ ance of demo­cracy.

The social demo­cratic model: a Rawlsian per­spect­ive It is useful to compare nat­ural rights lib­eralism and stand­ard neoclassical eco­ nom­ics to the polit­ical lib­eralism of John Rawls’ Theory of Justice. Rawls (1973: 522–5) argues – in a his­tor­ically more plaus­ible way than fiction-­based ‘state-­ofnature’ arguments – that human powers require socialization, communication and learning in terms of conceptual and other resources de­veloped by past gen­ erations; and that production in complex soci­eties can only be based on social coopera­tion. This ontological-­historical starting point also means that all humans are equal in their potential powers, generic moral person­al­ity and ab­stract sense of justice. For Rawls, the first prin­ciple of justice is that each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive scheme of equal basic liberties com­pat­ible with a sim­ilar scheme of liberties for others. Rawls specifically underlines that ‘the right to own certain kinds of prop­erty (e.g., means of production) and freedom of contract as understood by the doctrine of laissez-­faire are not basic’.4 The second prin­ciple of justice consists of two parts, specifying the way in­equal­it­ies are to be arranged: a) they are to be of the greatest bene­fit to the least ad­vant­aged members of so­ci­ety (the dif­fer­ence prin­ciple); b) offices and positions must be open to every­one under con­ditions of fair equality of oppor­tun­ity.

Neoliberal vs social democratic telos   93 The choice of the shared institutions of polit­ical eco­nomy can never be only a mat­ter of instrumental ration­al­ity. The choice of institutions also ‘determines in part the sort of persons they want to be as well as the sort of persons they are’ (Rawls 1973: 259). Institutions are to foster the virtue of justice and discourage desires and as­pira­tions incom­pat­ible with it. Justice always has pri­or­ity over claims to efficiency. As a corollary, lib­erty (in the sense of free de­velopment of all) has pri­or­ity even over ob­ject­ive social and eco­nomic ad­vant­ages. For a con­ science at this level of ethico-­political learning, author­it­arian institutions can never be justified. In chapter 4, §36, Rawls de­velops a polit­ical sociology of demo­cracy accord­ ing to which social and eco­nomic in­equal­it­ies tend to accu­mu­late. Therefore ‘. . . inequities in the eco­nomic and social system may soon undermine whatever polit­ical equality might have existed under fortunate his­tor­ical con­ditions’ (Rawls 1973: 226). Polit­ical justice has two aspects: 1 2

It includes a just pro­ced­ure satisfying the requirements of equal lib­erty of all. It is to be framed so that of all ar­range­ments which are feasible, it is more likely than any other to result in a just and effect­ive system of legis­la­tion.

Satisfying these con­ditions is not easy. It is misleading to read Rawls only as a mere supporter of a given list of tax-­and-trans­fer pol­icies or wel­fare state institu­ tions. To the contrary, according to Rawls, the best institutional ar­range­ment in a so­ci­ety cannot be determined a priori. In gen­eral, Rawls argues in favor of market-­based polit­ical eco­nomy. Markets can ensure pro­ced­ural justice (in terms of scalar distribution); are by and large consistent with equal liberties and fair equality of oppor­tun­ity; and decentralize the exercise of eco­nomic power. How­ever, ‘there is no essential tie between the use of free markets and private ownership of the instruments of production’ (ch. 5, §42). This raises the question whether private ownership of the means of pro­ duction is com­pat­ible with the gen­eral prin­ciples of justice? ‘To see the full force of the dif­fer­ence prin­ciple, it should be taken in the con­text of property-­owning demo­cracy or a lib­eral socialist regime’ (Rawls 2001: 420). Rawls argues that ‘in a so­ci­ety allowing private ownership of the means of production, prop­erty and wealth must be kept widely distributed and gov­ern­ment monies provided on a regu­lar basis to encourage free pub­lic discussion’ (Rawls 2001: 225). Among other things, this means that there must be no private funding of polit­ical par­ties. Rawls (2001: 226) proposes steady dispersal of the ownership of capital and resources by the laws of inheritance and bequest; fair equality of oppor­tun­ity is secured by pro­vi­sions for education; and training insti­ tutions that support the fair value of the polit­ical liberties. In socialism, means of production and nat­ural resources would be pub­licly owned. A price system can still be used, especially for the purpose of allocating resources but less for distribution. There can be different combinations of state ownership and plan­ ning and workers’ control of market enterprises. Both can be mixed in various ways with elements of a privately owned market system.

94   H. Patomäki Rawls de­veloped his theory of justice in the Bretton Woods era (1944–71). Neolib­eralization made his theory much less self-­evident or consensual. ‘I con­ tinue to think the dif­fer­ence prin­ciple im­port­ant and would still make a case for it . . . but it is better to recog­nise that this case is less evid­ent. . . .’ (Rawls 2001: 418–19). At the same time, Rawls seems to have concluded that the wel­fare state compromise was not sus­tain­able; something more would be needed to sustain a just and demo­cratic so­ci­ety. In a 1987 preface to the French edition, Rawls argued that ‘[wel­fare state efforts are] either insufficient or else ineffect­ive given the dis­ parities of wealth and the polit­ical influence they permit’ (Rawls 2001: 419).

The social demo­cratic model from a historical-­institutional per­spect­ive Eduard Bernstein (1907) stated at the outset of the twentieth century that ‘social­ ism is a movement towards an order of so­ci­ety based on the [co-­operative and demo­cratic] prin­ciple of asso­ci­ation’. It was in this spirit that the institutions of demo­cratic wel­fare states were built during the Bretton Woods era and until the rise of neo­liberalism in the 1970s and 1980s (see Berman’s chapter). Under­ standably, real world ethico-­political struggles and his­tor­ical contingencies resulted in various compromises. From a historical-­institutional per­spect­ive, thus, there is no pure social demo­cratic model. The fol­low­ing brief account of the underpinnings of social demo­cratic eman­cip­atory pro­ject comes closest to the Swedish model. The uni­versal­istic social demo­cratic wel­fare state is distinguished by the fol­ low­ing features (modified from Meyer 2007: 137–8): 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Legal enti­tle­ments to social ser­vices apply equally to all cit­izens (uni­ver­sal social cit­izen­ship). Wage-­replacement bene­fits can be nearly high enough to approach the claimant’s previous income level. The social wel­fare state is over­whelm­ingly financed from gen­eral rev­enues and ser­vices are free or nearly free. Apart from the health and education sectors, the system offers many other social ser­vices, for example in care of the elderly and morning-­until-evening daycare. An active family pol­icy aims to allow women to enter the labor market on equal terms with men by providing complete daycare for their chil­dren and other supplementary ser­vices. Job protection pol­icies are gen­erally supported by active labor market and adult education pol­icies. Centralized col­lect­ive bargaining follows the prin­ciple of solidaristic wage pol­icy across sectors, thus creating an impetus for labor productivity and technological dynamism. The state obliges itself to pursue a macro­economic pol­icy of full employment.

Neoliberal vs social democratic telos   95 The contrast with the neolib­eral model of demo­cracy is sharp. For neolib­erals, the free market system can best provide freedom, justice and efficiency. Thus, commodification and the intensification of dependence on markets emerge as key polit­ical goals at all levels of so­ci­ety, also in areas such as education and health. In the social demo­cratic model, the aim is largely the oppos­ite, namely reduction of market-­dependence and de-­commodification in order to overcome the ali­ena­tion and atomism gen­er­ated by com­petit­ive markets (see Esping-­ Andersen 1990: 21–8, 35–54; Ryner 2002: 48–59, 85). This is connected to de­velop­mentalist ideas about demo­cracy. The wel­fare state is not an aim in itself but is rather meant to provide an institutional form for further demo­crat­ization. As part of the idea that the choice of institutions ‘deter­ mines in part the sort of persons they want to be as well as the sort of persons they and their chil­dren will become’, every cit­izen is granted free and equally good uni­ver­sal pub­lic education. Goals of education include well-­informed pub­lic opinion and widespread civic virtues. The purpose is also to counter estab­lished relations of class and power. In a so­ci­ety allowing private ownership of the means of production, accu­mu­lated prop­erty and wealth tend to be concentrated in a rel­at­ively few hands and can be easily translated into cultural classifications and polit­ical influence. How­ever, the social demo­cratic idea is that, through mass mobil­iza­tion, labor can counter the eco­nomic power of private owners of means of production with polit­ical power in lib­eral demo­cracy. In the social demo­cratic model, further demo­crat­ization has often been taken to mean gradual movement towards demo­cratic socialism. Thus various wage-­ earner fund proposals were advanced in Europe during the 1970s and 1980s aimed at receiving income from taxation (of profits) and using it to accu­mu­late capital on behalf of wage-­earners. The more far-­reaching proposals for wage-­ earner funds were attempts to socialize capital in order to give workers a share in capital formation and a say in corporate decision-­making. Wage-­earner funds were realized only in Sweden, and even there in a form that fell short of the ori­ginal ambition behind them.

Prob­lems with the social demo­cratic model The neolib­eral model includes ideo­logical elements, disguising mere faith in par­ ticu­lar non-­grounded beliefs such as Science or Nature (cf. Klapwijk 2008), whereas the starting point of the theorists of social demo­cracy has been the full re­cog­ni­tion of the moral capa­city of all actors to make judgments about any issue at stake. Therefore, the social demo­cratic model operates at a higher stage of col­lect­ive learning, and is ethico-­politically more justified than the neolib­eral model.5 There are philosophical reasons for this account – i.e., without the re­cog­ ni­tion of the pos­sib­il­ity of col­lect­ive learning all kinds of perform­at­ive contra­ dic­tions arise – but first and foremost it consists of hypotheses that can be falsified by means of empirical and his­tor­ical studies. So far it has stood most tests well.

96   H. Patomäki From a norm­ative point of view, a key con­sidera­tion is the degree of gen­ eralizability and the related capa­city for ab­stract role-­taking. These indicate plausibility and stability of judgements in differentiated and complex multi-­actor con­texts. More­over, higher stage reasoning is simultaneously both more differ­ entiated (involving a nuanced understanding of psycho-­social real­it­ies) and more in­teg­rated (implying symmetry and consistence of judgements) than prior stages. Empirically, it has been estab­lished that higher stages are not only cognitively more difficult but also perceived by subjects as more adequate. This is in part because, as social con­texts change also due to col­lect­ive learning, earl­ier stages may seem increasingly ob­sol­ete and in­ad­equate (Kohlberg 1973). How­ever, also the social demo­cratic model is contra­dict­ory. Its main norm­ative contra­dic­tion reflects the more gen­eral uni­versal­ism/par­ticu­larism contra­dic­tion of the French Revolu­tion. The emergent ab­stract determinations whereby people could know themselves as one with their fellow cit­izens as (a) free and equal sub­ jects of civil law (the cit­izen as private commodity owner), (b) morally free sub­ jects (the cit­izen as private person), and (c) polit­ically free subjects (the cit­izen as demo­cratic cit­izen of the state), are best suited to the identity of world cit­izens, not to that of the cit­izen of a par­ticu­lar state. The modern human became homme and citoyen in one (Habermas 1979: 114–15). The same applies to uni­versal­ist social demo­cracy. Although in some cases the cosmo­pol­itan promise has been expli­cit,6 in practice social demo­cracy has been about wel­fare states. Of the social demo­cratic regimes of the Bretton Woods era, the Swedish model was prob­ably the most rad­ical and uni­versal­ist. It was eco­nomic­ally successful and sustained highly egal­it­arian eco­nomic pol­icies for more than forty years, and trans­ lated those as­pira­tions into a pro­gressivist foreign pol­icy of active neutrality of the Third Way (see Ryner 2002). A crit­ical prob­lem of the social demo­cratic model is that, as lib­eral capitalist systems of production, exchange and finance expand worldwide, attempts to realize social demo­cracy – not to speak of demo­cratic market socialism – within the confines of a sover­eign state eventually become unsus­tain­able. More­over, the trade-­union based Keynesian social demo­cratic model has also created its own bur­eau­cratic and technocratic relations of domina­ tion, leading, over time, to various crit­ical ethico-­political responses. The prob­lems of the Swedish model stemmed from insurrections against local relations of domination at the workplace; transformation of occupational struc­ tures and class relations; the crisis of the Bretton Woods system for regulating the global eco­nomy; and the lib­eralization of the exit options of capital, among other pro­cesses (for a more detailed account, see Patomäki 2000; 2002: ch. 8). Together with the end of the Cold War, this interplay reinforced neoliberal-­ oriented discourses, which then replaced the earl­ier, rather Marxist, concepts of the theorists of the Social Demo­cratic Party. This shift led to various articula­ tions of the requirements of ‘new times’ and gradual changes in the meaning of the Third Way, constituting a new neolib­eral framing of social prob­lems. The stand­ard crit­ical polit­ical eco­nomy explanation is that since the 1970s, policy-­makers of all OECD coun­tries have been liable to adopt monetarist and orthodox positions as a par­ticu­lar, biased response to perceived prob­lems such as

Neoliberal vs social democratic telos   97 stagflation that have emerged since the late 1960s. This par­ticu­lar and mostly false response is best explained in terms of a change in power relations in favor of transnational capital. According to this account, there were also ob­ject­ive structural and evolutionary reasons for this shift, for it origin­ated, in large part, in changes in the relations of production, which can be summarized as a shift from the Fordist towards a post-­Fordist regime of accumulation of capital. How­ever, the stand­ard crit­ical polit­ical eco­nomy hypo­thesis is problem­at­ical. Some authors rightly question the coher­ence of any distinct ‘post-­Fordist’ regime of accumulation. What is called ‘post-­Fordism’ is actu­ally the result of a mixture of pro­cesses that include the deepening of consumerism and product differentia­ tion (themselves im­port­ant aspects of the on-­going pro­cess of eco­nomic concen­ tration); the emergence of new communication and in­forma­tion technologies and thus new technological possib­il­ities for organ­izing production across time and space; transformation of relations of power within the workplace in favor of the owners and professional managers; and the applica­tion of new (neolib­eral) man­ agement ideas of first in private and then in pub­lic organ­iza­tions. Thus what is called ‘post-­Fordism’ is actu­ally more a result of the rise of neolib­eralization than the other way around. If my argument is right, the origins of neolib­eralization lie in the discrepancy between territorial states and spaces of world eco­nomy, and in the struggles over income distribution and power in which some actors started to ex­ploit this dis­ crepancy.7 By the early 1960s, the re-­integration of the world eco­nomy had opened oppor­tun­ities for many private market actors to resolve their day-­to-day prob­lems by spatial relocation. Expli­cit polit­ical choices were also involved in the ensuing transformations. The key choice was made by Pres­id­ent Richard Nixon in 1971, when he ended the link between dollar and gold. The choice was between unilateralism and multi­lateralism, but the former was justified also in terms of belief in ‘free markets’. Ethico-­political ideas associated with neo­ liberalism entered the pub­lic sphere more forcefully only after 1971–3. Throughout the Bretton Woods era, territorial states remained the main locus of regulation and the sole locus for tax-­and-trans­fer pol­icies. At the same time, the rules and prin­ciples of the Bretton Woods system and the GATT-­agreement were meant to ensure lib­eralization and re-­integration of the world eco­nomy. Once the movement towards demo­cratic socialism had come to a halt and once the only remaining aim was to manage and civilize capit­al­ism, the inherent tendencies of private market-­related orthodox ideas took over. The structural power of trans­ national capital and neolib­eral globalization gained rapid ascendancy and the pro­ cess of neolib­eralization started to follow its own dynamic. This pro­cess has also gen­er­ated the dominance of the neolib­eral model in demo­cracy pro­mo­tion.

Conclusion: a call for a global demo­cratic framework Critical-­reflexive consciousness understands that demo­cratic prin­ciples and systems are the product of an auto­nom­ous conscience and human agency, and should thus be subject to free mutual agreement. When col­lect­ive rules are

98   H. Patomäki understood as the free product of mutual agreement and an auto­nom­ous con­ science, the precise telos of demo­crat­ization – and other related norm­atively ori­ ented pro­cesses – must also be the free product of mutual agreement. Because transnational demo­cracy pro­mo­tion must be grounded on this uni­ver­salizing conviction and as it must be applied reflexively to one’s own practices, it calls for a global framework of demo­cratic institutions within which different under­ standings and models of norm­ative prin­ciples can freely compete and engage in dialogue with each other. In a parallel way, the lessons from the fate of the state-­based social demo­ cratic model call for reversing the order of pri­or­ities. The nation-­state can no longer provide a sufficient framework for pro­gressivist polit­ical action. The socially flavored foreign pol­icy idealism appears as a somewhat anachronistic basis for ‘pro­gressivist inter­na­tionalism’. Local and national struggles are essen­ tially connected to regional and global struggles and cannot be taken as separate spheres anymore (‘first pro­gressivism at home, and then exportation of these uni­versal­ist ideals to the rest of the world’). What is required is a globalist strat­ egy of carrying out global social/demo­cratic reforms. Future reforms along these lines can come about as a result of effects of mul­tiple simultaneous pro­cesses and contra­dic­tions among various on-­going tendencies.8 So what is the telos of demo­crat­ization? We have come to understand that morality and ethico-­political prin­ciples must have validity and applica­tion apart from the authority of any par­ticu­lar groups or persons or indi­vidual identification with any par­ticu­lar groups or institutions – including nations and states. With human learning advancing towards discourse ethics and beyond, there is a further call for a more differentiated dynamic between intra-­humanity self and others. Various crit­ical and post-­structuralist theories can be seen as correctives not only to Rawlsian but also to discourse-­ethical moral reasoning. At the stage of discourse ethics and beyond, people identi­fy themselves critical-­reflexively as world cit­izens (which is already a latent pos­sib­il­ity at earl­ier levels). There­after, the telos of demo­crat­ization becomes global and culturally pluralistic social demo­cracy, promoted demo­cratically by world cit­izens. Global social demo­cracy too would be no more than a transient phase. More­over, its actualization is contingent. Ethico-­political pro­gress is a struc­ tural pos­sib­il­ity built upon earl­ier layers of material-­structural possib­il­ities and learning. Yet, there is nothing inev­it­able about human pro­gress. Its potentials may not be actualized either in the short or long run – or ever. Analogically to the decline of past empires and civilizations, con­tempor­ary indi­viduals and institutions may fail to realize the avail­able human potential and fall back, even in terms of their learning potential. To fully understand the im­plica­tions of our fallibility is part of the pro­cess of learning to as­sume respons­ib­ility for the rules, prin­ciples and institutions we humans create and for the con­ sequences of our actions. The limits and illusions of our present understanding can best be seen from a future standpoint of an ever wider and more perceptive horizon.

Neoliberal vs social democratic telos   99

Notes 1 The ideas and claims of this paragraph are based on the well-­known works of Jean Piaget (2002, 1977), Lawrence Kohlberg (1981, 1973, 1971) and Jürgen Habermas (1990a, 1990b, 1979). For discussions of the empirical validity of the Kohlbergian framework in par­ticu­lar, see Boom et al. (2007); Dawson (2002); Gibbs et al. (2007); Krebs and Denton (2006); and Sonnert (1994); Patomäki (forthcoming). 2 In terms of Held’s (1996) his­tor­ical models of demo­cracy – which are useful for ana­ lyt­ical purposes but do not directly cor­res­pond to any existing his­tor­ical formation or tendency – the con­tempor­ary neolib­eral model is close to lib­eral and elitist models, but may include elements of the pluralist model. Also the social demo­cratic model involves many lib­eral values and prin­ciples, but is, in addition, also repub­lican and socialist, and often incorp­or­ates deliberative and cosmo­pol­itan con­sidera­tions as well. It should be noted that the argument of my chapter as a whole is cosmo­pol­itan (for a discussion about different conceptions of cosmo­pol­itanism and global demo­cracy, see Held and Patomäki 2006). 3 This vacillating and inconsistent use of the cri­terion for full mem­ber­ship in polit­ical com­mun­ity is part of the Lockean her­it­age. See MacPherson (1964: 248). Eds: see the chapter by Jahn for a detailed discussion. 4 This quota­tion is from p. 54 of the 1999 revised edition. In the 1972 ori­ginal edition, there was apparently no need to underline that abso­lute and exclusive right to prop­erty and contract is not basic. 5 I am of course presupposing the account of ethico-­political learning scheme explained in the beginning of the chapter. 6 Olof Palme, for example, expressed the idea that in the long run the dif­fer­ence between national and world pol­itics would disappear. In this sense, Palme also ad­voc­ated ‘inter­ na­tional demo­cracy’ (see Jerneck 1990: 128–9). 7 In open systems, there have been several mech­an­isms and pro­cesses at play. For instance, for a detailed discussion of the con­sequences of the Triffin dilemma, see Patomäki (2008: 133, 136, 187–8); and for the role of the US and British gov­ern­ments in facilitating the re-­emergence of global finance, Patomäki (2008: ch. 6). 8 Patomäki and Teivainen (2004) is a systematic ana­lysis of the norm­ative justifiability and polit­ical viability of different global demo­cracy proposals, synthesising the most viable ones into a strategy. Patomäki (2008) and Patomäki (2010) are attempts to build scen­arios about the next forty to fifty years from a more gen­eral per­spect­ive, focusing on the dia­lec­tics between limited-­scale future wars and eco­nomic crises, and the pos­ sible rise of a transform­at­ive movement that could respond to the prob­lems and contra­ dic­tions of the global polit­ical eco­nomy in terms of col­lect­ive learning and by building new global institutions.

6 Mis­under­stand­ing the maladies of lib­eral demo­cracy pro­mo­tion Richard Youngs

Demo­cracy pro­mo­tion has lost traction around the world. This atrophy has myriad causes and a range of con­sequences. One of its several results is that calls have become more audible for a fundamental re­think of what type of ‘demo­cracy’ should be supported in different regions. Much opinion now choruses the view that the ‘demo­cracy’ in ‘demo­cracy pro­mo­tion’ requires re-­ examination. Most critics of inter­na­tional pol­icies berate Western gov­ern­ments for an inflex­ible and inappropriate adherence to a specific form of ‘lib­eral demo­ cracy’. They are right to take demo­cracy promoters to task for many unduly narrow ways in which they conceive polit­ical reform. But it is not convincing to argue that democracy-­pro­mo­tion’s most ser­ious prob­lem today is its excessive adherence to a ‘lib­eral’ form of demo­cracy. This critique fails to grasp the way in which demo­cracy support pol­icies have evolved and confuses what is entailed in meeting local demands for reform in non-­democratic states. The routine admonishments cast at Western gov­ern­ments under the now-­ standard critique of lib­eral demo­cracy do not weather the scrutiny of empirical evid­ence. They risk becoming widely accepted myths that have little grounding in reality. Demo­cracy promoters do not over­whelm­ingly prioritise the pro­ced­ural over the social and substantive elements of reform; they do not seek deliberately to hollow out the state; they do not conflate eco­nomic with polit­ical lib­eralisation; they are not brow beaten into backing facade demo­cracy by multi­national com­ panies; they are not fixated on elections; and they are not completely unreceptive to al­tern­ative forms of repres­enta­tion. The prob­lem with demo­cracy pro­mo­tion lies not in its unbending and overly zealous imposition of lib­eral norms. Rather, its most ser­ious pathology is gov­ern­ments’ failure to defend core lib­eral norms in a way that would allow local vari­ations in and choices over demo­cratic reform – along with genu­ine civic empowerment and emancipation – to flourish. Current criticisms of the demo­cracy agenda risk pushing pol­icy deliberations in exactly the oppos­ite dir­ec­tion of their required improvement.

The roots of mis­under­stand­ing Doubts are growing over lib­eral demo­cracy. The constituent parts of the preoccupying pan­or­ama are now well known. The number of demo­cra­cies worldwide

Misunderstanding the maladies   101 has ceased to augment. Non-­democratic, emerging powers appear to be on the front foot. Many com­ment­ators now assert that the appeal of demo­cracy as a uni­ver­sal value lies in tattered shreds. Of more par­ticu­lar significance, the ‘lib­eral’ in lib­eral demo­cracy attracts increasingly crit­ical attention. As demo­cracy finds itself on the defensive, the notion gains currency that these travails owe much to its unduly narrow conceptualisation – especially on the part of Western powers and inter­na­tional institutions. The lib­eral form of demo­cracy is widely seen as restrictive, unhelpfully value-­laden and out of tune with cit­izens’ demands in different regions of the world. Its Western sponsorship is increasingly seen as insular and solipsistic. The crisis that besets the demo­cracy support agenda today extends as far as many suggesting that the whole concept of ‘demo­cracy’ in demo­cracy pro­mo­ tion needs to be recast. The fin­an­cial crisis has compounded the sense that a gen­ eral crisis now afflicts lib­eralism, in both its eco­nomic and polit­ical guises. The lib­eral strand of demo­cratic theory has increasingly taken a conceptual beating, and from the stature of expert that demands ser­ious attention. A vast array of writings now takes the core lib­eral agenda to task, and largely consigns it to the dustbin of his­tory (see Gray 2008; Kagan 2008; Saul 2005; Hurrell 2007). The whole notion that weakly demo­cratic states stand at a stage of immaturity on their way to something more ‘advanced’ is increasingly questioned. Many analysts’ prognosis is of a rise of ‘state-­capit­al­ism’ and ‘authoritarian-­ capit­al­ism’ as viable and, indeed welcome al­tern­atives to lib­eral demo­cracy (Bremmer 2009; Gat 2007). Cosmo­pol­itanism, it is suggested, will in the future need to make space for the emergence of a demand for less lib­eral types of polit­ ical regime (Fine 2007). The polit­ical con­sequences of the eco­nomic crisis are widely judged also to be illib­eral. His­tory shows that hard times can be fertile ground for the rise of values that give pri­or­ity to order over indi­vidual liberties. The critique of lib­eral demo­cracy is not confined to any one school of polit­ ical thinking; it is becoming something akin to gen­erally believed received wisdom. But it is of par­ticu­lar vehemence in the writing of those approaching the subject from the per­spect­ive of crit­ical theory. The severest critics deride the whole demo­cracy agenda as a straight jacket of power-­driven lib­eral norms (Habermas 2006; Duffield 2007). As outlined in the introduction to this volume, the strongest attack on lib­eral demo­cracy pro­mo­tion has come from neo-­ Gramscian writers. They dismiss demo­cracy pro­mo­tion as an elite-­driven pro­ject designed to legitimise the pre­ven­tion of far-­reaching reform to the capitalist eco­ nomy (Robinson 1996; Gills, Rocamora and Wilson 1993). There are many eloquent critiques that have added much of value to debates over demo­cracy’s inter­na­tional trajectory. But what is now the mainstream gen­ eral critique tends rather easily to as­sume many things that in fact require more careful interrogation. Is it really the case that to recover legitimacy, the demo­ cracy support agenda requires a whole new concept of demo­cracy? Is the prob­ lem really that demo­cracy promoters have insisted upon an unduly narrow form of either elect­oral or lib­eral demo­cracy? Is lib­eral demo­cracy really quite the demon that many now suggest it is?

102   R. Youngs This chapter offers a modest but hopefully distinctive con­tri­bu­tion to the current volume. Many of the book’s chapters delve into polit­ical theory and regional specificities. Written by someone with one foot in academia and one foot in the world of policy-­oriented think-­tanks, this chapter rather focuses on the nexus between conceptual debate and pol­icy practice. Ameli­ora­tion of this link is sorely needed. At present, aca­demics and diplomats’ perceptions of each other are hardly pos­it­ive. Aca­demics dismiss policy-­makers as hopelessly reductionist in their understanding of demo­cracy. Policy-­makers see aca­demics as self-­absorbed, ab­stract and behind-­the-curve. It is argued here that the stance required is a nuanced one. Some of the key aspects common to crit­ical per­spect­ives are sound and have made an im­port­ant con­tri­bu­tion to debates over demo­cracy pro­mo­tion. Some of the key as­sump­tions made in the introduction to this volume, that the ‘conceptual pol­itics of demo­ cracy’ needs to be opened up to a wider range of ideas, are also entirely valid and well made. How­ever, this chapter questions how far the scep­ti­cism heaped on lib­eralism’s shoulders captures what is most ser­iously wrong with real-­world pol­icy de­velopments. The argument can be summarised: shortcomings in the conceptual pol­itics of demo­cracy certainly merit attention, even if they are not demo­cracy pro­mo­tion’s pri­mary in­ad­equacy; but it is more doubtful that crit­ical theory provides the best guide to the way in which demo­cracy support requires betterment. Pol­icy examples in the chapter are drawn mainly from Euro­pean demo­cracy strategies (although the implicit purpose is not to comment on the well-­worn question of EU-­versus-US comparisons, a topic covered exhaustively in many other writings). Two commonly made as­sump­tions rest on empirical ground that is not firm. The first of these is the as­sump­tion that Western powers are in essence over-­ promoting lib­eral demo­cracy. The facts suggest instead that they are not doing much to promote demo­cracy of any type, whether lib­eral or other­wise. This is the most notable pol­icy trend of recent years, under-­stressed if not entirely ignored by arguments that derive from crit­ical theory. Second is the supposition that where they are active in demo­cracy support, Western powers follow a rigidly lib­eral template that is inappropriate and inattentive to local demands and specificities. Of course, in places some such concerns are well founded and injustices are undoubtedly committed in the pursuit of polit­ical change. But this argument is far too sweeping when forwarded as a gen­eral meta-­critique of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion. Real-­life pol­icy formu­la­tion is much more ad hoc and varied in its conceptual bases. This is evid­ent if one takes the trouble to look at the nitty-­gritty substance of what demo­cracy promoters are doing on the ground. In some cases Western powers assertively promote lib­eral demo­cracy. But other combinations are also adopted. Sometimes pol­icy favours illib­eral demo­ cracy; sometimes it seeks advances in lib­eral rights without demo­cracy; and sometimes it is active in supporting neither the ‘lib­eral’ nor the ‘demo­cracy’ strands of lib­eral demo­cracy. The precise nature and balance of such pol­icy

Misunderstanding the maladies   103 options varies across different demo­cracy promoters, different ‘target’ states and over different moments in time. Crit­ical theory inspired approaches risks seeing a uniformity that simply does not exist in concrete demo­cracy support strategies. It is if anything more straight jacketed than the policy-­makers it mocks as rigidly simplistic in their conceptual understanding of demo­cracy. This is not to suggest that all is well in the demo­cracy promoters’ house; but the renovations needed are more subtle in nature.

Demo­cracy, eco­nomic inter­ests and de­velopment A first, frequent criticism is that Western powers limit themselves to supporting a form of lib­eral polit­ical reform that excludes any inter­est in social demo­cracy. The evid­ence dem­on­strates that this is not a convincing line of argument. The routinely made suggestion is that a key prob­lem with the demo­cracy support agenda is that donors do not realise that ‘demo­cracy must deliver for eco­nomic de­velopment’ and help reduce pov­erty and in­equal­ity. Western gov­ern­ments can be criticised for many things, but this now stand­ard accusation is wide of the mark. The argument (made in some places in this volume) that donors place such abso­lute pri­or­ity on polit­ical lib­erty in their foreign pol­icies that they are blind to eco­nomic de­velopment challenges and pos­sibly al­tern­ative means of achieving these is not one that bears any close resemb­lance to reality. At the level of concrete funding initiatives the balance of pri­or­ities appears to be the very inverse. Donors give significantly more resources for social de­velopment and efforts to reduce in­equal­ity than they channel to polit­ical aid aimed at ‘imposing’ lib­eral demo­cracy. By far the largest slices of funding are managed by de­velopment agencies, most of whom remain reluct­ant to let any engagement on polit­ical reform divert attention from core social de­velopment aims. Of course, it would be fair to argue that on such issues still not enough is being done, and that trade pol­icies often cut across the stated aims of enhancing social demo­cracy. How­ever, this is a prob­lem more related to the prioritisation of commercial self-­interest and broader structural constraints of the inter­na­tional system than to a ‘conceptual pol­itics of demo­cracy’ that negates social demo­ cracy. What requires improvement is the linkage between demo­cracy pro­mo­tion pol­icies and other aspects of Western foreign and commercial pol­icies that relate to structural impediments and injustices at the global level. Conceptually, Euro­ pean gov­ern­ments would categorically question the suggestion that there is a trade off between core lib­eral demo­cracy and the goals of social demo­cracy. Pres­id­ent Obama’s discourse also now focuses routinely on linking demo­cracy to social justice – as, for example, in his Septem­ber 2010 speech to the United Nations Gen­eral Assembly (Obama 2010). The­or­etically, there is reson­ance here with the later work of John Stuart Mill that pointed to the mutually reinforcing links between lib­eral polit­ical rights and social demo­cratic ends (Ginsborg 2008: 42). Yet, as one com­ment­ator observes, many self-­styled pro­gressives have come to believe that these are largely

104   R. Youngs mutually exclusive pol­icy choices – and that concerns over the restriction of civic rights are little more than a middle-­class diversion from the pursuit of systemic socio-­economic change (Kampfner 2009: ch. 7). The impact on demo­cracy of structural con­ditionality aimed at re­du­cing the eco­nomic role of the state con­tinues to be prob­lematic in many coun­tries. But even here the fin­an­cial crisis has hastened a shift away from the use of structural adjustment con­ditionality (if only for the self-­serving reason that many Western gov­ern­ments are now borrowers from the inter­na­tional fin­an­cial institutions). In broad diplomatic terms, most coun­tries pursuing socialistic paths to de­velopment have been rewarded more than castigated. Think of the way in which Spain and France have deepened relations with Húgo Chavez’s Venezuela or the generous amounts of Euro­pean aid channelled to Vietnam. To some extent, it might even be said that the imbalance tips the other way. The prob­lem is not so much that of Euro­pean gov­ern­ments limit themselves to lib­eral demo­cracy without supporting meas­ures of social demo­cracy, rather it is that they support meas­ures of social demo­cracy without aiming their pol­icy instruments at the core tenets of lib­eral demo­cracy. Asked to list the most im­port­ant elements of his coun­try’s demo­cracy pol­icies, the reply of one senior Nordic diplomat reveals this confusion: ‘support for health and education’, which is ‘much more legitimate than free elections’. In practice, pol­icy aims (rightly, it might be felt) at the end goals associated with social demo­cracy, but without prioritising its demo­cratic pro­ced­ural com­pon­ents: the ‘social’ without the ‘demo­cracy’ of ‘social demo­cracy’. A second critique is that demo­cracy promoters neg­lect the neces­sary role of the state, the flip side to their belief in unbridled lib­eralism. In fact, donors’ aid programmes exhibit a notable state orientation, with the aim of building states’ social and eco­nomic competences – to such an extent that cit­izens often complain that such statist approaches neg­lect the civic sphere. De­velopment agencies such as the UK’s De­part­ment for Inter­na­tional De­velopment (DFID) have de­veloped some impressively sophisticated concepts of ‘building co­ali­tions for change’. But local actors complain that such approaches are in­vari­ably out-­ weighed by political-­level diplo­macy. Euro­pean gov­ern­ments have allowed regimes to neuter reform dy­namics in their (perfectly desir­able) efforts to include state bodies in their pro­jects. Donors are correct to insist that the demo­cracy agenda is as much about strengthening state as civic capa­city. But the way this is being done tilts the balance too far away from the latter. Local stakeholders are highly crit­ical of the fact that Euro­pean Commission pro­jects on judicial and administrative reform are agreed with gov­ern­ments and include mainly regime-­backed partners. In the Middle East people talk of a ‘legal complex’ – judges working with civil so­ci­ety activists and party reformists to broaden out the hitherto very statist approach to legal reform favoured by the inter­na­tional com­mun­ity. Fieldwork reveals civil so­ci­ety organ­isa­tions’ complaints that they are pushed by donors into ‘co­ali­tions’ with ministries – the new box to be ticked on donor check lists – when the prob­lem for social de­velopment is the illib­eral repression wrought by this very same state (Youngs 2010).

Misunderstanding the maladies   105 Among Euro­pean policy-­makers there is indeed growing re­cog­ni­tion that it is this imbalance that requires attention. The Commission’s ‘polit­ical eco­nomy’ approach to governance reform has uncovered concern that millions of euros of budget support given straight to non-­democratic regimes for social de­velopment purposes is simply empowering autocratic state structures that evade local account­ability over the way in which such funds are used. Third, central to crit­ical per­spect­ives is the con­tention that lib­eral demo­cracy is joined at the hip with eco­nomic lib­eralism, of a type that works against the inter­ests of non-­Western states. This is the essence of the neo-­Gramscian line. This would claim that all the discourse on supporting social justice and accepting other models of demo­cracy is entirely disingenuous – a feint to hide what is in fact a self-­interested, narrow pref­er­ence for lib­eral demo­cracy. The fin­an­cial crisis has also nourished a resurgent Marxist critique. Slavoj Žižek sees in this crisis proof that not only is market lib­eralism the flip side of polit­ical lib­eralism, but that tension between the two is inherent to lib­eralism itself. He contends that the fin­an­cial crisis shows that the polit­ical eco­nomy of class is back as prime shaper of struggle, negating the notion that lib­eral norms are uni­ver­sal. This influ­en­tial thinker ad­voc­ates that the left return to the Hegelian notion of a strong state and move away from support for lib­eral indi­vidual empowerment (Žižek 2010: 5, 37, 157, 200). It is abso­lutely true, and vital to highlight, that many injustices are carried out in the name of demo­cracy support, and that the latter can easily be used as a cloak for self-­centred Western eco­nomic inter­est in a way that militates against high-­quality polit­ical plur­al­ism. How­ever, the detailed pol­icy record once again shows a more varied pic­ture than is often painted. In most cases, Western states are more than happy to delink the commercial and demo­cracy agendas. The EU is currently negotiating a large number of trade deals with autocratic regimes, without any apparent worries over the absence of demo­cracy in these states. And conversely, the main post-­financial crisis trend in the West is pulling back from support for trade lib­eralisation. The Doha round is stuck; most bi­lat­eral trade deals are in fact ‘trade light’. Another point of relev­ance in response to the ‘elitist demo­cracy’, Marxian critique is that the one sector rarely included in demo­cracy initiatives is the business sector – trade unions get far more support from Western demo­cracy pro­mo­tion agencies. None of this is to argue that neo-­imperial dy­namics do not exist. But it is a plea for greater forensic rigour in determining what kind of pol­icy outcomes can be attributed to such dy­namics. Western gov­ern­ments are often admonished for striking commercial deals with autocrats, but then also for ‘demo­cratic imperialism’ when they do emphasise lib­eral norms in their foreign relations – damned if we do, damned if we don’t, some diplomats might feel. A good dose of imperialism could be said to lie in the convenient sidelining of demo­cracy more than any pernicious lib­eral understanding of polit­ical reform. Research suggests that people in autocratic states see ‘imperialism’ in Western double-­standards – sometimes supporting, sometimes deferring demo­cracy – more than in any adherence to a par­ticu­lar conceptual model of demo­cratic reform (Youngs 2010).

106   R. Youngs Many crit­ical points raised are im­port­ant and valid. They certainly offer a welcome complement to the focus of constructivism on identities: it is im­port­ant to redress the dominance of purely identity-­centred debates and recog­nise that the potential for and blockages to demo­cracy con­tinue to be rooted in mater­ial inter­ests and social structures. But there is much, perhaps wilful over-­conflating of the criticism of neo-­liberal eco­nom­ics with criticism of lib­eral demo­cracy. It is not true to say that Western powers neg­lect the eco­nomic dimension of demo­crat­isation in favour of a narrow focus on elections and polit­ical activists. Again, in the case of Euro­pean pol­icy exactly the reverse is the case: efforts aimed at the dispersal of eco­nomic power are given clear pri­or­ity. The prob­lem is more subtle: not so much a narrow exclusion of the eco­nomic dimension from the ‘conceptual pol­itics of demo­cracy’ as a failure to articulate more symbiotic linkages between eco­nomic and polit­ical change. For eco­nomic change to unleash pro-­democratic potential is not automatic but path-­dependent on parallel change in polit­ical rights, if the bene­fits of eco­nomic demo­crat­isation are not to be captured by incumbent autocratic regimes. A fourth con­tention is that approaches to demo­cracy pro­mo­tion are largely determined by pressure from multi­national com­panies for shallow rather than eman­cip­atory reform. This views fails to weather scrutiny. Empirical research has found that business views and actions vary enorm­ously. Some firms in some markets have indeed played a role in pushing for a curtailed form of low in­tens­ ity demo­cracy. But on other occasions, other firms – especially bigger nat­ural resources com­panies – prefer autocracy to low in­tens­ity demo­cracy. For example, some Middle Eastern regimes are now setting up business courts that are more efficient and predictable but act outside the purview of normal courts – and investors declare themselves happy with this situ­ation. Com­panies’ actions in this sense might help explain the lack of com­mit­ment to demo­cracy pro­mo­ tion but not to a par­ticu­lar, pernicious limited-­liberal form of demo­cracy. In still other cases, inter­na­tional com­panies have arrived at more enlightened conclusions that their own inter­ests depend on high-­quality demo­cracy, with active cit­ izen parti­cipa­tion, high education and social wel­fare pro­vi­sion, and improving Gini coef­fi­cients of equality. Not only is there much diversity in the positions adopted by inter­na­tional capital. Much un­cer­tainty also exists among executives over how their narrowly defined commercial inter­ests are affected by polit­ical structures. Most look for a lead on issues of pol­itics from diplomats rather than attempting to push the latter into a par­ticu­larly detailed line on demo­cracy pro­mo­tion. It is simply unconvincing to posit inter­na­tional capital as prime actor in herding Western states towards a uniform focus on a par­ticu­lar form of limited lib­eral demo­cracy everywhere in the world. Its actions are far more re­act­ive than this suggests, and more varied – sometimes worse and sometimes better (Youngs 2004: ch. 3). The book that did most to engender the neo-­Gramscian take on demo­cracy pro­mo­tion is unsatis­fact­ory in gen­eralising from an account centred on US pol­icy in Latin Amer­ica at one par­ticu­lar his­tor­ical moment (Robinson 1996). Many states where a neo-­Gramscian approach is alleged represent such small

Misunderstanding the maladies   107 markets it is doubtful that they represent major inter­ests for inter­na­tional capital: if the neo-­Gramscian account were correct we might expect the most assertive pro­mo­tion of limited demo­cracy to be found not in Ecuador or Niger but in China – precisely where we see an accommodation with the author­it­arian regime. More­over, the Gramscian framework must struggle with the fact that much low in­tens­ity demo­cracy today is of a leftist variety, certainly not falling over itself to meet the requirements of inter­na­tional capital. It is worth pointing out that John Locke’s now much-­maligned focus on private prop­erty (as being constitutive to polit­ical freedom) was part of his cam­ paign against serfdom – a pro­gressive product of its time, now pilloried as con­ ser­vat­ive dogma. A focus on prop­erty rights may not always be as regressive to substantive demo­cracy as many critics as­sume: in many coun­tries a major social concern of lower income groups is the impunity with which the gov­ern­ment is able to grab land from them. Often civil so­ci­ety organ­isa­tions themselves push for a stronger focus on private prop­erty rights within donor pol­icies. More­over, whether one thinks eco­nomic lib­eralisation is a good or bad thing, the fact that prop­erty rights have been extended around the world is hardly the result of a par­ ticu­lar conceptualistion of demo­cracy support pol­icies.

Forms of repres­enta­tion In one of the most eloquent of recent ana­lyses, John Dunn asserts that demo­ cracy today enjoys only a ‘reluct­ant deference’ because it has lost its ori­ginal sense of pop­ular parti­cipa­tion in decision-­making but is seen more narrowly as a popu­la­tion bestowing legitimacy upon the state through the prin­ciple of repres­ enta­tion. There is no genu­ine demo­crat­isation of life, but victory of the (classically rooted) notion of a ‘partially elective aristocracy’. This is valu­able in setting limits on the state but carries none of the stirring pre­ten­sions of demo­ cracy’s origins. Demo­cracy endures, Dunn argues, as ‘a recipe for nurturing the order of egoism’ (Dunn 2005: 17, 158, 176). The rel­ev­ant implication here is that the West has failed to find a way of promoting a really vibrant form of demo­cratic repres­enta­tion that extends beyond formalistic institutional change – a failure in some ways reflective of its own in­ternal polit­ical travails. Flowing from this, fifth in our list of key strands to the critique of lib­eral demo­cracy is the stand­ard criticism that Western demo­cracy promoters reduce demo­cracy to the holding of free and fair, com­petit­ive elections. While this admonishment con­tinues, it is not convincing today to accuse demo­cracy promoters of this ‘elect­oral fallacy’. No one ser­iously involved in demo­cracy support today argues that ‘demo­cracy equals elections’. The issue is how much effort is invested into pushing for free, multiparty elections compared to other com­pon­ents of high-­quality demo­cracy. Here it is simply not the case that Western demo­cracy promoters over-­concentrate their polit­ical capital or resources on elections to the detriment of more ‘substantive’ reforms. Indeed, if anything, pol­icy has shifted to the other extreme: the im­port­ance of elections is rather under-­estimated. Western gov­ern­ments prioritise social

108   R. Youngs pro­jects, civil so­ci­ety initiatives, good governance and many other reforms in coun­tries where they happily accept autocratically manipulated elections. Neither the US nor Euro­pean gov­ern­ments have tended to adopt punitive meas­ures in response to unfree elections with any significant degree of frequency. Coun­tries routinely win pol­icy upgrades from the Euro­pean Union in the aftermath of unfree elections: Ethi­opia, Rwanda, Armenia, Egypt, Azerbaijan, Tu­nisia and Morocco are just a few recent examples of this happening. The Euro­pean Par­lia­ ment is in battle with member-­state gov­ern­ments that fail to act in any way upon criticisms made by ob­ser­ver missions of flawed elections. The percentage of demo­cracy aid that goes to elect­oral pro­jects is no longer disproportionately high. In China, Euro­pean donors have switched funding from village election pro­jects to supporting the Chinese regime to build a social security system – exactly the oppos­ite of the stand­ard charges made against demo­cracy promoters. Western powers are not imposing a form of demo­cracy inappropriately based on or limited to elections. Indeed, the demand for freer elections is higher than the supply of support for free and fair elections from the inter­na­tional com­mun­ ity. More­over, it is a myth that donors do not accept elect­oral results they do not like. In most cases they do: Viktor Yanukovich’s victory in Ukraine and the AKP’s dominance in Turkey are two examples. Not every case is like the Hamas victory in 2006. Today the danger must be that the liberating role of elections is given insufficient due. Donors commonly argue now that free elections should only come after all other kinds of reforms have been implemented. How­ever, in many cases it is free elections that provide the breakthrough for other gains in polit­ical and social rights; a lack of free and fair elections is a block to other reforms, they are not just the end of a pro­cess. More­over, Western powers often presume people will wait more than they actu­ally want to for an inde­pend­ent voice in the choice of their gov­ern­ment (McFaul 2010: 66). Ironically, in their concern not to be foisting ‘Western-­style elections’ on other states, Western gov­ern­ments fall into the trap of thinking that reforms should everywhere follow the same path as Euro­pean his­tory, that saw fully free and inclusive pleb­is­cites come at the end of centuries of gradual reform (see Berman’s chapter). In this sense, withholding support for free elections could be said to be rather more Eurocentric than trying to temper non-­democratic regimes’ control of voting. A much repeated line is that (a softer) demo­cracy support pol­icy should be guided prim­arily by re­cog­ni­tion that ‘demo­crat­isation in Europe took 300 years’. But this seems to un­der­play the fact that this drawn out pro­cess witnessed untold bloodshed and upheaval – hardly an appropriate model for today’s demo­crats. A sixth point: the associated criticism that Western demo­cracy promoters are resistant to ‘al­tern­ative’ forms of repres­enta­tion. This accusation is also less than fully seized of the facts. De­velopment agencies and polit­ical founda­tions have increasingly engaged with tribal leaders and village level courts in the de­veloping world. Debates over conflict stabilisation initiatives have tilted strongly towards ‘vernacular’ understandings of demo­cracy based on informal and patronage-­based distributions of power (Elhawary et al. 2010: 17). The EU

Misunderstanding the maladies   109 talks of ‘specificities’ even in places like Georgia where demo­crats themselves reject the framing of debates in such terms. And most demo­cracy aid pro­jects are today about bridge-­building and medi­ation, not replicating Western institutions. From Afghanistan to Central Africa, from Nepal to Guatemala, the new leitmotif is support for ‘indi­gen­ous forms of recon­cili­ation’. Several Euro­pean gov­ ern­ments have supported pro­jects designed to organ­ise repres­enta­tion around indi­gen­ous rights in Bolivia; the US has been tougher on Evo Morales’ drugs pol­icy but has also sought to work in coopera­tion with his gov­ern­ment’s al­tern­ ative concept of repres­enta­tion. Euro­pean gov­ern­ments have backed the African Union Panel of the Wise, which includes tribal elders. In gen­eral, pol­icy shows evid­ence of becoming more pragmatic. It is simply untrue to say that donors are intent on imposing lib­eral demo­cracy in a way that overrides local participatory dy­namics. In fact under the Accra and Paris de­velopment agendas, the focus is now on supporting village-­level monitoring bodies overseeing municipal-­level budgets. The prob­lem lies not so much with a blind refusal to con­sider other forms of repres­enta­tion – indeed all the official discourse insists on quite the oppos­ite – but rather in understanding what this really means in practice. For example, exactly how should donors respond to and engage with dis­par­ate social movements that do not fit the Western model of representative bodies? All donors espouse ‘country-­specific approaches’. But this risks becoming an empty, if mellifluous, cliché. This author has certainly not heard any demo­cracy promoter ad­voc­ate ‘country-­blind approaches’. When one probes what ‘coun­try specific’ really means it appears bereft of clear opera­tional guidance in many con­texts. On the ground, donor co­ordination is identified as the big challenge; this is lacking precisely because a multiplicity of programmes and approaches are offered. In fact, the debate has already moved into a subsequent phase: donors that had recently been supporting traditional structures have now become more circumspect due to their less than favour­able ex­peri­ences on the ground. For example, the EU supported traditional Gacacca courts in Rwanda, as these were seen as a quicker, paperless track for geno­cide cases not ser­ious enough to be sent to the Arusha-­based Inter­na­tional Criminal Tri­bu­nal for Rwanda. But these courts have been dogged by complaints of witch-­hunts and controversial and often delayed rulings. Likewise, in the Demo­cratic Repub­lic of the Congo in the early 2000s the inter­na­tional com­mun­ity supported customary justice in some instances, but then stopped. This was because of a series of controversial de­cisions, for example involving rape cases in which tribal chiefs often ruled that the rapist and the victim should be forced to marry. Land ownership systems managed by chiefdoms have proven a barrier to ‘demo­cratising’ cit­izen­ship rights over land. The situ­ation now among donors is one of great un­cer­tainty about how to engage with customary justice. The drift is towards, rather, looking at ‘trans­itional justice’, which aims to provide redress for moments of egregious rights abuses but often appears delinked from the longer-­term reform agenda. Neither is it quite true to accuse Western gov­ern­ments of adhering to a lib­eral demo­cratic model that allows no room for religion-­based repres­enta­tion, as some

110   R. Youngs critics now do. Western gov­ern­ments have long provided fulsome support for Leb­anon’s confessional-­based demo­cracy. Pro­gress has been halting on engaging Islamists, and this remains an area of concern in Western pol­icies. But this is not prim­arily a prob­lem of a narrow ‘conceptual pol­itics of demo­cracy’. In recent years, Western-­democracy promoters have taken a step away from equating demo­cracy with pure secularism. Hundreds of Western funded pro­jects now facilitate religious dialogue. Many, many deliberative forums are funded on identity questions – all very Habermasian in nature. The West is not good at engaging with Islamists. But shortcomings in such engagement are not because it is working to a conceptual model of demo­cracy that excludes religiosity. The lib­eral tendency has actu­ally been towards ‘understanding religious dif­fer­ences’ much more than towards pressing lib­eral polit­ical norms as antidote to the root causes of rad­icalism. A seventh and final line of attack is the routine assertion that local demand is always for something other than lib­eral demo­cracy. The reality is more mixed. Traditional local forms are themselves highly contested. There are undoubtedly concerns with Western forms being inappropriately implemented. But there are also concerns that the West patronises many local civic groups, assuming they hanker after some kind of tribally based identity when what they really want is external help with the basic protection of lib­eral rights. Many local groups complain that donors have become far too indulgent towards traditional forms that are deeply undemo­cratic, for example in their treatment of women. The inter­na­ tional com­mun­ity’s attempt to ‘bring in the Taliban’ may seem perfectly sensible and desir­able, but it has also unleashed howls of protest from the ‘demo­cratic’ opposi­tion to the Karzai gov­ern­ment. Asked the very question about ‘the need for al­tern­ative models of demo­cracy’ ex­plored by some con­trib­utors to this volume, the replies of civic actors in the target states of demo­cracy support are often thought-­provoking. ‘Traditional forums must con­tinue, yes; but a different model of demo­cracy, no’, replies one Nepalese student activist. ‘Just word games’, sighs one African NGO leader. The pos­it­ive view now taken by policy-­makers towards ‘traditional structures’ may have extremely welcome elements. But – right or wrong – it is the very anti­thesis of the philosophical roots of polit­ical lib­eralism in the conceptual war on ossified tradition. Inter­estingly, Marxists are now in the forefront of critiquing this support for traditional forms: in their idiom, this ‘organic lifeworld’ is replete with ossified forms of domination. The Marxist line is that the lib­eral tolerance for such al­tern­ative forms is now so great it will form part of lib­eralism’s self-­destruction – as a creed tolerant of its antitheses. Bernard-­Henri Lévy maintains that imperialism was the nega­tion of, not the insistence on, the uni­ver­sality of stand­ard lib­eral pol­itics (Lévy 2009: 194). The latter years of British imperialism repres­ented the defeat, not the apogee, of Glad­stonian lib­eralism. Strategies need to look forwards. Where a new ‘conceptual pol­itics of demo­ cracy pro­mo­tion’ is required is in pre-­empting qualit­at­ive shifts in the forms of cit­izen account­ability. Cyber-­activism is the big new focus, especially among younger sectors of the popu­la­tion. Donors still struggle to build this into their

Misunderstanding the maladies   111 democracy-­support profiles. The prob­lem is not an overdose of outside support for lib­eral indi­vidual empowerment but a pref­er­ence for state-­controlled limited governance reform against such new forms of civic organ­isa­tion. The inter­na­ tional com­mun­ity supported the Equity and Recon­cili­ation Commission in Morocco, which most ob­ser­vers saw as an effort to pre-­empt demo­cratic breakthrough; at the same time, clampdowns against social networks and new media in Morocco elicited no crit­ical inter­na­tional response. Sim­ilarly in Egypt, most genu­ine civil so­ci­ety activists now re­gis­ter as law firms or civil com­panies to get around regime restrictions on civil so­ci­ety, but at the time of writing neither the US nor the EU have responded to this in their funding rules, for fear of upsetting the Mubarak regime. In short, debate over different forms of demo­cracy is needed; but the West does little to advance the core lib­eral freedoms of thought and expression that would enable such pref­er­ences to be freely deliberated.

Reflections on lib­eralism’s future Current inter­na­tional polit­ical trends are complex and still in flux. His­tory shows that there are no iron laws of demo­crat­isation, and dominant polit­ical dy­namics can prove strikingly changeable. The easy triumphalism of the lib­eral demo­cracy agenda in the 1990s was misplaced. How­ever, much criticism now risks over-­ shooting (Garton-­Ash 2004; Halliday 2009: 37–51). The Bush administration provided an easy dog to kick. But its excessive awfulness skewered the nature of conceptual debate: crit­ical theory has become as lacking in self-­reflexivity as the ‘lib­eral imperialism’ it everywhere sees and excoriates. A nuanced view is warranted of the ‘demo­cracy backlash’ (Burnell and Youngs 2010). We should indeed be attentive to a lack of flex­ib­il­ity in the conceptualisation of demo­cracy. The con­sidera­tion of a variety of models is neces­ sary and desir­able. How­ever, the evid­ence does not sustain the suggestion that the most ser­ious prob­lem with demo­cracy pro­mo­tion today is an excess of the ‘lib­eral’ in lib­eral demo­cracy. Indeed, in many places quite the reverse is true. The most worrying prob­lem is not practitioners’ lack of willingness to con­sider varieties of demo­cratic institutions but the lack of pri­or­ity attached to advancing core lib­eral rights. As Western powers decline, this trend is likely to deepen in the future. Lib­eralism will increasingly be on the back foot not overly dominant. In this sense, assuming that lib­eralism is dominant risks lagging behind the pol­icy curve. Dahl’s definition of demo­cracy may be partial and narrow, but can we really not with confidence say that it is better than the author­it­arianism that the West is still propping up under the guise of respect for ‘local values’? More­over, the ‘lib­eral overdose’ argument is curious to the extent that since the end of the 1990s a central thrust of debate common to de­velopment, security and governance circles has been ‘the rediscovery of the state’. The stress on core lib­eral polit­ical norms is today under- not over played. It con­tinues to be the centrally im­port­ant area where local reformers look to the

112   R. Youngs inter­na­tional com­mun­ity for support – most commonly, in vain. Deliberations over precise institutional configurations and second-­generation reforms are of a lesser order of im­port­ance. Michael McFaul observes that some debates about the intricate sequencing of reform and different varieties of institutional path­ ways look incongruous, as the US can today do little to influence such details but only back core demo­cratic values (McFaul 2010: 154). Yet it still hesitates to do so, for all the stand­ard commentary on US ‘lib­eral imperialism’. Lib­eral inter­ na­tionalism is still de-­legitimised by the per­vas­ive as­sump­tion that it is concerned prim­arily with mobilising milit­ary force in support of demo­cratic values; it must be made clearer that milit­ary power is simply ana­thema to the stand­ard day-­to-day agenda of demo­cracy support. There are different levels of critique, which risk elision. One thing is to argue that Western powers should support core lib­eral demo­cratic prin­ciples, then from this base work to build into their pol­icies a concern with social equality, parti­ cipa­tion, deliberation and religious identity. It would be entirely convincing to argue that, while demo­cracy promoters have advanced, they could and should be doing more in this dir­ec­tion. But it is quite another thing to suggest that such aims should be supported against or instead of core lib­eral norms. In practice, what many critics appear to ad­voc­ate is not a cumulative combination but a dilution of the lib­eral com­pon­ent in favour of other forms. They betray a core inconsistency: they dislike demo­cracy pro­mo­tion for being overly intrusive but then ad­voc­ate modifications that would make it more, not less, intrusive. This is because most suggested ‘al­tern­ative forms of demo­cracy’ breach the line between pro­cess and substantive pol­icy outputs – they ad­voc­ate par­ticu­lar ends, not just a type of policy-­making means. The concrete examples of Euro­pean pol­icies dem­on­strate that it is hardly cred­ible to ‘accuse’ Brussels of being an unthinking citadel of blinkered lib­ eralism. Indeed, in this author’s ex­peri­ence, conversations with policy-­makers reveal this to be akin to an almost unmentionable L-­word. When so much doubt and ambivalence now suffuses demo­cracy support strategies, it is unconvincing to admonish the latter for being uniformly, heavily prescriptive. Donors’ tendency to see demo­cracy through the prism of their own polit­ical systems still often surfaces. But in terms of the way that the ‘demo­cracy’ in demo­cracy support is defined conceptually it would seem somewhat redundant now to warn donors of the dangers of heavily prescriptive institutional templates. There is some evid­ence of the self-­reflexive policy-­learning on the part of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion practitioners that many critics as­sume is entirely lacking. Indeed, genu­ine doubt over the most suit­able paths forward has reached the point where some actors are reduced to immobilism. If Laurence Whitehead is right (in this volume) to argue for a conceptualisation of demo­cracy that is ‘floating but an­chored’, it is apt to note that current demo­cracy support pol­icies exhibit as much that is floating as is an­chored. The prob­lem is that while policy­relevant know­ledge has accu­mu­lated, it has done so in an ad hoc fashion and has not been systematised into common or comprehensive new approaches (Carothers 2009b).

Misunderstanding the maladies   113 The influences on demo­cracy strategy of aca­demic traditions are eclectic. If we were to trace the philosophical roots of Euro­pean good governance and demo­cracy support pol­icies it is simply not the case that Locke prevails over all else. The breadth of demo­cracy assistance programmes goes way beyond the Schumpeterian. The stress on the role of the state and the existential identity-­value of the polit­ical com­mun­ity found in many current pol­icy initi­ atives finds reson­ance (if unconsciously) in thinking that his­tor­ically stood as the anti­thesis to polit­ical lib­eralism. Such a line can be traced from Ar­is­totle’s view of the polit­ical com­mun­ity as a biological organism; to Rousseau’s insistence that the gen­eral will embodies a mys­tical, spiritual col­lect­ive identity of the polit­ical com­mun­ity above and beyond the will of the majority; through to Hegel’s system centred on the state as the organic embodiment of col­lect­ive inter­ests and identity, the ‘abso­lute’ within which the indi­vidual finds his very meaning. This is not to say any such strand of thinking would capture entirely the ideas that inform today’s foreign pol­icies. How­ever, the pertinent point is that the underpinnings of these pol­icies can be seen in writers who were in combat with Lockean lib­eralism. The stand­ard Euro­pean discourse on equality being more im­port­ant than formal polit­ical demo­cracy has a direct echo in (polit­ ically) anti-­liberal Rousseau. Concerns over the ‘tyranny of the majority’ that inform power-­sharing strategies in post-­conflict situ­ations have a long line of antecedent philo­sophers who inveighed strongly against the will of the majority, from Ar­is­totle through even to Kant (who was concerned with the repub­ lican separation of executive and legis­la­tion but certainly not with augmenting pop­ular power against the aristocracy). Even Benthamite rad­ical utilitarianism shines through, with its concern with a strong rule of law to restrain indi­ vidual freedoms and ensure greater equality in the furtherance of col­lect­ive inter­ests. If any modern philo­sopher is the thinker of choice for today’s discerning Eurocrat it is Habermas, not the classic lib­erals. In gen­eral, deliberative demo­ cracy has been most widely ad­voc­ated as a means of situating ab­stract cosmo­ pol­itan uni­versal­ism within concrete and varied social settings (see Chatterjee 2008). And all this offsetting of pure liberalism is quite apart from the more obvious cases of cynical realpolitik that take their cue from the more violent illib­eralism of Machiavelli and Hobbes.1 It is self-­evident that lib­eral demo­cracy now shares the conceptual field with rivals in a way that it did not in the 1990s. This may provide for vibrant debate and much-­needed self-­examination. But it does not neces­sar­ily mean that al­tern­atives have superior legitimacy. Allowing analytic space for a wider variety of forms and definitions of demo­cracy does not mean that sover­eign demo­cracy, Islamic demo­cracy, tribal demo­cracy or Bolivarian demo­cracy are neces­sar­ily superior or more in tune with local demands. With the West accused of being overly prescriptive of a lib­eral form of demo­cracy, it would be corruptive of the critique to jump straight into advocating other pre-­cooked forms. It should be remembered that a form such as social demo­cracy is just as

114   R. Youngs ‘Western’ in its origins as lib­eral demo­cracy: there is no reason a priori to as­sume that it cor­res­ponds more closely to ‘local demands’ in the way that is routinely and rather uncrit­ically suggested (how­ever much one may oneself desire socially demo­cratic outcomes). If the ascendance of conceptual competitors can add usefully to the para­meters of desir­able polit­ical reform, it is not incom­pat­ible with this that they should at the same time sharpen the West’s defence of core lib­eralism. Crit­ical theorists skate a thin line: they issue pleas for a re­thinking of demo­ cracy, but scratch beneath the surface and what they really lionise is undemo­ cratic state-­led de­velopment; theirs is in fact not a genu­ine concern with reconceptualising demo­cracy so much as a pretty wholesale questioning of the demo­cracy agenda, dressed up in softened discourse. A central pivot of many such critiques is the criticism of lib­eralism’s tele­olo­gical arrogance. But this centres too much on one influ­en­tial book published at one rather distinctive moment in time (Fukuyama 1992); lib­eralism more broadly and prop­erly understood is not teleology. More­over, many writers argue against teleology and prescription but then in the next breath confidently assert that social demo­ cracy must be a superior and more accept­able form of demo­cracy outside the West and one which has a more sus­tain­able long-­term future (cf. Patomäki’s chapter). This may be the case, but these critics have no philosophical justification for saying so without replicating the very same presumptiousness they profess to dislike in ‘lib­eral’ tenets – and thus contradicting themselves. Clearly, more debate about different forms of polit­ical repres­enta­tion would be healthy. Allowing space for a plurality of routes to and types of polit­ical reform would sit well with the core spirit of demo­cracy. How­ever, while more flex­ib­il­ity and open-­mindedness are still required in demo­cracy pro­mo­tion, there is a risk of being unduly defensive about the virtues of lib­eral demo­ cracy’s core tenets. The prob­lem in many places of the world is the absence of lib­eralism’s core values, not their excess. Vigil­ance in the need for demo­ cracy’s reconceptualisation is indeed merited. But it would be a muddled reasoning that took this to provide a case for the wholesale pullback from (already anaemic) support for lib­eral demo­cracy’s notion of fundamental polit­ical rights. We need more fully to understand local demands. But there is an automatic as­sump­tion routinely made that such demands are for more diverse, anti-­liberal polit­ical forms. This may in many places be the case, but the evid­ence must be assembled. One cannot simply assert this as if it were axiomatic to the emerging world order; there is no reason for supposing a priori that this is a nat­ural outcome of the rebalancing of inter­na­tional order. The evid­ence that exists points, again, to a more nuanced conclusion: a demand for the essential tenets of lib­eral uni­versal­ism, made rel­ev­ant to and expressed through the language and concepts of local cultures and histories. A growing focus within polit­ical philo­ sophy has been on ‘cap­abil­ities’: negat­ive lib­eral freedoms need to be deepened but also combined with the locally rooted cap­abil­ities that ensure their effect­ive realisation.2

Misunderstanding the maladies   115 The central thrust of Locke’s lib­eralism was anti-­dogmatism and prudence. The irony – and, for anyone concerned over demo­cracy’s health, the tragedy – is that inter­na­tional support for a supposedly lib­eral demo­cratic agenda is today associated with exactly the oppos­ite of these values. It is the non-­dogmatic spirit that lib­eralism must work to recover: lib­eral demo­cracy as a system that (simply) creates space for a variety of different local choices. Ad­voc­ates and op­pon­ents of lib­eralism are trapped in a circular debate over this mat­ter: while core lib­eral freedoms are required to make such local choices, critics insist that those very lib­eral rights are themselves a corruption of local auto­nomy. The imperative is not for lib­eralism to cede to other creeds, but to work towards squaring the circle that has always existed at its heart: that is, lib­eralism is in its very essence the rejection of utopian polit­ical design, yet, if not pursued with care, itself can appear as an unbending utopia. This defines its challenge: can lib­eralism stand convincingly as an anti-­utopian creed whose own propulsion requires courageous norm­ative conviction? Can it strike the Rawlsian balance of deepening a plurality of values without descent into relativism? Where it is most convincing to argue that a reconceptualisation is required is in relation to the multi­lateral dimension. Western powers’ strategies of demo­cracy support within par­ticu­lar national con­texts take place in complete isolation from their own multi­lateral diplo­macy. It is the fact that the multi­lateral pursuit of eco­ nomic lib­eralism has no counterpart in the sphere of polit­ical lib­eralism that risks leaving the latter devoid of its ori­ginal, classical idealism (Kienle 2010). The changing world order and deepening interdependence across many spheres renders this separation prejudicial to the chances for success at both levels. Rectifying this is not a mat­ter of a highly idealist claim in favour of a cosmo­pol­itan demo­cracy, that in light of today’s shifting power constellations looks increasingly improbable. Neither is the link simply a mat­ter of getting rising powers signed up to the Western agenda of demo­cracy support; such instrumentality is likely to backfire badly. But, conversely, it is essential to avoid the oppos­ite extreme of presuming that the link must be entirely negat­ive: that any effort in favour of globalism hollows out national-­level demo­cratic rights or that advances in demo­cratic rights nationally must undercut support for globalism. The nature of national-­international links is multifaceted and complex, and thus needs far more careful deliberation. Debate con­tinues between two pos­sible routes: a demo­crat­isation of traditional inter-­state relations (‘a demo­cracy of demo­cra­cies’) versus a more rad­ical and qualit­at­ive shift in multi­lateralism. Certainly, there must be a case for understanding that the pursuit of power-­based, state-­centric forms of multi­lateralism risks working against the very kind of local empowerment central to national-­level demo­cracy support programmes. Demo­ cracy promoters must begin to understand how their macro-­multilateral pol­icies effect the systematic constraints and potential rel­ev­ant to the health, vibrancy and impact of demo­cracy at the national level. In the absence of such a re­think on this question, advances at the level of specific demo­cracy support initiatives are likely to be overridden by systemic imbalances that sap the desired ‘demo­ crat­isation of demo­cracy’.

116   R. Youngs

Notes 1 This mix exists not only at a super­fic­ ial level, but extends right back to the cleavage in philosophical method that separates lib­eralism and illib­eralism: the deductive positing of a priori ideals, in a line extending from Plato through to Hegel, standing in distinction to the inductive empiricism of the English lib­erals. 2 For a summary of the long-­running and complex debates over ‘cap­abil­ities’, see Chatterjee (2008).

Part II

Cases

7 The conceptual pol­itics of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion in Bolivia Jonas Wolff  1

Introduction Bolivia presents a text-­book case for the conceptual pol­itics approach outlined in the Introduction to this volume. During the 1990s Bolivia became a much-­lauded de­velopment model (Mayorga 1997; Puhle 2001; Whitehead 2001a): fol­low­ing a turbulent, but ultimately successful transition to demo­cracy in the early 1980s, Bolivia first implemented a program of drastic macro­economic stabilization, then embarked on a strategy of second-­generation reforms that included (neo-­ liberally guided) structural adjustment, like privatization, and polit­ical reforms that deepened decentralization and pop­ular parti­cipa­tion. All this took place in a demo­cratic setting that was dominated by three major polit­ical par­ties that gov­ erned the coun­try in changing co­ali­tions and that were united by a broad consensus around lib­eral demo­cracy and neo-­liberal eco­nom­ics. Bolivia’s ‘pacted demo­cracy’, as it was called, appeared to follow a rather linear path towards consolidating into a lib­eral demo­cracy, understood as ‘consti­tu­tional, representative, indi­vidualistic, voluntaristic, privatistic, functionally limited, polit­ical demo­cracy as practiced within nation-­states’ (Schmitter 2006: 1). The ‘donor com­mun­ity’ enthusiastically en­dorsed and supported Bolivia’s reform pro­cess, with demo­cracy and governance – alongside eco­nomic reforms and pov­erty reduction – being the main areas of support. In this con­text, not much debate about the meaning and value of demo­cracy seemed neces­sary. At least in a gen­eral sense, both the Bolivian gov­ern­ment and  external actors took lib­eral demo­cracy ‘as the consensus end point being worked towards’ (Introduction: 2). The gen­eral path towards this destination seemed equally uncontroversial. After the turn of the century, this situ­ation has changed funda­ment­ally. Since the first election of Evo Morales as Pres­id­ent of Bolivia in 2005, the coun­try has been undergoing a pro­cess of profound polit­ical transformation that affects the most basic para­meters of how demo­cracy is conceived (cf. Crabtree and Whitehead 2008; Kohl and Bresnahan 2010; Wolff forthcoming). The issues at stake in this con­tentious transformation are: the model of demo­cracy (representative vs. participatory demo­cracy), the relationship between lib­eralism/lib­erty and demo­cracy/equality, the nature and breadth of human rights, the relation between pol­itics and eco­nom­ics, and even the very

120   J. Wolff nature of the state (unitary vs. plurinational). In this con­text, external demo­cracy pro­mo­tion is confronted with fundamental questions that directly relate to the conceptual pol­itics of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion: What kind of demo­cracy should be supported? Towards what destination is Bolivia’s polit­ical transformation headed? What would a desir­able and feasible ‘end point’ look like? How should demo­cracy promoters deal with contested meanings of demo­cracy that erupt both within the ‘recipient’ coun­try and between external actors and the local gov­ern­ment? Which polit­ical practices and institutions are legitimate within a broad understanding of demo­cracy (and thus to be accepted or even supported), and which represent a devi­ation from demo­cratic stand­ards (that is to be criticized or even pun­ished)? Bolivia, in this sense, represents an exceptional case for the debate on and practice of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion. The con­tempor­ary transformation of demo­cracy in this Andean coun­try constitutes one of the very few ex­peri­ences world-­wide in which there is a ser­ious effort to construct a demo­ cratic regime that, at least partially, deviates from mainstream conceptions of lib­eral demo­cracy.2 Contestation about demo­cracy and demo­cracy pro­mo­tion occurs not only between external and local actors, i.e. between demo­cracy promoters and the ‘recipient’ coun­try. As Hobson and Kurki argue in the Introduction, another site of conceptual pol­itics concerns different demo­cracy pro­mo­tion agencies. In this regard, comparing the US and Ger­many is especially inter­esting. Both are among the most im­port­ant actors in the field but are usually associated with quite different approaches. Although systematic comparative studies are missing, the ‘superpower’ and ‘lib­eral hegemon’ US and the ‘civilian power’ and ‘export nation’ Ger­many are usually seen as representing rather different approaches to demo­cracy pro­mo­tion: a polit­ical (and revolu­tionary) versus a de­velop­mental (and evolutionary) conception of demo­crat­ization, a missionary versus a reluct­ ant attitude towards meddling in other coun­tries’ affairs; an offensive/confrontational versus a cooperative/dialogue-­oriented stance; and dominance of security-­related vs. eco­nomic concerns (Spanger and Wolff 2007a: 280–4).3 These are, of course, overly simplistic ascriptions. Yet, they at least signal that we should expect conceptual dif­fer­ences between the US and Ger­many, should there be any substance behind the claim that conceptual contestation over demo­ cracy’s meaning occurs also between different demo­cracy promoters (see Introduction). Systematically speaking, then, what follows is a plausibility probe of the conceptual pol­itics approach applied to rather easy cases: both between Bolivia and external demo­cracy promoters in gen­eral and between the US and Ger­many, contestation and divergence are most likely or, in fact, obvious. Thus, we should expect the conceptual pol­itics per­spect­ive to bear significant insights. This chapter will start from the Bolivian ex­peri­ence, i.e. the conceptual challenges to demo­cracy pro­mo­tion in gen­eral that arise from the ongoing transformation of demo­cracy in Bolivia. These challenges relate to the mainstream conceptualization of demo­crat­ization (section 2), as well as to the dominant model of lib­eral demo­cracy (section 3) that gen­erally inform North-­Western efforts to promote

Democracy promotion in Bolivia   121 demo­cracy. Then, in a brief comparison of US and German pol­icies towards Bolivia, the relev­ance of the conceptual pol­itics for the behavior of these two par­ticu­lar demo­cracy promoters will be assessed (section 4).

Contestation in demo­crat­ization: challenging demo­cracy’s ‘instrumental value’ and ‘illusions about consolidation’ An im­port­ant line of argument in jus­tifying demo­cracy pro­mo­tion draws on the supposed ‘instrumental value’ of demo­cracy: Demo­cracy is seen as not only a good and noble thing in and of itself but also as con­trib­ut­ing to a whole series of other goods, including intra- and inter-­state peace, human rights, eco­nomic wel­ fare, pov­erty reduction and social justice (cf. Spanger and Wolff 2007b). How­ ever, Bolivia’s recent his­tory makes it clear that a deepening of demo­cracy – in the sense of increased demo­cratic parti­cipa­tion and polit­ical inclusion of formerly mar­ginalized sectors of so­ci­ety – can lead to substantive outcomes that are not in line with ‘donor’ pref­er­ences, which as­sume that ‘all good things go together’. In the mid-­1990s, Bolivia saw sweeping polit­ical reforms, most notably in terms of ‘decentralization’ and ‘pop­ular parti­cipa­tion’. An im­port­ant aim was to increase the demo­cratic parti­cipa­tion at the local level in order to bring demo­ cracy closer to the people and, thereby, make the demo­cratic institutions both more effect­ive and more stable. These reforms included the nationwide estab­ lishment of muni­cipal gov­ern­ments with demo­cratic elections and additional mech­an­isms of social control at the local level. Furthermore, part of the national par­lia­ment was now to be elected in uninom­inal (single-­member) elect­oral districts. A direct con­sequence of these polit­ical reforms was an opening up of the polit­ical system and, in par­ticu­lar, a strengthening of polit­ical forces with strong regional or local pres­ence. For example throughout the Chapare, one of Bolivia’s major coca-­growing regions, representatives of the cocalero (coca-­growers) federations were elected Mayors. In 1997, four cocaleros won seats in Congress, including Evo Morales, the leader of the main cocalero federation, who was elected with the highest share of votes in the whole coun­try. This polit­ical rise and inclusion of formerly mar­ginalized sectors of so­ci­ety cul­min­ated in the election of Morales as Bolivia’s first indi­gen­ous pres­id­ent in 2005. Although, of course, a series of factors con­trib­uted to this polit­ical success story, there is ample evid­ence that the deepening of demo­cracy, brought about by the polit­ical reforms in the 1990s, played an im­port­ant en­ab­ling role (cf. Van Cott 2005: ch. 3). The victory of Morales in 2005 indicates a successful polit­ical incorporation of formerly mar­ginalized sectors of so­ci­ety and, thus, a deepening of Bolivian demo­cracy. At the same time, how­ever, the new gov­ern­ment has clearly challenged ‘donor’ pref­er­ences. Morales has abandoned the US-­driven ‘War on Drugs’ in favor of cooperative coca eradication only and turned away from the neolib­eral de­velopment model in favor of a greatly enhanced role of the state in the eco­nomy (cf. Kohl and Bresnahan 2010; Wolff 2011).4 Yet, the prob­lem is

122   J. Wolff not limited to the well-­known conflict of aims between demo­cracy pro­mo­tion as a (weak) norm­ative orientation and pursuing eco­nomic and/or security concerns as (hard) mater­ial inter­ests: the state-­based eco­nomic and social pol­icies promoted by Morales and his gov­ern­ment – and, in par­ticu­lar, the pol­icy of ‘nationalizations’ – clearly differ from what the US and Ger­many conceive of as ‘good demo­cratic governance’ (cf. BMZ 2007: 4; Franco 2006: 18). In addition, the polit­ical empowerment and inclusion of the indi­gen­ous and social movements in Bolivia did not in fact sta­bil­ize or consolidate the demo­cratic system (cf. Crabtree and Whitehead 2008; Yashar 2005: ch. 5). Instead, it resulted, first, in a period of polit­ical turbulence and crisis (2000–2005) that included the toppling of two pres­id­ents and cul­min­ated in a conflict-­ridden dis­mant­ling of the existing institutional setting with a view to building a largely new polit­ical system (2006–present). This contrasts with another mainstream conception characterizing demo­cracy pro­mo­tion: the notion that the deepening and the consolidation of demo­cracy are two sides of the same coin; that improving the breadth and quality of parti­cipa­tion helps strengthen demo­cratic institutions, and vice versa. As a con­ sequence, protecting the existing demo­cratic institutions and promoting their further demo­crat­ization are seen as com­plement­ary tasks without major contra­dic­ tions. The risks associated with demo­crat­ization are gen­erally attributed to the initial phase of transition from author­it­arian rule only (cf. Mansfield and Snyder 2008). Yet, the demo­cratic state (as any state) institutionalizes social power relations; post-­transition demo­cra­cies are regu­larly built on (institutionalized) pacts and social compromises; and, in gen­eral, demo­cracy under con­ditions of structural social in­equal­it­ies depends on systematic limits to demo­cratic parti­cipa­tion in order to include the elites in the polit­ical game (cf. Rueschemeyer et al. 1992). Hence, a deepening of demo­cracy that aims at leveling the demo­cratic playing field by enhancing the parti­cipa­tion of mar­ginalized sectors will lead to demands for institutional change and, if successful, to a de-­consolidation of real-­existing demo­cratic institutions. Such pro­cesses may not ‘only’ undermine the lib­eral demo­cratic institutional order: if rad­ical demands for redis­tribu­tion in eco­nomic resources and polit­ical power meet the fierce resistance on part of threatened elites (including the privileged middle class), polarization can lead to escalating violent conflict, with the threat of civil war looming. At the heart of the dubious ‘instrumental value’ of demo­cracy and the ‘illusions about consolidation’5 is a conception of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion that Tony Smith once dubbed ‘con­ser­vat­ive rad­icalism’. This ‘paradoxical form’, that according to Smith, constitutes the ‘genius’ and ‘tragedy’ of US demo­cracy pro­ mo­tion, is ‘rad­ical in that for many coun­tries, demo­cracy has meant an abrupt and basic polit­ical change away from the narrow-­based author­it­arian gov­ern­ ments’, and at the same time ‘con­ser­vat­ive in that in fundamental ways, the Amer­icans have not meant to disturb the traditional social power relations based on prop­erty ownership’ (Smith 1994: 17–18). The Bolivian transition to demo­cracy largely followed this model.6 In extending this ex­peri­ence, the predominant expectation on the part of the ‘donor com­mun­ity’ was that when the poor and indi­gen­ous sectors of Bolivian so­ci­ety began to parti­cip­ate in the

Democracy promotion in Bolivia   123 pro­cesses of formal pol­itics they would ‘learn’ that lib­eral demo­cracy, neolib­eral eco­nom­ics, abandonment of a pro­ject of larger redis­tribu­tion of social power relations, con­tinu­ous efforts in coca eradication, etc. were ultimately in their own best inter­est. Yet, as will be seen, this was not precisely what happened.7

Contested models of demo­cracy: challenging the ‘transition para­digm’ and ‘lib­eral uni­versal­ism’ The ongoing transformation of demo­cracy in Bolivia is clearly characterized by contestation about the model of demo­cracy. Between 2006 and 2009, this contestation was centered on the pro­ject to rewrite the coun­try’s consti­tu­tion. In 2006, a Constituent Assembly was elected in order to draft a new Magna Carta. After a complicated and con­tentious pro­cess, in Janu­ary 2009 a new consti­tu­tion was adopted by referendum. Both the pro­cess of rewriting Bolivia’s consti­tu­tion and the new consti­tu­tion itself dem­on­strate the relev­ance of contested conceptions and models of demo­cracy (cf. Romero et al. 2009). Re­gard­ing the pro­cess of consti­tu­tional reform, a con­tinu­ous question concerned the rel­at­ive weight of basic demo­cratic legitimacy based on the polit­ical will of the majority and specific questions of legality and pro­ced­ural correctness (par­ticu­larly with a view to protecting the rights of minor­it­ies). On the one hand, impressive elect­oral victories since 2005 have dem­on­strated that Morales, his Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) and the pro­ject of consti­tu­tional reform could rely on solid and clearly majoritarian support among the popu­la­tion.8 On the other hand, the whole pro­cess of consti­tu­tional reform has been accompanied by controversial de­cisions and, in part, open irregu­larities. For example, in a highly disputed pro­ced­ure the draft for the new consti­tu­tion was adopted by the Constituent Assembly by a two-­thirds majority of the present members of the Assembly only, with the most im­port­ant opposi­tion groups being absent. Fol­ low­ing some nine months of polit­ical struggle, a two-­thirds majority in Congress agreed on a detailed revision of the consti­tu­tional draft; this pro­ced­ure lacked any legal basis but was crucial for en­ab­ling the consti­tu­tional reform to be accepted even by parts of the opposi­tion and, thus, for preventing a further escalation of polit­ical conflict (cf. Böhrt 2009). The gen­eral prob­lem concerning this pro­cess of polit­ical change is that it is just as undemo­cratic to stick categorically to pro­ced­ural regulations that grant a veto to the (institutionally) vested inter­ests of privileged elites as it is to enforce a redistributive polit­ical pro­ject that has majoritarian support but overrides all consti­tu­tional protection of minor­it­ies. Very clearly we are dealing here with a polit­ical struggle that involves conceptual pol­itics: whether one emphas­izes the pro­ced­ural/consti­tu­tional or the substantive/repub­lican dimension of demo­cracy is polit­ically consequential. From the former per­spect­ive, the Morales gov­ern­ment brought a deterioration in terms of horizontal account­ability and transparent, effect­ive, efficient and rule-­ bound (‘good’) governance. It lacked respect for the estab­lished institutional order and gradually dismantled institutional controls and pro­ced­ural rules while

124   J. Wolff new ones had yet to be estab­lished. From the latter per­spect­ive, in contrast, the quality of Bolivian demo­cracy in terms of repres­enta­tion and parti­cipa­tion (inclusion and ver­tical account­ability) has greatly improved. Both Bolivia’s gov­ ern­ment and the par­lia­ment are con­sider­ably more representative today than any predecessors, the new consti­tu­tion can count on more demo­cratic legitimacy than any consti­tu­tion before, and polit­ical parti­cipa­tion – meas­ur­able in, but not limited to elect­oral events – has clearly grown (cf. Barrios 2008; Wolff 2009). The transformation of Bolivian demo­cracy is, thus, a contra­dict­ory pro­cess that does not follow a linear path from less to more demo­cracy. A dog­matic emphasis on pro­ced­ure as­sumes that the path to demo­cracy is linear, that other forms of demo­cratic pro­gress are realized only after poly­archy is first perfected, and that therefore any coun­try where poly­archy is more advanced is neces­sar­ily more demo­cratic than one where poly­archy is less advanced or absent. Yet one might reject this as­sump­tion and, con­sequently emphas­ize social real­it­ies over formal structures – even while conceding that poly­archy, other things being equal, greatly enhances the pro­spects for a demo­ cratic outcome and is neces­sary for the consolidation of such an outcome. (Roth 2000: 496) A look at the new consti­tu­tion confirms this point: adopting the terminology proposed in the Introduction, it expresses the result of both contestation within lib­eral demo­cracy and a con­tentious attempt to go beyond lib­eral demo­cracy. In gen­eral, Bolivia’s new Magna Carta cor­res­ponds to the usual stand­ards of demo­ cracy and human rights but includes im­port­ant devi­ations from mainstream liberal-­democratic (and thus ‘donor’) conceptions. On the one hand, the new consti­tu­tion includes the ‘classical’ series of polit­ical and civil rights and the new polit­ical system is dominated by ‘traditional’ mech­an­isms and institutions of representative demo­cracy. On the other, this basically liberal-­democratic order is amended and modified to an im­port­ant extent: indi­gen­ous (customary) law is estab­lished as a second justice system besides ordinary law, with equal ranking; indi­gen­ous col­lect­ive rights provide for self-­government in auto­nom­ous indi­gen­ ous territories fol­low­ing indi­gen­ous customs and practices; indi­gen­ous minor­ity groups in rural areas elect their delegates in national par­lia­ment through special elect­oral districts; mech­an­isms of direct demo­cracy like recall and other referendums or pop­ular legis­lat­ive initiatives are estab­lished; the highest branches of the judiciary will be elected by pop­ular vote; ‘or­gan­ized civil so­ci­ety’ gains vaguely defined but potentially far-­reaching rights to parti­cip­ate in the design of pub­lic pol­icies and control pub­lic administration; finally, social and eco­nomic rights clearly go beyond anything usual in North-­Western lib­eral demo­cra­cies, possib­il­ities for privatization (e.g., of pub­lic social ser­vices) are constrained, and prop­erty rights (e.g., in land) are delimited (cf. Böhrt 2009; Wolff forthcoming). The gen­eral prob­lem here is two-­fold. It concerns, first, the ‘Transition para­ digm’ as dubbed and criticized by Thomas Carothers (2002).9 Bolivia is but one example in a long row of coun­tries around the world that dem­on­strate that

Democracy promotion in Bolivia   125 polit­ical regimes regu­larly deviate from the as­sumed linear path from author­it­ arian rule to lib­eral demo­cracy. Second and related to this, the idea that there is a single and uni­ver­sal model of lib­eral demo­cracy (‘Lib­eral Uni­versal­ism’) is openly challenged. Each really existing demo­cratic order is a specific blend of contra­dict­ory demo­cratic prin­ciples (e.g., sover­eignty of the people vs. consti­tu­ tionalism, majority rule vs. protection of minor­it­ies, polit­ical equality vs. indi­ vidual freedom, indi­vidual equality vs. re­cog­ni­tion of cultural dif­fer­ences) and in this sense the transformation of demo­cracy in Bolivia can be read as an attempt to readjust and rebalance these prin­ciples by strengthening the plebiscitary and participatory aspects of demo­cracy as well as the eco­nomic, social and cultural dimensions of human rights. Very clearly, as Laurence Whitehead (2008: 26) has argued, ‘it is pos­sible for more than one constellation of demo­cratic prin­ ciples to capture the col­lect­ive imagination of a polit­ical com­mun­ity’.10

Conceptual pol­itics in the practice of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion: US and German reactions to polit­ical change in Bolivia Looking back at the so-­called wave of demo­crat­ization since 1974, Philippe Schmitter (1995b: 16) noted that ‘experimentation beyond the basic institutions of lib­ eral demo­cracy’ has been ‘completely absent’. In any case, such an empirical observation cannot refute the claim that demo­cracy is and remains, in prin­ciple, an essentially contested concept as defined by W. B. Gallie (Kurki 2010: 370–2). The con­tempor­ary transformation of demo­cracy in Bolivia, how­ever, represents one of the very few ex­peri­ences worldwide which shows that we are dealing here not only with an ab­stract debate among aca­demic scholars, but with the pos­sib­il­ity that al­tern­ative models of demo­cracy have imme­diate relev­ance for the thinking on and practice of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion.11 How, then, did the US and Ger­many – two key protagonists in the business of inter­na­tional demo­cracy pro­mo­tion – react to this exceptional Bolivian ex­peri­ence? This is not the place to systematically ana­lyze US and German pol­icies towards Bolivia (see Wolff 2011), but rather an oppor­tun­ity to have a brief look at basic patterns with a view to the conceptual pol­itics dimension. At first sight, there are im­port­ant dif­fer­ences between the US and Ger­many in terms of both their perception of the state of demo­cracy under Morales and their respective attitudes towards the new gov­ern­ment. While acknowledging the elect­ oral legitimation of Pres­id­ent Morales, the US gov­ern­ment viewed the polit­ical predominance of Morales and the MAS party and the absence of any strong opposi­tion at the national level as a ser­ious prob­lem for demo­cracy. In line with a conception of demo­cracy that emphas­izes checks and balances and limits on the dis­cre­tionary power of elected gov­ern­ments, then USAID Assistant Administrator Adolfo Franco (2006: 19) argued in 2006 that the US was to promote Bolivian demo­cracy by supporting ‘counterweights to one-­party control’. In fact, USAID ac­tiv­ities in the area of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion – including the Office of Transition Initiatives – shifted towards the de­part­mental level12 and civil so­ci­ety. In addition, the National Endowment for Demo­cracy (NED) significantly increased its support for civil so­ci­ety ac­tiv­ities (cf. Gratius and Legler 2009: 207; Wolff 2011: 12–15).

126   J. Wolff An inter­esting example for the conceptual pol­itics per­spect­ive concerns the US Millennium Challenge Account. Here, a series of in­dic­ators has been set up to meas­ure, inter alia, if coun­tries ‘govern justly’ according to a fixed and uni­ver­sal stand­ard and, thus, deserve support from the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC). During the Morales gov­ern­ment, two democracy-­related World Bank Governance In­dic­ators (Gov­ern­ment Effect­iveness, Rule of Law) actu­ally declined and in Decem­ber 2008 the MCC Board of Dir­ectors decided to not reselect Bolivia as eli­gible for the program (Wolff 2011: 10). Even if this gradual decline in some in­dic­ators would never have caused the suspension, had it not been in combination with the open crisis in US–Bolivian relations (see below), Bolivia’s ‘violation’ of uni­ver­sally conceived stand­ards of good demo­cratic governance was clearly im­port­ant for jus­tifying the de­cision. In contrast, the German gov­ern­ment – and, especially, the German Ministry of De­velopment (BMZ) – viewed the election of Morales as an oppor­tun­ity for making Bolivian demo­cracy more representative of and responsive to the formerly mar­ginalized majority of the popu­la­tion. The broad support for Morales, here, was taken as a reason to support the gov­ern­ment (cf. BMZ 2007). Accordingly, Ger­many not only con­tinued its de­velopment coopera­tion with Bolivia but adjusted its demo­cracy assistance to the new polit­ical setting and the agenda of the new Bolivian gov­ern­ment: for example, the German Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) directly supported the Constituent Assembly, gen­erally increased its support for the national level (rel­at­ive to subnational entities) and focused much more on structural polit­ical reforms than previously (cf. Wolff 2011: 19–23). How­ever, Ger­many suspended some very specific coopera­ tion pro­jects with Bolivia as well. When, for example, irregu­larities and conflicts surrounding the Constituent Assembly peaked (in Decem­ber 2006 and again during the last months of the Assembly), German support for the pro­cess was suspended. Reacting to the con­tentious adoption of the consti­tu­tional text by the MAS majority in the Constituent Assembly, Ger­many stepped back from the ori­ ginal plan of supporting the pub­lic dissemination of the draft consti­tu­tion. Yet, the rationale behind these de­cisions was not so much an adherence to demo­ cratic/consti­tu­tional stand­ards as a conflict-­related aim to ‘do no harm’: con­ sidera­tions of empirical legitimacy or factual approval rather than formal legality and demo­cratic correctness led German agencies to suspend or restart its coopera­tion (Wolff 2011: 24–5). Again, how­ever, the ‘violation’ of crucial demo­cratic rules of the game was im­port­ant for jus­tifying German reactions. This is even clearer in another instance where German de­velopment coopera­tion was suspended. In reacting to Bolivia’s pol­icy of ‘nationalization’, which affected one German com­pany, Ger­many suspended a pro­ject in the area of climate and energy as a punitive response to Bolivian resistance to what would be, from the German per­spect­ive, an ‘appropriate’ compensation (Wolff 2011: 8). While this clearly represents an interest-­driven de­cision in support of a German com­pany, at least in jus­tifying the suspension conceptual pol­itics are again rel­ev­ant: in the German understanding, private prop­erty rights are a crucial element of the rule of law (the Rechtsstaat) and demo­cracy and the rule of law

Democracy promotion in Bolivia   127 are in­ex­tric­ably linked in the official German discourse.13 Thus, the sanc­tion against Bolivia in defense of German eco­nomic inter­ests was, at the same time, presented as support for ‘demo­cracy and the rule of law’ in Bolivia. This last point already suggests that the dif­fer­ences in US and German reactions are only part of the story. In gen­eral, both the US and Ger­many officially reacted with an attitude of respect for al­tern­ative paths and models. Both gov­ern­ ments ac­know­ledged the elect­oral legitimation of both the gov­ern­ment of Evo Morales and the consti­tu­tional reform. Support in terms of de­velopment assistance basically con­tinued and, although there was some shift in US pri­or­ities (see above), even the US maintained a rather cooperative posture and signaled con­ tinu­ous inter­est in remaining engaged with the Bolivian gov­ern­ment. US concern was, argu­ably, not driven by the perceived risks for Bolivian demo­cracy but focused prim­arily on the pol­icy changes in the area of counternar­cotics/coca eradication and on what was seen as a hostile, anti-­American attitude on the part of the Bolivian gov­ern­ment. In fact, US sanc­tions against Bolivia were either acts of diplomatic re­tali­ation – for example, the expulsion of the Bolivian Ambas­sador to Washington in 2008 fol­low­ing the expulsion of the US Ambas­ sador to La Paz – or justified by a lack of coopera­tion in the ‘Drug War’ – for example, the ‘de-­certification’ of Bolivia and the fol­low­ing suspension of trade pref­er­ences in late 2008 (cf. Gray 2009: 171–6; Wolff 2011). At the same time, both the US and Ger­many perceived the changes in Bolivian demo­cracy with skep­ti­cism. The partial deviance from what they regard as uni­ver­sal stand­ards of demo­cracy and human rights was seen as a prob­lem by German and US representatives, even if this concern was not pub­licly articulated in the German case.14 Thus, the de­cision to react flexibly and cooperatively to Bolivia’s pro­cess of polit­ical change – a de­cision openly taken by the German gov­ern­ment, but only partially so by the US – was to a big extent more a pragmatic and, in fact, reluct­ant adjustment to Bolivian ‘real­it­ies’. It was argu­ably driven by the re­cog­ni­tion of broad majoritarian support within the coun­try, the intention having some moderating influence on the Bolivian gov­ern­ment, and the strong will to remain somehow engaged in Bolivia, be it out of the self-­interest of the different de­velopment agencies, or because of the gen­eral polit­ical de­cision that a withdrawal from the coun­try would be the worst option.

Concluding remarks There can be not much doubt that the conceptual pol­itics approach sheds light on a crucial dimension of external demo­cracy pro­mo­tion. Demo­cracy pro­mo­tion, always and everywhere, relies on a specific conception of demo­cracy (the end point), of demo­crat­ization (the path) and of the proper role for the demo­cracy promoters (the external con­tri­bu­tion). Such conceptions are neces­sar­ily par­ticu­ laristic (cf. Kurki 2010). Even from a basically lib­eral per­spect­ive, there can be quite different understandings of demo­cracy, demo­crat­ization and demo­cracy pro­mo­tion (cf. Spanger and Wolff 2007a; Wolff and Wurm 2011). Such understandings, then, clearly shape the ways in which the state of demo­cracy in the

128   J. Wolff ‘recipient’ coun­try and the ‘needs’ in terms of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion are perceived. As always, the causal effects of such conceptual pre-­decisions on the pol­itics of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion are almost im­pos­sible to meas­ure. Most prob­ ably it makes no sense at all to look for such distinct effects – in contrast to, for example, the role of ‘mater­ial inter­ests’ – because such conceptions and understandings shape the very definition of inter­ests and vice versa. What the examples from US and German demo­cracy pro­mo­tion in Bolivia show, how­ever, is the relev­ance of conceptual pol­itics for jus­tifying specific pol­icies and de­cisions. And this is not a minor thing: factors that enable (and constrain) the pub­lic justification of polit­ical de­cisions are per se crucial (and causal) for policy-­making, par­ticu­larly in demo­cratic states. Beyond specific US and German pol­icies, the transformation of demo­cracy in Bolivia has im­port­ant con­sequences for the conceptual debate on demo­cracy pro­ mo­tion. Con­tempor­ary Bolivia shows, first, that real-­existing demo­cracy is a specific blend of contra­dict­ory demo­cratic prin­ciples. Thus, demo­cracy pro­mo­tion based on a linear conception of demo­crat­ization that simply tries to help coun­tries along the as­sumed path from ‘less’ (and more ‘faulty’) to ‘more’ lib­eral demo­ cracy misses the complex reality of demo­cratic change. Second, the (preliminary) results of the deepening of demo­cracy in Bolivia (in terms of increasing parti­cipa­ tion and repres­enta­tion) defy the overly har­moni­ous conception of demo­cracy pro­ mo­tion based on the notion that ‘all good things go together’ (cf. Spanger and Wolff 2007a, 2007b). Promoting demo­cracy from the outside, especially if it is successful, can have con­sequences that are not in line with ‘donor’ pref­er­ences – be these par­ticu­lar inter­ests or conceptions of how ‘real’ demo­cracy should look. Third and finally, demo­cratic experimentation in Bolivia, that at least partly transcends the mainstream model of lib­eral demo­cracy, confirms the expectation that the conceptual contestability of demo­cracy has imme­diate relev­ance for the thinking on and practice of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion. How­ever, for demo­cracy pro­mo­tion, the notions behind both the ‘Transition Para­digm’ and ‘Lib­eral Uni­versal­ism’ are not dispensable ideo­logical distortions that can be corrected easily. The gen­eral pro­ject, as well as the actual practice of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion, depends on the as­sump­tion that demo­cracy is in fact not essentially contested. Demo­cracy promoters need to (as­sume to) know where coun­tries are to go, along which path, and in what way external actors can help. Yet, demo­cracy pro­mo­tion in a situ­ation a la boliviana can only be conceived of as a joint search pro­cess, in which external actors accom­pany contra­dict­ory do­mestic pro­cesses of polit­ical change that neither have a predefined end point nor follow a known path. In the Bolivian case, Ger­many – not by way of a deliberate de­cision but as result of pragmatic muddling through – came to adopt, more or less, such a strategy. The implication was that the expli­cit pro­mo­tion of demo­cracy took a back seat while the support for inclusive pro­cesses of dialogue, constructive conflict res­olu­tion and the like became the focus. Ideally then it is not a specific end point – a given model of demo­cracy – that is striven for, but a peaceful and inclusive pro­cess of constructing a model appropriate for the specific coun­try.

Democracy promotion in Bolivia   129

Notes   1 This chapter draws on research conducted in the framework of the research pro­ject ‘Determinants of demo­cratic states’ hand­ling of conflicting ob­ject­ives in demo­cracy pro­mo­tion’ conducted by the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF ) and Goethe University Frankfurt, and funded by the German Research Founda­tion (DFG). The author thanks Thomas Carothers, Svenja Gertheiss, Dominik Hübner, Laurence Whitehead and the editors of this volume for valu­able comments.   2 I owe this point to Tom Carothers.   3 Cf. Carothers (2009a); Kopstein (2006); Monten (2005); Pospisil (2009: 163–281); Rüland and Werz (2002); Schraeder (2003); Smith (1994); Youngs (2004: 31–7).   4 In fact, USAID has been very hesitant to cooperate with Mayors representing the cocalero movement. For examples, in the framework of the Al­tern­ative De­velopment program, USAID is reported to have ‘resisted working with Chapare muni­cipal­ities, even though the muni­cipal gov­ern­ments are the designated planning unit’; the US even applied pressure on the Euro­pean Union’s Al­tern­ative De­velopment program PRAEDAC not to work ‘through the muni­cipal­ities’; in April 2004 only, ‘USAID/ Bolivia declared that it would expand its working relationship with Chapare muni­ cipal­ities’ (Farthing and Kohl 2005: 193, 194, 195). According to another source (Ledebur and Youngers 2008: 5), it was ‘in 2003’ that ‘USAID began working directly with Chapare muni­cipal gov­ern­ments, which are led by coca growers [. . .]. Previously, confrontational USAID pol­icies intended to weaken coca grower unions through the formation of parallel producers’ asso­ci­ations [. . .].’ As regards to Evo Morales, the de­cision taken by the Bolivian par­lia­ment in Janu­ary 2002 to exclude Morales from Congress – under the allegation of instigating viol­ence in the Chapare – was, at least in Bolivia, attributed to US pressure, and during the 2002 pres­id­en­tial elections the then US Ambas­sador Manuel Rocha openly threatened with a pos­sible withdrawal of US assistance if the Bolivian people should dare to elect Morales (Van Cott 2003: 772–3).   5 This latter expression is borrowed from Guillermo O’Donnell (1996).   6 The success of Bolivia’s ‘pacted demo­cracy’ after 1985 – and especially the implementation of drastic meas­ures of eco­nomic restructuring – was enabled by the weakness of the or­gan­ized pop­ular sectors: while the once-­strong labor union federation (COB) was weakened de­cisively by the eco­nomic crisis of the early 1980s (and additional polit­ical repression), the indi­gen­ous and social movements that would lead the social protests from 2000 onwards had yet to gain strength (cf. Conaghan and Malloy 1994: 150–1; Yashar 2005: 182–5).   7 As a con­sequence, the US had to learn that tardy attempts to threaten and exert pressure against the polit­ical changes enabled by the 1990s deepening of demo­cracy, i.e., against the rise of Evo Morales and his Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS), were largely counterproductive. In the end, the US had to basically accept the Morales gov­ ern­ment and the pro­cess of polit­ical transformation promoted by it (cf. Wolff 2011: 8–17). The German gov­ern­ment – which has no major stake in Bolivia – could even afford to pragmatically support the Morales gov­ern­ment (cf. Wolff 2011: 17–25).   8 Morales was elected in 2005 (with 52 percent), confirmed in a recall referendum (67 percent) in 2008 and re-­elected in Decem­ber 2009 (63 percent). Equally, the MAS won national elections in 2005 (only narrowly missing the abso­lute majority in Congress), in 2006 (abso­lute majority in the Constituent Assembly) and 2009 (two-­thirds majority in the new par­lia­ment). In Janu­ary 2009, the new consti­tu­tion was adopted in a referendum by a clear-­cut majority of 61 percent.   9 Guilhot (2005: ch. 4) and Smith (2007: ch. 5) trace the influence of transition studies on the rise of the demo­cracy pro­mo­tion para­digm. 10 ‘Out of this mixture [of the broadly shared ‘elements of polit­ical demo­cracy’] it is pos­sible to distill more than one set of demo­cratic pri­or­ities that can be defended on

130   J. Wolff the grounds of highest prin­ciples. More­over, beyond this long but restrictive list of com­pon­ents it would be pos­sible to identi­fy additional features that are regarded in certain con­texts as in­teg­ral to demo­cracy for some soci­eties (upholding free market prin­ciples, opposing totalitarian evil-­doers, correcting his­tor­ical injustices against excluded popu­la­tion groups, etc.) but not for others.’ (Whitehead 2008: 36; Whitehead’s chapter). 11 Re­gard­ing ‘the kinds of non-­liberal demo­cratic or extra-­liberal demo­cratic models that might already exist’, Milja Kurki (2010: 370) points to ‘ad­voc­ates of rad­ical demo­cracy in the World Social Forum’ and ‘de­velopment activists that wish to reclaim a social rather than lib­eral demo­cratic form of demo­cracy in Africa’. The main empirical examples for demo­cratic experiments and initiatives that go ‘beyond the lib­eral demo­cratic canon’ assembled by Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2005) refer to the local level or social movements. These examples are already im­port­ant arguments against the ‘widespread tendency to decontest demo­cracy’ noted by Hobson and Kurki (Introduction: 6); how­ever, with a case like Bolivia, where demo­cratic experimentation includes basic polit­ical institutions at national level, the debate on potential al­tern­atives to lib­eral demo­cracy gains another quality. 12 Already before the election of Morales in Decem­ber 2005, the USAID Demo­cracy Program in Bolivia had a focus on subnational gov­ern­ments, and it was in 2005 that it was decided to shift this support from the muni­cipal to the de­part­mental level – in reaction to the first pop­ular election of de­part­mental governors (prefectos) in that year. It is im­pos­sible to say if the new focus on regional gov­ern­ments reflects a deliberate US de­cision to support the de­part­mental gov­ern­ments (and the auto­nomy movements behind them) as a counterweight to the MAS or even a preventive adjustment to an expected victory of Morales in late 2005. How­ever, as the 2005 can­did­ates in opposi­tion to Morales won most (six out of nine) prefecturas, USAID de facto focused support on the one level of the state mainly gov­erned by the opposi­tion to the new central gov­ern­ment. OTI ac­tiv­ities, equally targeting the de­part­mental level, reinforced this tendency (Wolff 2011: 11–12). 13 When dealing with demo­cracy, official docu­ments and speeches on demo­cracy pro­ mo­tion regu­larly mention both elements together (‘Demokratie and Rechtsstaat’), as two sides of the same coin. 14 The local offices of the German polit­ical party founda­tions, how­ever, did so – in par­ ticu­lar the center-­right organ­iza­tions Konrad-­Adenauer-Stiftung and Hanns-­SeidelStiftung.

8 Lib­eral demo­cracy pro­mo­tion and civil so­ci­ety strengthening in Ghana Gordon Crawford and Abdul-­Gafaru Abdulai

Introduction The role of civil so­ci­ety rose in significance in demo­crat­isation gen­erally and in demo­cracy pro­mo­tion specifically in the years fol­low­ing the end of the Cold War. Great claims for its con­tri­bu­tion have been made by aca­demic writers and demo­cracy pro­mo­tion practitioners alike. With regard to the role of civil so­ci­ety in demo­crat­isation, Diamond (1994: 7–11) outlined ten demo­cratic functions of civil so­ci­ety, with the ‘first and most basic’ being ‘the lim­ita­tion of state power,’ while others included stimulating polit­ical parti­cipa­tion, de­veloping a demo­ cratic culture of tolerance, recruiting new polit­ical leaders, and so forth. In the con­text of Africa, Harbeson et al. (1994: 1–2) asserted strongly that civil so­ci­ety was the ‘missing key to sustained polit­ical reform, legitimate states and gov­ern­ ments, improved governance, viable state-­society and state-­economy relations, and pre­ven­tion of the kind of polit­ical decay that undermined new African gov­ ern­ments a generation ago’ – the key to all good things, it would seem. This emphasis on the role and significance of civil so­ci­ety has also been evid­ent in the discourses of inter­na­tional demo­cracy pro­mo­tion actors, notably the bi­lat­eral and multi­lateral ‘donor’ agencies. Civil so­ci­ety assistance has been a key element in USAID’s demo­cracy and governance programmes since 1993, introduced ini­ tially by the Clinton administration and today continuing to be a central dimen­ sion (USAID 2010). UNDP (2002: 4) has also asserted a strong linkage between demo­cratic pol­itics and human de­velopment, with its focus on strengthening demo­cratic institutions including the customary ref­er­ence to a ‘vibrant civil so­ci­ ety’ as key to monitoring gov­ern­ment and promoting polit­ical parti­cipa­tion. In Funding Virtue, Ottaway and Carothers (2000) have traced this burgeoning inter­ est in civil so­ci­ety assistance within the demo­cracy pro­mo­tion programmes of the US and other aid-­giving coun­tries, notably from the mid-­1990s onwards. They have highlighted the common enthusiasm for ‘civil so­ci­ety strengthening’ to the extent that ‘the idea that civil so­ci­ety is always a pos­it­ive force for demo­ cracy . . . is unassailable’ (Ottaway and Carothers 2000: 4), and thus its funding is regarded as virtuous.1 In line with the ‘conceptual pol­itics’ approach, this chapter investigates the underlying meaning of civil so­ci­ety within the con­text of demo­crat­isation and

132   G. Crawford and A.-G. Abdulai demo­cracy pro­mo­tion. It does so by examining bi­lat­eral donor support (i.e. from Western gov­ern­ments) to civil so­ci­ety organ­isa­tions in Ghana and ana­lyses the underlying concept of civil so­ci­ety contained within such programmes. Our starting point is influenced by crit­ical per­spect­ives such as those of Baker (2004, 2002) and Hurt (2006). Baker has firmly located the current orthodox view of civil so­ci­ety within a framework of lib­eral demo­cracy, de­scribed as the ‘taming of civil so­ci­ety’. In his view, this has entailed the ‘instrumentalisation’ of civil so­ci­ety as ‘merely supportive of lib­eral demo­cracy, rather than [a] site for demo­ cratic parti­cipa­tion’ (Baker 2004: 45). Civil so­ci­ety thus becomes functional for lib­eral demo­cracy by providing mech­an­isms for controlling the state, such as a channel for inter­est groups into parlia­ment­ary deliberation, and through under­ taking a scrutiny or ‘watchdog’ role over those in power (Baker 2002: 1). This orthodox view of civil so­ci­ety is deeply embedded in what Held (1996: 81) de­scribes as a central tenet of modern Euro­pean lib­eralism, in which ‘gov­ern­ ment must be restricted in scope and restrained in practice’ with civil so­ci­ety conceived as an im­port­ant means of limiting state power. Baker (2004: 43) contrasts this lib­eral demo­cratic model of civil so­ci­ety with a more rad­ical model of demo­cratic parti­cipa­tion and self-­management, where demo­cracy and demo­crat­isation within civil so­ci­ety become ends in themselves. We would add that such a model is gen­erally in accord with the demo­cratic prin­ ciple of pop­ular control over col­lect­ive decision-­making in various spheres, including that of the state (Beetham et al. 2002). For Baker, this al­tern­ative, rad­ ical model is influenced by Antonio Gramsci’s (1971) writings on state-­society relations in the 1930s, notably his emphasis on civil so­ci­ety as a pos­sible site for the de­velopment of counter-­hegemonic forces opposed to the hege­monic rule of the state and its dominant eco­nomic class. In Baker’s view, such a model of civil so­ci­ety was more evid­ent in the 1970s and 1980s in Central and Eastern Europe and Latin Amer­ica, where opposi­tion to different forms of author­it­arian rule was based on self-­organisation from below and the construction of pop­ular resistance to the state and the eco­nomy (2004: 58). How­ever, Baker (2004: 43) highlights how this rad­ical model only flourished briefly and subsequently has largely been eclipsed by the hege­monic, lib­eral demo­cratic model of civil so­ci­ety that emerged post-­1990. In looking specifically at the role of civil so­ci­ety in Euro­pean Union de­velopment pol­icy, Hurt (2006) de­velops a sim­ilar critique, though one that draws attention to a neo-­liberal concept of civil so­ci­ety which places greater emphasis on the eco­nomic dimension of lib­eralism, notably an intent to reduce and restrict state inter­ven­tionism in the eco­nomy. He notes that EU civil so­ci­ety support programmes ‘need to be understood within the broader eco­nomic aims of EU de­velopment pol­icy,’ which is itself distinctly neo-­liberal in character, promot­ ing eco­nomic lib­eralisation and greater integration into the global eco­nomy, and thus influ­en­cing the type of civil so­ci­ety that is promoted (Hurt 2006: 109–10). Prompted by such per­spect­ives, the ana­lyt­ical framework de­veloped here makes two distinctions between differing conceptualisations of civil so­ci­ety. Firstly, fol­low­ing Baker (2004, 2002), it makes the distinction between an

Liberal democracy and civil society in Ghana   133 orthodox lib­eral concept of civil so­ci­ety and a rad­ical approach. Sec­ondly, within the lib­eral concept of civil so­ci­ety, it distinguishes between a lib­eral demo­cratic model and a neo-­liberal model, where the former focuses on polit­ical pro­cesses that control and constrain the state, while the latter places emphasis on the eco­ nomic sphere and aims to limit the scope of state inter­ven­tion through eco­nomic lib­eralisation pol­icies. Critiques have also been made of the civil so­ci­ety assistance programmes provided by inter­na­tional demo­cracy promoters, ones which also highlight the lib­eral demo­cratic and neo-­liberal approaches to civil so­ci­ety. In a key con­tri­bu­ tion that chimes with the ana­lysis of a lib­eral demo­cratic concept of civil so­ci­ety, Ottaway and Carothers (2000) have noted the concentration of efforts to strengthen civil so­ci­ety on a very narrow set of professionalised NGOs, sim­ilar to Western ad­vo­cacy organ­isa­tions and with little account­ability to do­mestic constituencies, while the wider range of organ­isa­tions that typically make up civil so­ci­ety is largely ignored (2000: 11). Focusing on the neo-­liberal dimen­ sion, Hearn (2001) extends this critique in her ana­lysis of civil so­ci­ety assistance as part of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion programmes in Ghana, Uganda and South Africa, and emphasises the linkages with building a consensus around neo-­ liberalism. She also recalls Gramsci, though focusing on his view of hege­monic rule as achieved through a mixture of coercion and consent in which civil so­ci­ ety also constitutes an arena for the cre­ation and reproduction of consent, rather than as a site of counter-­hegemony. She reminds us that civil so­ci­ety is not neces­sar­ily a site of pro­gressive pol­itics and resistance but more a contested arena in which states and other power­ful actors, including inter­na­tional agencies, intervene to influence polit­ical agendas and defuse opposi­tion (Hearn 2001: 43). In a separate report specific to the Ghanaian con­text, Hearn (2000: 24) found that polit­ical aid to civil so­ci­ety was aimed at promoting consensus around eco­ nomic reform and neo-­liberalism, as dem­on­strated by ‘the kinds of CSOs being supported by donors and those that receive the most funding’. This chapter builds on such work by examining two recent bi­lat­eral donor civil so­ci­ety pro­jects in Ghana: the Ghana Research and Ad­vo­cacy Programme (G-­RAP) and the Ghana Rights and Voice Initiative (RAVI). G-­RAP receives multi-­donor funding from the gov­ern­ments of the Neth­er­lands, the United Kingdom, Denmark and Canada, while RAVI is funded solely by the UK’s De­part­ment for Inter­na­tional De­velopment (DFID). Both programmes were implemented from 2004 to 2010, when the first phase of both came to an end.2 The chapter addresses the fol­low­ing questions: • • •

What underlying concept of civil so­ci­ety is contained within these civil so­ci­ety support programmes? To what extent do these programmes emphasise a lib­eral demo­cratic and/or a neo-­liberal concept of civil so­ci­ety? Al­tern­atively, do they provide evid­ence of donor support for a more rad­ical model of demo­cratic parti­cipa­tion within civil so­ci­ety and the extension of pop­ular control over col­lect­ive decision-­making?

134   G. Crawford and A.-G. Abdulai The chapter proceeds in five sections. After this introduction, the second section briefly provides the con­text of civil so­ci­ety strengthening ac­tiv­ities in Ghana. The third and fourth sections look in detail at G-­RAP and RAVI respectively, examining their his­tory, the nature of donor ob­ject­ives, the kinds of organ­isa­ tions supported, and teasing out the underlying concept of civil so­ci­ety embed­ ded in these programmes. Finally, the conclusion summarises the findings and con­siders whether demo­cracy has been promoted or undermined through these civil so­ci­ety support programmes.

Ghana, demo­cracy pro­mo­tion and civil so­ci­ety strengthening Ghana is one of few African coun­tries where demo­cracy has become increas­ ingly consolidated after the demo­cratic transition in the early 1990s (Abdulai and Crawford 2010). Beyond holding five successful national elections between 1992 and 2008, Ghana’s rankings on polit­ical rights, civil liberties and press freedom have improved con­sider­ably and are now among the best in Africa.3 Ghana also boasts an active civil so­ci­ety, with the Euro­pean Union acknowledging the role played by ‘a vibrant, mobilized and well-­organized civil so­ci­ety’ (EU 2009: 25) during the coun­try’s Decem­ber 2008 elections. While the emergence of this lively civil so­ci­ety sector is largely en­do­genous, with Ghana’s non-­governmental organ­isa­tions being largely respons­ible for its de­velopment, the prin­cipal bi­lat­eral de­velopment aid donors active in Ghana, (namely Canada, Denmark, Ger­many, The Neth­er­lands, the United Kingdom and the United States) have all included ‘civil so­ci­ety strengthening’ meas­ures in their demo­cracy pro­mo­tion programmes in the last decade or so. That said, focusing on EU efforts, Crawford (2006: 148) has argued that such assistance up to the mid-­2000s has been limited and ad hoc. This point had also been ac­know­ledged by the donor agencies themselves in their statement that previ­ ous donor support to CSOs had been ‘short-­term and pro­ject related, with little or no co-­ordination’ (G-­RAP 2004: 6). Somewhat paradoxically, the significant de­velopment that led to a more con­ centrated donor focus on ‘civil so­ci­ety strengthening’ was the shift in 2003 to Multi-­Donor Budget Support (MDBS) in support of the Gov­ern­ment of Ghana’s (GoG) pov­erty reduction strategy. MDBS repres­ented a move away from a sec­ toral, project-­driven approach to de­velopment assistance, and involved the direct trans­fer of fin­an­cial resources from participating donor agencies to the GoG to support the implementation of the Ghana Pov­erty Reduction Strategy (GPRS). Substantial sums were involved, with US$500 million being pledged for GPRS I (2003–2005) (G-­RAP 2004: 5), and the nerv­ousness on the part of the bi­lat­eral donor agencies was palpable. One response was the new focus by donors on ‘strengthening the capa­city of civil so­ci­ety to engage the Gov­ern­ment in active dialogue’, stated as having ‘become a key ob­ject­ive for DPs’ [de­velopment part­ ners] (G-­RAP 2004: 5). The message was that donor inter­ven­tions ‘are not sufficient’ to keep the gov­ern­ment on track, and that ‘there is a need to strengthen pub­lic account­ability and broaden the inputs into the pol­icy pro­cess

Liberal democracy and civil society in Ghana   135 from across Ghanaian so­ci­ety’ (G-­RAP 2004: 5). This con­text led to the ini­ti­ation and estab­lishment of both G-­RAP and RAVI by 2004, with the former involving a pooled funding mech­an­ism between the four bi­lat­eral agencies (The Neth­er­lands, the UK, Canada and Denmark) and the latter funded solely by the UK’s DFID.

Ghana Research and Ad­vo­cacy Programme (G-­RAP) Con­text The Ghana Research and Ad­vo­cacy Programme (G-­RAP) was launched in Septem­ber 2004 in support of the de­velopment of Ghana’s civil so­ci­ety institu­ tions, with a par­ticu­lar focus on Research and Ad­vo­cacy Organ­isa­tions (RAOs). Accordingly, the ‘overall ob­ject­ive of G-­RAP is to improve the funding base of RAOs, to enhance their capa­city to carry out evidence-­based research and ad­vo­ cacy, and to promote networking ac­tiv­ities in support of pro-­poor and gender sensitive pol­icies in Ghana’ (Ahadzie 2007: 12). One underpinning as­sump­tion was that civil so­ci­ety was crit­ical in ‘ensuring the transparency of gov­ern­ment and holding it to account for its pol­icies and use of pub­lic resources’ (G-­RAP 2004: 6) – a core concern of donors with respect to MDBS. It was perceived, how­ever, that although Ghana has had rel­at­ively active civil so­ci­ety organ­isa­ tions, their ability to influence pub­lic pol­icy had been hampered by various factors, including the ‘fragmented and short-­term nature of their funding base’ (G-­RAP 2004: 6). G-­RAP was thus initiated to create a more predictable funding base for Ghana’s RAOs with a view to strengthening their institutional capa­city and enhancing their ability to engage in pol­icy pro­cesses. Typical beneficiaries of G-­RAP funding have been think-­tanks, de­velopment organ­isa­tions and ad­vo­ cacy networks, with funding gen­erally targeted at those RAOs that have the potential of con­trib­ut­ing to national pol­icy dialogue (G-­RAP 2010). At its inception, G-­RAP offered three types of funding, namely: multi-­annual (three-­year) core grants to indi­vidual RAOs with estab­lished track records of influ­en­cing pub­lic pol­icy pro­cesses; institutional and capa­city building (ICB) grants, aimed partly at strengthening inter-­RAO networking; and technical assistance (TA) grants in support of enhanced human resources and technical (IT) equipment (G-­RAP 2007: 17). Fol­low­ing a mid-­term review of the pro­ gramme in 2007, how­ever, the ICB and TA grants were both phased out (G-­RAP 2008: 6), such that the programme subsequently provided only two types of grants, namely core grants and Special Pro­ject Grants in support of effect­ive net­ working and co­ali­tion building among RAOs on specific ad­vo­cacy issues. Together, the four bi­lat­eral agencies, made com­mit­ments of US$7 million to support G-­RAP over the first three years of implementation (G-­RAP 2004: 12), and a further com­mit­ment of approximately US$9 million over the period 2008–2010 (Awori 2009: 2).4 In total, G-­RAP has supported 29 RAOs and net­ works in Ghana (G-­RAP 2009: 3), and the first phase of the programme ended in March 2010.

136   G. Crawford and A.-G. Abdulai G-­RAP’s underlying concept of civil so­ci­ety It is im­port­ant to note from the outset that G-­RAP’s participating donors recog­ nised that research and ad­vo­cacy CSOs in Ghana operate largely within central gov­ern­ment circles in the national capital. This meant that the programme’s exclusive focus on RAOs was likely to circumscribe its bene­fits to the well-­ established Accra-­based organ­isa­tions that, unlike their community-­based coun­ terparts, are by ‘nature self-­appointed in their efforts to represent the poor’ (G-­RAP 2004: 8). The participating donors emphasised, how­ever, that they wanted to ‘encourage and support new entrants into G-­RAP’ so as to ‘avoid cre­ ating an elite club of RAOs’ (G-­RAP 2004: 8–9). This was to be achieved in two main ways: first by encouraging all beneficiary RAOs to work in collaboration with community-­based organ­isa­tions; and by providing one-­off ICB and TA grants to smaller, but promising organ­isa­tions which did not qual­ify for G-­RAP multi-­annual core funding (G-­RAP 2004: 8–9). Taken at face value, this would seem to suggest G-­RAP’s com­mit­ment to offering support to broad-­based civil so­ci­ety in Ghana, one that is aimed at encouraging greater societal parti­cipa­tion within demo­cratic pro­cesses. How­ ever, a closer scrutiny of the overall design and implementation of the pro­ gramme suggests a contrary view. We argue in this section that G-­RAP’s par­ticu­lar intent for ‘strengthening civil so­ci­ety’ capa­city, especially in its early days, was more of an attempt to enable CSOs to challenge and limit the powers of the Ghanaian state and less of an attempt to extend pop­ular control over demo­cratic decision-­making. Indeed, the Programme Memorandum of 2004, reflecting the ori­ginal thinking of the donors, exhibited a degree of state scep­ti­ cism. Here, civil so­ci­ety was perceived largely as a watchdog institution, such that the G-­RAP initiative was seen as crit­ical in creating ‘[s]ufficient polit­ical space . . . for RAOs to challenge Gov­ern­ment pol­icy choices’ (GRAP 2004: 16, emphasis added). In what follows, we undertake a more detailed investigation of G-­RAP’s underlying concept of civil so­ci­ety through an ana­lysis of the type of organ­isa­ tions that have been supported; the opera­tion of the institutional capa­city build­ ing (ICB) and technical assistance (TA) grants; and the underlying intent of G-­RAP’s emphasis on inter-­RAO networking. Type of organ­isa­tions supported Beyond the gen­eral focus on national-­level CSOs, G-­RAP has been emphatic that its funding was to specifically target only those ‘RAOs [that] have a solid track record of engaging the Gov­ern­ment on its pol­icy choices and holding it to account for its actions’ (G-­RAP 2004: 6). This narrow focus led to the estab­ lishment of very restrictive eligibility cri­teria for the receipt of multi-­annual core funding. For the first selection round (2005) these included: the demonstration of existing capa­city through satis­fact­ory responses in a highly demanding organ­isa­ tional assessment of 109 questions; an emphasis on both research and ad­vo­cacy

Liberal democracy and civil society in Ghana   137 ac­tiv­ities; and, above all, an annual fin­an­cial turnover of at least US$400,000. These cri­teria, especially the latter fin­an­cial threshold, effect­ively excluded smaller organ­isa­tions that were not already in receipt of substantial donor funding. The cri­teria were stated to have been neces­sary in order to limit the number of respondents to G-­RAP’s calls for proposals (G-­RAP 2007). Yet, if the participating donors wanted to ensure that the programme did not result in the pro­mo­tion of an elite club of RAOs, as claimed, then why were such high eligi­ bility cri­teria set, ones that were certain to exclude a whole range of organ­isa­ tions that were potentially rel­ev­ant to demo­crat­isation pro­cesses? Not only was funding limited to a small number of already rel­at­ively well-­ endowed organ­isa­tions with significant capa­city, but also their ideo­logical orienta­ tion is highly pertinent. It is notable that the most well-­established, Accra-­based, pro-­market think-­tanks are amongst the major recipients of multi-­annual core funding in the early years. Such organ­isa­tions expli­citly espouse a lib­eral philo­ sophy and include the Institute of Eco­nomic Affairs (IEA), the programmes of which are over­whelm­ingly geared toward the ‘promot[ion of] good governance, demo­cracy and a free and fair market eco­nomy in Ghana’ (IEA 2010),5 and the Ghana Center for Demo­cratic De­velopment (CDD-­Ghana), the expli­cit mission of which is to ‘promote demo­cracy, good governance and the de­velopment of lib­eral polit­ical and eco­nomic envir­on­ment in Ghana in par­ticu­lar and Africa in gen­eral’ (CDD-­Ghana Annual Report 2006: 1). Indeed, these organ­isa­tions, together with the Centre for Pol­icy Ana­lysis (CEPA) – all of which have consistently remained among the top five recipients of G-­RAP core funding – have been de­scribed by Ohemeng (2005: 445) as Ghana’s ‘con­ser­vat­ive think tanks,’ ones that are prim­ arily ‘concerned with the adoption and pro­mo­tion of the neolib­eral agenda in changing the state and enhancing polit­ical [and eco­nomic] openness’. How­ever, two qualifications to these findings are neces­sary. First, an excep­ tion to the support for pro-­market organ­isa­tions is the inclusion of Third World Network (TWN-­Africa) as a core grantee, an Accra-­based, pan-­African research and ad­vo­cacy organ­isa­tion that focuses on socio-­economic de­velopment issues from a social justice per­spect­ive. Nonetheless, of the nine organ­isa­tions that obtained multi-­annual core grants in the first round of funding in 2005, only TWN-­Africa could be said to be a persistent critic of the neo-­liberal de­velopment strategies promoted by donor agencies. Second, since 2007, there has been a significant expansion in the range of organ­isa­tions that have been awarded G-­RAP core funding, beyond those that have been expli­citly supportive of the neo-­liberal de­velopment discourse (see Table 8.1). This broader range has included those concerned with security and de­velopment issues, legal ad­vo­cacy organ­isa­tions, private media organ­isa­tions and anti-­corruption agencies, with the latter two types perhaps aimed at ensuring a more prudent utilisation of donor funds. What has been par­ticu­larly notice­able has been the increasing prominence of women’s rights organ­isa­tions among G-­RAP’s core grantees, with three out of 14 core grantees in 2007 and six out of 23 in 2008 being prim­arily concerned with gender-­related issues, as indicated in Table 8.1. How­ever, from inter­views and docu­mentary evid­ence it would appear that some of the participating RAOs

ABANTU for Development International Federation of Women Lawyers, (FIDA) Ghana ARK Foundation Women in Law and Development in Africa Network for Women’s Rights (NETRIGHT) Gender Studies and Human Rights Documentation Centre African Security Dialogue and Research Foundation for Security and Development West Africa Network for Peace Ghana Centre for Democratic Development Institute for Economic Affairs Centre for Policy Analysis Institute for Democratic Governance Integrated Social Development Centre Third World Network (TWN-Africa) Social Enterprise Development Foundation (SEND Foundation) Institute for Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER), University of Ghana Northern Ghana Network for Development Ghana Integrity Initiative Centre for Public Interest Law Legal Resource Centre Media Foundation for West Africa

Gender and women’s rights promotion

Peace-building and security

Economic and political governance

Policy advocacy on socio-economic development

Higher education

Networks

Anti-corruption

Legal advocacy organisations

Media

–

– –

–

45,000

237,500

115,000 237,500 –

209,100 283,500 280,000 252,040

47,500 10,500 112,500

– –

86,250 38,600 58,100

2007

62,500

75,000

90,000 80,000

100,000

65,000

195,000

240,000 225,000 50,000

182,500 195,000 220,000 175,000

– –

137,500 89,000 107,500 127,650 40,000 50,000

2008

Amount (in US dollars)

Source: compiled from G-RAP (2008), ‘G-RAP Fund Account, Contract Number CNTR 03 5188’, April 2008, and G-RAP (2009), ‘G-RAP Fund Account, Contract Number CNTR 03 5188’, March 2009.

Core grantees

Thematic areas of organisations

Table 8.1  G-RAP fund disbursement to core grantees, 2007–2008

Liberal democracy and civil society in Ghana   139 themselves played a crit­ical role in determining these changes through their con­ testation of certain aspects of G-­RAP’s design, with the relationship between some RAOs and the Programme Management Team (PMT) de­scribed as ‘fraught’ (G-­RAP 2007: 19) in the early years of the programme. The outcomes of such contestation were the relaxation of the $400,000 threshold, the incorpo­ ration of gender mainstreaming as a programme ob­ject­ive, and a reduction in the number of questions used in the initial organ­isa­tional assessment of potential core grantees from 109 to 51, though this still implied a fairly detailed manage­ rial assessment format (see G-­RAP 2007: 17–19). While acknowledging that this recent support for a more diverse range of organ­isa­tions could be in­ter­preted as a gradual shift within G-­RAP towards the pro­mo­tion of broader-­based civil so­ci­ety parti­cipa­tion, one significant pattern has remained rel­at­ively unchanged, namely the con­tinued dominance (in funding terms) of the major Accra-­based, pro-­market organ­isa­tions – IEA, CDD-­Ghana and CEPA. Table 8.1 shows that IEA was G-­RAP’s highest core grantee in 2007 ($283,500), receiving slightly more than CEPA ($280,000). Along with CDD-­ Ghana, these three organ­isa­tions received approximately 37 per cent of total core funding to 21 organ­isa­tions in 2007, and con­tinued to feature heavily in 2008, although TWN-­Africa also received substantial funding, slightly more than each of the three prominent pro-­market NGOs in 2008. In sum, we argue here that the restrictive eligibility cri­teria for G-­RAP’s core funding plus the concentration of funds on pro-­market think-­tanks were intended to groom a narrow set of CSOs that could serve as a proxy for the participating donors in limiting the powers of the Ghanaian state and holding it ac­count­able in respect of its pol­icy choices and use of donor resources. G-­RAP’s award of institutional capa­city building and technical assistance grants A further point relates to the opera­tion of the Institutional Capa­city Building (ICB) and Technical Assistance (TA) grants. As indicated earl­ier, these two grant cat­egor­ies were claimed to have been introduced in order to avoid funding only an ‘elite club of RAOs’ and to help smaller but promising RAOs gradu­ate to the level where they would meet the cri­teria for G-­RAP’s multi-­annual core funding. Yet a closer examination of the quality and quantity of these grants, as well as their short-­lived nature, raises crit­ical questions about the real motives behind their introduction. Indeed, in 2007, TA grants were awarded to three organ­isa­tions only, totalling $98,465 (G-­RAP 2008: 7), in contrast to the total of $772,600 received by CDD, IEA and CEPA.6 Given that these organ­isa­tions prob­ably failed to secure multi-­annual core funding due to their lower capacities, itself partly a con­sequence of fin­an­cial constraints, it is ques­tion­able how such limited sums could sufficiently build their capacities to enable them to become ‘new entrants’ of G-­RAP. Perhaps more significantly, both the ICB and TA grant cat­egor­ies were phased out in 2007 (G-­RAP 2008), despite the initial re­cog­ni­tion of their im­port­ance if G-­RAP was to avoid funding only an ‘elite club’.

140   G. Crawford and A.-G. Abdulai It would appear that both the ICB and TA grants were partly introduced to serve a pub­lic relations function, and to mask the real thrust of the programme in supporting only a narrow set of CSOs in whom the donors had greater confi­ dence in their ability to challenge and limit state power. Indeed, the Mid-­Term Review Team of the programme would seem to concur with this view when they de­scribed these two grant cat­egor­ies as a ‘compensation mech­an­ism’ meant to ‘reward organ­isa­tions not selected for mainstream core funding’ (G-­RAP 2007: 26). Nonetheless, whereas the rather poor quality of these grants and their sub­ sequent withdrawal amounts to the rel­at­ive neg­lect of many of the so-­called ‘promising’ small RAOs, the ‘high performing’, Accra-­based lib­eral NGOs con­ tinued to enjoy multi-­annual core funding. It is also im­port­ant to recog­nise that the phasing out of the ICB and TA grants had nothing to do with a shortage of funds, given that pledged funds were not fully expended. Rather, it had more to do with the donor focus on carefully selected RAOs that were perceived as able to influence and impact on gov­ern­ment, as partly ac­know­ledged in G-­RAP docu­ mentation itself: The fundamental premise of G-­RAP design was not the need to de­velop sys­ tematic RAO organ­isa­tional capa­city, but rather . . . to free up high-­ performing RAOs from the external constraints that were inhibiting them from fully impacting on pro-­poor pol­icy. (G-­RAP 2007: 21) This argument is further supported by the introduction of a new form of grant in 2008 – the Special Pro­ject Grants – aimed largely at providing support for effect­ ive networking and co­ali­tion building among these selected and privileged RAOs on specific ad­vo­cacy issues, thus strengthening another key dimension of the overall G-­RAP strategy, as discussed below. G-­RAP and inter-­RAO networking Inter-­RAO networking has been an im­port­ant element of G-­RAP’s design and implementation ar­range­ments from the outset. Indeed, as a funding con­dition, it has been criticised by a number of RAOs during the programme’s mid-­term review in 2007, highlighting the ‘pressures on them to increase their networking ac­tiv­ities’ as a key challenge. Not only do G-­RAP’s pre-­qualification cri­teria7 for core funding include the requirement that a given ‘organ­isa­tion parti­cip­ates in civil so­ci­ety co­ali­tions/networks’ (G-­RAP 2004: 31), but also the performance review of core-­funded RAOs includes an assessment of ‘their ability to de­velop . . . networks and alli­ances with other actors across Ghana’ (G-­RAP 2004: 14).8 In prin­ciple, civil so­ci­ety networks have the potential to play several useful roles in consolidating demo­cratic governance, inclusive of serving as a col­lect­ ive mouthpiece for various mar­ginalised groups in so­ci­ety. How­ever, in practice, they can also fulfil the role of creating a more united front amongst RAOs in challenging the state and holding it to account on behalf of donors. We would

Liberal democracy and civil society in Ghana   141 argue that G-­RAP’s in­ter­pretation of the notion of networking, and its under­ lying emphasis on inter-­RAO collaboration, is geared largely towards the latter. This is evid­ent in at least two respects. First, the Mid-­Term Review Report (G-­RAP 2007: 43) indicates that the ‘stated intention’ of networking in ‘G-­RAP parlance’ is to ‘reinforce inter-­RAO inter­action and solidarity,’ and thus facili­ tate more effect­ive inter­actions with the Ghanaian state. Second, although an early intention of G-­RAP was that all beneficiary RAOs should work in collabo­ ration with community-­based organ­isa­tions (G-­RAP 2004), it is ac­know­ledged by G-­RAP in­siders that this has not happened.9 Indeed, the evid­ence suggests that while the programme has apparently placed much emphasis on inter-­RAO networking as well as on the RAO-­government interface, there has been no sim­ ilar effort aimed at promoting effect­ive collaboration between RAOs and the very poor whose inter­ests they purportedly serve. On the contrary, the RAOs con­tinue to operate largely within central gov­ern­ment and donor circles, and there is virtually no evid­ence of increased collaboration between them and community-­based organ­isa­tions. This is rather surprising given the participating donors’ ac­know­ledgement of Accra-­based RAOs as being significantly distant ‘from their constituencies in Ghanaian so­ci­ety’ (G-­RAP 2004: 8). Yet the dis­ tinct lack of concern about this clear programme failure would seem to suggest that it was never a donor pri­or­ity, indicating that their intentions are less about extending pop­ular control over demo­cratic decision-­making and more about strengthening an elite group of civil so­ci­ety organ­isa­tions with the capa­city to challenge and limit the state, ones that can be relied on to interact with donors in mutual coopera­tion.

Ghana Rights and Voice Initiative (RAVI) Con­text The Ghana Rights and Voice Initiative (RAVI) was a DFID-­funded pro­ject from 2004–2010, with a budget of £4.7 million. As indicated above, RAVI was ‘designed as a com­plement­ary aid mech­an­ism [to Multi-­Donor Budget Support]’ (Haden and Ahadzie 2008: 1), and its stated goal was to ensure ‘improved account­ ability and responsiveness of the Gov­ern­ment of Ghana towards its cit­izens, par­ ticu­larly the poor’ (DFID Ghana 2004: 30). Additionally, RAVI’s emergence was related to two broad DFID pol­icies in the areas of ‘rights’ and ‘voice’. First, increasing ‘cit­izen voice’ in policy-­making and enhancing gov­ern­ment account­ability, rationalised as likely to improve the ‘pro-­poor’ nature of gov­ern­ ment pol­icy, was in line with DFID’s approach to the state at that time. This is summarised as the CAR framework – Capability, Account­ability and Respon­ siveness – in which these three overlapping elements are seen as forming a ‘vir­ tuous cycle of governance’, with ‘an effect­ive state [being] a CAR state’ (Loughhead 2009, cited in Holland and Thirkell 2009: 4).10 From a de­velopment aid per­spect­ive, enhancing state capability clearly requires assistance to state institutions, the supply side, while leveraging increased account­ability and

142   G. Crawford and A.-G. Abdulai responsiveness of gov­ern­ment requires the strengthening of non-­state actors and organ­isa­tions, the demand side. This emphasis on ‘voice and account­ability’ and on the role of civil so­ci­ety in ‘help[ing] to build effect­ive and ac­count­able states’ (DFID 2006: 2) has become a familiar element of DFID pol­icy rhet­oric in the past half-­decade. How­ever, the language is deceptively alluring. Such discourses can also serve to disguise an underlying state scep­ti­cism where ‘voice and account­ability’ are valued for their role in constraining state actions and limiting its powers. This point is reinforced by ref­er­ence to the World Bank’s approach to state and civil so­ci­ety, one that ad­voc­ates ‘bringing the state closer to the people’ through ‘giving people a voice’ and ‘broadening parti­cipa­tion’, as out­ lined initially in the 1997 World De­velopment Report on ‘state effect­iveness’ (World Bank 1997: 10). Again the beguiling nature of such apparently pro-­ democratic language is evid­ent. Yet the World Bank’s underlying negativity towards the state becomes clear in its frequent ref­er­ences to an ‘arbit­rary’ and ‘capricious’ state, echoing classical lib­eralism’s deep-­seated fear of excessive and unrestrained state power, with a chapter devoted to this exact topic in the 1997 Report (World Bank 1997: ch. 6). Given the extensive influence of the Bank in the adoption of de­velopment discourses, it is contended here that DFID’s notion of an ‘effect­ive state being a CAR state’ is sim­ilarly underpinned by polit­ical lib­eralism and state negativity in which the ‘voice and account­ ability’ mech­an­isms attributed to civil so­ci­ety are perceived as fulfilling an instrumental function to restrain and restrict state power. Second, the par­ticu­lar focus on ‘rights’ within RAVI relates to the separate but closely linked DFID pol­icy on human rights and a rights-­based approach to de­velopment (DFID 2000), one that was evid­ent for a decade, at least until the change of gov­ern­ment in the UK in May 2010. ‘Realising human rights for poor people’, as the pol­icy was entitled, was to be achieved through three prin­ciples: parti­cipa­tion, en­ab­ling people to parti­cip­ate in policy-­making pro­cesses; inclusion, emphasising the human rights values of equality and non-­discrimination; and fulfilling obli­ga­tions, pertaining to the respons­ibil­ities of state duty-­bearers to promote human rights (DFID 2000: 7). These idealised prin­ciples relate closely to the above pol­icy on ‘voice and account­ability’, with human rights to be secured through poor people’s parti­cipa­tion and expression of voice, listened to in turn by a responsive gov­ern­ment. One dif­fer­ence however is that pro-­active state action is required for rights realisation. RAVI is distinctive, though not unique, in combining these two elements of voice and account­ability and a rights-­based approach. As stated in the Pro­ject Memorandum, the goal of improving gov­ern­ment account­ability and responsive­ ness through ‘enhance[d] cit­izen engagement with the state’ is situated within the specific framework of ‘the protection and ful­fil­ment of civil, cultural, eco­ nomic, polit­ical and social rights’ (DFID Ghana 2004: 5). Thus, as a civil so­ci­ety support pro­ject, it has a specific human rights focus and seeks to strengthen the capa­city of rights-­holders to exercise their voice and demand their rights and to enhance citizen-­government engagement, with rights realisation by the state as an anticipated outcome.

Liberal democracy and civil society in Ghana   143 RAVI was managed for DFID by a consortium of inter­na­tional NGOs headed by ActionAid Ghana, with pro­ject implementation by a secretariat based in Accra. A total of 34 Ghanaian CSOs were provided with two-­year grants in three rounds of grant-­making between 2005 and 2007. These grantees included 11 ‘intermediary’ organ­isa­tions who worked in turn with a total of 109 local NGOs and CBOs, thus extending support to ‘grassroots’ organ­isa­tions (RAVI 2009a). In addition, RAVI attempted to con­trib­ute to a culture of rights through pro­vi­ sion of training programmes for grantees on a rights-­based approach and by holding pub­lic events at which the rights work of its grantees was showcased. RAVI’s underlying concept of civil so­ci­ety What is the concept of civil so­ci­ety that underpins RAVI? Despite the ori­ginal pro­ ject goal, as outlined above, implying a lib­eral demo­cratic orientation in which civil so­ci­ety is prim­arily conceived as a mech­an­ism for controlling the state, there is some evid­ence that in practice RAVI has gone beyond such an orthodox and instrumental approach. First, RAVI has en­com­passed a wide range of civil so­ci­ety organ­isa­tions and would appear to have opera­tionalised ‘a broad and inclusive view of “civil so­ci­ety” ’ (DFID Ghana 2004: 6), as promised. Second, rights cover­ age has entailed not only civil and polit­ical rights but also eco­nomic, social and cultural rights. Third, the emphasis on citizen-­government engagement has encour­ aged demo­cratic parti­cipa­tion and col­lect­ive action, including alliance-­building amongst local and national CSOs. We look at these three aspects in turn. Range of civil so­ci­ety organ­isa­tions RAVI supported a wide range of organ­isa­tions through its fin­an­cial assistance to direct beneficiaries and intermediary organ­isa­tions, extending well beyond the narrow range of professional and westernised NGOs that may be most able to perform a watchdog role on state institutions. Although direct beneficiaries have only totalled 23 in number, these have been diverse in terms of both type of organ­isa­tion and thematic focus. Grantees have included: • • • • •

mem­ber­ship organ­isa­tions, including trade unions such as the Gen­eral Agricultural Workers Union (GAWU); faith-­based organ­isa­tions such as the Chris­tian Council of Ghana; media organ­isa­tions, for instance the Founda­tion for Female Photojourn­al­ ists and Pub­lic Agenda, a weekly news­paper that focuses on de­velopment and rights issues often ignored by both private and state-­owned media; legal ad­vo­cacy organ­isa­tions such as Centre for Pub­lic Inter­est Law (CEPIL) and the Legal Resources Centre (LRC), both focusing on access to justice for the poor; and co­ali­tions and networks, for example, the National Co­ali­tion on Do­mestic Viol­ence Legis­la­tion (DVC), the Northern Network for Education De­velopment and the Com­mun­ity Radio Network. (RAVI 2009a)

144   G. Crawford and A.-G. Abdulai The grants disbursed to 11 intermediary organ­isa­tions have extended cover­ age to over 100 local NGOs and CBOs. These have included organ­isa­tions of poor, rural people, often far from Accra and regional capitals, who have been introduced to a rights-­based approach and whose organ­isa­tional capa­city has been strengthened. RAVI’s own pub­licity has highlighted various success stories in which poor and often vulnerable groups and com­munit­ies have actively engaged with gov­ern­ment agencies in attempts to protect and promote rights (RAVI 2009b). One such example is Solidarity Action for Com­mun­ity Empowerment (SOLACE), a community-­based organ­isa­tion sup­ ported by the Belim Wusa De­velopment Agency (BEWDA), itself a small de­velopment NGO, in the Upper East region of northern Ghana. SOLACE focuses on health issues, being par­ticu­larly concerned about the high rates of maternal and child mor­tal­ity in the local area. The two-­year part­ner­ship with BEWDA (2006–2007) as an intermediary organ­isa­tion entailed the de­velopment of SOLACE’s organ­isa­tional capa­city, including training in rights-­based approaches. Con­sequently, it appears that SOLACE has been able to engage more effect­ively with local gov­ern­ment in making right claims, with some success in the areas of water pro­vi­sion (water storage tanks) and sanitation (renovation of pub­lic toilet facilities), both vital for improved health (RAVI 2009a: 4; inter­view SOLACE coordinator, 11 Novem­ber 2009). Additionally, in com­mun­ity education work, SOLACE promotes aware­ness of women’s rights, notably through drama and education around themes of gender equality and anti-­FGM (female genital mutilation) (Inter­view, SOLACE coordinator, 11 Novem­ber 2009). Cover­age of rights The broad cover­age in RAVI of different types of human rights is already evid­ ent in the varied thematic orientations of the organ­isa­tions listed above and is further dem­on­strated by looking at the concerns of beneficiary organ­isa­tions. The cover­age is clearly not limited to those elements of civil so­ci­ety that are supportive of eco­nomic neo-­liberalism, with many organ­isa­tions advocating for greater state regulation and gov­ern­ment protection against big business. Eco­ nomic rights are promoted by the Gen­eral Agricultural Workers Union and by organ­isa­tions involved with nat­ural resource-­dependent com­munit­ies. For instance, Forest Watch Ghana promotes the rights of mar­ginalised socio-­ economic groupings in forestry, while Friends of the Nation seeks to ensure that the voices of fisher folk are heard, with these organ­isa­tions also having an envir­ on­mental rights dimension to their work. Social rights are promoted through RAVI’s support for a variety of rights-­deprived social groupings, including: • •

dis­abled people, e.g. Ghana Federation of the Dis­abled and the Ghana Asso­ci­ation of the Blind; women, e.g. Women in Law and De­velopment (WiLDAF ) and the Ark Founda­tion, promoting women’s and chil­dren’s rights. Both organ­isa­tions

Liberal democracy and civil society in Ghana   145

•

are also members of the Do­mestic Viol­ence Co­ali­tion, which itself received RAVI support; and chil­dren and young people, e.g. Youth Alive, working with street and other vulnerable chil­dren.

There is some limited cover­age of cultural rights through assistance to the Center for Indi­gen­ous Know­ledge and Organ­isa­tional De­velopment, while civil and polit­ical rights are protected through the support provided to legal ad­vo­cacy organ­isa­tions such as CEPIL and LRC. Both organ­isa­tions engage in court liti­ gation and have been respons­ible for taking landmark cases in relation to social rights, for example CEPIL’s work in housing rights and eviction. The work of one RAVI beneficiary, WACAM, an asso­ci­ation of com­munit­ies affected by mining, itself en­com­passes a wide range of human rights abuses per­petu­ated by multi­national gold mining com­panies, inclusive of violations of civil rights (e.g. viol­ence by private security and Ghanaian security forces), of eco­nomic rights (e.g. loss of land and displacement), of envir­on­mental rights (e.g. pollution of water supplies by cyanide spills), and of women’s rights (e.g. loss of income through forest degradation). Again, demands are more for state action and inter­ ven­tion than inaction and deregulation. Demo­cratic parti­cipa­tion and col­lect­ive action Finally, the focus on citizen-­government engagement has encouraged demo­cratic parti­cipa­tion and col­lect­ive action and the strengthening of local and national CSOs both indi­vidually and col­lect­ively. While many RAVI-­supported organ­isa­ tions have engaged with state duty-­bearers through the formal channels of demo­ cratic repres­enta­tion, especially at local gov­ern­ment level, some organ­isa­tions have also adopted a more direct action approach in advocating for rights. In such ways, new forms of demo­cratic expression and parti­cipa­tion have occurred, including in ‘created spaces’ (Cornwall 2002), where like-­minded indi­viduals and civil so­ci­ety organ­isa­tions have come together and created more auto­nom­ ous spaces for inter­action and polit­ical mobil­isa­tion. One outcome has been alliance-­building and the formation of co­ali­tions, themselves the basis for stronger and more concerted action in pursuit of various rights. One example is the Do­mestic Viol­ence Co­ali­tion (DVC) that successfully cam­paigned for the passing of a Do­mestic Viol­ence bill into law. One feature of the DVC was the range of strategies that it utilised in pursuit of its key aim. These entailed a com­ bination of conventional lobbying of gov­ern­ment and various forms of peaceful direct action, including the picketing of par­lia­ment, a night vigil, men’s marches and ‘the Teaser’. This latter action involved women, who were dressed in wedding gowns with battered faces and bandages, standing at strategic locations across Accra with placards stating, ‘This could be your wife’, ‘I did not bargain for this when we got married’, ‘I am your partner and not your punch bag’ and so forth. Together, these con­trib­uted in drawing attention to the issue of do­mestic viol­ence in Ghana in an innov­at­ive and participatory manner. Such examples

146   G. Crawford and A.-G. Abdulai indicate that, within RAVI at least, CSOs have been valued not simply as coun­ tervailing forces to state power, but also for their role in advocating for rights realisation by the state and in con­trib­ut­ing to demo­crat­isation pro­cesses through broad-­based polit­ical parti­cipa­tion. The evid­ence above has suggested ways in which RAVI has moved beyond an orthodox and instrumental approach to civil so­ci­ety, simply perceived as a mech­an­ism for controlling state institutions. In par­ticu­lar, the types of organ­isa­ tions supported and the nature of their ac­tiv­ities could be construed as attempts to extend pop­ular control over demo­cratic decision-­making, albeit mainly at a local and decentralised level. How­ever, there are also a number of lim­ita­tions and caveats concerning the extent to which RAVI has con­trib­uted to this demo­ crat­isation of polit­ical life. First, there is the issue of attribution. Although pos­it­ ive stories can be told about the ac­tiv­ities of RAVI beneficiaries, such success is not neces­sar­ily attrib­ut­able to RAVI’s support and may have happened anyway, especially as some organ­isa­tions, WACAM for instance, had a significant his­ tory prior to RAVI funding, with estab­lished ac­tiv­ities, strategies and networks. While fin­an­cial support from RAVI was doubtless welcome, it may not have made a substantial dif­fer­ence to the organ­isa­tion concerned or con­trib­uted sig­ nificantly to its success or effect­iveness. Second, RAVI funding has been short-­ term – two years only. At best, within such a timeframe, only limited pro­gress can be made, with the likelihood that momentum will not be maintained and backsliding may occur after such short-­term funding has ceased. Finally, RAVI ended in June 2010, fol­low­ing a de­cision by DFID not to go ahead with a second phase. A new pro­ject, the Ghana Account­ability and Responsiveness Initiative (GARI), has replaced both G-­RAP and RAVI with multi-­donor funding. Is it the case that a pro­ject that appears to have con­trib­uted to the de­velopment of pro­ gressive polit­ical discourses in Ghana around issues of rights, demo­cratic parti­ cipa­tion and the state as duty-­bearer is not actu­ally a donor pri­or­ity?

Conclusion: demo­cracy promoted or undermined? We have examined two civil so­ci­ety support programmes in Ghana undertaken in the second half of the 2000s by bi­lat­eral donor agencies as part of their demo­ cracy pro­mo­tion ac­tiv­ities, and in doing so have sought to tease out the par­ticu­ lar concept of civil so­ci­ety that underpins them. In par­ticu­lar we have asked whether these programmes emphasise a lib­eral demo­cratic and/or a neo-­liberal concept of civil so­ci­ety, or al­tern­atively whether they provide evid­ence of donor support for a more rad­ical model of demo­cratic parti­cipa­tion within civil so­ci­ety and pop­ular control over decision-­making? Our findings are three-­fold. First, the pic­ture is complex and multifaceted, and there is a significant dif­fer­ence between the two programmes. Second, notwithstanding this complexity and diversity, the predominant intent of these programmes, especially G-­RAP, is about checking the power of the state. Third, fol­low­ing on from this, we posit that inter­na­tional agencies are not only engaged in reconstructing state-­society relations in their own (idealised) Western image but also in their own inter­ests. In this concluding

Liberal democracy and civil society in Ghana   147 section, these three findings are examined in more detail, followed by con­sidera­ tion of their im­plica­tions for demo­cracy. First, in examining these recent civil so­ci­ety programmes in Ghana it is appar­ ent that their organ­isa­tional cover­age is more diverse than in those studied previ­ ously by Hearn (2001: 24), which were found to have focused narrowly on those CSOs that promoted market-­led eco­nomic reform. Therefore the pic­ture has become more multifaceted, especially with the introduction of RAVI, although the same proponents of neo-­liberal eco­nomic pol­icies, such as the Institute of Eco­nomic Affairs, con­tinue to feature amongst the largest G-­RAP beneficiaries. Dif­fer­ences between RAVI and G-­RAP are also evid­ent, ones that suggest some vari­ation in the underlying concept of civil so­ci­ety. Whereas G-­RAP assistance was mainly limited to the narrow range of professional and westernised NGOs that are most able to perform a watchdog role and scrutinise state ac­tiv­ities, RAVI beneficiaries often play a more pos­it­ive role in pro­cesses of demo­crat­ isation through polit­ical parti­cipa­tion and col­lect­ive action and in demanding the realisation of human rights by the state. Admittedly, we traced the changes in G-­RAP in its pro­vi­sion of support to a somewhat broader range of CSOs, inclu­ sive of those with a focus on women’s rights and gender relations, but noted that this occurred largely due to the challenges to the programme from a section of Ghanaian civil so­ci­ety itself. In this respect, the con­tent of an externally funded programme has been contested and partly re-­shaped by those who were doubt­ less expected to be grateful and passive recipients. Overall, therefore, we note a degree of dif­fer­ence in the model of civil so­ci­ety that underpins RAVI and G-­RAP, with some evid­ence in RAVI of donor support to a broader-­based notion of civil so­ci­ety, with inklings here of a more rad­ical model of demo­cratic parti­ cipa­tion in which CSOs engage with the state in struggles to secure rights for people living in pov­erty or other­wise vulnerable. How­ever, such hints of an al­tern­ative model of civil so­ci­ety may be short-­lived. RAVI was the initiative of one donor agency, the UK’s DFID, and its enthusiasm for human rights and demo­cratic parti­cipa­tion has clearly di­min­ished, as indicated by DFID’s de­cision to discon­tinue with RAVI. Second, notwithstanding such complexities and degrees of dif­fer­ence, our investigation indicates that the predominant intent of donor programmes is to promote a model of civil so­ci­ety that seeks to limit the state’s power, one char­ acterised by Baker (2004: 45) as the ‘instrumentalisation’ of civil so­ci­ety. This is dem­on­strated especially through G-­RAP, as well as through the overall con­text in which both G-­RAP and RAVI were introduced, in other words as a com­ plement­ary aid mech­an­ism to the Multi-­Donor Budget Support provided to the Gov­ern­ment of Ghana. The pro­ject goals of both G-­RAP and RAVI focus on ‘holding gov­ern­ment to account for its pol­icy choices’ (G-­RAP 2004: 1), and display a negat­ive orientation towards the state. Both pro­jects are underpinned by the as­sump­tion that the Gov­ern­ment of Ghana cannot be trusted to implement donors’ preferred pol­icy choices, ones that remain eco­nomic­ally neo-­liberal while being labelled as ‘pro-­poor’ (Crawford and Abdulai 2009). Therefore, driven by the fear of state arbitrariness that pervades a lib­eral per­spect­ive, donor

148   G. Crawford and A.-G. Abdulai agencies have turned to civil so­ci­ety organ­isa­tions as a perceived control mech­ an­ism on the state through the pro­vi­sion of inputs into policy-­making pro­cesses and the scrutiny of pol­icy implementation. There is evid­ence here that donors’ high regard for the role of CSOs is underpinned by state scep­ti­cism and intent to constrain state power and limit state inter­ven­tionism. Donors’ own external inter­ven­tion is simultaneously rationalised and legitimised as ensuring that gov­ ern­ment delivers pro-­poor pol­icy, and the as­sump­tion is that CSOs ‘ad­voc­ate on behalf of the poor and socially excluded in Ghanaian so­ci­ety’ (G-­RAP 2004: 1). This rose-­tinted view justifies and legitimises the selection and support of par­ ticu­lar organ­isa­tions, even though it is highly debatable whether many G-­RAP beneficiaries do in fact represent the poor, given that such Accra-­based organ­isa­ tions mainly operate in central gov­ern­ment (and donor) circles, with little or no evid­ence of collaboration with community-­based organ­isa­tions. What has been evid­enced here, especially with G-­RAP, is the capacity-­building by donors of a narrow set of elite CSOs as the major, large-­scale beneficiaries of G-­RAP funding, inclusive of all the leading pro-­market think-­tanks. It would seem that this elite group of G-­RAP beneficiaries are perceived as offering the most likely challenge to state power. They may be small in number but, as noted by Caroth­ ers and Ottaway (2000: 16), such professionalised NGOs can have ‘inordinate influence’ in terms of policy-­making, especially in circumstances where gov­ern­ ment de­part­ments are weak and overstretched. Therefore we conclude that the underlying concept of civil so­ci­ety within donor civil so­ci­ety support pro­ grammes in Ghana is predominantly a lib­eral one. Returning to our initial dis­ tinction between a lib­eral demo­cratic and a neo-­liberal approach within an overall lib­eral model, there is evid­ence within G-­RAP of support for both those organ­isa­tions that are specifically engaged in the pro­mo­tion of neo-­liberal eco­ nomic reforms and those that function to limit and control the state more gen­ erally. The broadening of support within G-­RAP suggests that it now displays gen­eral lib­eral demo­cratic charac­ter­istics as well as the specific neo-­liberal dimension which aims to limit state eco­nomic inter­ven­tionism. Third, such donor inter­ven­tion in African soci­eties, as exemplified by the case of Ghana, could be construed as an attempt by Western ‘donor’ gov­ern­ments to construct civil so­ci­ety in their own image, motiv­ated ideo­logically by the notion that this constitutes ‘good governance’ where the state is increasingly held to account by a lib­eral pub­lic sphere or civil so­ci­ety. How­ever, we also detect a more self-­interested mo­tiva­tion. Again the con­text of the transition from the Structural Adjustment era of programmes to that of Pov­erty Reduction Strategy Papers is crit­ical. Under the rhet­oric of ‘coun­try ownership’, donors are less able to impose policy-­based con­ditionality and have to seek other ways to maintain pol­icy influence. One means has been apparent in this study. It entails a two-­fold approach. The first aspect involves the requirement by donors that the gov­ern­ ment show evid­ence of its engagement with civil so­ci­ety in pol­icy formu­la­tion and implementation as part of the ‘triggers’ for the release of MDBS funds (Crawford and Abdulai 2009: 107). The second aspect entails the pro­cesses that have been examined in this paper. Through a funding mech­an­ism like G-­RAP,

Liberal democracy and civil society in Ghana   149 donor agencies de­velop a close relationship with selected elite NGOs, to whom they provide substantial core support. Con­sequently, such NGOs have both the capa­city and the status to engage more effect­ively with gov­ern­ment. It is pre­ cisely these NGOs that are then invited to engage with gov­ern­ment, as required by funding ‘triggers’, while other local NGOs and CBOs remain at the margins.11 And thus the circle is complete. We contend that it is through the cultivation of civil so­ci­ety proxies in this manner, alongside donor insistence that gov­ern­ment consult with them, that donors aim to retain pol­icy influence and to ensure that gov­ern­ment pol­icies remain consistent with their own pol­icy choices, that is, ones that promote eco­nomic lib­eralisation and private sector de­velopment.12 Therefore, finally, what are the con­sequences for demo­crat­isation in Ghana of such alleged demo­cracy pro­mo­tion ac­tiv­ities? Some disturbing demo­cratic defi­ cits are revealed. First, despite being demo­cratically elected, the Gov­ern­ment of Ghana remains an object of mistrust, whereas NGOs, who have no demo­cratic credentials and often represent no one but themselves, are regarded as virtuous and pro-­poor by Western ‘donor’ gov­ern­ments. Second, the concern for greater gov­ern­ment account­ability is shared by donors and NGOs alike. Yet, unlike the Gov­ern­ment of Ghana, which will be held ac­count­able by its cit­izens for its per­ formance at the next elections, donor agencies are entirely unac­count­able to Ghanaian cit­izens, and many NGOs have become increasingly ac­count­able to their external funders rather than to a do­mestic constituency. Third, G-­RAP and RAVI both emphasise the pro­ject goal of pro-­poor pol­icy implementation by a gov­ern­ment that is responsive towards its cit­izens. Yet attempts by donor agen­ cies to indirectly influence gov­ern­ment eco­nomic pol­icy via its civil so­ci­ety champions, notably the G-­RAP beneficiaries, is not only profoundly undemo­ cratic but also dem­on­strates con­tinu­ity from the SAP era in undermining demo­ cracy through the removal of pol­icy sover­eignty from national gov­ern­ments.

Notes   1 Van Rooy (1998) has also examined the rise of civil so­ci­ety assistance within de­velopment aid more gen­erally, including in demo­cracy pro­mo­tion.   2 Although a second phase of each was anticipated, this has not happened and they have effect­ively been replaced by a new pro­ject – the Ghana Account­ability and Respon­ siveness Initiative (GARI) – which was being estab­lished at the time of writing.   3 For example, Freedom House scores for polit­ical rights and civil liberties in Ghana have reached almost the highest level pos­sible in recent years, scoring 1 for polit­ical rights and 2 for civil liberties in the 2010 report, where 1 is the highest level of freedom and 7 the lowest (Freedom House 2010). The 2009 Freedom House in­dic­ ators for press freedom place Ghana at a higher level than Italy, Greece and Israel, and first equal (with Mali) in Africa (Freedom House 2009).   4 How­ever, there appears to be a significant gap between these pledges and the actual amount disbursed so far, with the total grants awarded as at Decem­ber 2008 amount­ ing to US$5,012,741 (see G-­RAP 2009: 3).   5 The IEA’s overall orientation toward the neo-­liberal de­velopment agenda is also apparent in its mem­ber­ship in the Eco­nomic Freedom Network and its role as a co-­ publisher of Freedom House’s annual Eco­nomic Freedom of the World report for several years (www.freetheworld.com).

150   G. Crawford and A.-G. Abdulai   6 In addition, fixed ICB grants of $15,000 were regu­larly awarded to the elite core grantees.   7 In Annex D of the G-­RAP Joint Programme Memorandum, two lists of cri­teria for GRAP eligibility are presented, namely a pre-­qualification stage (using 27 cri­teria) and full qualification (24 cri­teria pertaining to ‘organ­isa­tional competencies’).   8 Im­port­antly, these pressures did not go without opposi­tion and contestation by some RAO representatives, as exemplified in a letter from NETRIGHT, itself a gender network, that rejected an offer from G-­RAP of an ICB grant: We are also very concerned by the PMT’s [Programme Management Team] attempts to use the promise of capa­city building support to force a number of women’s organ­isa­tions into so-­called strategic part­ner­ships. . . . We do not believe that the PMT has the mandate to re-­engineer the women’s NGO landscape. Letter of 18/1/05 from NETRIGHT to the PMT, quoted in G-­RAP 2007: 41)   9 Inter­view with official from Royal Neth­er­lands Embassy, Accra, 11 March 2010. 10 Capability is the extent to which leaders and gov­ern­ments are able to get things done. Account­ability de­scribes the ability of cit­izens, civil so­ci­ety and the private sector to scrutinise pub­lic institutions and gov­ern­ments and hold them to account. Responsiveness refers to the extent to which pub­lic pol­icies and institutions respond to the needs of cit­izens and uphold their rights. (Holland and Thirkell 2009: 4). 11 One recurrent element in the nar­rat­ive reports of G-­RAP grantees is their attendance at various pol­icy forums initiated by gov­ern­ment. This is presented as growing re­cog­ ni­tion of the role of civil so­ci­ety in pol­icy formu­la­tion and the cre­ation of more space for participatory decision-­making. Yet gov­ern­ment is forced to invite NGOs to such forums in order to dem­on­strate to donors that they have engaged with civil so­ci­ety, while NGO grantees have to report to donors about how and when they have engaged with gov­ern­ment in pol­icy discourses. Both are responding to donor funding require­ ments, almost acting out parts in a theatrical performance created by donor agencies. 12 Our findings tend to confirm the views of Ghanaian lawyer and aca­demic, Raymond Atuguba, who bluntly stated: In simple terms, de­velopment agencies give money directly to the gov­ern­ment, in Ghana through an agency known as the Multi-­Donor Budgetary Support (MDBS), and ask them [the gov­ern­ment] to spend it on specific programs. They then give money to CSOs and ask the CSOs to watch that the gov­ern­ment spends the money on what the gov­ern­ment is supposed to spend the money on. The donor coun­tries and de­velopment agencies then sit back, relax and watch the fight. That is the rights-­based approach to de­velopment. (Atuguba 2011:11)

9 Concepts of demo­cracy among donors and recipients of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion An empirical pilot study Valerie J. Bunce and Sharon L. Wolchik 1 Demo­cracy assistance has been a controversial enterprise since its inception. In addition to doubts about whether states should engage in ac­tiv­ities designed to promote the de­velopment or strengthening of demo­cracy in other sover­eign entities, questions have arisen concerning the effect­iveness and overall utility of such actions, as well as the bene­fits to the providers. For the most part, critics have focused on the prac­tical prob­lems involved in demo­cracy assistance, including the short time horizons of many donors, the bur­eau­cratic nature of reporting requirements, dif­ficult­ies in identi­fying and supervising the most appropriate pro­jects and the tendency for a good deal of the funds involved to be spent on consultants and administrative costs in the donor coun­tries. Other analysts have highlighted the impact of asymmetries in money, know-­how, and therefore power which have characterized the relationship between donors and recipients in many cases, as well as the lack of know­ledge of local con­ditions and the resulting inapplic­ability of suggested techniques that have plagued some efforts to provide demo­cracy assistance (For example, see: Barany and Moser 2009; Wedel 2009; Guilhot 2005; Traub 2008 and McFaul 2010). Still others have noted the dependence of local NGOs involved in demo­cracy pro­mo­tion on foreign funding and the tendency such funding has had to create a web of NGOs that have little connection to their popu­la­tions and are, in fact, heads without bodies that exist largely to take ad­vant­age of funding oppor­tun­ities and provide employment for well-­educated, gen­erally young, urbanites in the recipient coun­ tries (for example, see: Hendersen 2002; Cooley and Ron 2002; Green 2007; Green and Kohl 2007; Finkel et al. 2006). How­ever, very few have examined, especially in a systematic way, the extent to which there are, in addition, deeper issues that affect demo­cracy assistance, that is, dif­fer­ences in the conceptions of what demo­cracy is, and therefore, of what is needed to promote it, on the part of providers and recipients of demo­cracy assistance (for example, see: Barany and Moser 2009). As the editors of this volume note in their introduction, such dif­ fer­ences may be im­port­ant not only in the realm of ideas but also in terms of the concrete actions different groups of actors take in an effort to promote what they perceive to be demo­cracy, and therefore the prac­tical outcome of demo­cracy assistance efforts. They may also have an impact on the success of efforts to estab­lish or strengthen demo­cracy in par­ticu­lar con­texts.

152   V. J. Bunce and S. L. Wolchik This chapter attempts to address this issue by focusing on the per­spect­ives of providers and recipients of demo­cracy assistance in the post-­communist world. We chose to focus on this region in part because of our own expertise, but also because of a larger pro­ject we have conducted over the past six years on demo­ cratizing elections in post-­communist Europe and Eurasia. It is also merited by the fact that from 1990 to 2005 the post-­communist region was the largest recipient of US gov­ern­ment demo­cracy assistance (see also Finkel et al. 2006; Bunce and Wolchik 2006). We approach this chapter, as we did the larger pro­ject from which our sample was drawn, from the per­spect­ive of empirical social scientists trained at the University of Michigan who have each spent over three decades focusing on the pol­itics of communist and then post-­communist regimes in Europe, as well as on various aspects of demo­crat­ization. We also draw on our familiarity with and inter­actions with both demo­cracy promoters in Washington DC and in the field, and recipients of such assistance in the field over the last 20 years. In our earl­ier study, we focused on the wave of demo­cratizing elections in the post-­communist world that began with the ousting of Vladimir Meciar in Slovakia in 1998, moved to Croatia where the successors of Franjo Tudjman were defeated and to Serbia where Slobodan Milosevic was ousted in 2000, Georgia in 2003, Ukraine in 2004, and Kyrgyzstan in 2005. We also examined efforts to use elections to unseat semi-­authoritarian rulers that failed in Belarus, Armenia and Azerbaijan (Bunce and Wolchik 2010, 2011). As part of this pro­ject, we conducted approximately 200 in-­depth inter­views with parti­cip­ants involved in these elections, including US and Euro­pean demo­ cracy assistance providers, US embassy and gov­ern­ment officials, officers of US and Euro­pean NGOs active in the region, and polit­ical leaders, NGO activists, aca­demic analysts, and others in the coun­tries under study. Although parts of these inter­views touched on demo­cracy pro­mo­tion and its effect­iveness, we did not expli­citly ask our respondents about their views concerning the meaning of demo­cracy. While our conclusions are thus informed by the understanding of how demo­cracy pro­mo­tion works at the center and on the ground from the per­ spect­ives of a variety of actors in numerous coun­tries, we cannot use these elite inter­views directly to address the questions examined in this chapter or the broader volume of which it is a part. Instead, we used those inter­views as a pool of respondents to whom we sent an email questionnaire specifically focused on this aspect of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion, as well as on perceived prob­lems with such ac­tiv­ities. It is this subset of our inter­views that forms the basis for our ana­lysis of concepts of demo­cracy in this chapter. Since our inter­viewees for the larger pro­ject as well as this chapter were by no means selected randomly but rather for their roles in the elections we were analyzing, our conclusions cannot be gen­ eralized to all providers and recipients of demo­cracy assistance in the post-­ communist world or even those in the coun­tries we studied. This is par­ticu­larly true for the responses we received through our email questionnaire, as the rapid turnover of demo­cracy assistance, embassy, and NGO personnel both in the US and abroad made it difficult to contact all of those we inter­viewed over the six

An empirical pilot study   153 years of our larger pro­ject. The small size of our sample is yet another reason why the results we discuss cannot be gen­eralized. Our results, therefore, should be seen as a pilot study that can highlight patterns that can be investigated more thoroughly and systematically in later research with larger samples. How­ever, as with other types of qualit­at­ive evid­ence, such inter­views can provide insight that is difficult to obtain via more structured survey research. We also hope that this study will provide an illustration of how such research can be conducted more systematically in the future. The central question we focus on in this chapter is how providers and recipients conceptualize demo­cracy. In other words, are there any consistent dif­fer­ ences in these conceptions across coun­tries that differentiate the two groups? After analyzing responses to an open-­ended question about the meaning of demo­cracy among our elite sample, we then turn to conceptions concerning the largest obs­tacles to demo­cratic de­velopment and respondents’ views concerning the biggest prob­lems in demo­cracy assistance. We also discuss the impact of parti­cipa­tion in demo­cracy assistance on the way providers and recipients view demo­cracy. In our discussion of conceptions of demo­cracy and prob­lems with demo­cracy assistance, we compare our findings briefly with several larger-­scale studies of elite and cit­izen conceptions of demo­cracy and a recent survey of the views of demo­cracy assistance recipients on prob­lems with such assistance. We conclude with observations about what our study tells us about the broader questions of inter­est in this volume, including the pos­sible con­sequences of our findings for the effect­iveness of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion, as well as fruitful areas for further research.

Methodology and hypotheses In order to assess pos­sible dif­fer­ences in conceptions of demo­cracy we used a vari­ant of an open-­ended question used by several other researchers (For example, see: Miller et al. 1997; Dalton et al. 2007; see Appendix in this chapter for questions and nature of the sample). In analyzing the responses we received, we used the three gen­eral cat­egor­ies Russell Dalton et al. (2007) used in their synthetic ana­lysis of a number of large-­scale surveys of cit­izens’ conceptions of demo­cracy.2 Thus, we categorized responses as falling into those that emphas­ ized: (l) freedom, (2) the rules of the game and institutional aspects of demo­ cracy, and (3) social/eco­nomic bene­fits as the pri­mary meaning of demo­cracy. The first two cat­egor­ies both fit within what can be termed a lib­eral definition of demo­cracy, while the latter is consistent with a socialist or social demo­cratic definition. In addition to tables presenting summaries of our results, we have also included excerpts from the responses we received in order to provide a better sense of the nature of the responses of different groups and to allow readers to ‘hear’ the ‘voices’ of some of those we inter­viewed. Our research was guided by several hypotheses. First, since all respondents in our sample were involved in demo­cracy assistance, which included inter­action with donors on the part of recipients as well as work on the part of both to

154   V. J. Bunce and S. L. Wolchik further demo­cracy, we did not expect to find large dif­fer­ences in how those in the two groups conceptualized demo­cracy. This expectation was bolstered by another aspect of our sample. Since we had what was in effect an elite sample, we expected that there would be less dif­fer­ence in the responses of donors and recipients of demo­cracy assistance than if we had compared samples of ordinary cit­izens in both groups of coun­tries. This expectation was based on the well-­ documented finding that elites tend to have polit­ical values and attitudes closer to the official or unofficial ‘ideo­lo­gies’ of their soci­eties than mass pub­lics. We were also inter­ested in the views of those indi­viduals who had origin­ally been recipients of demo­cracy assistance who went on to provide demo­cracy assistance to others in the post-­communist region. We hypothesized that the views of these respondents, whom we identi­fy as recipient-­donors in the discussion that follows, would be closer to those of ‘Western’ donors, due to the fact that, as active parti­cip­ants in providing demo­cracy assistance to others, they had higher levels of inter­action with donor organ­iza­tions over several years or even decades. On the other hand, since these indi­viduals were part of the same soci­ eties as other recipients of assistance and had shared many of the ex­peri­ence of living under com­mun­ism as well as common efforts to transform their polit­ical, social, and eco­nomic systems, it seemed pos­sible that their concepts of demo­ cracy and views of what was prob­lematic with demo­cracy assistance would more closely re­semble those of other recipients. Al­tern­atively, since these respondents did in fact have a foot in both worlds, we thought it pos­sible that their views would fall somewhere in between those of providers and respondents who received demo­cracy assistance. Their role in bridging the two groups, in fact, was one that was often noted in our earl­ier inter­views with people in this cat­ egory, who often emphas­ized the ad­vant­ages their ex­peri­ence in successfully ousting semi-­authoritarian rulers and prior to that living under com­mun­ism gave them in working with groups and indi­viduals trying to do the same thing (Bunce and Wolchik 2011: ch. 10). In respect to views re­gard­ing the greatest obs­tacles to demo­cratic de­velopment in recipient coun­tries, we expected both providers and recipients of assistance to identi­fy do­mestic, or in­ternal, issues as the pri­mary impediments. This expectation derived from the gen­erally shared consensus that do­mestic factors remain the most im­port­ant determinants of demo­cratic pro­gress, despite the im­port­ant role of the external envir­on­ment and actions of external actors in supporting or threatening such de­velopment. We also expected few systematic dif­fer­ences in donor and recipient views of the main prob­lems with demo­cracy assistance. At the same time, we thought that recipients would be more likely, given the asymmetry of power and resources involved, to identi­fy prob­lems related to the actions of external actors than those actors themselves.

Conceptions of demo­cracy As Table 9.1 illus­trates, the largest number of our respondents (16 of 36) defined demo­cracy prim­arily in institutional terms. Nine or 25 percent of respondents

An empirical pilot study   155 Table 9.1  Conceptions of democracy Institutions

Freedom

Mixed

Social/economic Total

Donors Recipients

  8 = 80%   8 = 30.8%

l = 10% 8 = 30.8%

  l  = 10% 10 = 38.9%

0 0

10 = 100% 26 = 100%

Total

16 = 44.4%

9 = 25%

11 = 30.6%

0

36 = 100%

identified freedoms of various sorts as the central element of what demo­cracy meant to them. Eleven or 30.6 percent gave replies that we have clas­si­fied as mixed, which included responses that fell into more than one cat­egory. The majority of the latter mentioned some combination of institutional features and freedoms. Only two of our respondents mentioned eco­nomic security or prosperity at all, and none of these put this factor first. Thus, almost all of our respondents shared some vari­ant of a lib­eral demo­cratic concept of demo­cracy. Our ana­lysis thus deals largely with vari­ations within this common conception. The response of a US official who worked in Kyrgyzstan was typical of those who identified institutional factors and rules of the game as central to their concept of demo­cracy: ‘Cit­izen­ship parti­cipa­tion in gov­ern­ment and de­cision making. The ability of the cit­izenry to hold the gov­ern­ment ac­count­able.’ An NGO activist in Kyrgyzstan emphas­ized sim­ilar dimensions. ‘Demo­cracy,’ he noted, is account­ability of the gov­ern­ment to civil so­ci­ety and merit-­based selection of the national and sub-­national leaders. This demo­cratic account­ability makes anti-­corruption efforts and eco­nomic planning much easier and more effect­ive than is the case under less transparent author­it­arian regimes. In short, I see demo­cratic governance as an effect­ive tool for gradual eradication of per­vas­ive corruption and for improvement of decision-­making in eco­nomic planning and foreign pol­icy. A Georgian NGO activist also highlighted account­ability, stating: ‘At its simplest, a gov­ern­ment that is ac­count­able and the pos­sib­il­ity of a peaceful transition of power, as determined by the electorate.’ A US donor who worked in Georgia had a response that paralleled the first part of this observation, noting that ‘Demo­cracy means the rules by which the state operates are written and avail­able for all to see. That peri­od­ic­ally the people choose who will govern them, and that cit­izens have some speci­fied rights.’ Yet another donor active in Serbia also focused on transparency: ‘Demo­cra­cies are transparent participatory pluralistic systems of governance with many varied, informed, and mobilized inter­est actors actively engaged in de­cision making. Over time, they generate superior pol­icy outcomes.’ Those whose responses fell into the ‘freedom’ cat­egory, on the other hand, identified features such as the ability of the indi­vidual to chart his or her own course, indi­vidual choice, and freedoms of speech, assembly, and travel as key

156   V. J. Bunce and S. L. Wolchik to their understanding of demo­cracy. The response of a US official who worked in Armenia was typical of this cat­egory: Demo­cracy is less about elections (the practice of demo­cracy) but about instilling a culture that the indi­vidual has a sacred and power­ful tool in the vote that he or she casts to determine his or her future. As a result, there is a distinct correlation between demo­cracy and freedom. Freedom or lib­erty is the hallmark of a demo­cratic so­ci­ety. The response of a US donor active in a number of post-­communist coun­tries was more specific, noting that demo­cracy means A clear balance of rights and respons­ibil­ities between the rulers and ruled—a series of indi­vidual and col­lect­ive rights: assembly, speech, confession, commerce, fair and transparent legal treatment and respons­ible gov­ ern­ment. But also the respons­ib­ility to take active part to ensure these rights are safeguarded and take an active part in the so­ci­ety you live in. Still another respondent linked demo­cracy to professional freedom: For me personally, demo­cracy means freedom to deliver lectures on sensitive polit­ical issues without any fear of the KGB informers from among students sitting in a classroom. It also means freedom of travel abroad and parti­cipa­tion in different inter­na­tional coopera­tion pro­jects, defending my rights, and support polit­ical force according to my own con­sidera­tion. A recipient in Serbia who later became a demo­cracy promoter also emphas­ized freedom as the key dimension of demo­cracy, noting that demo­cracy ‘means freedom of choice . . . it means freedom of speech and movement, in the social aspect it means freedom of different opinion and behavior, polit­ically it means that THOSE WHO VOTE decide about the election results, instead of THOSE WHO COUNT VOTES. . . .’ Referring to the ‘demo­cratic revolu­tions’ in Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine,’ this respondent noted that the ‘MAJOR FOUNDA­TION of those revolu­tions’ was that FOREVER you will have the free and fair elections. . . . Fair elections itself, are of course the FIRST STEP. Non violent movements mobilize huge numbers of people and participating in nonviolent movement often changes (the) way people see themselves . . . So in short freedom of choice + free and fair elections + de­veloped active cit­izen­ship. An NGO activist in Armenia stated: For me, personally, demo­cracy means – somewhat vaguely perhaps – al­tern­ atives, choice between the good and the better in all walks of life; it means

An empirical pilot study   157 an avenue of resolving in­ternal and external conflicts in a peaceful, non-­ violent manner; it means enablement of people’s talents and strengths and a way of shunning violent manner; it means enablement of people’s talents and strengths. Eleven of our respondents gave replies that we categorized as mixed, i.e., that combined two or more of the cat­egor­ies we used. All but two of these responses combined institutional factors and freedom. As noted earl­ier, all but one of these respondents were either recipients or recipient-­donors. The one US donor whose response fell into this cat­egory, who had worked in Slovakia, focused on the role of cit­izens in pol­itics, but also mentioned freedom of expression, noting that Demo­cracy means that the people have a direct role in shaping their gov­ern­ ment. This requires that they have equality of treatment and oppor­tun­ity before the law and the ability to express their opinions freely and without fear of reprisal. This requires an effect­ive rule of law and a media not controlled by the gov­ern­ment. The brief response of an NGO activist in Ukraine reflects a per­spect­ive common to many of the responses we clas­si­fied as mixed: ‘Fair elections, freedom of expression, protection of cit­izens’ rights and freedoms.’ A recipient-­donor in Armenia gave a sim­ilarly mixed response: Demo­cracy is associated with account­ability, respons­ib­ility, freedom of expression, access to diverse sources of in­forma­tion (including state-­owned in­forma­tion), availability of channels to tangibly influence a decision-­ making pro­cess on various levels, equality before the law, lack of fear of state/clan pun­ishment, polit­ical and eco­nomic stability . . . and pro­gress. An NGO activist in Ukraine noted, ‘To make it short – I share more or less lib­ eral idea of demo­cracy with polit­ical com­peti­tion, rule of law and freedom of speech.’ A recipient in Kyrgyzstan noted sim­ilar factors: ‘Rule of law. Laws recog­nized gen­erally as respecting all basic indi­vidual freedoms and rights.’ A Slovak NGO activist who fell into the recipient-­donor cat­egory noted: For me demo­cracy means: stable rules for pub­lic life on the base of polit­ical legitimacy, people’s involvement (including myself ) into pub­lic life and governance, protection of human rights, including freedom of expression, aca­demic freedom etc., protection of minor­it­ies, free parti­cipa­tion in pub­lic debate, ability to influence governance, rule of law. Very few (two of 36) of our respondents gave responses that in any way mentioned social and/or eco­nomic bene­fits as central to their concept of demo­cracy, and none of our respondents listed such bene­fits first. Rather, ref­er­ence to social and eco­nomic well-­being was the second or third aspect mentioned. The

158   V. J. Bunce and S. L. Wolchik response of an NGO activist in Azerbaijan reflected this pattern, noting that demo­cracy means ‘Equal oppor­tun­ities of access to power and resources to all people, tolerance, polit­ical plur­al­ism, fair elections.’ A recipient-­donor in Azerbaijan also mentioned eco­nomic stability and pro­gress, but these elements were secondary to others that focused on account­ability of gov­ern­ment and freedom of expression. As we will discuss more fully later, this finding is not surprising, given the elite nature of our sample. It is also consistent with the findings of the surveys of cit­izens’ conceptions of demo­cracy that Russell Dalton et al. (2007) ana­lyzed, which contradict many early expectations about how postcommunist cit­izens would understand demo­cracy. As Table 9.1 illus­trates, our initial hypo­thesis that donors and recipients would not differ greatly in their concepts of demo­cracy was only partly supported by our data. Both donors and recipients, as well as recipient-­donors, identified institutional factors or freedoms as central to their concepts of demo­cracy, and for none in any of these cat­egor­ies were social/eco­nomic bene­fits crucial. As Table 9.1 illus­trates, institutional factors were paramount for respondents in all cat­egor­ies aside from the recipient-­donor cat­egory. As we noted in the introduction to this chapter, the nature of our sample and the small number of respondents require caution in gen­eralizing from our findings. But, while our study should be seen as a pilot of what a larger, more systematic study might confirm or dispute, our findings do suggest a number of pos­sible explanations for the prevalence of this focus on institutional factors. Thus, donors and recipients may share a focus on institutional features of demo­cracy due to the emphasis both elites and ordinary cit­izens place on elections and the ability of cit­izens to choose their leaders as central elements of demo­cracy,3 irrespective of coun­try or other aspects of con­text. Such an explanation would support the view that demo­cratic norms have become widespread in the modern world, even in the semi-­authoritarian con­texts in which many of our recipients work or worked prior to the ousting of a semi-­authoritarian leader. The focus on institutional aspects of demo­cracy among donors and recipients, how­ever, may reflect another factor, and that is the nature of demo­cracy assistance. Here, we refer, for example, to the tendency for both US and other inter­na­tional donors to focus on elections as pivotal events and provide funds, training, and other forms of assistance to try to ensure free and fair elections, encourage opposi­ tions to run energetic and effect­ive cam­paigns, and facilitate efforts by NGOs to or­gan­ize voter registration drives and get-­out-the-­vote cam­paigns, pub­lic opinion and exit polls, and, if elections are stolen, mass protests in support of the opposi­ tion. This pos­sib­il­ity may be especially likely in our sample, since it was drawn from those indi­viduals we inter­viewed who were involved as donors and recipients of assistance in the course of demo­cratizing elections that tried and in some cases succeeded in ousting semi-­authoritarian leaders and in others tried but failed to do so. Thus, even though the US has been more likely to fund civil so­ci­ety ac­tiv­ities over the long-­term in these soci­eties than Euro­pean donors, US officials and NGO representatives also were highly focused on elections and voter choice during the events we studied. The fact that our findings differ from the tendency Dalton et al. (2007) found among mass pub­lics in a variety of nations, including the US as well

An empirical pilot study   159 as several post-­communist Euro­pean coun­tries, for more respondents to identi­fy freedoms as central to their concepts of demo­cracy than institutional factors (Dalton et al. 2007: 146, 152ff.) supports this conclusion, as the professional focus of both donors and recipients may counter the tendency to emphas­ize freedoms. At the same time, it is striking that a much larger proportion of donors than recipients identified institutional factors as key to their concepts of demo­cracy (80 percent versus 30.8 percent). It is also striking that only a single respondent in the donor group gave an answer that featured freedoms, in addition to another respondent whose response included freedoms as well as institutional factors. This dif­fer­ence is open to a number of in­ter­pretations. It may be that donors, who have grown up in as well as lived for much of their lives in demo­cratic soci­ eties, are more likely to take the exist­ence of basic demo­cratic freedoms for granted. Recipients of demo­cracy assistance, on the other hand, who live in soci­ eties that either were until recently or are still not free, may see these aspects of demo­cracy as more crit­ical as the result of their ex­peri­ences in less than free soci­eties. It may also be that recipients are more likely to reflect the emphasis on freedoms found among mass pub­lics. In Table 9.2, we divide our sample into three cat­egor­ies instead of two, which allows us to examine the views of a crucial cat­egory of respondents, those who were initially recipients of demo­cracy assistance and later went on to be demo­ cracy promoters (recipient-­donors) (see Table 9.2). These ‘gradu­ates’, as we have called them in our previous work, are those who, having succeeded, with outside assistance, in bringing about demo­cratic breakthroughs through elections in their own coun­tries, were funded to share their ex­peri­ences and help train activists in other coun­tries who wanted to emu­late their success. There were eight such indi­viduals in our sample. As we discussed at the outset, we origin­ ally anticipated that their views would be closer to those of donors than to those of recipients of aid, given the fact that numerous ‘gradu­ates’ have worked with US funders for several years or even a decade. Al­tern­atively, since they have lived in the post-­communist world and thus have shared the ex­peri­ences of other recipients of demo­cracy assistance, it is pos­sible that their views will be closer to those of the latter cat­egory. In fact, as Table 9.2 illus­trates, the concepts of demo­cracy of this cat­egory of our respondents, the recipient-­donors, appear to re­semble those of other recipients more than those of donors. Thus, like other recipients, recipient-­donors were con­sider­ably less likely than donors to identi­fy institutional factors alone as key to their concepts of demo­cracy. As was the case with other recipients, their responses were more evenly distributed between institutional, freedom, or mixed institutional/freedom cat­egor­ies. The small size of this group in par­ticu­lar cautions against attributing too much im­port­ance to the distribution of their responses. How­ever, it is inter­esting that, contrary to what one might expect, given the emphasis on institutional aspects among donors and the higher level of inter­action among donors and recipient-­donors, recipient-­donors are less likely than those who were only recipients to identi­fy institutional aspects of demo­ cracy as key.

160   V. J. Bunce and S. L. Wolchik Table 9.2  Conceptions of democracy: donors, recipients, recipient-donors Institutions Freedom

Mixed

Social/economic Total

Donors   8 = 80% l = 10% Recipients   6 = 33.3% 5 = 27.8% Recipient-Donors   2 = 25% 3 = 37.5%

  l  = 10% 0   7 = 38.9% 0   3 = 37.5% 0

10 = 100% 18 = 100%   8 = 100%

Total

11 = 30.6% 0

36 = 100%

16 = 44.4% 9 = 25%

Main obs­tacles to demo­cratic de­velopment Although not the central focus of our investigation for this chapter, we also asked respondents to share their views concerning the main obs­tacles to demo­ cratic de­velopment and main prob­lems with demo­cracy assistance. We were par­ticu­larly inter­ested here in the extent to which donors and recipients might assign different weights to in­ternal versus external factors as impediments to demo­cratic de­velopment. As Table 9.3 illus­trates, most respondents identified in­ternal prob­lems or factors as the main impediments to demo­cratic pro­gress. These responses parallel those found by Joel Barkan, who in a recent study of how recipients viewed demo­cracy assistance conducted for the National Endowment for Demo­cracy found that most respondents identified in­ternal factors as the most significant obs­tacles to demo­cratic de­velopment in their coun­tries.4 Thus, only two of our respondents identified external factors as the main impediment, and approximately 20 percent listed both in­ternal and external factors. There is, how­ever, an inter­esting dif­fer­ence among donors and recipients in the extent to which they view external factors as key impediments to demo­ cratic de­velopment. Although only two of our respondents felt that external factors alone were key, over twice as many recipients as donors viewed such factors as well as in­ternal issues as crit­ical. Given the greater exposure of recipient-­donors to the donor com­mun­ity, as well as their greater ex­peri­ence in gen­eral with demo­cracy assistance, we anticipated that recipients who went on to work as demo­cracy promoters would be more likely than other recipients to be aware of and identi­fy prob­lems stemming from external factors as key. As Table 9.4 illus­trates, the only two responses that listed these factors alone did in fact come from respondents in Table 9.3  Main obstacles to democratic development, donors and all recipients Internal

External

Both

Total

Donors Recipients

  9 = 90% 18 = 69.2%

– 2 = 7.6%

1 = 10% 6 = 23.1%

10 26

Total

27 = 75%

2 = 5.6%

7 = 19.4%

36

An empirical pilot study   161 Table 9.4  Main obstacles to democratic development, donors, recipients, recipient-donors Internal

External

Both

Total

Donors Recipients Recipient-Donors

  9 = 90% 12 = 66.6%   6 = 75%

– – 2 = 25%

1 = 10% 6 = 33.3% –

10 18  8

Total

27

2

7

36

this cat­egory. How­ever, recipient-­donors were less likely than other recipients to identi­fy a combination of in­ternal and external factors as major impediments and more likely than those who were only recipients to focus on in­ternal factors alone. As Table 9.5, which breaks both in­ternal and external impediments down farther, illus­trates, respondents most frequently identified prob­lems with polit­ical culture in the coun­try, lack of precon­ditions for demo­cratic de­velopment, and aspects of his­tory, including the legacy of com­mun­ism and Soviet rule, as the pri­mary impediments to demo­cratic de­velopment. Prob­lems stemming from weak institutions and bad governance were next. Smaller numbers of respondents identified corruption and vested inter­ests, the behavior of polit­ical elites, expectation overload or prob­lems with the demo­crat­ization para­digm leading to pop­ular disappointment with demo­cracy as crit­ical impediments. Rel­at­ively few respondents linked prob­lems with demo­cratic de­velopment to eco­nomic factors, either pov­erty or lack of de­velopment, or, conversely, the pres­ence of too many resources (energy).

Table 9.5  Main obstacles to democratic development by category of response internal Internal Political culture, lack of preconditions, history Weak institutions, bad governance Corruption, vested interests Political elites Weak civil society Expectations overload/problems with democratization paradigm Poverty/lack of development Resources (resource curse) External Lack of commitment of external powers/vested interest in status quo Problems with democratization strategy, attitudes Economic and political crisis of the developed world Geopolitical environment Russia Note All responses given by respondents were categorized.

26 15 7 5 5 4 3 1 4 2 1 1 1

162   V. J. Bunce and S. L. Wolchik Lack of com­mit­ment to promoting demo­cracy, unwillingness to challenge violations of demo­cratic norms, and a vested inter­est on the part of external actors in the status quo were the most frequently mentioned external factors impeding demo­cratic de­velopment. Other respondents mentioned prob­lems with the demo­crat­ization strategy and attitudes of those involved in demo­cracy assistance as key. Single respondents identified the global eco­nomic and polit­ical crisis, the geopolit­ical envir­on­ment of a par­ticu­lar coun­try, and a single external actor (Russia) as significant. The response of a donor active in Armenia illus­trates the impact given to polit­ical attitudes and beliefs by many of our respondents among both donors and recipients: Explaining to people that they should defy attempts to bribe or intimidate them for their votes is difficult because most people who do not live in a demo­cratic culture do not see their own polit­ical power, but are worried about the short-­term, tan­gible reality of feeding their fam­il­ies. If someone offers them money for their vote, it makes no logical sense for them not to take the deal. More­over, in coun­tries with strong, imposing gov­ern­ments, it is difficult for the indi­vidual to believe that his vote makes any dif­fer­ence . . . for the demo­cracy de­veloper, the challenge is two-­fold: creating a culture in which people feel empowered demo­cratically, and being at odds with a gov­ ern­ment structure that feels threatened by the empowerment of its own people. Another donor respondent, who also emphas­ized pop­ular attitudes, in this case the lack of ‘widespread social acceptance of short-­term sacrifices for long-­term gain,’ as a key obs­tacle, noted that in post-­communist coun­tries this unwillingness was ‘likely ex­acer­bated by hearing the “sacrifice for long-­term goals” song and dance from the communists as well’. A recipient from Ukraine, whose response fell into the same cat­egory, noted that Pol­itics in the region works like the used car market – the less honest you are, the faster you get to the top. So acting in accordance with the prin­ciples mentioned above [demo­cratic prin­ciples] makes one look a stupid loser [who is thus] in need of special training. Still others speci­fied certain polit­ical values and attitudes as key impediments. A recipient who later became a donor from Slovakia included ethnic nationalism, as well as a ‘low level of demo­cratic polit­ical culture, adherence of [a] big portion of the popu­la­tion to non-­democratic values,’ and corruption and ‘murky interlinks between pol­itics and business’ as impediments. Institutional factors most commonly mentioned included lack of division of powers, election mech­an­isms that did not work to trans­fer power, and prob­lems with or the lack of the rule of law. The response of a donor in Armenia identified, in addition to corruption and the low level of demo­cratic values in so­ci­ety, ‘the

An empirical pilot study   163 attitude that a group of power holders (visible and in­vis­ible) are con­sidered as ‘the only players in town,’ and lack of channels of influence’. Those who identified elite behaviors as key impediments most frequently noted the lack of com­mit­ment of supposedly demo­cratic elites to demo­cracy or the actions of author­it­arian gov­ern­ments as key. The response of a recipient active in the NGO world in Georgia captured the first per­spect­ive very succinctly: ‘Saakashvili’. A recipient from Kyrgyzstan couched his views in somewhat more gen­eral terms: ‘In [the] post-­Soviet con­text, the factor of person­al­ity is [a] crucial one. Empirical observation suggests that strong pres­id­ents in post-­ Soviet so­ci­ety abuse their power.’ A donor active in Kyrgystan identified, ‘Opposi­tion to power-­sharing by those in power and reluctance by leaders of de­veloping states to follow through on com­mit­ments (e.g., ICCPR, OSCE) as elements of elite behavior detrimental to demo­cratic de­velopment.’ Perceived prob­lems with the demo­crat­ization para­digm were well-­captured by the response of a recipient from Georgia who noted the biggest obs­tacle for demo­cracy de­velopment is the [sic] demo­crat­ization. The para­digm of this 30 years’ pro­cess was one sided. It made too much stress on pro­mo­tion of com­peti­tion, without enough stress on coopera­tion, but the version of com­peti­tion that de­veloped in effect is zero-­sum, which is a version of chaos, rather than that of demo­cracy. . . . Soci­eties may become very unhappy with chaos and prefer some forms of dic­tatorship stability instead. A recipient from Armenia voiced sim­ilar per­spect­ives, identi­fying ‘cynicism about demo­cracy and its genu­ineness’ as the main impediment: Many people believe that demo­cracy is, by and large, a myth, and even those coun­tries that are believed to be demo­cra­cies stage and stage-­ manage their demo­cratic theatre. The reason for this extreme view of demo­cracy lies in the very literal and abso­lute comprehension of what demo­cracy is. Over the years various do­mestic and inter­na­tional actors have presented demo­cracy in such lofty, supernat­ural, maybe even ‘divine’ terms that a huge capabilities-­expectations gap has emerged in de­veloping coun­tries, resulting in unrealistic hopes of demo­cracy being a panacea to all pains of the world. . . . In other words, the propaganda of what might be called textbook demo­cracy has bred vast socio-­ psychological prob­lems among the popu­la­tion of author­it­arian and semi-­ authoritarian coun­tries . . . The response of a donor active in Georgia was typical of those who identified elite behaviors and values as key impediments: ‘patrimonial elites, and a dis­connect between the pref­er­ences of the electorate and the pro­jections and in­tu­itions of the polit­ical elite, including the opposi­tion’. The response of a recipient from Georgia captured the sentiments of the few respondents who

164   V. J. Bunce and S. L. Wolchik mentioned social or eco­nomic issues as impediments to demo­cratic de­velopment: I think it is difficult to think of demo­cratic de­velopment as separate from de­velopment in gen­eral. Pov­erty eradication, equal and fair distribution of wealth and other issues related to eco­nomic de­velopment are directly related to demo­cratic de­velopment. . . . So I think that demo­cratic de­velopment should be understood in the wider con­text of de­velopment where all aspects of eco­nomic and social de­velopment are paid attention to. As noted earl­ier, most of our respondents, both donors and recipients, identified in­ternal factors as the pri­mary impediments to demo­cratic de­velopment. Recipients were more likely than donors to include external as well as in­ternal impediments in their responses, and it was only two recipients who later became donors who gave answers that focused only on external factors. The one donor who also included external factors and who was active in Kyrgyzstan identified the ‘gen­eral lack of support for demo­cratic de­velopment, compared to other strategic inter­ests such as security, milit­ary, energy’ as key. As Table 9.5 illus­trates, lack of com­mit­ment on the part of outside actors and their unwillingness to hold gov­ern­ments ac­count­able for violations of demo­ cratic pro­ced­ures were the pri­mary external impediments identified. The response of a recipient in Georgia put this view very succinctly: ‘In gen­eral, in the post-­Communist coun­tries like Georgia, the biggest obs­tacle is the ignoring from the inter­na­tional com­mun­ity of violations of fairness of the elections and human rights.’ A recipient from Azerbaijan, who also identified post-­ Soviet legacies as a key impediment, echoed the response of the US donor whose response we discussed above: ‘vested external inter­ests in the energy resources.’ The responses of the two recipient-­donors who identified solely external factors merit further discussion, as they were the only ones in our sample who did not include in­ternal factors among the key impediments to demo­cratic de­velopment. The first of these, from a recipient in Slovakia, identified the eco­ nomic and polit­ical crisis in the de­veloped world as the key impediment. The second, from Serbia, gave an extended answer that identified the lack of capability of ‘demo­cratic leaders’ of the world . . . to agree on a concept and focus for demo­cracy pro­mo­tion and the tendency of other regional or energy inter­ests of such leaders to conflict with their com­mit­ ment to demo­cracy assistance, the lack of inter­na­tional focus on pro-­ democracy nonviolent struggles, the lack of follow up after demo­cratic breakthroughs have taken place, the lack of a ‘sci­ent­ific approach’ and co­ordination of sci­ent­ific research concerning demo­cratic struggles and misconceptions about such struggles, in par­ticu­lar, the depiction of demo­ cratic movements as ‘tools of the west’ by author­it­arian leaders as impediments.

An empirical pilot study   165

Greatest prob­lems with demo­cracy assistance Although our pri­mary concern in this chapter has been with conceptions of demo­cracy, we were also inter­ested to see if there were dif­fer­ences between donors and recipients in terms of their perceptions of the most prob­lematic aspects of demo­cracy assistance. In fact, as Table 9.6 illus­trates, the largest number of respondents identified issues with the goals or nature of demo­cracy assistance as the most im­port­ant prob­lem with such assistance, a factor that is very closely related to conceptions of demo­cracy. This cat­egory was followed closely by the neg­lect of local circumstances or poor understanding of local challenges. A nearly equal number identified some aspect of the do­mestic situ­ation which complicated the pro­cess or made demo­cracy assistance less effect­ive. Lack of flex­ib­il­ity and administrative prob­lems associated with demo­cracy assistance were mentioned by nearly a fifth of all respondents, followed closely by the charac­ter­istics of those engaged in demo­cracy assistance and by issues related to the time frame of assistance. Other issues, including those related to the sincerity of the effort to promote demo­cracy, corruption, the amount of assistance, and the lack of legitimacy of the West, as well as a conflict between pol­itics and neutrality, and lack of attention to civil so­ci­ety were mentioned, but by only one or two respondents. Given the numbers of respondents in our sample and the large number of cat­ egor­ies we have used to summarize their comments, it is difficult to draw many meaningful conclusions concerning dif­fer­ences between donors and recipients. Perhaps the most suggestive dif­fer­ence lies in the fact that higher proportions of recipients than donors identified prob­lems with the goals of demo­cracy Table 9.6  Biggest problems respondents have encountered with democracy assistance Total respondents Number Percent Goals and nature of democracy assistance 11 Neglect of local circumstances, poor 10 understanding of challenges Domestic conditions in receiving country 9 Lack of flexibility, coordination, bureaucracy 7 Characteristics of assisters 6 Time frame of assistance 5 Lack of conditionality and will to change, 3 cooperation with government Corruption 2 Amount of assistance 2 Decreased legitimacy of the West 2 Conflict between political goals and neutrality 1 Lack of attention to civil society 1

Recipients █

Number Percent

30.5 27.7

8 8

30.8 30.8

25 19.4 16.7 13.8 8.3

5 5 7 3 2

19.2 19.2 26.9 11.5 7.6

5.5 5.5 5.5 2.8 2.8

2 2 2 1 1

7.6 7.6 7.6 3.8 3.8

Note Percentages do not add to 100 as respondents were free to name as many problems as they wished.

166   V. J. Bunce and S. L. Wolchik assistance, neg­lect of local con­ditions, and bur­eau­cratic/administrative issues as prob­lems. Donors were somewhat, but not significantly, more likely to identi­fy factors related to the do­mestic situ­ation of the recipient coun­try as crit­ical. It is also inter­esting that only recipients identified the decreased legitimacy of the West, corruption, and amount of assistance, as well as the lack of con­ditionality and real will to change, as prob­lematic. Recipients who later became donors offered responses that were less clustered than either of the other groups. The single largest response cat­egory for this group (two responses) focused on bur­ eau­cratic/administrative prob­lems. Inter­estingly enough, none of the recipients who later became donors gave responses related to the goals or nature of demo­ cracy assistance. These results provide both parallels and contrasts to the recent email survey of recipients of demo­cracy assistance Joel Barkan conducted for NED. Barkan asked a question that differed from ours to some degree (‘What are the two most common mis­takes that providers of demo­cracy assistance often make when assisting organ­iza­tions such as yours?’). Nonetheless, we can combine some of his cat­egor­ies to approximate several of our cat­egor­ies. The largest single cat­ egory of ‘mis­takes’, or prob­lems recipients who parti­cip­ated in the NED survey had with demo­cracy assistance, involved timing, both the length of time it took to reach recipients and the length of time of funding. The second cat­egory of ‘mis­takes’ consisted of the administrative and reporting requirements of funders, a cat­egory we have termed bur­eau­cratic/administrative prob­lems. Nearly a fifth of ‘mis­takes’ identified dealt with issues we have re-­classified as related to the goals of demo­cracy assistance. Issues related to neg­lect of local con­ditions and the amount of fin­an­cial assistance accounted for approximately a fifth of the responses, and a very small proportion with the inappropriateness of technical assistance.5 In order to facilitate comparison of our results with those of Barkan, we have provided results for recipients only as well as for all of our respondents in Table 9.6. If we look at this cat­egory, several contrasts stand out between our findings and those of the NED survey. Our recipients were more likely than those in NED’s much larger sample to identi­fy prob­lems with the goals and nature of demo­cracy assistance as prob­lematic. They were nearly twice as likely as NED’s respondents to identi­fy neg­lect of local circumstances as a key prob­lem and less likely to mention prob­lems related to the amount of funding. Our recipients were less likely to list prob­lems with timing, the most frequently mentioned cat­egory in the NED survey, as key. In addition, approximately a fifth of our respondents identified issues related to do­mestic con­ditions and over a quarter charac­ter­istics of those involved in demo­cracy assistance as key prob­lems, cat­egor­ies not found in the NED study. These dif­fer­ences may relate to the fact that we did not restrict our respondents to only two issues, as the NED survey did. But they may also reflect the fact that the Barkan survey was conducted under the auspices of NED, one of the pri­mary providers of demo­cracy assistance around the world. Even though respondents were as­sured of anonymity, some may have nonetheless been hesitant to be too crit­ical of the goals of demo­cracy assistance, or mention

An empirical pilot study   167 objectionable charac­ter­istics of those engaged in demo­cracy assistance. Our respondents showed no such hesitancy. As with all of our conclusions, further research is needed to determine whether these dif­fer­ences would also be evid­ent in a larger study that included respondents from other world areas, as the NED survey did.

Impact of parti­cipa­tion in demo­cracy assistance on conceptions of demo­cracy The final question we were inter­ested in was the impact of parti­cipa­tion in demo­ cracy assistance on parti­cip­ants’ concepts of demo­cracy. We anticipated that parti­cipa­tion in these endeavors might lead to such change, given the daily work such assistance involves in dealing with various aspects of demo­cracy and obs­ tacles to it. As Table 9.7, which summarizes the responses of donors and recipients to the question of how such parti­cipa­tion influenced their concepts of demo­cracy, illus­trates, the largest group of our respondents indicated that their concepts had in fact changed in some way as the result of their parti­cipa­tion in demo­cracy assistance. These changes were par­ticu­larly evid­ent among donors, 80 percent of whom indicated that their concepts of demo­cracy had changed, compared to 57.7 percent of recipients. A somewhat larger proportion of recipients who later became donors (62.5 percent) than of all recipients as a group indicated that their parti­cipa­tion in demo­cracy pro­mo­tion had changed their concepts of demo­cracy, but this dif­fer­ence was not great. Most of those in all cat­ egor­ies who indicated that their concepts of demo­cracy had changed stated that they had become more realistic and more appreciative of local con­ditions than they had been prior to their parti­cipa­tion in demo­cracy pro­mo­tion (see also Youngs’ chapter). Of those who indicated that their concept of demo­cracy had changed, approximately 70 percent of all respondents, including 88 percent of all donors and 80 percent of all recipient-­donors, compared to 60 percent of all recipients indicated that they had become more realistic about the chances for demo­cracy. Only one donor and one recipient-­donor, compared to five of all recipients, indicated that the nature of their concept of demo­cracy had changed. A single respondent, a recipient, stated that he had become more op­tim­istic about the chances for demo­cracy as the result of his parti­cipa­tion in demo­cracy assistance (see Table 9.8.)

Table 9.7  Impact of participation in democracy assistance on concepts of democracy Total

Donors

Recipients

Recipient-Donors

Not at all Changed No answer

11 (30.6%) 23 (63.9%)   2 (5.6%)

  2 (20%)   8 (80%) –

  9 (34.6%) 15 (57.7%)   2 (7.6%)

2 (25%) 5 (62.5%) 1 (12.5%)

Total

36

10

26

8

168   V. J. Bunce and S. L. Wolchik Table 9.8  Type of change in concept of democracy as the result of participation in democracy assistance among those whose concepts changed Total

Donors

Recipients

Recipient-Donors

More realistic 16 (69.3%) More optimistic   1 (4.3%) Change in nature of concept   6 (26.1%)

7 (87.5%) – 1 (12.5%)

  9 (60%)   1 (6.7%)   5 (33.3)

4 (80%) – 1 (20%)

Total

8 (100%)

15 (101%)

5 (100%)

23 (99.7%)

These results, which, as with our other results, stand in need of being confirmed by a study with a larger sample, at the very least suggest that the concepts of donors are more affected by parti­cipa­tion in demo­cracy pro­mo­tion than are those of recipients of such assistance. The fact that the per­spect­ives of donors and recipients who become donors are closer than those of recipients as a group, par­ticu­larly among those whose concepts changed, is par­ticu­larly suggestive as it may reflect higher expectations on the part of donors prior to their ex­peri­ence with demo­cracy assistance, and/or the impact of additional ex­peri­ence on the per­spect­ives of recipients who later become donors.

Conclusions As we noted at the outset, our ability to gen­eralize from our findings is limited by both the nature and size of our sample. At the same time, several of the results of our study were not anticipated and merit emphasis. Thus, although neither donors nor recipients defined demo­cracy in terms of social or eco­nomic bene­fits, there were im­port­ant dif­fer­ences in the two groups in the extent to which they identified institutional factors or freedoms as key elements of demo­cracy. The greater emphasis on freedom among recipients, including those who later became donors, may reflect their ex­peri­ence in soci­eties that were not or are not free. Given the very heavy emphasis on institutional factors among donors, how­ever, it is easy to see how mis­under­stand­ings concerning the purpose and focus of demo­cracy assistance could arise. Dif­fer­ences between the two groups were also evid­ent in the factors each identified as the most im­port­ant obs­tacles to demo­cratic de­velopment. The tendency of the donor com­mun­ity to focus on do­mestic con­ ditions within the coun­try receiving assistance and the recipients to alloc­ate blame more evenly between do­mestic con­ditions and external factors, including the goals and nature of demo­cracy assistance and the charac­ter­istics of demo­cracy assisters, further increases the potential for miscommunication and conflict. The frequent lament that outsiders involved in demo­cracy assistance do not understand or pay enough attention to local con­ditions among recipients of assistance, and a cor­res­ponding lack of aware­ness of such a pos­sib­il­ity among donors is an additional potential source of conflict. These dif­fer­ences, which may well decrease the effect­iveness of demo­cracy assistance, merit additional research, both within the post-­communist region and in other parts of the world.

An empirical pilot study   169 Another set of findings that is intriguing concerns the position of recipients who later become donors. Our expectation that they would bridge the two worlds was only partially borne out. In terms of concepts of demo­cracy and per­spect­ives on the greatest obs­tacles to demo­cracy, they more closely re­sembled other recipients than they did donors. Their views on prob­lems with demo­cracy assistance and the impact of parti­cipa­tion in demo­cracy assistance on their concepts of demo­cracy, how­ever, were closer to those of the donor respondents than to those of other recipients. These findings suggest that these respondents do indeed have a foot in both worlds. The influence of inter­action with other donors involved in demo­cracy assistance appears to be greatest in those areas most closely related to demo­cracy assistance itself and their work as professional promoters of demo­cracy. In more gen­eral terms, their views reflect those of other recipients. Given the dispersal of our sample across several coun­tries that differ in terms of their degree of demo­ cracy and the small size of the recipient-­donor cat­egory in par­ticu­lar, further research is clearly needed to investigate the per­spect­ives of this im­port­ant group of actors, who are perceived by many in the region to have greater legitimacy as actors in demo­cracy assistance than outsiders. The dif­fer­ences we found among donors and recipients in terms of the main prob­lems with demo­cratic de­velopment and with demo­cracy assistance also have a conceptual dimension. The fact that recipients, including those who later become donors, more often see external factors, or a mix of in­ternal and external factors, among the main prob­lems of demo­cratic de­velopment, and the tendency of those who identi­fy external factors as im­port­ant to point to prob­lems with the demo­crat­ization strategy and attitudes of external demo­cracy promoters, could be indicative of a dif­fer­ence in concepts of what demo­cracy is as well as of how to attain it. Sim­ilarly, the fact that nearly a third of those receiving assistance identified issues related to the goals and nature of demo­cracy assistance as prob­ lematic aspects of such assistance suggests that recipients may be dubious about the way in which donors conceptualize demo­cracy. In short, our preliminary study suggests that donors and recipients, at least in the post-­communist world, may conceptualize demo­cracy is somewhat different ways. Although these conceptions, as expli­citly articulated, can for the most part be clas­si­fied as those of lib­eral demo­cracy, views re­gard­ing the greatest prob­ lems with demo­cratic de­velopment as well as demo­cracy assistance hint at other dif­fer­ences that may influence communication and coopera­tion between donors and recipients that merit further study.

Appendix A: sample Our sample was a sample of oppor­tun­ity drawn from the approximately 200 parti­cip­ants in all aspects of demo­cracy assistance inter­viewed in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Croatia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Serbia, Slovakia and Ukraine as well as in Washington, New York, and London between 1996 and 2010. Most of the inter­views took place between 2004 and 2008. Of the 36 responses to our email questionnaire, ten were donors or worked with organ­iza­tions in the US or Europe

170   V. J. Bunce and S. L. Wolchik that provided demo­cracy assistance and 26 were recipients of such assistance. Eight of the latter were first recipients and then providers of assistance, in many cases funded by western organ­iza­tions. Respondents were contacted by email and asked to respond to four open-­ended questions provided in Appendix B. They were as­sured that they would not be identified in our discussion by name or position unless they expli­citly gave us per­mis­sion to do so. Nine of the respondents we have identified as donors came from the US and one from Ger­many. Recipient responses came from Slovakia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Serbia, and Ukraine.

Appendix B: questionnaire Respondents were contacted by email and asked to share their views on the fol­ low­ing open-­ended questions: 1 2 3 4

There is con­sider­able argument concerning the meaning of demo­cracy. What does demo­cracy personally mean to you? What do you see as the biggest obs­tacles to demo­cratic de­velopment? What are the biggest prob­lems you have encountered with demo­cracy assistance? How, if at all, has your conception of demo­cracy changed as the result of your ex­peri­ence with demo­cracy assistance?

Respondents were as­sured that we would not cite them by name or position unless they gave us expli­cit per­mis­sion to do so.

Notes 1 We would like to thank our respondents for their time and thoughtfulness in answering our questionnaire. We are also grateful to Kallie Knutson for her research assistance and to the Institute for Euro­pean, Russian, and Eurasian Studies, The George Washington University, for its support of her work with us. 2 See Dalton et al. (2007), footnote 15 for in­forma­tion re­gard­ing cri­teria for classifying responses into the three cat­egor­ies. 3 See Bunce and Wolchik’s Demo­cratizing Elections (2011: ch. 1) for sources confirming this tendency. 4 See World Movement of Demo­cra­cies, Powerpoint, http://demo­cracy.assistance. sgizmo.com?rg=JAK. 5 Drawn from pre­senta­tion by Joel Barkan at the World Movement of Demo­cra­cies, Powerpoint, Slides number; see http://demo­cracy.assistance.sgizmo.com?rg=JAK questions used; 1,125 respondents had taken the survey at the time the powerpoint was prepared.

10 Arab demo­crat­ization and the de-­imagining of author­it­arian com­mun­ity Beyond Orientalism and Occidentalism Larbi Sadiki Introduction How do we explain demo­cracy (in)transition in the Arab World? How does Western demo­cracy pro­mo­tion spell agency demotion for the Arab Middle East? How can we elicit answers that go beyond the explan­at­ory tools of Orientalists and Occidentalists? These are the key questions this chapter shall attempt to address. To this end, the chapter reframes the prob­lematic of demo­cracy/demo­ crat­ization in the Arab Middle East (AME). In­teg­ral to this exercise is an exami­ nation of how demo­cracy and com­mun­ity are being ‘de-­ima­gined’ and ‘re-­ima­gined’ in the Arab world. Up to sixty years of inde­pend­ence has all but proved the failure of the postco­lo­nial ‘imagining’ of Arab nationalist com­munit­ ies. Demo­cracy has mostly been sidelined in such postco­lo­nial ima­gined com­ munit­ies. Today the Arab Middle East faces new de-­imagining and re-­imagining of com­munit­ies from the Atlantic coast (Morocco) to the shores of the Red Sea and the Arab Gulf (Yemen, Saudi Arabia, etc.). The Arab Middle East’s relationship with demo­cracy and demo­crat­ization (and by implication ‘the West’) since the advent of Euro­pean co­lo­nialism in the mid-­1800s has been fraught with ideational tension. The relationship has been weighed down by epistemological tension, if not rivalry. From the outset, the Arab-­Western encounter was not going to be easy. ‘The West’ (Euro­pean colo­ nizers and much later the US) has arrogated to itself the role of an all-­knowing agent in all mat­ters of organ­izing the full spectrum of the socio-­political world. This is par­ticu­larly true of mat­ters related to the art of gov­ern­ment. For Oriental­ ists (formulators of anti-­Arab or Muslim constructs) hold the Western ex­peri­ ence, especially post the Enlightenment, to be nothing less than an exemplary demo­cratic founda­tion worthy of emu­la­tion by and exportation to an ‘Orient’ bereft of civic cultures and practices. They hold this to be the yardstick for meas­ uring degrees of modernity and tradition, transition and stagnation, and demo­ cracy and autocracy. By contrast, Occidentalists (formulators of anti-­Western constructs) mount a defense against this position, noting that the indi­gen­ous mind is not a tabula rasa. The conceptual and epistemological ground for organ­ izing the polit­ical should be local polit­ical know-­how, his­tory, culture and reli­ gion. Neither line of argument is fully compelling. Perhaps both nar­rat­ives,

172   L. Sadiki being equally ‘ethnocentric’ and ‘culturalist’, tend to distract from the norm­ative crux of demo­cracy as an ethos of plur­al­ism and equality. Going beyond both nar­rat­ives and their exaggerated sense of ‘self-­exceptionalism’ is vital for reframing the para­meters of a new line of inquiry of Arab demo­crat­ization. To this end, the constructs of both nar­rat­ives produce calls for a brief comparative discussion in order to re-­visit the postulates of each. This exercise allows for a re-­interpreting of how and where to look for Arab demo­cracy and demo­crat­ ization. Subsequent to this discussion, the inquiry turns to an investigation of the failed pro­ject of ‘ima­gined com­munit­ies’ and counter-­projects of ‘de-­imagining’ com­munit­ies, thus bringing more complexity to our understanding of Arab demo­crat­ization. The aim behind this innov­at­ive line of inquiry is to ‘prob­ lematize’ or re-­cast the question of Arab demo­crat­ization. Without understand­ ing of the dis­mant­ling of the postco­lo­nial modernization of state so­ci­ety, no firm grasp of the prob­lem of why and how demo­cracy resists transition to the AME can be attained. Before turning to a con­textualization of Arab demo­crat­ization, the chapter briefly defines Orientalism and Occidentalism.

Orientalism and Occidentalism: definitions Edward Said’s iconoclastic work provides the best deconstruction of the Euro­ centric style of thinking and writing on ‘the East’. Thus, at the core of the defini­ tion Said’s work puts forth is an ontological and epistemological polarity, which makes ‘the Occident’ and its ‘other’, ‘the Orient’, antitheses. Central to this style of thinking and writing is the tendency to ‘gen­eralize’, condemning ‘the Orient’ to a fixed and single monolith. This ignores im­port­ant dimensions of culture, his­ tory, geo­graphy, and a variety of socio-­economic vari­ables that would suggest ‘the Orient’ to be a place of diversity not unity. Islam is placed in this Orientalist frame as a hindrance to modernity and civic culture; and it is seen to clash with demo­cracy and the Western dogmas of ration­al­ity, secular pol­itics and pol­icies of inclusiveness towards women and minor­it­ies. In par­ticu­lar, the failure to locate an analogue within Islam of the characterizing stand­ard of all Western demo­cratic polities of a division between the sacred and profane predisposes the Muslim Middle East to being condemned to the box of the ‘other’ (Sadowski 1993: 14–21). ‘Islamic’ is then read not only as ‘non-­demo­cratic’ but also as being not congenial with all things ‘demo­cratic’ or amen­able to demo­cracy. In my own work, over the years, I have made two observations worth reproducing here. The first is that ‘Orientalist essentialist constructions of [Islam] as bereft of multi-­polar voices and multi­lateralism’ call for revision and interrogation. The second is that, with special ref­er­ence to polit­ical Islam, ‘gen­eralizing is generic to Orientalizing. Islamists are not one and the same even if they share a common polit­ical telos’. (Sadiki 2004). This brand of bin­ary knowledge-­making is geared towards privileging Euro-­American modes of being, thinking and acting. This is rel­ev­ant to our inquiry of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion by Western gov­ern­ments. In promoting demo­cracy, they repeat the cardinal sin of demoting

Beyond Orientalism and Occidentalism   173 the Arab and Muslim worlds’ agency. These entities and the cultural, epistemological and polit­ical ‘universes’ they en­com­pass are deemed hardly capable of producing demo­cratic know­ledge. Demo­cratic know-­how and know­ ledge have to be transposed and introduced from without, rather than allowed to evolve gradually through local and global know­ledge from within. Occidentalism may be thought of as Orientalism in reverse: in this style of thinking and writing ‘the West’ is essentialized, gen­eralizations and reduction­ isms are committed akin to those characterizing the Orientalist style. Again, referring to my own work, I have previously noted that Occidentalism produces ‘essentializations about a monolithic “West”, disag­greg­ated Westerners, and selected elements of Western modernity and culture’ (Sadiki 2004: 96). Orien­ talism is incubated within the matrix of Western ascendancy, domination and co­lo­nialism: it is the language of the power­ful – to an extent the ‘col­on­izers’ or ‘former col­on­izers’. In contrast, Occidentalism is reactionary: the former col­on­ ized striking back, thinking back and writing back. It is almost a decolonizing discourse (Sadiki 2004: 96). Sardar makes a sim­ilar point very eloquently: If ‘Orientalism is a discourse of power, with the strength of a dominant, globalized civilization behind it,’ then Occidentalism is the language of the ‘powerless’ (Sardar 2004).

Con­textualizing Arab demo­crat­ization The intellectual artifacts diffused by Euro-­American transitologists do not yield the same reson­ance in the Arab Middle East (AME). Once deracinated of their tem­poral and spatial con­texts, they struggle to germinate demo­cratically – as they are expected and intended to by their inventors. Sim­ilarly, a fledgling ‘Arab transitology’ mimetically engaging with its Western counterpart fails to trans­fer the demo­cratic know­ledge and knowledge-­making de-­coupled from time and space. Thus the prob­lematic of discussing Arab demo­cracy and demo­crat­ization stumbles from the outset upon funda­ment­ally conceptual and the­or­etical prob­ lems. Demo­cracy and demo­crat­ization resist transition to the Arab con­text as much as the AME’s polit­ical and civil soci­eties and estab­lishments resist transit­ ing to demo­cracy and demo­crat­ization. Western the­or­etical frameworks and con­ cepts do not always explain Arab peculiarities. This is despite the wide usage of neologisms such as ‘dimuqratiyyah’, ‘damaqratah’ or ‘tahawwul dimuqrati’, respectively the Arabic terms for ‘demo­cracy’, ‘demo­crat­ization’ and ‘demo­ cratic transition’. The nature of the intellectual engagement with this prob­lematic remains wanting in rigour, con­tinu­ity and cumulative know­ledge production. The Arab engagement with the prob­lematic is also troublesome without local demo­cratic know­ledge to supplement whatever comparative learning that can be gleaned from global examples. This local demo­cratic know­ledge remains limited the underde­veloped and unsupported by empirically didactic setting. The twin ills of conceptual/the­or­etical borrowing and empirical paucity furnish limited mater­ial for inquiring into the prob­lematique of demo­cracy and demo­crat­ization in the AME. Furthermore, it is no exaggeration to say that the crux of the

174   L. Sadiki discussion has for a long time been shaped and marred by Orientalist-­ Occidentalist sparring. This sparring reflects a longstanding his­tory of mutual exclusion. The vestiges of this mutual exclusion have got in the way of a sober dialogue – or dialogical disputation. This has interfered with mutual accommo­ dation and exchange of learning bene­fi­cial for demo­crat­ization in the AME. Recent ana­lyses of the complex dy­namics of Arab movements toward lib­ eralizing author­it­arian structures are fragmentary. Until very recently, demo­ cracy has been con­sidered to be irrel­ev­ant to the Arab con­text. Hudson deprecates this exceptionalism, the by-­product, inter alia, of the genre of Orien­ talist liter­at­ure that excludes the AME from the study of demo­crat­ization (for instance, Hudson 1991). An extension of this Orientalist bias is the often as­sumed incompatibility of Islam and demo­cratic practices. But there are counter-­arguments (Esposito and Piscatori 1991). The prejudicial view against Islam has roots in an adversarial his­tory with Christendom (Cantori 1994: 507). Knowledge-­making and practices in the study of Arab pol­itics are not neutral: they are embedded in the his­tor­ically biased attitude of Euro-­American ideas towards Islam and Arabism (Cantori 1994: 507). The corollary is that ‘the West feels that its stereo­types constitute “know­ledge” of the Middle East’ (Cantori 1994: 507). Gen­eralizations about Islam and Islamists and their as­sumed hostil­ ity to demo­cracy aside, ‘Islamic and Western demo­cratic values tend to overlap’ and include basic concepts of equality, justice and so on (see Binder 1994; Korany 1994; Parens 1994). The post-­1945 demo­cratic model, filtered through Amer­ican plur­al­ism, cannot and should not be precisely reproduced in the AME. This is not to argue either that demo­cracy should be ‘occidentalized’ as exclu­ sively Western or that the Arab demo­cratic model will be sui generis. At least in theory, common denominators already exist. Islam’s concepts of consultation and consensus jostle for re­cog­ni­tion as equal to and com­pat­ible with demo­ cracy’s most basic prin­ciples of parti­cipa­tion and contestation. Islam’s prin­ciples of equality and justice, claim many Muslim scholars, have analogues in Western demo­cracy. Demo­crat­ization ought to be defended and instituted in the AME. How­ever, the danger of homogenizing meanings of demo­crat­ization lies in the attempt to enclose them in a single framework (such as ‘third wave’) to the point where they cannot speak to a different setting. For such meanings are trapped in a single way of understanding the world. A para­digm that speaks with the singu­ larity of ‘truth’ requires reassessment of its basic precepts. Attempts by Laurence Whitehead and Thomas Carothers to crit­ically reassess the ‘status’ not only of ‘third wave’ demo­crat­ization, but also with the whole para­digmatic edifice of demo­crat­ization provide food for thought for any ser­ious study of how demo­ cracy and demo­crat­ization fare outside their Western settings.

Arab election ‘fetishism’ The Arab Middle East is today awash in elect­oralism and what I call election fetishism. That is, ubiquitous elections but con­tinu­ous absence of demo­cratic rule

Beyond Orientalism and Occidentalism   175 and rulers (Sadiki 2009). Indeed, it is apt to talk about ‘election fever’ in the Arab Middle East. More than a decade ago, elections were noted for their infre­ quency. Today they take place with frequent regu­larity. In fact, not a year passes without at least half-­a-dozen elections. They happen in Arab mon­archies and repub­lics, in secular and religious states, in oil-­rich and less well-­to-do coun­tries, and in polit­ical realms with and without rigid ideo­lo­gies. In 2009 alone at least four major polls took place: parlia­ment­ary elections in Leb­anon and Kuwait, two sets of provincial elections in Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan. Iraqis voted again in early 2010 to choose parlia­ment­ary representatives. How­ever, it took nine months for a new gov­ern­ment to be formed due to dis­agree­ment over who actu­ ally won the elections and who had a ‘mandate’ to rule. Elect­oralism has not translated into demo­cratic attitudes and ethical capa­city to share power and accept defeat at the polls. Yemen’s parlia­ment­ary elections scheduled for 2010 have been postponed for 2011. Egypt’s two-­round elections of Novem­ber 2010 produced the most rigged and, subsequently, mono-­chromatic par­lia­ment since elections began thirty years ago. The coun­try’s formidable Muslim Brother­hood, which won 20 percent of the seats in 2005, did not win a single seat in the first round due to viol­ence and fraud, forcing it to withdraw from the second round. Closer to the southern rim of the Mediterranean, Algeria’s April 2009 pres­id­en­ tial elections gave Abdelaziz Bouteflika a third term after the National Assembly removed in Novem­ber 2008, a consti­tu­tional pro­vi­sion limiting tenure to two terms. In Octo­ber 2009, Tunis­ians went to the polls to elect a new par­lia­ment, and returned Bin Ali to the presidency, although Tunisians changed their minds courageously contesting the limits of his power in 2011. This elect­oralism, how­ever, insistently begs the question: elections to what end? This very question must be broken down into a series of questions that facilitate a coherent and clear inquiry into a very complex issue. Such an inquiry must account for ‘specificity’. The Arab Middle East is not a monolith. Diversity of time and space points to a diverse tapestry of elect­oral ex­peri­ences. Whilst there are no ‘neat constructs’ of how to ana­lyse elections in twenty-­one different settings, investigation of the local ex­peri­ences may yield some gen­eralizable value as to the ‘ills’ of election ‘fetishism’ in the AME. Yet, even through a his­ tor­ically situated and contingent study we must conclude that at this his­tor­ical juncture, demo­cratic transition within an Arab setting can only mean ‘elect­ oralism’. Elections are an im­port­ant demo­cratic institution; but demo­cracy cannot be reduced into a merely periodic elect­oral exercise. Elections are a pos­it­ive step in the right dir­ec­tion. They have the potential to ‘habituate’ voters into the art of participatory pol­itics, peaceful contest of power, the ethic of dialogue and consensus-­building, and the affirmation of civil and polit­ical rights to repres­enta­ tion and account­ability through elected deputies. Hence, do Arab elections further demo­cracy? In other words, do elections produce a ‘demonstration effect’, multiplying the deepening and widening of demo­cratic ethics, skills and values of cit­izen­ship? Or are they simply ‘demonstration events’ – ‘PR’ exercises aimed at external consumption? Do Arab elections break polit­ical

176   L. Sadiki monopolies of dominant ruling par­ties, ruling houses, and sec­tar­ian and ethnic dogmas? Do they produce future polit­ical soci­eties and leaders? Last but not least, do they weaken narrow loyalties to tribe, sect, family, and ideo­logy and do they enhance demo­cratic value-­sharing and democracy-­learning? These queries form part and parcel of my con­tinu­ous research agenda (Sadiki et al. 2011; Sadiki 2011). How­ever, for now it seems that the answers to these questions are in the negat­ive. Elections are held almost entirely for the sake of holding them and parading them as ‘ticked boxes’, evid­ence of super­fi­cial ‘polit­ical correctness’. Further understanding of this prob­lem warrants a brief re-­visitation of Orien­ talist and Occidentalist pre-­constructions of mat­ters concerning Arab demo­cracy and demo­crat­ization, the subject of the ensuing brief discussion.

Beyond orientalism and occidentalism This ‘recycling’ of autocracy and demo­cratic impasse is challenging for both Orientalists and Occidentalists. Does it validate Orientalist stereo­types that the AME is bereft of the neces­sary ethical, civic and demo­cratic ‘toolkit’ that may mediate demo­cratic transition? Or does it validate Occidentalist pro­posi­tions that Western tutelage, including demo­cracy pro­mo­tion, have all along been spurious, intended to impede rather than promote the rise of demo­cratically elected gov­ ern­ments in the AME? It is through attempting to answer such questions that Orientalists and Occidentalists seek prim­arily to jus­tify their mutually exclusive positions and claims. The Orientalists carry on ignoring external factors in their explication of persistent Arab author­it­arian rule. They advance ethnocentric claims that condemn the AME to demo­cratic ‘exile’. The Occidentalists, by con­ trast, seem to filter their counter-­discourses and assessment of Arab author­it­ arianism through a mind-­set that still seems to be injured by the co­lo­nial encounter and ex­peri­ence. ‘The West’ is totalized and through a typically con­ spiratorial mode of thinking is accordingly relegated to an infinite ‘adversarial’ position. Orientalism and occidentalism The Arab Middle East has since its encounter with the ‘West’ served as a spatial laboratory for ‘testing’ borrowed ‘isms’. Demo­cracy and demo­crat­ization are no exception. They are Anglo-­Euro-Amer­ican inventions. It is in Britain, the US and Europe where they have been applied and tested longest. Today they con­ tinue to be tested in Southern and Latin Amer­ica, Southern Europe and the Euro-­ Mediterranean area, South East Asia and, more recently, Eastern Europe. They have also ‘travelled’ to the AME. Nationalism, secularism, socialism, the free market and now demo­crat­ization have all followed the same travel itinerary: from ‘the West’ to the rest. This ‘travel’, how­ever, is not without ‘checkpoints’. These ‘checkpoints’ have made the travel arduous, and open to contingency and disputation.

Beyond Orientalism and Occidentalism   177 Not since the 1850s has demo­crat­ization been a fully home-­grown undertak­ ing. Early partly elected institutions were motiv­ated by the eagerness of British and French mercantile inter­ests for the local mercantile class to have repres­enta­ tion at the level of the state. This representative agenda was not intended for the bene­fit of the local populace. Rather, it was meant to defend the opening of free trade with Europe and promote the passing of laws for the protection of these inter­ests. Co­lo­nialism followed when remote-­control hege­mony failed to make much of an impact. After the long hiatus of cor­porat­ist and socialist bur­eau­cratic author­it­arianism in many parts of the AME, demo­cracy and demo­crat­ization returned. First, it returned qua elections in Sadat’s Egypt in the late 1970s. Then it proved somewhat infections when the ‘bread bargain’ collapsed. The rewriting of state-­society contracts involved the exchange of bread for votes. It was the late 1980s and the distribution had to be adjusted to shift from wel­fare pro­vi­sion to power distribution, which never went above safeguarding the hege­monic state by other means. Then it took a polit­ical ‘tsunami’, two Gulf wars coupled with the invasion of Iraq, for demo­cracy and demo­crat­ization to once more make the rounds of the AME, this time embedded within milit­ary ma­chines. The Iraqi experiment, aided by US mentoring and protection, has thus far yielded nothing but election fetishism.1 The demo­crat­ization pro­ject, how­ever, seems to be losing its explan­at­ory power at the time of its arrival in the AME. Carothers has declared the trans­ itions para­digm to have reached an end point. Whitehead, amongst others such as O’Donnell within the vast terrain of transitology, strongly notes the specificity of transition theory. Huntington’s ‘third wave’ theory resonates with the same specificity of pro­cess (consolidation), of time (1840s to 1970s), and of space (the Amer­icas and Europe). Its utility where the AME is concerned may not stop at the northern rim of the Mediterranean. But the 1974 Portuguese coup that was to herald a new wave of demo­crat­ization in Southern Europe never ‘washed’ south­ wards onto the shores of the Arab Mediterranean states. As demo­cracy con­tinues to re­kindle its moral flame across the globe, the full pan­oply of diverse ‘modernities’, histories, cultures, religions, languages, levels and models of de­velopment, and memories dictate against para­digmatic fixity or singularity. The contest con­tinues unabated. If demo­cracy is an essentially contested concept, so is demo­crat­ization. Thus Whitehead, inter alia, interro­ gates the monism of demo­crat­ization qua ‘consolidation’. Like Carothers, Whitehead’s interrogation ‘resists’ the reign of third-­wave wisdom across bound­ar­ies of time and space. Specific knowledge-­making about transition in specific space and specific time invites comparison but not stand­ardization of the terms and tools of ana­ lysis. The contest affirms the view that demo­crat­ization defies linearity, unfold­ ing through contingency, incompleteness and open-­endedness. But this incompleteness is the impetus for continuing the search for clues in the ‘narra­ tion’ of demo­crat­ization from dis­par­ate geographies, modernities, theories and ex­peri­ences. In the AME, demo­crat­ization may not yet be the only ‘game in town’. Demo­crat­ization competes with other ongoing currents – prim­or­dialism,

178   L. Sadiki pan-­Arabism, Islamization, unruly civism, and empire-­building. This is where Orientalists and Occidentalists fail to appreciate and assess the prob­lematic of demo­cratic transition: demo­cracy and demo­crat­ization are neither single nor fixed; their tem­porality and spatiality defy fixity to a single template or brand of know­ledge; and the moral verities underpinning demo­cracy and demo­crat­ization are subject to variability and contestability. Orientalists tend to be fixated on gen­eralizing models of demo­cracy and demo­crat­ization that are today showing the strains of fierce contests about meaning, con­tent and form. Sim­ilarly, Occidentalists tend to invoke hege­mony and cultural relativism in their bid to resist imposition of demo­cracy and demo­crat­ization from without. What they fail to grasp are the lessons of the demo­cratic revisionism in Western scholarship. Had they engaged more crit­ically with this brand of learning, they would have learnt what demo­cracy and demo­crat­ization to seek. Plus, the Western demo­cratic repertoire with its pluralist and diverse ex­peri­ences is in­valu­able. If the co­lo­nial or hege­monic tendencies of US plur­al­ism offend Arab or Islamist Occidentalists, there is nothing stopping them from absorbing rel­ev­ ant lessons from the non-­colonial Scan­din­avian model. Indeed, ‘word’ and ‘world’ are challenging when it comes to mapping out demo­cratic learning from without on a local terrain. But the long-­term, open-­ended, complex and contin­ gent pro­cess of demo­cratic learning must be open to creative adjustment and the wider search for ideas that may be amen­able to cross-­fertilization with the local repertoire of demo­cratic know­ledge. For Occidentalists to engage in reduction­ ism by pretending the West is monolithic is the same as Orientalists labouring under the illusion that ‘one size fits all’ is the right way to proceed with when promoting demo­cracy in the AME. Orientalism post-­9/11 and post the invasion of Iraq In relation to demo­cracy pro­mo­tion, Orientalism, as a body of scholarship/ policy-­making, reproduces many of the norm­ative and ideo­logical as­sump­tions of its co­lo­nial intellectual forebears and practitioners. In par­ticu­lar, its claim to a ‘positional superi­or­ity’, as Said calls it, in the realm of ideas and technologies, remains intact. Demo­cracy, exclusively appropriated as a ‘Western’ not ‘human’ her­it­age, is uncrit­ically deemed exportable. It is at the core of a new ‘civilizing mission’ whose worst manifestations con­tinue to be displayed in Iraq. From the outset it was ‘security’ not demo­cracy that guided the whole Iraqi mis-­adventure in forging a future for a people whose common ‘cake of values’ is non-­existent. Indeed, post-­9/11 demo­cracy is wrapped up in the cause celèbre of security. Demo­cracy and demo­crat­ization are effect­ively being ‘securitized’. They are thought of as added ‘ammu­ni­tion’ in the fight against terror and not as ends in themselves. Pos­sibly this is one reason why in neither Afghanistan nor Iraq has the imposition of demo­cracy and demo­crat­ization come to any promising fru­ ition. In both, local know­ledge and values are ignored, and demo­crat­ization is somehow ‘short-­circuited’ through routinized elect­oral exercises, which yield little or no demo­cracy.

Beyond Orientalism and Occidentalism   179 As part of a repertoire and vocabulary of ‘expert’ views and opinions they give us an example of the cultural construction of an ‘ima­gined geo­graphy’ that locates ‘the same’ and ‘the other’ as two bin­ary oppos­ites that are mutually exclusive and incom­pat­ible. In their bid to acquire cred­ib­il­ity as policy-­makers and experts on all things Islamic, the neo-­orientalists expound their views as what Said (1978: 255) has termed summational statements that in effect express the authority of know­ledge that they possess in knowing an alien culture and being the gatekeeper of the transmission of demo­cratic know­ledge of that par­ ticu­lar culture (Islam) to another (the West) – the reception of the foreign to the familiar. The ‘securitization’ of the role of the schol­arly practitioner of the study of Islam has resulted from the influence of pub­lic pol­icy and do­mestic issues on the questions of polit­ical viol­ence and terrorism (Marcuse 2004: 265–6). Epi­ thets of ‘rad­ical’, ‘funda­ment­alist’, ‘Wahhabi’, etc., all serve to reinforce the imaginary of an Islam that is a source of danger and totally antithetical to demo­ cracy. An ima­gined geo­graphy of ‘the other’ in a far-­off land in an alien milieu evoking an image of the fan­at­ical ‘jihadi’ collapses into a world where ‘the other’ dwells within the imme­diate confines of ‘the same’ (Gregory 2004: 20–21). A plethora of discourses have emerged which, attack the alleged insin­ cerity and disingenuousness of Muslims residing in the West and also the Islam­ ists in the Muslim world as anti-­democratic, despite all the evid­ence to the contrary. Within the West, security and surveillance of these sources of risk con­ stitute the pri­mary means of addressing the prob­lem of polit­ical Islam. Within the AME, the securitization of the as­sumed threat of polit­ical Islam seeks to identi­fy systematically not terrorism as such but the exist­ence of Muslims with expli­cit religiously and anti-­democratically informed polit­ical views. This atti­ tude is perfectly exemplified by Daniel Pipes’s list of questions to Muslims to ascertain their ‘moderate-­ness’!2 Thus, the threat is not the spectre of polit­ical viol­ence per se; rather, it is the erosion of Western values and ‘Islamization’ of Arab and Muslim soci­eties. Within ‘the West’, ‘the other’ inhabits the space where the same is seemingly threatened on the phys­ical and ideo­logical planes. Without ‘the West’, in the AME in par­ticu­lar, the Muslim ‘other’, being terror-­ prone and non-­democratic, must be subjected to direct ‘civilizing’ through a dynamic demo­cracy pro­mo­tion agenda, which in the case of Iraq necessitated direct milit­ary inter­ven­tion. That agenda has been dropped by the Obama Administration. Bush and his neo-­cons, the instigators of that invasion as well as an ambitious civilizing mission in the AME, caused Mayhem in the region with no demo­cratic return of import to jus­tify the drastic actions taken.

‘Orientalization’ of the AME and ‘double pro­mo­tion’ Three modes of essentialism mark the Western approach to demo­crat­ization in the Arab Middle East. The first regards the stand­ard tendency by many policy-­ makers and scholars to treat Islam as an obs­tacle to demo­crat­ization. Post-­9/11, the gist of the reform ‘tool-­kit’ packaged to the region – such as under the Greater Middle East Initiative – tended to place premium on changing the way

180   L. Sadiki the AME ‘thinks’ and ‘knows’. When ‘West’ meets ‘East’, contrast and dif­fer­ ence reign high. ‘The West’ is privileged as the sole source of all know­ledge and understanding of demo­cracy. In such mirror images, the ‘non-­West’ is mar­ginal to ration­al­ity, peripheral to theory, and on the sidelines of knowledge-­making. One glaring omission within the wide field of transitology displays the prejudi­ cial position of ‘the Occident’ as the ‘knower’ of demo­cracy. Polit­ical Islam or Islamism is not monolithic, how­ever: it speaks with many tongues, for and against demo­cracy. This hardly justifies the caricaturing of polit­ical Islam into a unitary movement – Al-Qaida-­led, almost a ‘jihadist Caliphate’, with a univocal discourse and in­ter­preting of Islam as much as demo­ cracy. This caricaturing preceded 9/11 (for example, Pipes 1995) but intensified in the aftermath of those bloody and tragic events. The need for disaggregation cannot be emphasised enough so that the nature of the encounter and inter­action is treated and captured with proper vera­city.3 Failure to represent the nuanced and diffuse nature of the encounter and inter­action serves to turn Huntington’s ‘clash of civilisations’ into a self-­fulfilling prophecy. More im­port­antly, it denies space to brands of organ­ised polit­ical Islam which persist with the onerous task of carving out a shared platform with demo­cracy. The second mode of essentialist ‘speech’ regards the ‘AME as no more than a ‘workshop’, where experimentation ensues with the ideas and the theories invented in and by ‘the West’ in their ‘travel’ outside the precincts of the demo­ cratic world. Indeed, fol­low­ing the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the US-­led effort with regard to demo­cracy pro­mo­tion is a perfect example of, how on the ground, ‘coaching’ the AME into the Western demo­cratic ways was pursued. Many Western gov­ern­ments and NGOs are guilty of this patronising attitude. Dozens of Western think-­tanks from Spain to the US thrive on and build careers ded­ic­ ated to probing demo­cracy, gender issues, minor­it­ies, and human rights. These are funded and staffed largely by the West and, despite producing thousands of papers and organ­ising workshops, seminars and conferences, little on the ground has been produced in the AME to jus­tify their work. The Western ‘demo­cratic’ expert in these think-­tanks has become part and parcel of the pathology of Western hege­mony. Yes, lots of these think-­tanks provide a forum for Arab dis­ sidents and opposi­tion forces. But at the end of the day, these forums work in tandem with Western pol­icy predilections and pref­er­ences when it comes to demo­cracy pro­mo­tion. Their norm­ative templates and mo­tiva­tion serve the funding par­ties, not the AME. Plus, the Western world’s most focused initiative to promote demo­cracy during G. W. Bush’s Administration has left the AME’s polit­ical map intact. Maliki’s death squads, Gaddafi’s crimes against his own people, Ben Ali’s singular rule, Mubarak’s dynasticism and various Gulf states’ autocratic ways were neither hindered nor mitigated by the Western demo­cracy pro­mo­tion agendas, whether US or EU-­led. A third type of essentialism that can be identified is the way that the AME is stripped of all agency to learn demo­cracy unaided by ‘the Occident’. In fact, the whole crux of the Greater Middle East Initiative was to turn the various Arab states into ‘pupils’ in a US-­led and funded brand of schooling, with ‘teachers’ or

Beyond Orientalism and Occidentalism   181 ‘instructors’ recruited from the EU. This approach looks and sounds neo-­ colonial. Even the gurus of modernization theory in the height of the 1970s and 1980s, despite being tele­olo­gical and linear in the way they conceptualized the eventual ‘passing of tradition’, did not pre­scribe ‘direct’ Western coaching of the newly-­founded postco­lo­nial states, whether in Africa or the Middle East. They were guilty of prescription but not of direct instruction on how to modernize the ‘other’. The Greater Middle East Initiative represents a discourse of power, leaving no doubt as to who is the sole ‘knower’ of a ‘fixed’ brand of demo­cracy or which agency is promoted for the purpose of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion. Here ‘Orientaliza­ tion’ is manifest in the ‘double pro­mo­tion’ inherent in the Greater Middle East Initiative: demo­cracy pro­mo­tion advances specific values pertinent to Euro-­ American ‘imagining of com­mun­ity’, which inherently and inev­it­ably promotes the ‘promoter’ to the ‘promotee’ and the ‘promoter’ not the ‘promotee’. This somewhat approximates the old civilized-­barbarian dyad. Indeed, for the various Arab pub­lics at the receiving end of US-­led invasion concomitant with a large-­ scale demo­cracy pro­mo­tion cam­paign, there is no other way of viewing it in terms of colonization-­civilization-cum-­modernization-cum-­democratizationcivilization. As shall be dem­on­strated below, the textuality pertinent to the Greater Middle East Initiative in its entirety – speeches, texts, official docu­ ments, summits, press releases – treats the AME as a clean slate, bereft of any know­ledge worthy of con­sidera­tion in the US-­led bid under G. W. Bush to promote demo­cracy, by force if neces­sary. Deconstruction of the US-­led demo­cracy pro­mo­tion has produced endless papers. My own critique differs in that it revolves around aspects of knowledge-­ making and practice. It brings into sharp focus the construction of power rela­ tions of domination and subjugation through textual reading of the initiatives – the Greater Middle East Initiative (GMEI) and Broader Middle East Iniative (BMEI). The usage of terms like ‘greater’ or ‘broader’ Middle East is a classic example of the persistent Orientalist understanding of the AME. The monolithic label ‘Middle East’, already vague, is now rendered even more im­pre­cise as its bound­ar­ies are stretched further afield to include in addition to the AME Afghan­ istan, Iran, Israel, Paki­stan and Turkey. The term that still begs the question ‘Middle of where East of what’ now calls for definition as to ‘greater’ or ‘broader’ in what sense. Even though the use of ‘broader’ is con­sidered a Euro­ pean refinement of its precursor – ‘greater’ – it is intriguing as to why Arab rulers or peoples would find it less im­pre­cise or more accept­able. Gen­erally, there is a tendency of Arabs to view with sus­pi­cion attempts to ‘lump’ them together with non-­Arabs. Such schemes, many argue, derail the search for an Arab com­mun­ity of inter­ests. The GMEI is a successor to a plethora of schemes super imposed top-­down and from without. Like its precursor, the Middle East Part­ner­ship Initiative (MEPI), the GMEI reflects the persistent road-­mapping the US began under Bush Senior (e.g. New World Order) fol­low­ing the liberation of Kuwait in 1991, con­tinued through the Madrid Conference and subsequent calls for a ‘New Middle East’ (by Shimon Perez), up to George W. Bush’s issuing in

182   L. Sadiki 2003 and Condoleezza Rice’s idea of a ‘New Middle East’ in July 2006 (in the midst of the thirty-­three day war between Hezbullah and Israel). This discourse of power can be clearly seen in the GMEI’s ‘working paper’ published by Al-­Hayat news­paper. The ownership of its text is Amer­ican. The rationale given for the GMEI is Amer­ican. So are the strategies. The text maps out power relations in which the Arab side is subordinate – silent. The text deftly invokes the UN Arab Human De­velopment Reports as if to record Arab prior agreement to the GMEI. It is a text that smacks with unilateralism. Through the text the only superpower is attempting to order the AME in its own image: the three pillars of demo­cracy, know­ledge so­ci­ety and capit­al­ism reflect not only Amer­ican values but also cri­teria of success as noted by Pres­id­ent Bush in his NED speech of 2003 (Bush 2003). This is one aspect of the GMEI and the BMEI that critics have in­vari­ably ignored. There is a one-­way flow of in­forma­tion, know­ledge, know-­how and values. The BMEI adopts the GMEI’s initial three pillars addressing the three deficits – demo­cracy, know­ledge and eco­nomy – and expands on them by toning down the Amer­ican stress on the polit­ical and emphasising ‘dialogue’ and ‘part­ ner­ship’. How­ever, there is no equality in it. The G-­8 side is clearly the knowledge-­maker, with exclusive ownership over the con­tent of the initiatives. The BMEI text lit­er­ally opens up candidacy for ‘apprenticeship’ into good gov­ ern­ment and governance. The mentoring is top-­down. The learning is unidir­ec­ tional. What the BMEI prac­tically sets up is a form of ‘classroom’ for ‘coaching’ the AME into measuring up to globalization. In this ‘classroom’, Jordan is the most proactive ‘pupil’, partaking in all ac­tiv­ities and bene­fiting from most funds. Whilst Jordan clamours for the ‘carrots’ of training and funding at the levels of state and so­ci­ety, the Arab Gulf states have a level of fin­an­cial resources that render these ‘carrots’ insufficiently tempting. There are dis­cre­tionary ‘carrots’ (e.g. the US concluding a deal with Morocco days before its Septem­ber 2007 parlia­ment­ary elections to reward demo­cratizing steps taken by King Mohamed VI, with US$697.5 million of grants under the Millennium Challenge Corpora­ tion).4 There are no ‘sticks’ in the initiative, as Ottaway and Carothers point out. But this is not entirely correct. ‘Sticks’ are implicit in the risk of missing the pecu­ni­ary rewards and ‘train’ of ‘modernization’, stability, moderation and reform for coun­tries that choose not to partake in the BMEI’s ac­tiv­ities. The oil-­ rich Arab Gulf states do not need the initiatives and assistance avail­able in limited programmes, especially in relation to WTO mem­ber­ship; they can choose to keep their parti­cipa­tion to a min­imum. The less well-­to-do states cannot do so, despite the non-­binding nature of the BMEI. The ‘mentoring’ is assigned to Canada (e.g. voter registration and elect­oral transparency in Afghan­ istan), the EU (e.g. Palestinian elections and elect­oral commission), France (e.g. elections in Yemen), UK (e.g. parlia­ment­ary capa­city in Bahrain), UNIFEM and Canada (e.g. de­velopment of women’s rights in Algeria, Jordan, Leb­anon, Morocco, ‘Palestinian Territories’ and Tu­nisia), Ger­many (e.g. gender equality in Jordan, Morocco and Yemen), Italy (e.g. ‘education for all’ in Afghanistan and Libya), Japan (e.g. women’s empowerment in Egypt, Jordan and the

Beyond Orientalism and Occidentalism   183 ‘Palestinian Territories’), US (e.g. funding regional women’s cam­paign schools in the AME). There are additional mentoring roles for the G-­8 coun­tries in media training, pub­lic administration, strengthening civil so­ci­ety, improving education systems, and local de­velopment. There is a missing link in this chain of learning and mentoring. Because the GMEI is built on as­sump­tions of G-­8 leadership in knowledge-­making and dif­ fusion, little or no effort has been made to ex­plore ‘local’ know­ledge in the AME and oppor­tun­ities of intra-­Arab learning. Not all of the ‘goods’ that could be deployed for demo­cracy pro­mo­tion are in the sole possession of the G-­8 states, the mentors. Indi­vidual states in the AME have deficits in demo­cracy and know­ ledge. How­ever, as a whole the AME possesses forms of know­ledge, albeit dis­ persed across the vast Arab canvass, with the potential to help demo­crat­ization.

Re-­framing the ‘prob­lematic’ of Arab demo­cracy and demo­ crat­ization The intention here is to seek out an explan­at­ory method in­teg­ral to the unfolding real­it­ies of the AME rather than fol­low­ing one that is dictated by the demo­crat­ ization para­digm that has gen­erally been inspired by studies of ex­peri­ences grounded in specific tem­poral and spatial con­texts of limited relev­ance to the AME. From this per­spect­ive, specificity and relev­ance are at the core of schol­ arly soundness. For study of demo­cratic (in)transitions does not seek some kind of episteme, which is detached from the tem­poral and spatial milieu of the social world under study. Nor should it be tainted by the uncrit­ical positioning of either Orientalist or Occidentalist discourses. The prob­lematic of demo­cratic (in)trans­ ition must account for the key factor that inhibits demo­cratic transition: demo­ cratic faragh or void. It is within this void that that renego­ti­ation of power takes place, mostly through occupying of the void by so­ci­ety and dis­mant­ling of the myth of the state, that is, the author­it­arian state. The postco­lo­nial Arab state is a hegemon, what Nazih Ayubi (1996) calls the ‘over-­stated Arab state’. This brand of state has his­tor­ically invested itself with all the attributes of power (co­er­cive, fin­an­cial, legal, tribal, ideo­logical, in­forma­ tional, social, etc.). It has thus left so­ci­ety with little shared space for normaliz­ ing state-­society relations, and even less space for societal contests of state power. Since its emergence into territorial exist­ence, the Arab postco­lo­nial state’s design of this brand of statecraft fulfils what might be called ‘total pol­ itics’ or ‘total state’. Such a state has a notable blind spot: the ‘void of power’. This is where so­ci­ety strikes back to invent the vocabulary of self-­recognition and self-­ existence, as well as the attendant thought-­practice congenial to speaking and acting back at the hegemon. There lies the promise of negotiating the demo­cratic void or faragh. In the ongoing struggles to cohabitate or populate the ‘void of power,’ potentially, and sometimes actu­ally, Arab soci­eties seek to convert the ‘void of power’ into the ‘power of the void’. In every state retreat/absence there emerges potential for advancement/pres­ence by so­ci­ety, as if (state) ‘zero-­power’

184   L. Sadiki equates with (societal) ‘pos­it­ive power’, at least potentially. The aim of refram­ ing the prob­lematic of demo­crat­ization creatively and crit­ically is to go beyond sterile Orientalist and Occidentalist pro­posi­tions that no longer speak to the struggles to dismantle author­it­arianism on the ground. This captures the essence of the nature of demo­cratic struggles in the AME. The fight is prim­arily to defeat the structures of author­it­arianism. This begins with de-­imagining the postco­lo­ nial nationalist author­it­arian com­munit­ies, paving the way for a new type of re-­ imagining of demo­cratic com­mun­ity. Conceptually and the­or­etically, this exercise opens up a vista for con­sidering the agential dynamic in demo­crat­ ization in the AME, as well as accounting for the structural ills that might be stumbling blocks in the way of demo­cratic transition. ‘De-­imagining com­munit­ies’ and imagining ‘un-­imagined com­munit­ies’ ‘De-­imagining’ marks the onset of ‘speaking back’ at the ‘hegemon’, striking back, as it were, at the state. The linchpin of the postco­lo­nial hege­monic order in the AME is the ‘total state’.5 Accordingly, and in ref­er­ence to the AME, the brand of ‘total state’ is one that has mainly engaged so­ci­ety through its ambi­ tion to occupy the entirety of the field of polit­ical action – from the manage­ ment of theatre and football to defense pol­icy design. To this end, it has deployed various instruments (ranging from co­er­cive to distributive and dis­ cursive), exclusively guarding pol­itics as a narrow and closed bastion, thus inhibiting the rise of pub­lic arenas for the habituation of so­ci­ety to the skills and ethics of cit­izen­ship. As the exclusive bastion of the few, the brand of ‘ima­gined com­mun­ity’ that has been produced for the enactment of pol­itics through nation and state-­building in the AME has been subject to ongoing and fierce contests. The resulting ‘ima­gined com­mun­ity’ has not been all-­ embracing and uni­ver­sal in the exercise of ‘power over’. It has relegated to a secondary class of cit­izen­ship its minor­it­ies, dissidents and even its own members who have in many instances throughout the AME sought to act through unimpaired free choice and voluntary judgment. In essence, the ‘ima­ gined com­mun­ity’ of the ruling few has grown unaccustomed to all forms of auto­nom­ous checks by so­ci­ety or legally sanc­tioned rival pro­jects of ‘ima­gined com­munit­ies’. From a the­or­etical standpoint, the persona of such a state has never been estab­lished. States may reserve the prerogative to de­velop visions, values and rules for their conduct within their own territories. But this kind of ‘legal’ or ‘consti­tu­tional’ state is a rarity in the AME. The power-­bidders occu­ pying the centre of the postco­lo­nial state have doubled as rulers and façades for the state. Mainly, the state in the AME is endowed with external legitimacy – having fulfilled some requirements of the Westphalian and Weberian tem­ plates after inde­pend­ence. These comprise a combination of inter­na­tionally demarcated and recog­nized borders (along with the regalia of the state, flags, armies, national anthems, coat of arms, etc.) and a centralized authority backed up by co­er­cive and legal might.

Beyond Orientalism and Occidentalism   185 The fierce contests against the hege­monic ‘ima­gined com­munit­ies’ of the Arab Middle East within the realm of the void allow for ‘ima­gined com­munit­ies’ in reverse. That is, they signal the onset of de-­imagining of the existing hege­ monic ‘ima­gined com­munit­ies’ seeking their overthrow for being parochial, private-­public, privatized and prim­or­dialized whilst still claiming a uni­ver­sal nationhood of sorts, and for inhibiting free choice in the exercise of ‘power over’. To re-­state Benedict Anderson (2006), nations or com­munit­ies are ima­ gined through a number of pro­cesses: 1 2 3 4

De-­primordialization, i.e. ‘imagining’ or ‘inventing’ a com­mun­ity super­ sedes kinship ties and close know­ledge and asso­ci­ation of a clan or tribe. Nationalization of identity and belonging: ima­gined nations pander to nationalist ‘ethnocentricity’. De-­divinization of the newly ‘ima­gined’ nations and states (owing to the ascendance of Enlightenment and revolu­tionary ration­al­ity, as Anderson points out). Indeed, having de-­divinized religion, the new Enlightenment-­based ration­al­ ity mythologized and sacralized the ‘ima­gined’ nationalist com­mun­ity, a ‘fraternity’ or asso­ci­ation of compat­riots, as a ‘deep, horizontal comrade­ ship’ to die for in the name of pat­riotism.

The imagining of the postco­lo­nial com­mun­ity or nationhood has more or less followed a sim­ilar trajectory in the AME. The itinerary of the power-­bidders and new ‘occupiers’ of the postco­lo­nial state have from day one at the helm set out to dismantle prim­or­dial asso­ci­ation and symbols of identification and an­chors (and even arms in many instances) in the name of centralization and moderniza­ tion. ‘The passing of tradition’-type correctness of the postco­lo­nial era has also set to relegate religion to a secondary role. Lit­er­ally, to use Eric Hobsbawm’s phrases, the age of postco­lo­niality has been at once an ‘age of revolu­tions’ (by free officers, pan-­Arabists, secularists, and eventually Islamists) and of ‘extremes’ (Hobsbawm 1962; Hobsbawm 1994) (national vs. tribal, modern vs. traditional, uni­ver­sal vs. parochial, etc.). The new rallying myths through which the newly born ‘ima­gined com­munit­ies’ are to be mediated exalt the state and loy­alty to its centre. Thus the postco­lo­nial ima­gined orders unfolded through what might be called ‘re-­intellectualization’ (Eickelman and Anderson 2003). The new masters of the postco­lo­nial state had in their possession the state press, radio, and eventually TV, the arts, and educational syllabi to ‘coach’ or induct their subjects into the new faith, nationalism, and moor it in the new an­chors of national identity and pat­riotic loy­alty. The reality today is almost the oppos­ite – as if it were the ‘passing of nationalism’, or at least of author­it­arian nationalism. Anderson’s four pro­cesses that have col­lect­ively constructed and entrenched the ‘ima­gined com­ mun­ity’ are more or less coming unstuck. Rather, and more precisely, they are witnessing reversal, varying degrees, throughout the AME. The multitude that once substituted nation for tribe, clan or family or other prim­or­dial asso­ci­ations

186   L. Sadiki is today having second thoughts. Many are already joining the swelling March back from the ‘ima­gined com­mun­ity’ and towards the protection, certainty and an­chorage of these prim­or­dial asso­ci­ations. When the Ba’thist ‘ima­gined com­ mun­ity’ collapsed in Iraq, these were surviving sanctuaries within which counter-­imagined com­munit­ies are being constructed post-­Saddam Hussein. In Yemen, the centre’s never-­ending duels with peripheral counter-­imaginings of ‘ima­gined com­munit­ies’ that em­brace tribe, sect and unruly activism (Al-­Qaida) are chipping into the already limping nation-­state. From Sudan to Somalia, sim­ ilar manifestations are evid­ent in various corroding ‘ima­gined com­munit­ies’ in the AME. The power-­bidders themselves lead the ‘de-­prim­or­dialization’ in reverse. They tap into kinship and confessional repertoires of belonging in order to mobilize for their own ‘imaginings’ of com­mun­ity. The za’amat or business and polit­ical ‘lordships’ of Leb­anon are a case in point. The Hariri family holds sway – through a combination of clientship and Saudi-­backed confessionalism – over the coun­try’s Sunnis. Fam­il­ies are the training grounds for the training and recruitment of future polit­ical leaders (e.g. GeMayel, Faranjie, Junblat, etc.). The operative term is ‘confession’ not a uni­ver­sal ‘image of communion’. Elsewhere a form of ‘dynastic repub­licanism’ best embodies the de-­primordialization in reverse in the AME. Worse perhaps is when the power-­bidders mix business with pol­itics (for instance, see Dib 2007). Those members of the innermost circles of the nation’s field of action pick the cherries of the exercise of ‘power over’, becoming the media barons, landed millionaires and aristocrats (e.g. Egypt), beneficiaries of lucrative arms contracts in the AME (e.g. the Arab Gulf ), and, increasingly, control prime real estate (e.g. the Hariris’ land pur­ chases in Amman), the shores and the beaches (numerous cases, notably Bahrain). This compounds the realm of the moral void, setting up the ima­gined com­mun­ity for non-­compliance by the excluded or estranged power-­compliers. For the greater part of postco­lo­niality, com­pliance is incumbent on welfarism (distribution of subsidized goods as oppos­ed to distribution of power) or on co­er­ cive control. Apathy has been one coping mech­an­ism with author­it­arianism. Apathy is at once a negat­ive form of com­pliance and non-­compliance. How­ever, in the realm of the void, not only are com­pliance and apathy partly withdrawn, but a profusion of dynamic voices and forces populating the realm of the void set the scene for discursive and prac­tical resistance – speaking and acting back. The corollary is the profusion from below of voices and forces with their own pro­jects to de-­imagine the existing ‘ima­gined com­munit­ies’ that are beset by the rot of moral void. Religion is back as one source feeding counter-­imaginings of com­mun­ity. Again, this is a reversal of the pro­cess of de-­divinization that coupled the rise of ‘ima­gined’ nations in the modern era. Perhaps nothing has reified it more than the failure of the pro­ject of modernity constructed on the pedestal of ‘ima­gined com­mun­ity’. Copts, Shiites and Sunnis are turning in droves to faith. In the demo­cratic moment, the intersection of the profane and sacred gives birth and nurtures hybrid identities. Religious symbols, dictums, metaphors interpenetrate with demo­cratic language, infusing it with nuance and hybridity. The return of religious verities seeped into pol­itics through maverick,

Beyond Orientalism and Occidentalism   187 populist, pop­ular, and charismatic challengers to the status quo. Those thrust into the AME’s polit­ical stage, such as Hassan Nasrallah, Muqtada al-­Sadr, Rashid Ghannushi, Ismail Haniyyah, Khalid Mish’al and Nadia Yassine, have become cel­eb­rated symbols and names. Their discourses lace religion with pol­itics with a fierce burning passion, managing to influence pub­lic opinion and command wide fol­low­ings once reserved for the likes of Hassan Al-­Banna, Sayyid Qutb, Shaykh Kishk, Abdelaziz Al-­Rantissi and Ayatollah Khomeini. In par­ticu­lar, the charismatic Shiite Nasrallah of the Leb­an­ese Hizbullah enjoys pop­ularity enjoyed before him only by Sunni Jamal Abd Al-­Nasser of Egypt. Rights and wrongs aside, fugitive Osama bin Laden has been the subject of private and secret reverence by millions of Arabs and Muslims. These figures’ rise to polit­ ical centre stage coincided with and partly even accounted for the secular leaders’ receding authority and cred­ib­il­ity throughout the AME.6 The myth of ‘watan’ (homeland), already shattered by mal-­distribution of power under the postco­lo­nial ima­gined com­mun­ity in the AME, is being erased further in the minds of the new pub­lics. These pub­lics cannot ima­gine the ‘watan’ to be a place in which they are accorded little or no space to exercise the agency of unimpaired choice. More­over, they cannot ima­gine the ‘watan’ to be a place where they face potential eco­nomic banishment from its shores, beaches, and eco­nomic oppor­tun­ities, as they have been excluded in polity. Therefore the preconstructions of their newly ima­gined forms of identity and their attendant discourses and praxis lead them towards resistance.

Conclusion What is certain in the AME today is that power voids are proliferating. It is no exaggeration to suggest that a pro­cess of de-­imagining ‘ima­gined com­munit­ies’ is under way. Western demo­cracy pro­mo­tion pro­jects have thus far shown its uselessness, not its worth. Bush’s Greater Middle East Initiative has failed, even in Iraq, where one set of bloody rulers has been substituted by another. Elect­oral ‘fetishism’, there as elsewhere in the Arab Middle East, was stand­ardized, not to aid demo­cracy but, rather, shore up delegitimized ruling elites and fam­il­ies. Egypt that once held the promise of an Arab ‘demonstration effect’, was after the Novem­ber 2010 parlia­ment­ary elections, the furthest from demo­crat­ization.7 Unlike Bush, Obama dropped the demo­crat­ization agenda in the AME. Maybe Obama is aware of the pitfalls of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion without the backup of a local agency, itself empowered by civic practices, local know-­how and en­ab­ling civil soci­eties. Today, the story of Arab demo­crat­ization may be said to be unfolding through speaking and acting back. This has become, for now, the only means to ‘de-­ima­ gine’ the postco­lo­nial ‘ima­gined com­munit­ies’ – That is, resist author­it­arianism. The demo­cratic void remains a space where the possib­il­ities of new becoming are tested not only discursively but also prac­tically. Acting and speaking back at the hege­monic state is a twin function of the profusion of new voices, discourses and actors from below as well as the atomization of power. At the core of this

188   L. Sadiki atomization of power is the endeavour by these emerging voices and actors to inhabit the demo­cratic void with a view to record pres­ence (and thus roll back absence) and dynamically seek, create and maintain spaces of demo­cratic struggle. Two brief the­or­etical qualifications are in order. First, the space of demo­cratic void repudiates the Orientalist stigma of Arabo-­civic passivity and absence. Fur­ thermore, it affirms Ibn Khaldoun’s thesis of the pres­ence of a space inde­pend­ent of or detached from the state – a very good approximation of a civic sphere for societal self-­help and self-­affirmation (Gellner 1989). For more than 600 years, Ibn Khaldoun’s classic text, the Muqaddimah, has affirmed the pos­sib­il­ity of dis­ tinctive civic and state realms in Arab pol­itics. Sec­ondly, the type of civic engagement de­scribed in this chapter is resistance-­based in orientation. It incorp­ or­ates elements of pas­sion­ate pol­itics of identity, perhaps antithetical to the Euro-­American model of polit­ical ration­al­ity. Nonetheless, this must not dampen its inherent ethos of anti-­authoritarian resistance and its telos of dis­mant­ling the structures of author­it­arianism as a prelude to future demo­crat­ization.

Notes 1 This chapter was written a few months before the Arab revolutions of 2011. Nothing today tests the ‘democratization paradigm’ more than the unfolding Arab spring, which so far has led to the ousting of two of the most dynastic and unrepresentative regimes in the Arab world. The Arab spring comes to force Orientalist and Occidentalist inputs on democratization to revise assumptions about good government, democracy promo­ tion, the preconditions of democracy, and how democratization happens. It is unfolding locally, through Arab agency, with minimum Western machination (except in Libya) and with no link whatsoever to the grand narratives of transitology such as by Huntingdon. 2 See Pipes (2004) for an example of the unwarranted hounding and ad hominem attacks of an Egyptian-­American Islamic scholar at the hands of an Orientalist. For Daniel Pipes’ list of questions for Muslims to find out whether they are really moderate or not, see Pipes (2003). 3 One notable attempt to do so is Esposito (1992). 4 The Millennium Challenge Corporation rewards performance in three areas: just rule, investing in people, and promoting eco­nomic freedom. 5 From Haenal, in Schmitt’s in­ter­pretation, we find a distinction between the ‘uni­ver­sal state’ and the ‘total state’. The former derives its mission from law and acts as one organ­iza­tion of many within a given so­ci­ety, distinguished by its ability to rise above them for the purpose of being every­one’s state. It is charged with ‘delimiting and organ­izing socially effect­ive forces’ according to the spirit of the law. According to Haenel, a ‘total state,’ by contrast, has the potential to exercise power in order to make ‘all social goals of so­ci­ety its goals’. See Schmitt (1996: 24). 6 Now that bin Laden is dead that reverence may subside in some regions but increase in others where the United States is presenting Al-Qaida. 7 On 11 February, 2011 Egyptians forced Mubarak out of power, changing the course of politics in that country, and with it the future of democratization, which now has a chance.

11 The conceptual pol­itics of demo­cracy in inter­na­tional law Hilary Charlesworth

This chapter ex­plores the conceptual pol­itics of demo­cracy in the area of inter­na­ tional law and the institutions in which it is de­veloped, par­ticu­larly the United Nations. How has the meaning of demo­cracy been fought over and shaped in these con­texts? The chapter first sketches the relationship of inter­na­tional law and concepts of demo­cracy. It then examines the way that the United Nations has de­veloped the idea of demo­cracy. The chapter observes that, after a long period of detachment, inter­na­tional lawyers and inter­na­tional organ­isa­tions have created a constrained, institution-­based definition of demo­cracy. This has pro­ duced an unstable founda­tion for demo­cracy in cases of inter­na­tional inter­ven­ tion after conflict. Inter­na­tional legal approaches to demo­cracy provide a nice case study of some of the conceptual debates identified by the editors in their introduction to this volume. Various understandings of demo­cracy jostle for space in the inter­ na­tional arena, from those focused on elections, to those that give pri­or­ity to the protection of human rights, to versions that focus on institution-­building. These understandings are the­or­etically rather muddled and do not fit easily within the stand­ard typologies of demo­cracy. Inter­na­tional lawyers tend gen­erally to opt for vagueness rather than precision in this area and avoid discussions of demo­ cracy’s meaning and value. The most recent inter­na­tional accounts of demo­cracy reject the idea of any type of demo­cracy template and insist that local con­ditions must influence its design. How­ever, the practice of the United Nations in pro­ moting demo­cracy after conflict suggests that local concerns and voices in fact occupy an un­cer­tain and insecure place in this enterprise and that more attention is paid to pro­cess than to the final demo­cratic product.

Inter­na­tional law Inter­na­tional law has traditionally had little inter­est in the idea of demo­cracy. Indeed it is often regarded as itself the product of undemo­cratic pro­cesses: many de­veloping states argue that some inter­na­tional legal prin­ciples have been derived from the inter­ests and practices of imperial powers (Anghie 2005). The prin­ciple of uti possedetis is an example, confining the territorial bound­ar­ies of decolonised states to those at the time of colonisation. Another apparently

190   H. Charlesworth undemo­cratic feature of inter­na­tional law is that it largely regulates the state without taking the effect of its strictures on indi­viduals within the state into account (Crawford 1993: 117–18). Inter­na­tional law also asserts primacy over do­mestic legal rules, even if demo­cratically adopted (Vienna Convention on the Law of Treat­ies 1969, Art­icle 27), leading to the charge that it creates a ‘demo­ cratic deficit’ in national legal systems. Classical accounts of inter­na­tional law did not investigate the in­ternal govern­ ance ar­range­ments within states and regarded the system of gov­ern­ment inside states as simply a mat­ter of national law. The Swiss jurist Emerich de Vattel wrote in 1758 that a coun­try’s consti­tu­tion was of ‘purely national concern’ and this view prevailed into the twentieth century, with Lassa Oppenheim confirm­ ing in his classic treatise in 1905 that, from an inter­na­tional law per­spect­ive, each state had ‘the faculty of adopting any Consti­tu­tion it likes and of changing such Consti­tu­tion according to its dis­cre­tion’ (quoted in Marks 2000: 31). A striking exception to this gen­eral lack of inter­est in demo­cracy by inter­ na­tional lawyers was an address to the Amer­ican So­ci­ety of Inter­na­tional Law in 1917 by its Pres­id­ent, Elihu Root, a former Secretary of State (Root 1917). Root had great faith in the inevitability of the march of demo­cracy and its cen­ trality to the integrity of inter­na­tional law. Demo­cracy was ‘one of those great and fundamental movements of the human mind which no power can control, and which run their course inev­it­ably to the end in an unknown future’ (Root 1917: 158). As demo­cracy de­veloped, autocratic and dynastic forms of gov­ ern­ment would wither away, their memories ‘faded and grown dim in the minds of millions of men in the civilized nations’ (Root 1917: 158). For Root, demo­cracy was the key to the de­velopment of inter­na­tional law as demo­cra­cies were unlikely to be involved in inter­na­tional wrongdoing. He regarded dynas­ tic pol­itics as largely respons­ible for war and demo­cracy as an antidote through its tempering of dynastic ambition (Root 1917: 161). Although Root conceded that demo­cra­cies were capable of folly and wrongdoing, the fact that these missteps would be widely exposed made them susceptible to reason and delib­ eration: ‘demo­cra­cies are in­cap­able of holding or executing those sinister pol­ icies of ambition which are beyond the reach of argument and the control of law’ (Root 1917: 163). More­over, as there would be inev­it­able conflict between demo­cratic and non-­democratic gov­ern­ments, demo­cra­cies had to strike against non-­democracies by ‘kill[ing] its enemies when it can and where it can’ (Root 1917: 166). Root’s prediction of the inevitability of demo­cracy and the likelihood of demo­cra­cies acting consistently with inter­na­tional law was quickly undermined by events and had little echo in the field for much of the twentieth century. The founding of the United Nations in 1945 altered the formal framework of inter­na­tional law from a Westphalian model, concerned with the preser­va­tion of national sover­eignty, re­li­ance on force as the basic form of legitimation and decentralised dispute res­olu­tion to one that recog­nised the human rights of indi­ viduals within states, placed significant lim­ita­tions on the use of force and accorded inter­na­tional institutions great power (Cassese 1986). Despite this

Democracy in international law   191 con­sider­able shift, demo­cracy was not on the agenda of the new ‘Charter’ model of inter­na­tional law, reflecting a broader inter­na­tional ambivalence about demo­ cracy’s value. The term ‘demo­cracy’ did not appear in the Charter of the United Nations and was not a prere­quis­ite for mem­ber­ship of the organ­isa­tion; rather, the United Nations was declared to be open to all ‘peace-­loving states’ (UN Charter 1945, Art­icle 4). This requirement was origin­ally intended to disqual­ify gov­ern­ments with a fas­cist his­tory from mem­ber­ship in the United Nations, par­ ticu­larly Spain (Simma 1995: 163). The San Francisco Conference of 1945 resolved that ‘peace-­loving’ was not syn­onym­ous with demo­cratic institutions, as this would amount to interference in the do­mestic affairs of sover­eign states. In the mid-­1950s, Western powers, including the United States and the United Kingdom, unsuccessfully invoked the ‘peace-­loving’ con­ditionality to oppose the admission of Bulgaria, Hun­gary and Romania on the grounds that they were not demo­cratic gov­ern­ments (Simma 1995). The drafting of the Uni­ver­sal Declaration of Human Rights by a sub-­ committee of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights between 1947 and 1948 prompted a more expli­cit discussion of demo­cracy at the inter­na­tional level, with con­tention about the best form of governance for the protection of human rights (Morsink 1999: 59–61). The final outcome of this debate was Art­ icle 21 of the Declaration which presents an election-­focused notion of parti­cipa­ tion in gov­ern­ment, without using the term ‘demo­cracy’: 1 2 3

Every­one has the right to take part in the gov­ern­ment of his coun­try, directly or through freely chosen representatives. Every­one has the right of equal access to pub­lic ser­vice in his coun­try. The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of gov­ern­ment; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genu­ine elections which shall be by uni­ver­sal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equi­val­ ent free voting pro­ced­ures.

Henry Steiner has pointed out that the drafting his­tory of Art­icle 21 ‘reflects concern by states on both sides of the Cold War divide to ensure that their own system of pol­itics was not in instant violation of [the pro­vi­sion]’ (Steiner 1988: 77). The only ref­er­ence to demo­cracy in the Uni­ver­sal Declaration is found in Art­icle 29, which declares ‘the gen­eral wel­fare in a demo­cratic so­ci­ety’ as a pos­ sible lim­ita­tion on the exercise of rights. The language of Art­icle 21 of the Uni­ver­sal Declaration was incorp­or­ated into Art­icle 25 of the Inter­na­tional Covenant on Civil and Polit­ical Rights (ICCPR) in 1966 in an amended form: Every cit­izen shall have the right and the oppor­tun­ity, without [discrimina­ tion] and without unreason­able restrictions: a

To take part in the conduct of pub­lic affairs, directly or through freely chosen representatives;

192   H. Charlesworth b c

To vote and to be elected at genu­ine periodic elections which shall be by uni­ver­sal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret ballot, guar­ anteeing the free expression of the will of the electors; To have access, on gen­eral terms of equality, to pub­lic ser­vice in his coun­try.

Thirty years later, the ICCPR’s monitoring body, the United Nations Human Rights Committee, de­scribed this treaty pro­vi­sion as lying ‘at the core of demo­ cratic gov­ern­ment based on the consent of the people’ (Gen­eral Comment 25 on Art­icle 25, 1996). The Gen­eral Comment how­ever provided a rather thin legal articulation of the value of demo­cracy. It was mainly concerned with the details of elect­oral practices, although it noted the significance of cit­izen parti­cipa­tion in the conduct of pub­lic affairs through ‘pub­lic debate and dialogue with [polit­ical] rep­ resentatives or through their capa­city to or­gan­ize themselves’ (Gen­eral Comment 25 on Art­icle 25, 1996: para 8). The Gen­eral Comment also emphasised the pro­ tection and pro­mo­tion of freedom of expression, assembly and asso­ci­ation as ‘essential con­ditions of the right to vote’ (Gen­eral Comment 25 on Art­icle 25, 1996: para 12), but it did not de­velop the concept of demo­cracy more fully. Another treaty pro­vi­sion that argu­ably supports a demo­cratic ideal is common art­icle 1 of the ICCPR and the Inter­na­tional Covenant on Eco­nomic, Social and Cultural Rights of 1966, which pro­claims the right to self-­determination, includ­ ing the right of a people to ‘freely determine their polit­ical status’. The meaning of this phrase is open to debate. James Crawford has argued that the right to self-­ determination does not neces­sar­ily mean the estab­lishment of a form of gov­ern­ ment based on the idea of ‘one vote, one value’ (Crawford 2006: 333). He pointed to cases such as Swaziland, where the United Nations Gen­eral Assembly sanc­tioned governance by traditional authorities (in Swaziland’s case a heredi­ tary mon­archy) because they have the support of the people. In the case of Fiji, the United Nations approved the adoption of a consti­tu­tion in 1970 that discrimi­ nated between racial groups, giving pref­er­ence to indi­gen­ous Fijians over Fijians of Indian an­ces­try (Crawford 2006). On the other hand, Crawford has noted that the min­imum core of the right to self-­determination must be gov­ern­ment that has the support of the rel­ev­ant people and in this sense represents them (Crawford 2006: 334). The linkage of demo­cracy and self-­determination was also suggested in the 1993 Vienna Declaration on Human Rights, which referred to demo­cracy as ‘based on the freely expressed will of the people to determine their own polit­ ical, eco­nomic, social and cultural systems and their full parti­cipa­tion in all aspects of their lives’ (UN Doc. A/Conf./157, 12 July 1993, para I (8)). Such a formu­la­tion requires identification of ‘the people’ in a par­ticu­lar con­text. This question is raised in an acute form, for example, in the case of the 1998 Nouméa Accord in New Caledonia, which was a response to a movement among the Kanak popu­la­tion for inde­pend­ence from France. Are the New Caledonian people simply the indi­gen­ous popu­la­tion (which makes up 44 per cent of the popu­la­tion), or do they include permanent and temporary residents of French

Democracy in international law   193 origin? The Accord provides for a vote by ‘the popu­la­tions concerned’ to decide the final status of the islands at a date to be fixed between 2014 and 2018, imply­ ing that there may be a voting system somewhat different to one vote one value (Crawford 2006: 334, n 18). Inter­na­tional lawyers’ long-­standing wariness about expli­citly endorsing demo­cracy as an inter­na­tional norm dissipated somewhat after the ending of the Cold War as part of the more gen­eral global pause in contestation over demo­ cracy’s value, de­scribed by the editors of this book. In par­ticu­lar, Amer­ican inter­na­tional lawyers began to articulate a right to demo­cracy in inter­na­tional law. For example, Thomas Franck identified an ‘emerging right to demo­cratic governance’ (Franck 1992). He reflected on the con­tempor­ary tumult within the Soviet Union and the strong inter­na­tional reaction to the overthrow of Pres­id­ent Aristide in Haiti in Septem­ber 1991, observing a ‘cosmic, but unmys­ter­ious, change’ in the preparedness of gov­ern­ments to argue for a demo­cratic enti­tle­ ment (Franck 1992: 47). Franck presented this de­velopment as almost entirely as the product of Western thinkers, such as Hume, Locke, Jefferson and Madison (Franck 1992: 49). His writing was infused with spiritual language, suggesting both the inevitability and moral value of the move to demo­cratic governance; indeed Franck’s art­icle’s final sentence argues that ‘[t]he task is to perfect what has been so wondrously begun’ (Franck 1992: 91). Other inter­na­tional lawyers have de­veloped the notion of a human right to demo­cracy. Thus Christina Cerna (1995), Gregory Fox and Georg Nolte (1995) have argued that the legitimacy of gov­ern­ments should be assessed by inter­na­ tional rather than national cri­teria, that the inter­na­tional requirement is of demo­ cratic gov­ern­ment and that indi­viduals everywhere have a right to demo­cratic gov­ern­ment (see also Steiner 1988). Sim­ilarly, Steven Wheatley (2005: ch. 3) has argued that creating and sustaining demo­cracy is an inter­na­tional legal obli­ ga­tion, en­ab­ling the inter­na­tional com­mun­ity to scrutinise the substance and pro­ cesses of a state’s polit­ical system. He has also suggested that inter­na­tional law en­dorses a form of Habermas’ deliberative demo­cracy – a system that engages cit­izens in active deliberation and allows broad parti­cipa­tion in pol­itics, resulting in consensus positions – as opposed to what he terms ‘aggregative’ demo­cracy – a form of demo­cracy that is focused on com­petit­ive elections (Wheatley 2005: 185–7; see also Wheatley 2010). Michael Reisman (2000) presented the argument that a right to demo­cracy could be discerned in inter­na­tional law to support ‘pro-­democratic inter­ven­tion’. He inverted the traditional notion of state sover­eignty in inter­na­tional law to argue that the crit­ical sover­eignty protected in inter­na­tional law was not that of the ruler, but that of the people. This led him to conclude that if the people’s pref­er­ences for gov­ern­ment were usurped, inter­na­tional law would support inter­ ven­tion to remove the usurper. Gregory Fox and Brad Roth have sim­ilarly artic­ ulated the idea of a ‘demo­cratic enti­tle­ment’ in inter­na­tional law, arguing that ‘meas­ures to implement demo­cratic rights, undertaken by foreign states col­lect­ ively and/or indi­vidually, need not respect the sover­eign prerogatives of gov­ern­ ments that violate those rights’ (Fox and Roth 2001: 336).

194   H. Charlesworth Some inter­na­tional lawyers who adopted an expli­citly lib­eral demo­cratic polit­ical approach, such as Anne-­Marie Slaughter (1995) and Fernando Tesón (1992), argued that a fundamental distinction should be drawn between lib­eral demo­cra­cies and non-­liberal demo­cra­cies in inter­na­tional law. For them, undemo­cratic gov­ern­ments did not have the re­quis­ite sover­eignty to enjoy full status in the inter­na­tional com­mun­ity and lib­eral demo­cra­cies could be relied on largely to self-­regulate. A further con­text in which inter­na­tional lawyers have addressed ideas of demo­cracy has been within inter­na­tional institutions. This has inspired chal­ lenges such as those to the permanent mem­ber­ship of the United Nations Secur­ ity Council and the associated veto power and proposals for global peoples’ assemblies that would give voice to civil so­ci­ety and transnational inter­est groups (e.g. Falk 2007). Both types of reform pro­jects are animated by an idea of demo­cracy based on broader parti­cipa­tion in decision-­making. In their introduction to this book, the editors note that the post-­Cold War enthusiasm for a norm of demo­cracy has been mis­takenly in­ter­preted as a sign of uni­ver­sal acceptance. The brief survey of inter­na­tional lawyers’ attitudes to demo­cracy indicates that, overall, Amer­ican inter­na­tional legal scholars have manifested the greatest dedication in demarcating a right to demo­cracy.1 This national connection of course has parallels in the democracy-­promotion liter­at­ ure. It has meant that the impact of these views has been limited on inter­na­tional law gen­erally. Inter­na­tional lawyers have become more cau­tious about embrac­ ing the concept of demo­cracy at the global level both because of inconsistent inter­na­tional practice in supporting it (e.g. Farrall 2009) and because ‘pro-­demo­ cratic’ inter­ven­tion has rarely delivered on its goal.2 In this sense, Tony Smith’s concerns about the effect of ‘the lib­eral jurists’ on definitions of sover­eignty and the just war expressed in this volume can be confined to a par­ticu­lar national con­text.

Inter­na­tional institutions As we have seen, the de­velopment of the concept of demo­cracy within the United Nations was restrained initially by the concern that this would constitute illegitimate interference in the do­mestic affairs of states. The decolonisation era, starting in the 1960s, deepened distrust of the language of demo­cracy. Demo­ cracy was regarded by some Southern states as a Trojan Horse, masking the imposition of Western values as a form of gov­ern­ment (Anghie 2005). These states found recourse to the Westphalian language of national sover­eignty a useful device to resist the de­velopment of inter­na­tional stand­ards relating to demo­cracy. The end of the Cold War and the apparent triumph of demo­cracy encouraged the United Nations to en­dorse the concept of demo­cracy, but it remained vague about its con­tent and meaning, anxious not to antagonise any of the regional groupings within its mem­ber­ship. This is evid­ent in the first full discussion of demo­crat­isation by the United Nations in Secretary-­General Boutros Boutros-­Ghali’s An Agenda

Democracy in international law   195 for Demo­crat­ization published in 1996. The Agenda did not give the idea of demo­cracy any real substance, noting that the ‘[i]mposition of foreign models . . . contravenes the [United Nations] Charter prin­ciple of non-­intervention in in­ternal affairs’. The Agenda referred to the ‘un­deni­able fact there is no one model of demo­crat­ization or demo­cracy suit­able to all soci­eties’ and claimed that ‘it is not for the United Nations to offer a model of demo­crat­ization or demo­cracy or to promote demo­cracy in a specific case’. The role of the United Nations was simply to offer only ‘assistance and advice’ and allow each member state ‘to choose the form, pace and character of its demo­crat­ization pro­cess’. In prac­tical terms, United Nations assistance included help with drafting consti­tu­ tions, estab­lishment of justice systems and police forces that abide by the rule of law, the depoliticisation of the milit­ary, the cre­ation of institutions to promote and protect human rights, and the fostering of civil so­ci­ety and an inde­pend­ent media (Boutros-­Ghali 1996: 1–2). The elaboration of the notion of demo­cracy within the United Nations occurred prim­arily in the Commission on Human Rights. The Commission adopted a series of res­olu­tions on demo­cracy from 1997 onwards, which illus­ trated North-­South divergence on the concept. Some of the res­olu­tions en­dorsed the pro­cess of demo­crat­isation of states and presented ‘free and fair elections [as] an essential feature of demo­cracy’ (e.g. CHR Res­olu­tion 2001/41). These res­olu­tions were typically supported by the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada as well as some Southern states, while China, Cuba, Saudi Arabia and Syria abstained from voting. Another strand of res­olu­tions adopted during the same sessions countered this understanding by supporting the ‘pro­mo­tion of a demo­cratic and equit­able inter­na­tional order’ (e.g. CHR Res­olu­tion 2001/65). They avoided any ref­er­ence to elections and emphasised the eco­nomic and social dimensions of demo­cracy. In defining demo­cracy, these res­olu­tions invoked many concepts promoted by the de­veloping world, such as self-­determination, permanent sover­eignty over nat­ural wealth and resources, the right to de­velopment, the prin­ciple of solidarity (which calls for the distribution of the costs of global challenges ‘in accordance with basic prin­ciples of equity and social justice’), and the right to a healthy envir­on­ment. Unsurprisingly, these res­ olu­tions attracted support from the abstainers on the Northern-­sponsored res­olu­ tion and negat­ive votes from all Western states on the Commission. The Commission on Human Rights was replaced by the United Nations Human Rights Council in 2006. The Council has con­tinued the tradition of adopting twin res­olu­tions on demo­cracy; one that attracts support from the Northern members of the Council and one that they vote against. Thus a 2008 res­olu­tion on ‘The role of good governance in the pro­mo­tion and protection of human rights’ (HRC Res. 7/11) linked corruption with violations of human rights and was approved by the North, as well as some Southern states, although a number abstained from the vote. Three months later, a familiar res­olu­tion on the ‘pro­mo­tion of a demo­cratic and equit­able inter­na­tional order’ (HRC Res. 8/5) prompted negat­ive votes from all the Northern states in the Council’s mem­ber­ship.

196   H. Charlesworth In 2005, on a United States initiative, the United Nations estab­lished a Demo­cracy Fund to ‘support demo­crat­ization throughout the world’. The mandate of the Fund does not define the idea of demo­cracy and it eschews the pro­mo­tion of ‘any single model of demo­cracy’ (UNDoc. A/RES/60/1, para. 135). The 2005 Summit Outcome docu­ment agreed to by Heads of State of United Nations members on the United Nations’ sixtieth anniversary offered a slightly more detailed account of demo­cracy, stating that ‘demo­cracy is a uni­ ver­sal value based on the expressed will of people to determine their own polit­ ical, eco­nomic, social and cultural systems and their full parti­cipa­tion in all aspects of their lives’ (UN Doc. A/RES/60/1, para. 135). It noted that ‘demo­ cra­cies share common features’, but did not identi­fy any. The Summit Outcome also repeated the rejection of a ‘single model of demo­cracy’, observing that ‘demo­cracy does not belong to a single coun­try or region’. The docu­ment shows the influence of Southern states’ scep­ti­cism about the Northern demo­ cracy agenda by reaffirming ‘the necessity of due respect for sover­eignty and the right of self-­determination’ and emphasising that ‘demo­cracy, de­velopment and respect for all human rights and fundamental freedoms are interde­pend­ent and mutually reinforcing’. The most recent United Nations’ con­tri­bu­tion to the de­velopment of the idea of demo­cracy is the Secretary-­Gen­eral’s Guidance Note on Demo­cracy, issued in 2009. Its stated aim is to set out the United Nations framework for demo­cracy ‘based on uni­ver­sal prin­ciples, norms and stand­ards, emphasizing the inter­na­ tionally agreed norm­ative con­tent’. The Note is committed to ‘prin­ciples, coher­ ent and consistent action in support of demo­cracy’. Strikingly, the Note attempts to retrofit demo­cracy into the United Nations Charter against the his­tor­ical record, insisting that ‘demo­cratic prin­ciples are woven throughout the norm­ative fabric of the United Nations’. The Guidance Note remains at a gen­eral level and echoes the mantra that there is ‘no one model’ of demo­cracy. At the same time, it asserts that there is an ‘inter­na­tionally agreed norm­ative con­tent’ of the concept of demo­cracy and pro­ poses some substantive elements. It links demo­cracy to the rule of law and presents demo­cracy as a means to achieve inter­na­tional peace and security, eco­ nomic and social pro­gress and de­velopment, and respect for human rights. At the same time, the Note regards demo­cracy as based on human rights. The Note is bolder than previous United Nations statements in urging a ‘holistic’ understand­ ing of demo­cracy that en­com­passes pro­ced­ure and substance, formal and infor­ mal pro­cesses, majorities and minor­it­ies, men and women, gov­ern­ment and civil so­ci­ety, pol­itics and eco­nom­ics, national and local com­munit­ies. It en­dorses the idea of local ownership of demo­cracy and emphasises the need to include minor­ it­ies and mar­ginalised groups in gov­ern­ment. An inter­esting de­velopment in the Guidance Note on Demo­cracy is the deployment of the pithy injunction ‘do no harm’ in the con­text of post-­conflict peace-­building. ‘Do no harm’ is the language of the Hippocratic oath, which is traditionally taken by doctors as a com­mit­ment to ethical practice and marks a con­sider­able shift in inter­na­tional discourse on demo­cracy. In this con­text, it

Democracy in international law   197 implies that attempts to bring demo­cracy through inter­na­tional inter­ven­tion are not neces­sar­ily bene­fi­cial for the people who are the object of the inter­ven­tion, and can ex­acer­bate division and viol­ence. The use of the Hippocratic oath in the Guidance Note may be a reaction to inter­na­tional inter­ven­tions such as those in Afghanistan and Iraq in the last decade, where crude forms of democracy-­ building have been used almost as a form of pun­ishment of rogue regimes and as a method of shoring up the security of the democracy-­builders.3

Democracy-­building after conflict Post-­conflict inter­ven­tions by inter­na­tional institutions illus­trate both inter­na­ tional legal de­velopments and the practices of the United Nations with respect to demo­cracy. All major United Nations missions now include significant democracy-­building com­pon­ents. Although much attention has been paid to the legality of the demo­cracy enterprise when it is conducted in the aftermath of an invasion, such as in the case of Iraq, inter­na­tional lawyers have gen­erally side­ stepped the question of the form of democracy-­building after conflict. Inter­na­ tional lawyers have tended to as­sume that there are few legal issues in demo­crat­isation if the affected state has agreed to an inter­na­tional pres­ence (e.g. Farer 2004). An example of the complexities gen­er­ated by such United Nations’ inter­ven­ tion practice is the case of Timor Leste. It has often been held up as an example of successful inter­na­tional democracy-­building and the adoption of a new consti­ tu­tion provided an apparently simple exit strategy for the inter­na­tional com­mun­ ity. The inter­ven­tion was guided by faith in multiparty elections as a signifier of demo­cracy paralleling the limited terms of Art­icle 25 of the ICCPR, discussed above, although it also reflected the United Nations rhet­oric of ‘local ownership’ of governance structures. The United Nations Trans­itional Authority in East Timor (UNTAET) was formed in 1999 after Indonesia had agreed to withdraw after 24 years of occupa­ tion. The focus of UNTAET’s work was to estab­lish Western polit­ical institu­ tions based on concepts such as the separation of powers and there was little attention given to existing local structures, or how they might interact with the proposed new consti­tu­tional edifice. The United Nations was unable to grapple with specific Timorese social networks that did not map readily on to the Western model of cit­izen/state relations, where formal institutions such as the judiciary, the legislature and the executive structure polit­ical life (Hohe 2004: 303). The goal of multi party elections was an alien concept in Timor Leste because of the local unitary and hierarchical idea of polit­ical power which made ‘peaceful polit­ical opposi­tion . . . logically im­pos­sible’ (Hohe 2004: 306; see also Chesterman 2004: 93). The role of kinship relations in Timorese so­ci­ety was poorly understood by UNTAET officials. Traditionally, polit­ical authority and ritual authority were separate in Timor Leste; polit­ical authority depended not on polit­ical ideo­logy but on ancestral will (Hohe 2004: 304). Timorese polit­ical leaders have both

198   H. Charlesworth used and manipulated this indi­gen­ous polit­ical culture to try to achieve exclusive authority, while never­the­less using the inter­na­tional vocabulary of demo­cracy. Factions in Timor Leste pol­itics are not so much based on philosophical dif­fer­ ences as on ‘a struggle for personal power and cultural denominators’ (Hohe 2004: 310). The United Nations did not seem aware of the local polit­ical para­ digms and made no ser­ious attempts to accommodate them. UNTAET regarded the Timorese as without a polit­ical system (Chesterman 2004: 93–4). The United Nations had little grass-­roots contact, apart from a civic education pro­ject and the constitution-­drafting exercise. It did not have inter­est in local gov­ern­ment and concentrated on the national level, engaging only with a limited elite. While it championed the virtues of demo­cracy, the structure of the UNTAET mission approximated what Simon Chesterman has de­scribed as ‘a benevolent autocracy’ (Chesterman 2004) or in Hohe’s words, ‘feudal demo­cracy’ (Hohe 2004: 302). Although its mandate required consultation and coopera­tion with the Timorese people (Security Council Res­olu­tion 1272, 1999), UNTAET was designed in a steep hier­archy, with de­cisions being made by the Special Repre­ sentative of the Secretary-­General and passed down the ranks. This style of organ­isa­tion has become accepted in United Nations missions, but the Special Representative was also the trans­itional administrator of Timor Leste, with almost unfettered polit­ical power. This conflation of roles meant that ‘authoritarian-­style decision-­making was not only conducted in­ternally within the mission, but also in the administration of the coun­try’ (Hohe 2004: 315). In this sense, the form of governance modelled by UNTAET was completely at odds with the form of governance it was preaching. The two-­track sal­ary struc­ ture and different working con­ditions between inter­na­tional and local staff also caused con­sider­able tension and did not seem consistent with demo­cratic ideals (Devereux 2005: 319–20). The language of local ownership was regu­larly deployed in Timor Leste perhaps, as Chesterman has argued, to ob­scure the assertion of almost unlimited powers to shape the governance system of the new polity by the inter­na­tional com­mun­ity (Chesterman 2004: 100). This led to the appointment of East Timor­ ese staff without proper training. More funda­ment­ally, it distracted attention from the milit­ary force that underpinned UNTAET’s pres­ence (Chesterman 2004: 108) and did not ac­know­ledge that local ownership could only be achieved incrementally; that it was the goal but not the means of demo­crat­isation (Ches­ terman 2004: 100). UNTAET’s attitude to protecting human rights also created a sense of double­dealing which undermined its demo­cratic credentials. While UNTAET saw itself as having a role in promoting human rights in Timor Leste, it did not seem to con­sider that inter­na­tional human rights stand­ards applied to its own work. The way UNTAET handled allegations of human rights violations against its own em­ployees had little transparency, with investigations conducted ‘in house’ and in secret. The major sanc­tion was being sent home rather than being pro­sec­uted and victims were not informed of the result of investigations (Devereux 2005: 318–19).

Democracy in international law   199

Conclusion The conceptual pol­itics approach is useful in studying inter­na­tional law and institutions’ approach to demo­cracy, as law and pol­itics are closely entwined in this area. A range of understandings of demo­cracy have influenced the inter­na­tional arena, ranging from the thin to the rel­at­ively thick. It now is de rigueur how­ever to discount the notion of a single model of demo­cracy and to en­dorse the significance of engaging with local popu­la­tions. There has been little ex­plora­tion in theory and practice of concepts of demo­cracy beyond the estab­lishment of the stand­ard suite of Western gov­ern­mental institutions. Inter­na­tional lawyers and institutions have largely slipped into endorsing an idea of demo­cracy that focuses on state institutions and polit­ical par­ties, not unlike that promoted by scholars such as McFaul, discussed in the introduc­ tion to this volume. Many vital institutions of daily life, such as workplaces, are outside this concept. Although there are ref­er­ences in United Nations docu­ments on demo­cracy to the role of civil so­ci­ety in generating and sup­ porting demo­cracy, civil so­ci­ety is understood essentially as non-­government organ­isa­tions that derive their status and legitimacy from adherence to lib­eral values (Rajagopal 2003: 260–1). This sidelines broader social movements and narrows the pos­sib­il­ity of true local ownership of or parti­cipa­tion in the new polit­ical order. Attention to the conceptual pol­itics of demo­cracy in inter­na­tional law and institutions suggests the need for a sustained debate on what demo­cracy means in inter­na­tional law. As Susan Marks has pointed out, ‘low in­tens­ity’ forms of demo­cracy, such as those contemplated in Timor Leste, ‘concentrate attention on forms and events, and . . . shift the emphasis away from relationships and pro­ cesses’ (Marks 2000: 52). The effect is to consolidate existing social orders and to reduce the pro­spect of polit­ical and social change through redistributive claims. Inter­na­tional lawyers and institutions should instead become more con­ scious of the weaknesses of external solutions in cases of conflict. They must also be careful to distinguish law and order from peace and security. The editors remind us of Guillermo O’Donnell’s insight that demo­cracy always offers more than it can deliver; that it is a com­mit­ment to a journey rather than an end in itself, and this is its great virtue. It has im­port­ant im­plica­tions for inter­na­tional lawyers, suggesting the inutility of devising formulas for demo­ cracy, or associating demo­cracy with a fixed set of institutions. The prin­ciple of demo­cratic inclusion, de­scribed by Marks, is useful in this task, influ­en­cing the in­ter­pretation and applica­tion of inter­na­tional law (Marks 2000: 109–11). The idea of demo­cratic inclusion reaches beyond institutional forms of demo­cracy to emphasise the ‘enlarge[ment of] oppor­tun­ities for pop­ular parti­cipa­tion in polit­ ical pro­cesses and [to] end social practices that systematically mar­ginalize some cit­izens while empowering others’ (Marks 2000: 109). It also emphasises the im­port­ance of identi­fying and strengthening local institutions that enhance self-­ government and responding to social and eco­nomic in­equal­it­ies as they affect the capa­city to have access to polit­ical power (Marks 2000: 64–5).

200   H. Charlesworth

Notes 1 Some of the strongest ripostes to this scholarship have also come from Amer­ican schol­ ars, e.g. Alvarez (2001). 2 There has been greater attention to the concept of demo­cracy in regional settings, for example, see Wheatley (2005), Bowden and Charlesworth (2009: 97–9). 3 The ‘do no harm’ language also appears in the OECD Guidelines (for example, see OECD 2010).

12 From ‘fortunate vagueness’ to ‘demo­cratic globalism’ Amer­ican demo­cracy pro­mo­tion as imperialism Tony Smith The ideas of eco­nom­ists and polit­ical philo­sophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more power­ful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Prac­tical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct eco­nom­ist. John Maynard Keynes

Introduction Amer­ican demo­cracy pro­mo­tion has never been disinter­ested. At times its concerns have been geo-­strategic, at times eco­nomic, at times ethno-­religious. But its most ser­ious ambition has always been to defend the national security of the United States by promoting a type of gov­ern­ment for others that, while extending the blessings of lib­erty abroad, would also redound to the security of Amer­ ica by estab­lishing a form of inter­na­tional order where the threat of war based on dangers arising from anarchy and pred­atory author­it­arian gov­ern­ments would be replaced by a com­mun­ity of peace an­chored in the character of demo­cratic peoples and their ability to work together. Think of it as a secular religion if you will (and you surely should), but as first articulated in the United States in self-­ conscious form with prac­tical con­sequences by Woodrow Wilson (pres­id­ent from 1913 to 1921) what came to be called ‘lib­eral inter­na­tionalism’ (or in its Amer­ican con­text, ‘Wilsonianism’) was a set of ideas with power­ful con­ sequences for foreign peoples and for world order. In some circumstancese the ambition bore bitter fruit: one need only think of Wilson’s inter­ven­tions in the Dominican Repub­lic, Nicaragua, and Haiti, for example, not to speak of Iraq and the intended ‘transformation’ of the ‘Broader Middle East’ after 2003. Elsewhere, its effects were more a mixed blessing: the Amer­ican impact on the Philippines is an instance. In yet other circumstances, the hope became a reality: during Wilson’s time, Czecho­slo­vakia was a coun­try that gained handsomely from the Amer­ican pres­id­ent’s efforts. But Wilsonianism’s greatest triumphs came later, more than two decades after Wilson’s death in 1924, thanks to the lib­eralising efforts of Amer­ican occupation forces in Japan and Ger­many after the Second World War. In my opinion, these

202   T. Smith occupations may be counted as the greatest accomplishments in the his­tory of the Repub­lic’s involvement in world affairs, con­trib­ut­ing as they did not only to the transformation of these two militaristic nations into lib­eral demo­cra­cies typified by rel­at­ively open markets and parti­cipa­tion in multi­lateral institutions, but also to Amer­ica’s eventual victory over the Soviet Union with the end of the Cold War in 1989. Here was the most enduring example of what lib­eral inter­na­ tionalism could accomplish (Smith 1994). When Wilson talked as he so often did about the ‘disinter­ested spirit’ in which the United States acted, not even he believed his words to be exactly true; self-­interest, as well as altruism, was always a feature of teaching South Amer­ icans [or anyone else] to elect good men, as he put it in 1913.1 Yet the argument for altruism was ever present. For the peculiarity of Amer­ican imperialism exercised in the name of demo­cracy was that it was designed to exist only temporarily, long enough to transform an occupied people polit­ically and eco­nomic­ally, but then to turn them over to what Wilson always insisted must be their own ‘national self-­determination’, to work out as they would their col­lect­ive des­tiny as inde­pend­ent, demo­cratic states acting in a world order he hoped to see dominated by multi­lateral institutions ded­ic­ated to preserv­ing the peace. When such a goal was accomplished on a large enough scale, then the world would be ‘made safe for demo­cracy’ as he famously put it in his war address to the Congress on 2 April 1917 (Link 1983: 519ff., see also Link, 1982: 533ff.). Over time, Amer­ican demo­cracy pro­mo­tion gained in conceptual richness and from ex­peri­ence gained on the ground. Wilson at Versailles had learned from his ex­peri­ences in Latin Amer­ica; the United States acting in occupied Ger­many and Japan was far more skilful than it had been in the Philippines. Conceptually, there was growth as well, with lib­eral inter­na­tionalism as a polit­ical doctrine gaining in ideo­logical complexity, coher­ence, self-­confidence, and purpose. What I would call the ‘classic phase’ of Amer­ican demo­cracy pro­mo­tion under Wilson was superseded by the far broader and deeper efforts attached to this program during its ‘hege­monic phase’ fol­low­ing the Second World War, when multi­lateral institutions appeared to co­ordinate the eco­nomic and security inter­ ests of the world’s market demo­cra­cies. This stage gave way in turn to the frankly ‘imperialist phase’ of sponsoring demo­cracy abroad that set in in the 1990s, as the United States contemplated its role in world affairs at a moment of unrivaled power after the collapse of the Soviet Union (Smith 2007). Yet if there were changes in the way the mission of lib­eral inter­na­tionalism was conceived, there was consistency too. Wilson’s contemplation of the global duties of his coun­trymen as ‘apostles of lib­erty and self-­gov­ern­ment’ when he con­sidered the Philippines as a laboratory for demo­cracy after its conquest in 1898 had much in common with Pres­id­ent Bill Clinton’s call for ‘demo­cratic enlargement’ in the 1990s, as well as with Pres­id­ent George W. Bush’s mem­or­ able assertion in his Second Inaugural Address that the best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world. . . . So it is the pol­icy of the United States to seek and support the

American democracy promotion as imperialism   203 growth of demo­cratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.2 Estab­lishing just what Wilson’s position was on demo­cracy pro­mo­tion is a subject that has bedeviled all who have addressed it. Part of the prob­lem comes from the fact that Wilson’s statements can be cherry-­picked; at times he seemed extremely cau­tious that one people might foster the demo­crat­isation of another, at others he seemed fully confident that the task could, and should, be accomplished. He could talk about the ability of the United States to ‘teach South Amer­icans to elect good men’ while recognising that Amer­ican influence in Mexico during the 1910–1917 revolu­tion could only be limited. He could write with authority about the long time and dis­cip­line neces­sary for a so­ci­ety to be capable of being gov­erned demo­cratically, yet he could also speak of Amer­ican milit­ary inter­ven­tion in Haiti or the Dominican Repub­lic as leading with apparent certainty to the cre­ation of representative gov­ern­ment through an elect­oral pro­cess backed by Amer­ican advisers. He could insist on regime change in Berlin in 1918, yet in the same address declare that should Austria-­Hungary leave the war he would not demand that it end its empire or restructure its gov­ ern­mental institutions. He could make it clear in his drafts for the Covenant of the League of Nations and in his speeches to the Congress and the Amer­ican people that he regarded a multi­lateral organ­isa­tion dominated by demo­cratic nations as an essential con­dition for its successful functioning, yet he could soon afterwards accept states entering the League that manifestly were author­it­ arian, just as he could allow pro­vi­sions for demo­cracy pro­mo­tion that he had insisted on for the League’s Mandates to be unceremoniously discarded whatever his hopes for an Amer­ican Mandate over both Armenia and Constant­ inople.3 In short, in opera­tional terms, Wilson as pres­id­ent could temper his idealism, recog­nize that he had to work with the mater­ial at his disposal, not with circumstances as he would like them to be, and so douse his op­tim­ism in a cold bath of realism based on a con­sidered judgement of the logic of his­tor­ical de­velopment, a mat­ter he had written about extensively for two decades, beginning in the late 1880s.4

Lib­eral inter­na­tionalism matures into a ‘hard ideo­logy’ Whatever the continuities in the Amer­ican lib­eral inter­na­tionalism from Wilson’s time until ours, my purpose in this essay is to emphas­ise change. My con­ tention is that from the late 1980s until today a neo-­Wilsonianism has been appearing, a way of thinking characterized at once by a voluntarism and a pseudo-­scientific certitude that it had not had in earl­ier periods. There are those who would compare lib­eral inter­na­tionalism as it was articulated by Wilson at the time of the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 as equi­val­ent to Bolshevik thinking. True, Wilson was quite aware that his hopes sponsoring demo­cratic gov­ern­ment and lib­eral capit­al­ism as far abroad as pos­sible ran counter to the Bolshevik model for polit­ical and eco­nomic order and that

204   T. Smith communists were hoping to push their revolu­tions globally. Yet in trying to face up to the Soviet threat, Wilson had no hard ideo­logy at his disposal in 1919, no vision of the evolution of world his­tory that saw with pseudo-­scientific certitude the logic of the road hitherto taken by humanity, no firm (as opposed to intu­it­ ive) sense of the logic of the crossroads at which His­tory (with a capital H) then stood, no rel­at­ively opera­tional guidelines as to how next to proceed to reorder world affairs. Yes, the seeds of a pseudo-­scientific vision of his­tory were there; one can indeed trace them back to Wilson’s earliest ruminations on the character of demo­cratic gov­ern­ment in his first pub­lications on this question in the 1880s. Yet neither Wilson nor lib­eral inter­na­tionalists elsewhere had worked out concepts that saw an iron logic to his­tory or a form of action to bring about a future of world freedom and peace thanks to a par­ticu­lar form of gov­ern­ment with the degree of precision and assurance that communists enjoyed in the aftermath of the Great War. For this de­velopment to occur for lib­eralism, his­tory had to proceed over seven more decades, over the horrors of the Second World War and the existential fears of the Cold War, to the post-­Cold War era when finally, but then with amazing speed, lib­eral inter­na­tionalism and its agenda of demo­ cracy pro­mo­tion engendered an ideo­logy with arguments equi­val­ent in complexity, coher­ence, and purposefulness to those com­mun­ism had come to possess decades earl­ier. This point may not at first seem self-­evidently true. Yet as long-­term and multifaceted as Amer­ican demo­cracy pro­mo­tion was in the century between the Spanish Amer­ican War and the collapse of the Soviet Union (1898–1991) and basic as the rhet­oric of such a mission was to Amer­ican self-­confidence during the trials of a terrible period that included two world wars, the Great Depression, and the struggle against Soviet com­mun­ism, just how the United States conceived what it was doing had not been very rigorously defined prior to the 1990s. To be sure, in its occupation of the Philippines beginning in 1898 and lasting until 1946, the Amer­icans were never at a loss for how they would proceed. Elections would be held first at the local, then the provincial, and finally the national level, conducted through par­ties freely recruited, with positions which might be crit­ical of how Amer­ican power was exercised. Amer­ican officials introduced the practices of a free press and uni­ver­sal pri­mary education; they purchased church lands from the Vatican with the notion of creating a broad-­ based, inde­pend­ent farming com­mun­ity; they rapidly Philippinised the central gov­ern­ment’s bur­eau­cracy; and they talked often about when inde­pend­ence would be granted to the Philippines as a demo­cratically constituted coun­try. So too, during the occupations of Japan and Ger­many, Washington had voluminous planning docu­ments for how these coun­tries would be demilitarised and demo­ cratised, docu­ments whose directives were crit­ical to the eventual success of Amer­ican ambitions in these two coun­tries.5 What is nonetheless striking about Amer­ican demo­cracy pro­mo­tion in these very different circumstances is how thin the actual conceptual structures were upon which Washington erected such ambitious undertakings. It was as if the Amer­icans were working with the pieces of a puzzle whose final composition

American democracy promotion as imperialism   205 escaped them. The relations between eco­nomic and polit­ical de­velopment were poorly conceived (see Jahn’s chapter), to the extent they were argued at all, during the days when the Philippines were Amer­ican. The wholesale polit­ical reconstructions of Ger­many and Japan after 1945 were far more sophisticated in their planning than anything that had gone on with respect to the Philippines, yet much of the success was due to local German and Jap­an­ese leaders whose sense of national purpose in working with the United States explains as well as what the Amer­icans were doing why these historic enterprises were the great successes they were. In short, in Amer­ican hands, lib­eral inter­na­tionalism during these years was never a highly coherent ideo­logy – on this score, Marxism– Leninism was a far more impressive intellectual achievement – and it always depended on the willing collaboration of local demo­cratising leaders. If Konrad Adenauer was in­dis­pens­able to the Amer­ican mission in Ger­many after 1945, no less can be said of lib­erals who em­braced what was increasingly an inter­na­tional creed in the 1990s, especially in the persons of such leaders as Oscar Arias, Vaclav Havel, Kim Dae Jung, Nelson Mandela, Pope John Paul II, and even Mikhail Gorbachev (not to speak of more anonym­ous freedom fighters, from Chile to the Iberian peninsula to Greece and Taiwan, who were vital to the transformation of their lands). Why was the Amer­ican sense of mission so ideo­logically thin rel­at­ive to either com­mun­ism or what it would itself become during the 1990s? Certainly the United States had leaders possessed of a world vision, who felt that whatever was meant by such lofty words as civilisation, justice, freedom, and peace, these hopes would perish should Amer­ica not play a role in articulating their meaning and defending their integrity on a global scale. But unlike com­mun­ism, lib­eral inter­na­tionalism had intellectual reser­va­tions built into its very construction as a system of thought, a reluctance, almost an inability, to be pure in doctrine and in practice clear cut – at least in comparison with its communist, and later fas­cist, op­pon­ents, who would often mock ‘bourgeois parlia­ment­arianism’ for what they called its ‘weakness’. Instead, lib­eralism’s success seemed to depend to a large meas­ure on ‘muddling through’ at home and on pro­gressive movements and indi­viduals working inde­pend­ently the globe around, without the bene­fit of the kind of unity Lenin had created through the Third Inter­na­tional. The notion that lib­eral demo­cracy could be successfully transmitted to the entire planet according to a single blueprint backed up by the Amer­ican milit­ary, the result being the cre­ation of a Kantian ‘perpetual peace’, was an intellectual ambition that awaited the late twentieth century. Should we perhaps not conclude that it was the variety of sources of lib­eral inter­na­tionalism, the multitude of circumstances to which it had to adjust, and the very self-­imposed restraints within its basic concepts, that made its effort to be formulated in highly ideo­logical terms virtually im­pos­sible? With its insistence on national self-­determination, its respect for personal choice and group diversity, its ethic of indi­vidual freedom and social tolerance, its concession to allowing ‘market forces’ to dictate eco­nomic reality, and its endless in­ternal debates and sense of constant change based more on improvisation than fixed

206   T. Smith doctrine, how could any complex, coherent, and commanding version of the lib­ eral demo­cratic mission ever gain a hammerlock on foreign pol­icy with a fixed blueprint for action? Writing in 1952, Reinhold Niebuhr expressed this point in what remains argu­ ably the single best book on the United States in world affairs, The Irony of Amer­ican His­tory. ‘There is a deep layer of Messianic consciousness in the mind of Amer­ica,’ the theologian wrote. Still, ‘We were, as a mat­ter of fact, always vague, as the whole lib­eral culture is fortunately vague, about how power is to be related to the allegedly uni­ver­sal values which we hold in trust for mankind’ (Niebuhr 2008: 69). ‘Fortunate vagueness’, he explained, arose from the fact that ‘in the lib­eral version of the dream of managing his­tory, the prob­lem of power is never fully elaborated’ (Niebuhr 2008: 73). Here was a happy fact that distinguished us from the communists, who as­sumed, thanks to their ideo­logy, that they could master his­tory, and so were as­sured that the end would jus­tify the means, such that world revolu­tion under their auspices would bring about uni­ ver­sal justice, freedom, and that most precious of promises, peace. In contrast, Niebuhr could write: On the whole, we have as a nation learned the lesson of his­tory tolerably well. We have heeded the warning ‘let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, let not the mighty man glory in his strength.’ Though we are not without vainglorious delusions in regard to our power, we are saved by a certain grace inherent in common sense rather than in ab­stract theories from attempting to cut through the vast ambiguities of our historic situ­ation and thereby bringing our des­tiny to a tragic conclusion by seeking to bring it to a neat and logical one . . . This Amer­ican ex­peri­ence is a refutation in parable of the whole effort to bring the vast forces of his­tory under the control of any par­ticu­lar will, informed by a par­ticu­lar ideal . . . [speaking of the communists] All such efforts are rooted in what seems at first glance to be a contra­dict­ory combination of voluntarism and determinism. These efforts are on the one hand excessively voluntaristic, assigning a power to the human will and the purity to the mind of some men which no mortal or group of mortals possesses. On the other, they are excessively deterministic since they regard most men as merely the creatures of an his­tor­ical pro­cess. (Niebuhr 2008: 75, 79) The Irony of Amer­ican His­tory came out in Janu­ary 1952, only months after the pub­lication of Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism, a book that reached a conclusion sim­ilar to his. Funda­ment­alist polit­ical systems of thought, Arendt (1966: 467–9) wrote, are known for their sci­ent­ific character; they combine the sci­ent­ific approach with results of philosophical relev­ance and pretend to be sci­ent­ific philo­ sophy . . . Ideo­lo­gies pretend to know the mysteries of the whole his­tor­ical pro­cess – the secrets of the past, the intricacies of the present, the

American democracy promotion as imperialism   207 un­cer­tainties of the future – because of the logic inherent in their respective ideas . . . they pretend to have found a way to estab­lish the rule of justice on earth . . . All laws have become laws of movement. And she warned: Ideo­lo­gies are always oriented toward his­tory. . . . The claim to total explanation promises to explain all his­tor­ical happenings . . . hence ideo­logical thinking becomes emancipated from the reality that we perceive with our five senses, and insists on a ‘truer’ reality concealed behind all perceptible things, dominating them from this place of concealment and requiring a sixth sense that enables us to become aware of it. . . . Once it has estab­lished its premise, its point of departure, ex­peri­ences no longer interfere with ideo­ logical thinking, nor can it be taught by reality. (Arendt 1966: 470) For Arendt as for Niebuhr, then, a virtue of lib­eral demo­cracy was its rel­at­ive lack of certitude in terms of faith in an iron ideo­logy that rested on a pseudo-­ scientific authority that its worldwide propagation would fulfill some mandate of his­tory, or to put it more concretely, that the United States had been selected by the logic of his­tor­ical de­velopment to expand the perimeter of demo­cratic gov­ ern­ment and free market capit­al­ism to the ends of the earth, and that in doing so it would serve not only its own basic national security needs but the peace of the world as well. True, in his address to the Congress asking for a declaration of war against Ger­many in 1917, Wilson had asserted, ‘the world must be made safe for demo­cracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested founda­tions of polit­ical lib­erty.’ (Link 1982: 533). Yet just what this meant and how it might be achieved were issues that were not resolved intellectually – at least not before the 1990s. Reinhold Niebuhr died in 1971, Hannah Arendt in 1975, some two decades short of seeing the ‘fortunate vagueness’ Niebuhr had saluted during their prime be abandoned by the emergence of what can only be called a ‘hard lib­eral inter­ na­tionalist ideo­logy’, one virtually the equal of Marxism–Leninism in its ability to read the logic of His­tory and pre­scribe how human events might be changed by messianic inter­ven­tion into a world order where finally justice, freedom, and peace might prevail. The authors of this neo-­liberal, neo-­Wilsonianism: left and lib­eral aca­demics. Their place of residence: the United States, in leading universities such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford. Their purpose: the instruction of those who made foreign pol­icy in Washington in the aftermath of the Cold War. Their ambition: to help Amer­ica translate its ‘unipolar moment’ into a ‘unipolar epoch’ by providing Amer­ican leaders with a conceptual blueprint for making the world safe for demo­cracy by demo­cratising the world, thereby realizing through ‘demo­cratic globalism’ the century-­old Wilsonian dream – the cre­ation of a structure of world peace. Their method: the construction of the missing set of lib­eral inter­na­tionalist concepts whose ideo­logical complexity,

208   T. Smith coher­ence, and promise would be the essential equivalence of Marxism– Leninism, something most lib­eral inter­na­tionalists had always wanted to achieve but only now seemed pos­sible.

Demo­cratic globalism as imperialism in the 1990s The tragedy of Amer­ican foreign pol­icy was now at hand. Rather than obeying the strictures of a ‘fortunate vagueness’ which might check its ‘messianic consciousness’, as Niebuhr had enjoined, lib­eral inter­na­tionalism became possessed of just what Arendt had hoped it might never de­velop, ‘a sci­ent­ific character . . . of philosophic relev­ance’ that ‘pretend[s] to know the mysteries of the whole his­tor­ical pro­cess,’ that ‘pretend[s] to have found a way to estab­lish the rule of justice on earth’ (Niebuhr 2008: 74; Arendt 1966: 470). Only in the aftermath of the Cold War, with the United States tri­umph­ant and demo­cracy expanding seemingly of its own accord to many corners of the world – from Central Europe to different coun­tries in Asia (South Korea and Taiwan), Africa (South Africa), and Latin Amer­ica (Chile and Argentina) – had the moment arrived for demo­cracy pro­mo­tion to move into a distinctively new mode, one that was self-­confidently imperialist. Wilsonians could now maintain that the study of his­tory revealed that it was not so much that Amer­ican power had won the epic contest with the Soviet Union as that the appeal of lib­eral inter­ na­tionalism had defeated proletarian inter­na­tionalism. The victory was best understood, then, as one of ideas, values, and institutions – rather than of states and leaders. In this sense, Amer­ica had been a vehicle of forces far greater than itself, the sponsor of an inter­na­tional convergence of dis­par­ate class, ethnic, and nationalist forces converging into a single movement that had created an his­tor­ ical watershed of extra­ordinary im­port­ance. For a new world, new ways of thinking were mandatory. As Hegel has instructed us, ‘Minerva’s owl flies out at dusk’, and lib­eral scholars of the 1990s applied themselves to the task of understanding the great victories of demo­cratic gov­ern­ment and open market eco­nom­ies over their adversaries between 1939 and 1989. What, rather exactly, were the virtues of demo­cracy that made these amazing successes pos­sible? How, rather expli­citly, might the free world now protect, indeed expand, its perimeter of action? A new concept of power and purpose was called for. Primed by the growth of think-­tanks and prestigious official appointments to be ‘pol­icy rel­ev­ant’, shocked by murderous outbreaks witnessed in the Balkans and Central Africa, believing as the lib­eral left did that pro­gress was pos­sible, Wilsonians set out to formulate their thinking at a level of conceptual sophistication that was to be of fundamental im­port­ance to the making of Amer­ican foreign pol­icy after the year 2000.6 The jewel in the crown of neo-­liberal inter­na­tionalism as it emerged from the seminar rooms of the greatest Amer­ican universities was known as ‘demo­cratic peace theory’. En­cap­sul­ated simply as ‘demo­cra­cies do not go to war with one another’, the theory contended that lib­eral demo­cratic gov­ern­ments breed peace

American democracy promotion as imperialism   209 among themselves based on their do­mestic practices of the rule of law, the increased integration of their eco­nom­ies through meas­ures of market openness, and their parti­cipa­tion in multi­lateral organ­isa­tions to adju­dic­ate conflicts among each other so as to keep the peace. The extra­ordinary success of the Euro­pean Union since the announcement of the Marshall Plan in 1947, combined with the close relations between the United States and the world’s other lib­eral demo­cra­cies, was taken as conclusive evid­ence that global peace could be expanded should other coun­tries join ‘the pacific union’, ‘the zone of demo­ cratic peace’. A thumb-­nail sketch cannot do justice to the richness of the argument. Polit­ ical scientists of an empirical bent dem­on­strated conclusively to their satis­fac­ tion that ‘regime type mat­ters’, that it is in the nature of lib­eral demo­cra­cies to keep the peace with one another, especially when they are in­teg­rated together eco­nomic­ally. The­or­etically inclined polit­ical scientists then argued that lib­eral inter­na­tionalism could be thought of as ‘non-­utopian and non-­ideo­logical’, a sci­ent­ifically validated set of concepts that should be recog­nized not only as a new but also a dominant form of conceptualising the behaviour of states (Moravcsik 1997). And lib­eral polit­ical philo­sophers could maintain on the basis of demo­cratic peace theory that a Kantian (or Wilsonian) lib­eral world order was a morally just goal for pro­gressives worldwide to seek so that the anarchy of states, the Hobbesian state of nature, could be superseded and a Golden Age of what some dared call ‘post-­his­tory’ could be inaugurated (Rawls 1999). Yet if it were desir­able that the world’s leading states be demo­cratised, was it actu­ally pos­sible to achieve such a goal? Here a second group of lib­eral inter­ na­tionalists emerged, intellectuals who maintained that the transition from author­it­arian to demo­cratic gov­ern­ment had become far easier to manage than at earl­ier his­tor­ical moments. The blueprint of lib­eral demo­cracy was now tried and proven in terms of values, inter­ests, and institutions in a wide variety of coun­tries. The seeds of demo­cracy could be planted by courageous Great Men virtually anywhere in the world. Where an extra push was needed, then the lib­ eral world could help with a wide variety of agencies from the gov­ern­mental (such as the Agency for Inter­na­tional De­velopment or the National Endowment for Demo­cracy in the United States) to the non-­governmental (be it the Open So­ci­ety Institute, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty Inter­na­tional, or Freedom House). With the de­velopment of new concepts of demo­cratic transition, the older ideas in demo­crat­ization studies of ‘sequences’ and ‘precon­ditions’ could be jettisoned. No longer was it neces­sary to count on a long his­tor­ical pro­cess during which the middle class came to see its inter­ests repres­ented in the cre­ation of a demo­cratic state, no longer did a people have to painfully work out a social contract of tolerance for diversity and the institutions of limited gov­ern­ment under the rule of law for demo­cracy to take root. Examples as distinct as those of Spain, South Korea, Poland, and South Africa dem­on­strated that a lib­eral transformation could be made with astonishing speed and success.

210   T. Smith When combined, demo­cratic peace theory and demo­cratic transition theory achieved a volatile synergy that neither alone possessed. Peace theory argued that the world would bene­fit incalculably from the spread of demo­cratic institutions, but it could not say that such a de­velopment was likely. Transition theory argued that rapid demo­crat­isation was pos­sible, but it could not estab­ lish that such changes would much mat­ter for world pol­itics. Combined, how­ ever, the two concepts came to be the equi­val­ent of a Kantian moral imperative to push what early in the Clinton years was called ‘demo­cratic enlargement’ as far as Washington could while it possessed the status of the globe’s sole superpower. The result would be nothing less than to change the character of world affairs that gave rise to war – inter­na­tional anarchy system and the character of author­it­arian states – into an order of peace premised on the character of demo­cratic gov­ern­ments and their asso­ci­ation in multi­lateral com­munit­ies basing their conduct on the rule of law that would increasingly have a global consti­tu­tional character. The arrogant presumption was, in short, that an aggressively lib­eral Amer­ica suddenly had the pos­sib­il­ity to change the character of His­tory itself toward the reign of perpetual peace through demo­cracy pro­mo­tion. Enter the lib­eral jurists. In their hands a ‘right to intervene’ against states or in situ­ations where gross and systematic human rights were being violated or weapons of mass destruction accu­mu­lated became a ‘duty to intervene’ in the name of what eventually became called a state’s ‘respons­ib­ility to protect.’ (ICISS 2001). The meaning of ‘sover­eignty’ was now transformed. Like pirate ships of old, author­it­arian states could be attacked by what Secretary of State Madeleine Albright first dubbed a ‘Com­mun­ity of Demo­cra­cies’, practicing ‘muscular multi­lateralism’ in order to reconstruct them around demo­cratic values and institutions for the sake of world peace. What the jurists thus accomplished was the redefinition not only of the meaning of sover­eignty but also that of ‘Just War’. Imperialism to enforce the norms a state needed to honor under the terms of its ‘respons­ib­ility to protect’ (or ‘R2P’ as its partisans liked to phrase it) was now deemed legitimate. And by moving the locus of decision-­making on the question of war outside the United Nations (whose Security Council could not be counted on to act to enforce the demo­cratic code) to a League, or Com­mun­ity, or Concert of Demo­cra­cies (the term varied according to the theorist), a call to arms for the sake of a demo­ cratising crusade was much more likely to succeed. For all of these concepts to come together and to change world affairs, Amer­ ican leadership was obviously in­dis­pens­able. Indeed, beginning with its first use in 1998, Albright’s characterisation of the United States as ‘the in­dis­pens­able nation’ gained an enduring currency: ‘If we have to use force, it is because we are Amer­ica. We are the in­dis­pens­able nation. We stand tall, and we see further into the future (Madeleine Albright, February 18, 1998).’ As an action-­oriented ideo­logy, lib­eral inter­na­tionalism and its mission to promote demo­cracy worldwide by the use of force if neces­sary had now come of age in intellectual terms. Woodrow Wilson had perhaps intuited demo­cratic

American democracy promotion as imperialism   211 peace theory when he tried at Versailles in 1919 to construct a League of Nations based on demo­cratic states and ded­ic­ated to the kind of spiritual and institutional, changes that would make the world safe for demo­cracy by promoting lib­eralism globally. But his ideas lacked the empirical proof, the the­or­etical sophistication, and the philosophic weight that they came to enjoy in the 1990s when inter­na­ tional relations specialists at Amer­ica’s leading universities put their minds to the task. By the year 2001, a coun­try of imperial possib­il­ities was thus finally possessed of a doctrine of imperial respons­ib­ility. If the worm were in the fruit with Wilson as pres­id­ent – if all the ingredients for the concepts that came to fru­ition in the 1990s were present in embryonic form by 1919 – it was only 80 years after he left office in 1921 that, with the inauguration of George W. Bush as pres­id­ent in 2001, lib­eral inter­na­tionalism came to have the impact it had always portended but never possessed, either in terms of power or purpose. In this sense, the attack of Septem­ber 11 was not a crisis so much as an oppor­tun­ity. As Pres­ id­ent Bush put it in Septem­ber 2002, in the docu­ment most often referred to as defining the Bush Doctrine, the National Security Strategy of the United States: ‘The great struggles of the twentieth century between lib­erty and totalitarianism ended with a decisive victory for the forces of freedom and a single sus­tain­able model for national success: freedom, demo­cracy, and free enterprise.’ (White House 2002: 1). Referring to the Amer­ican ambition to secure world peace six times on the first page of the docu­ment, the pres­id­ent concluded his opening remarks by saying: Freedom is the non-­negotiable demand of human dignity; the birthright of every person in every civilization. Throughout his­tory, freedom has been threatened by war and terror; it has been challenged by the clashing wills of power­ful states and the evil designs of tyrants; and it has been tested by widespread pov­erty and disease. Today humanity holds in its hand the oppor­tun­ity to further freedom’s triumph over all these foes. The United States welcomes our respons­ib­ility to lead in this great mission. (White House 2002: 2) With the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, demo­cracy pro­mo­tion had become a justification for war. To be sure, the gen­eral pub­lic was sold on the idea that Saddam Hussein was harboring weapons of mass destruction, to be used most prob­ably against Israel but with a longer-­term threat to others as well. It is doubtful that the Amer­ican pub­lic would have rallied to war in the name of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion alone. Equally sure, the goal of the invasion was not simply regime change in Baghdad but was also the estab­lishment of the United States in a magnificent Middle East location, one that would allow it to pro­ject power not only with respect to Iraq’s neigh­bours (Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia most im­port­antly, plus Jordan, Kuwait, and Turkey) but also, through its influence over local oil production, to have added leverage over OPEC as well as both Russia (whose main trump in world affairs besides its milit­ary was energy

212   T. Smith exports) and China (whose main eco­nomic weakness was lack of adequate energy resources). These factors ac­know­ledged, it remains the case that demo­cracy pro­mo­tion was not just a camouflage for inter­ven­tion on other grounds but a motive in its own right for the Amer­ican invasion of Iraq. Indeed, for many it was the leading motive. For it was not just Iraq that the United States hoped to transform by demo­ crat­ization in 2003 but the entire Middle East, perhaps all the Muslim world, and were this not ambition enough, perhaps the non-­democratic world in gen­eral! For good reason, many may doubt that such an outrageous ambition could truly have been an inspiration for action. Yet tempting as it surely is to Realists thinking in power terms, Marxists thinking of eco­nomic inter­ests, or simply those thinking with common sense to discount the demo­crat­isation of the Arab world as a prime goal of Amer­ican pol­icy, there are good reasons to take this explanation ser­iously. For demo­cracy pro­mo­tion had become something of a secular religion during the 1990s and far too many ad­voc­ates of war in 2003 were convinced by the arguments discussed above for us to believe that only narrow eco­ nomic concerns, or the security of Israel, or Realpolitik, or even these three factors combined, explain more than a part of this invasion.7 Underwriting ‘Opera­tion Iraqi Freedom’, demo­cratic peace theory had successfully persuaded many that the sole rem­edy for the Arab (if not Muslim) world’s polit­ical corruption, cruelty and incompetence, and thus to outbreaks of terrorist viol­ence these prob­lems gen­er­ated within increasingly agitated popu­la­ tions, could be found only if respons­ible, effect­ive, legitimate demo­cratic gov­ ern­ments were in place there. Peace theory therefore dictated the imperative of regime change in the Arab world.

Demo­cracy pro­mo­tion and the future of Amer­ican foreign pol­icy The result of neo-­liberal involvement in the cre­ation of new thinking about Amer­ican demo­cracy pro­mo­tion was that many of the chief advisers to Pres­id­ent Barack Obama in 2009 were recruited from the ranks of those who called for the invasion of Iraq in 2003 for the purposes of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion based on the trilogy of concepts laid out above: demo­cratic peace theory, demo­cratic transition theory, and a new inter­na­tional jurisprudence on Just War. Anne-­Marie Slaughter, Ivo Daalder, Ronald Asmus, Philip Gordon, Michael McFaul, James Lindsay – here are the names of but a few of the neo-­liberal intellectuals who supported the invasion of Iraq on the grounds laid out above and who became active in the making of pol­icy for Amer­ica’s 44th pres­id­ent. In his 2008 pres­id­en­tial cam­paign, candidate Obama made clear his en­dorsement of lib­eral inter­na­tionalist aims, whatever his earl­ier condemnation of the attack on Iraq. And in 2009, during his first year in office, he reaffirmed these beliefs, no­where more strikingly than when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on 10 Decem­ber 2009. Asserting, ‘Make no mis­take: evil does exist in the world’, Obama announced,

American democracy promotion as imperialism   213 I believe that force can be justified on humanitarian grounds . . . inaction tears at our conscience and can lead to more costly inter­ven­tion later. That is why all respons­ible nations must em­brace the role that militaries with a clear mandate can play to keep the peace. As to the nature of his goal: ‘Only a just peace based upon the inherent rights and dignity of every indi­vidual can truly be lasting.’ And again, evoking the Uni­ver­sal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations in 1948: ‘if human rights are not protected, peace is a hollow promise’. In some coun­tries the failure to uphold human rights is excused by the false suggestion that these are Western prin­ciples, foreign to local cultures or stages of a nation’s de­velopment . . . I believe that peace is unstable where cit­izens are denied the right to speak freely or worship as they please; choose their own leaders or assemble without fear. Pent up grievances fester, and the suppression of tribal and religious identity can lead to viol­ence. . . . Only when Europe became free did it finally find peace. Amer­ica has never fought a war against a demo­cracy, and our closest friends are gov­ern­ments that protect the rights of their cit­izens. No mat­ter how callously defined, neither Amer­ica’s inter­ests, nor the world’s, are served by the denial of human as­pira­tions. So even as we respect the unique culture and traditions of different coun­tries, Amer­ica will always be a voice for those as­pira­tions that are uni­ver­sal. Obama thus con­tinued to talk in what I would call ‘the Amer­ican vernacular’, the widespread as­sump­tion that Amer­ican nationalism is best expressed in world affairs by lib­eral inter­na­tionalism – words, that is, of pro­gressive imperialism. One can ima­gine that Ronald Reagan would have been impressed; after all, his famous Westminster speech of June 1982 had virtually been pla­gi­ar­ised by Obama’s speech writers. Can the defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan finally wake up rad­ical lib­erals to the illusions of their ideo­logy? Indeed, lib­eralism had compounded these reversals by an eco­nomic melt-­down that, like Amer­ican milit­ar­ism, was the expression of national hubris backed up by the pseudo-­scientific arguments of eco­nomic theory that produced the ‘Washington Consensus’, the conceptual founda­tion of ‘globalism’ and the disasters that followed. Yet the network of inter­ests, institutions, and rhet­orical values that surrounded lib­eral inter­na­tionalism con­tinued through 2011 to hold ideas in place that were the intellectual equi­val­ent of the emperor without clothes. Lib­eralism may be able to retrench – to pull back from its milit­ary missions, to work out its eco­nomic dysfunctionalities – and regroup its forces – to prove that effect­ive multi­lateral coopera­tion among like-­minded peoples is pos­sible under Amer­ican leadership. But, for today, such a de­velopment seems unlikely. Eco­nomic chaos may feed on itself; more self-­defeating milit­ary inter­ven­tions may yet be undertaken; and all the while the banner of demo­cracy will be lifted

214   T. Smith at the very moment that it is being undermined at home by vested inter­ests and delusional thinking. All this was forecast six decades ago in the final lines of Niebuhr’s Irony of Amer­ican His­tory: For if we should perish, the ruthlessness of the foe would be only the secondary cause of the disaster. The pri­mary cause would be that the strength of a great nation was directed by eyes too blind to see all the hazards of the struggle; and the blindness would be induced not by some accident of nature or his­tory but by hatred and vainglory. (Niebuhr 2008: 174)

Notes 1 ‘I am going to teach the South Amer­ican repub­lics to elect good men’, Wilson declared with respect to Mexico, to British envoy William Tyrrell in Novem­ber 1913. 2 Woodrow Wilson, ‘The Idea of Amer­ica’, The Atlantic Monthly, Decem­ber 2002 [a talk origin­ally delivered Decem­ber 2001] in volume 12 of Link’s Papers of Woodrow Wilson (1972: 208ff.); Clinton can best be read in his National Security Strategy Docu­ ment of 1995 (White House, 1995), while Bush’s Second Inaugural is readily avail­able on line, dated 20/2/2005. 3 On Wilson and Amer­ican Mandates see Link (1989: 240, 246, 253). 4 Wilson (1889: esp. II, 1171–81), and Link (1968: 65ff.). 5 On the Philippines, see ch. 2 of Smith (1994); on the occupations of Ger­many and Japan, see ch. 4. 6 For a longer version of the argument in this section, see Smith (2007: chs 4–6). 7 For one of the most strident expressions of this conviction in influ­en­tial circles, see Kaplan and Kristol (2003); for an earl­ier statement see Kristol and Kagan (1996).

Conclusion Reflections on a new approach in a new era of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion Christopher Hobson and Milja Kurki 1

In the last three decades there has emerged a demo­cracy pro­mo­tion com­mun­ity made up of states, inter­na­tional organ­isa­tions, quasi-­governmental organ­isa­ tions, NGOs, transnational corporations and other private actors. This rapid growth has been mirrored by an equally large expansion of research, ana­lysis and pol­icy commentary on demo­crat­isation and demo­cracy pro­mo­tion. Despite the con­sider­able insights gen­er­ated, much of this scholarship has been limited, and perhaps even distorted, by certain as­sump­tions that have been uncrit­ically accepted and repeated. The focus of this volume has been to carefully examine and challenge the taken-­for-granted conceptual frameworks that shape demo­ cracy pro­mo­tion scholarship and practice. Utilising what we have termed a ‘conceptual pol­itics’ approach, the con­trib­utors have ex­plored the ramifications and con­sequences of how demo­cracy is understood and defined. In so doing, underlying this volume has been an empirical claim and a norm­ative one. The empirical pro­posi­tion is that conceptual pol­itics do take place in the field of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion. This has been amply dem­on­strated throughout the collection, most clearly by the chapters in the second section. The norm­ative claim is that demo­cracy pro­mo­tion should be understood and practiced in a pluralist manner, an argument implied in the introduction and also expli­citly made by some of the con­trib­utors, most expli­citly by Ish-­Shalom. Not only does this norm­ative impetus partly reflect the contestation that takes place over the meaning of demo­cracy in polit­ical life, it also accords with many of the core values now associated with demo­cracy, such as plur­al­ism and freedom of expression. In light of the richness of the preceding chapters, the aim of this conclusion is not to provide an extensive summary, but rather to draw out some of the major ana­lyt­ical themes and the con­sequences that flow from their findings. The fol­ low­ing issues will be focused on: (1) the strengths and lim­ita­tions of the conceptual pol­itics approach; (2) what a conceptual pol­itics framework tells us about the role of lib­eralism in shaping demo­cracy pro­mo­tion practices; (3) the norm­ ative con­sequences of adopting such an approach, in par­ticu­lar whether it facilitates or encourages relativism; (4) the more gen­eral relev­ance of con­sidering the conceptual pol­itics approach of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion at a time when the inter­ na­tional polit­ical landscape is increasingly in flux.

216   C. Hobson and M. Kurki

Strengths and weaknesses Col­lect­ively this volume amply dem­on­strates the value-­added of examining demo­cracy pro­mo­tion from a per­spect­ive that takes into account the conceptual and the­or­etical dimensions of these practices. Saying this, it is inter­esting to note the vari­ation in why the different con­trib­utors think this is the case. For example, Ish-­Shalom and Patomäki both highlight the the­or­etical and norm­ ative reasons for foregrounding the conceptual contestability of the idea of demo­cracy. On a the­or­etical level, different models of demo­cracy can be identified, each of which may point towards a different route to promoting demo­ cracy, such as Patomäki suggests in contrasting the lib­eral demo­cratic and social demo­cratic versions. Meanwhile, Ish-­Shalom argues for a pluralistic ethic when con­sidering meanings of demo­cracy. In this regard, it is im­port­ant to recog­nise, as Whitehead emphasises, that conceptions of demo­cracy are not ab­stracted; they are deeply embedded and con­textualised in relation to the values and practices of soci­eties and the indi­viduals that compose them. This insight is one that, while the­or­etical in nature, has direct empirical and prac­ tical ramifications: if the version of demo­cracy advanced has little purchase or relev­ance within the specific socio-­economic, his­tor­ical and cultural circumstances of the target coun­try, the chance of successful demo­crat­isation is slim. This argument is also forcefully made by Sadiki in his ex­plora­tion of the pathologies and potentialities for greater demo­cracy in the Arab Middle East. The point we wish to make is that while this volume is partly motiv­ated by the­ or­etical and norm­ative inter­ests in the contested nature of demo­cracy, it would be a mis­take to regard it as a purely the­or­etical exercise. What many of our con­tri­bu­tions have shown is how a conceptual pol­itics approach sheds new light on empirical cases. For example, in their chapters, Berman, Jahn and Smith all do so through providing the­or­etically informed his­tor­ical accounts. Both Jahn and Berman argue, for different reasons, that lib­eral demo­cracy and its his­tor­ical de­velopment have been misunderstood, and this has ser­ious ramifications for present-­day de­cisions and pol­icies. Jahn uncovers a much more ambiguous relationship between lib­eralism and demo­cracy compared to stand­ ard accounts. Meanwhile, Berman suggests that the success of demo­cracy in post-­1945 Europe has been misattributed to the lib­eral model, proposing that it has actu­ally been due to the consolidation of social demo­cracy. In both chapters, a conceptual pol­itics approach reveals how con­tempor­ary practices are shaped by a partial or ques­tion­able reading of lib­eral demo­cracy and its his­tory, and how an alternate in­ter­pretation can lead to a different set of pol­icy re­com­ mendations. In Smith’s chapter, he strongly argues that over time the the­or­ etical underpinnings of Amer­ica’s demo­cracy pro­mo­tion efforts have hardened and become rigid in their ideo­logical structure, with adverse and destructive con­sequences. Implicit in this argument is a pref­er­ence for the ‘fortunate vagueness’ that previously marked Amer­ica’s efforts. Smith’s discussion highlights one of the forms of conceptual contestation con­sidered in the introduction, that of vagueness versus precision in the way concepts are defined, or in

Conclusion   217 this case larger ideo­logical constructs made up of different concepts. Charlesworth offers another illustration of this dynamic: while the vagueness of the concept of demo­cracy facilitated its embedding within the ideational structures of the United Nations and inter­na­tional law, conceptual imprecision also con­ tinues to replicate minimalist understandings of demo­cracy, and potentially undemo­cratic tendencies in UN actions. Other chapters brought to the fore one of the clearest manifestations of conceptual pol­itics in this field, contestation between different forms of demo­cracy. Wolff uses the conceptual pol­itics framework with great effect to illus­trate how the deepening of demo­cracy has not led to the expected end of a more consolidated lib­eral demo­cracy but rather a transition to another kind of demo­cracy. He also discusses the different ways in which two external actors – the United States and Ger­many – have responded to the unique conceptual pol­itics of demo­cracy in Bolivia. Crawford and Abdulai focus on one central com­pon­ent of lib­eral demo­cracy – civil so­ci­ety – and show the way it is understood influences and shapes the pol­icy de­cisions of external agents engaged in supporting demo­crat­ isation. Bunce and Wolchik shed light on another realm where conceptual pol­ itics operates, that between external donors and local recipients. One conclusion of their pilot study is that demo­cracy con­tinues to be understood prim­arily within a lib­eral framework. There was, how­ever, a tendency for donors to conceive of (lib­eral) demo­cracy more in institutional terms, in contrast to recipients who took a somewhat more expansive, ‘cultural’ view that notably incorp­or­ated less tan­gible notions related to freedom. In an im­port­ant con­tri­bu­tion, Richard Youngs strikes a more cau­tious note, acknowledging that a conceptual pol­itics approach has its uses, but warning that it could facilitate a misdia­gnosis of the most pressing prob­lems facing demo­ cracy pro­mo­tion. He argues that ‘shortcomings in the conceptual pol­itics of demo­cracy certainly merit attention, even if they are not demo­cracy pro­mo­tion’s pri­mary in­ad­equacy, but it is more doubtful that crit­ical theory provides the best guide to the way in which demo­cracy support requires betterment.’ Youngs is right to highlight the potential pitfalls of a conceptual approach, in par­ticu­lar the danger of critique not being sufficiently based on actual practice, and he is also on solid ground in suggesting that some crit­ical theory accounts have over-­ emphasised the shortcomings of lib­eralism and lib­eral demo­cracy. Nonetheless, the editors would caution against equating a conceptual pol­itics approach with crit­ical theory, even if neo-­Gramscians have done the most work in this area to date. Rather, the framework outlined in this volume is consciously much more open and pluralist, and one that has potential to be adopted by positivist and post-­positivist scholars. For example, while Ish-­Shalom argues for an expli­citly constructivist and crit­ical theory-­orientated approach, Bunce and Wolchik dem­ on­strate that the more classical methods of polit­ical science can be adopted to study the dy­namics of conceptual pol­itics. Admittedly, as a result, dif­fer­ences remain in how conceptual pol­itics is engaged, data gathered and evid­ence evalu­ ated. Indeed, across the collection one can find a wide range of epistemological and ontological as­sump­tions informing the con­tri­bu­tions.

218   C. Hobson and M. Kurki

Understanding the role of lib­eralism in demo­cracy pro­mo­tion A recurrent theme in this volume – one that has echoes elsewhere in the liter­at­ ure – is the central, argu­ably defining, role of lib­eralism in shaping the way demo­cracy is understood and the manner in which it is promoted abroad. On this point, there is rel­at­ively widespread consensus within the volume. Where there is less agreement is over the conclusions that one can draw from this situ­ation. For more mainstream and policy-­orientated scholars, the prevalence of lib­eralism and lib­eral demo­cratic models in demo­cracy pro­mo­tion is obvious, perhaps even unremark­able. Bunce and Wolchik’s chapter, for example, notes the strong role lib­eral demo­cratic cri­teria in the way demo­cracy is understood by both promoters and recipients. For many mainstream scholars and pol­icy analysts, the role of lib­eralism is readily apparent, im­port­ant and not norm­atively prob­lematic in the way some neo-­Gramscian accounts propose. Indeed, con­sider Zakaria’s (2003, 1997) prominent argument that there has been insufficient emphasis on the ‘lib­ eral’ in lib­eral demo­cracy; a suggestion that can also be found in Youngs’ con­ tri­bu­tion. On the surface, this expli­cit acceptance of lib­eralism in demo­cracy pro­mo­tion – norm­atively and/or empirically – may seem to suggest that a conceptual pol­itics approach is either superfluous or prob­lematic insofar as it may encourage a misreading of the role and value of lib­eralism in demo­cracy pro­mo­ tion (Youngs’ argument), with it pos­sibly being unjustly blamed for the travails demo­cracy pro­mo­tion has been facing. Yet, if one reflects more carefully, it can be seen that this point actu­ally validates the conceptual pol­itics approach: it is only through examining the issue on a conceptual and the­or­etical level that one can prop­erly con­sider the role of lib­eralism – pos­it­ive or other­wise – in shaping the way demo­cracy is understood and supported in demo­cracy pro­mo­tion practice (Hobson forthcoming). If many regard the central role of lib­eralism in demo­cracy and demo­cracy pro­mo­tion as ‘common sense’, for crit­ical theorists this is precisely the reason that it needs to be much more closely interrogated. Not questioning or examining lib­eralism’s position is in itself a move pregnant with polit­ical con­sequences; it can power­fully operate to entrench a specific vision of what demo­cracy is and how it should be achieved. Engaging in these issues from a more crit­ical theory inspired per­spect­ive entails a refusal to accept lib­eralism’s role at face value, nor accept such a claim as being neutral. To be clear, how­ever, one needs to distinguish between adopting a crit­ical theory approach to con­sidering lib­eralism’s role and being crit­ical of it. Admittedly, in many ana­lyses both points are made and closely intertwined, as can be seen in Patomäki’s chapter in this volume, and in the neo-­Gramscian liter­at­ure on the topic (Robinson 1996; Gills, Rocamora and Wilson 1993). Yet an empirical pro­posi­tion about the centrality of lib­eralism does not neces­sar­ily lead to a norm­ative claim. One finds in Jahn’s con­tri­bu­tion an argument that is prim­arily focused on the ana­lyt­ical con­sequences of accepting lib­eralism’s position, making a strong case that as a result the relationship between lib­eralism and demo­cracy has been ser­iously misunderstood, which has

Conclusion   219 ramifications for pol­icymaking. Given the significance of lib­eralism, and its close relationship to con­tempor­ary understandings of demo­cracy, it is likely that there will con­tinue to be contestation not only over lib­eralism’s role in the practice of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion, but also how it should be ana­lysed. A further issue that arises from the position of the lib­eral demo­cratic model in demo­cracy pro­mo­tion relates to one of the key axes of conceptual contestation that was identified, namely, that between different models of demo­cracy. In polit­ical theory one can find a range of demo­cratic theories, but even here there is a danger of overstating the amount of debate that exists. Turning to the real world, lib­ eralism’s primacy is pronounced. If one looks for major empirical examples of al­tern­ative models of demo­cracy, they are admittedly few and far between. Nonetheless, they do exist. As Berman and Patomäki show in their chapters, the social demo­cratic model that has been instituted in Europe, most significantly in Scan­din­ avia, has a different set of pri­or­ities and values to the Ango-­American lib­eral demo­ cratic tradition, even if there are im­port­ant points of overlap and commonality. The Scan­din­avian model is certainly not the only empirical al­tern­ative, as Wolff shows in his im­port­ant chapter on Bolivia. While acknowledging the con­textual factors unique to this case, there is con­sider­able ferment elsewhere in Latin Amer­ica and rising dissatis­fac­tion with the current regimes. One conclusion that can be drawn from the Bolivian case is that what we may be seeing is not a rejection of demo­ cracy in toto, but the specific neo-­liberal version that has emerged since the 1980s, and the potential growth of a new form of demo­cracy that draws on different traditions and influences. In this regard, it is worth recalling Whitehead’s thought-­ provoking discussion on understanding demo­crat­isation and demo­cracy pro­mo­tion with ref­er­ence to biological metaphors, where he de­scribes demo­cra­cies as ‘complex adaptive system[s]’, and further notes the trend towards regime hybridity. A conceptual approach allows for a much more nuanced and textured framework for understanding such de­velopments, compared to prevailing approaches that see demo­cracy and non-­democracy in dichotomous or gradated terms. In reflecting on the role of lib­eralism, a further issue is its relationship not only to the form of demo­cracy advanced, but to the very practice of demo­cracy pro­mo­ tion. As noted in the introduction, the con­text for the con­sider­able extension and embedding of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion within inter­na­tional pol­itics was the lib­eral Zeitgeist that attended the end of the Cold War. Given that lib­eral prin­ciples are now under greater challenge and it appears that a more complicated balance of power is replacing the unipolar interregnum, it might be asked whether demo­ cracy pro­mo­tion practices will be altered or sidelined in this less favour­able envir­ on­ment. Lib­eralism’s position may be under greater challenge and lib­eral prin­ciples are not always systematically defended by key actors, but it would be foolish to downplay its present role or misjudge how deeply embedded it has become within inter­na­tional pol­itics. In our view, lib­eralism con­tinues to strongly influence not only demo­cracy and its pro­mo­tion but also the way these pol­icies are received, in­ter­preted, adopted, rejected and modified. Indeed, lib­eralism it seems structures the field within which support and opposi­tion for these practices takes place (Hobson and Kurki 2010). Lib­eralism constitutes a deep-­seated

220   C. Hobson and M. Kurki discursive framework for demo­cracy pro­mo­tion, despite the increasing rhet­oric that accepts plur­al­ism, contested-­ness and local ownership as core starting points for demo­cracy assistance (Hobson and Kurki 2010; Kurki forthcoming b). This is a point that Crawford and Abdulai too dem­on­strate in their chapter: even broader notions of civil so­ci­ety still largely operate within a lib­eral framework. This may not be a bad thing – and perhaps what is needed is indeed even more and more expli­citly prin­cipled lib­eralism, as Youngs suggests. Yet, in this con­text it still remains an inter­esting point to con­sider just how pos­sible it is for other al­tern­ ative models of demo­cracy to be promoted with any real force in an inter­na­tional order that remains deeply, and implicitly, lib­eral.

The norm­ative perils of conceptual pol­itics? At a time when the ‘demo­cracy pro­mo­tion backlash’ shows few signs of di­min­ ishing (Carothers 2010), and pub­lics in many trans­itional and consolidated demo­cra­cies are suffering from a growing sense of disenchantment with this regime type, it might be asked whether conceptually unpacking demo­cracy is par­ticu­larly prudent. This volume could be open to the same line of criticism that Plattner (1998) levelled at Zakaria’s (1997) work, in which he cautioned against going too far in ‘ “unpacking” the com­pon­ent elements of modern lib­eral demo­ cracy’. In this sense, a conceptual pol­itics approach might be regarded as norm­ atively prob­lematic if it facilitates or encourages relativism. As noted in the introduction, demo­cracy already suffers from con­sider­able rhet­orical abuses, with almost all states making some claim to be demo­cratic, no mat­ter how farfetched such attempts may seem. Put differently, there are very few gov­ern­ments that openly repudiate demo­cracy. Is it pos­sible to pluralise conceptions of demo­ cracy without further encouraging this state of affairs? Does a conceptual approach leave us unable to distinguish ‘real’ demo­cracy from the many regimes that have a demo­cratic façade but lack the freedoms and rights that give demo­ cracy meaning and value? This is a pressing mat­ter when one con­siders that increasingly power­ful states such as China and Russia are deploying the language of demo­cracy to legitimate their gov­ern­ments. A concern with the dangers of relativism is under­stand­able, especially at a time when faith in demo­cracy may be faltering and demo­cracy pro­mo­tion practices are increasingly contested, even countered through so-­called ‘autocracy pro­mo­tion’ (Burnell 2010b). Nonetheless, we would deny that this charge can be levelled at this volume. The strongest counter to this line of potential criticism is provided in Ish-­Shalom’s chapter, where he identifies the dif­fer­ence between relativism and plur­al­ism: By embracing an anything-­goes attitude, relativism dodges any sort of engagement, polit­ical or moral, with the essence of contested-ness. Relativism is the sidestepping of moral judgment necessitated by the fact of ­contested-ness. . . . Plur­al­ism, contrary to relativism, accepts contested-ness, respects it, and values the reason­able meanings people hold fairly.

Conclusion   221 Just because conceptual pol­itics recog­nises a plurality of potential kinds of demo­cracy, it does not force us to accept that all demo­cratic forms are equally demo­cratic or demo­cratic in the same way (see Kurki 2010). Russia can still be criticised for its in­ad­equate demo­cratic credentials, but needs to be done within a more polit­ically self-­aware and open envir­on­ment, where Western demo­cracy promoters recog­nise the pol­itics of their own approach rather than simply assuming its pri­or­ity or uni­ver­sality. Indeed, the pluralising moves attempted in this volume argu­ably lay the groundwork for a stronger defence of demo­cracy. By denying or ignoring the conceptual contestation that does take place within demo­cracy pro­mo­tion – something that this collection has clearly dem­on­strated does exist the­or­etically and empirically – leaves us ill-­equipped to distinguish the dif­fer­ence between legitimate and illegitimate invocations of the demo­cratic label. Not only does conceptual plur­al­ism facilitate debate and dialogue – in themselves im­port­ant demo­cratic ac­tiv­ities – it has potential to encourage a more egal­it­arian approach to demo­cracy pro­mo­tion. A distinguishing feature of these practices to date is their unidir­ec­tional nature, in which the prioritisation of a certain model of demo­cracy can work to privilege those actors that conform to the dominant understanding (Hobson 2009b: 397). In this regard, Teivainen (2009: 163–5) suggests that within demo­cracy pro­mo­tion there is a ‘pedagogy of power’ in which external actors perform ‘the social function of the teacher whose role is to instruct and guide the more “child-­like” coun­tries’. In contrast, the pluralist ethic underwriting the conceptual pol­itics framework outlined in this volume is one that is more open and attuned to the range of meanings and models of demo­cracy that exist, without automatically privileging a certain version or set of actors. Put differently, a conceptual pol­itics may help to inject a more egal­it­arian and polit­ically sensitive ethos into the thought and practice of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion, a trend that many demo­cracy pro­mo­tion practitioners have also been calling for in recent years.

The relev­ance of conceptual pol­itics A defining feature of much of the liter­at­ure on demo­cracy pro­mo­tion and demo­ crat­isation is that it seeks to be of relev­ance to policy­makers and those in the field. At first glance, the conceptual pol­itics approach might seem like an overly ab­stracted endeavour that is of little assistance to practitioners. In his chapter, Youngs suggests a weaker version of this position: a conceptual pol­itics approach might have merit, but it does not address the most pressing issues and challenges the demo­cracy pro­mo­tion com­mun­ity presently faces. One of the biggest criticisms of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion in recent years has been the undemo­cratic ways it has often been implemented. The attempts at co­er­cive demo­crat­isation of Afghanistan and Iraq are the most obvious examples, but one can find sim­ilar complaints in ref­er­ence to the way EU accession cri­teria have been applied in Central Eastern Europe, and the harsh structural adjustment programmes that went hand in hand with a large number of

222   C. Hobson and M. Kurki third wave transitions. The pluralist ethic that informs a conceptual pol­itics framework has potential to encourage greater consistency between the means and ends of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion. Even introducing a more open, self-­reflexive and humble language could have potentially significant ramifications. This is interesting to consider in the context of the backlash against democracy promotion, as well as the Arab spring. There is overlap and engagement between the schol­arly and pol­icy com­munit­ ies when it comes to demo­cracy pro­mo­tion, and thus there is potential for a conceptual pol­itics approach – or some of its ethos – to filter through to pol­icy circles. Admittedly, a conceptual pol­itics framework would likely influence the ac­tiv­ities of practitioners prim­arily in an indirect sense. Yet as Ish-­Shalom argues, aca­demics have a com­mit­ment to each other and the larger com­mun­ity to recog­nise the conceptual contestability of demo­cracy, and the con­sequences that flow from this situ­ation. Practitioners may not share this com­mit­ment yet, but can still bene­fit from it: not only by being able to engage in more reflective practice, but also by being able to think laterally about pol­icy options avail­able to them. Even if this framework might not provide simple, straightforward pol­icy re­com­mendations, this is certainly no reason to discount it. And where inter­ action between the two realms takes place, there is a need for mutual dialogue. As Youngs notes, demo­cracy pro­mo­tion scholars should not preach at policy­ makers about conceptual models without understanding the real world constraints within which they are gen­er­ated and must function. At the same time, policy­makers should not simply deny the conceptual contestation surrounding demo­cracy, which this volume has dem­on­strated exists both empirically and the­ or­etically.

Conclusion Focusing on the conceptual pol­itics of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion does not offer a magic bullet to the troubles and ills the practice now suffers from. Furthermore, it by no means claims to explain all aspects of demo­cracy pro­mo­tion and demo­ crat­isation. Nonetheless, at a time of flux and un­cer­tainty, there is con­sider­able value in ex­plor­ing such an approach. In this regard, Carothers (2010: 72) has recently argued that: . . . at the same time that the Western pol­icy com­mun­ity comes to grips and grapples with how to respond effect­ively to the [demo­cracy pro­mo­tion] backlash, it must also confront the larger imperative of finding new ideas and approaches to fit an inter­na­tional con­text for demo­cracy work that has funda­ment­ally changed from that of decades past. The conceptual pol­itics framework advanced in this volume provides tools for reassessing the as­sump­tions that have shaped practice to date, and suggests a different way of thinking about demo­cracy pro­mo­tion and demo­crat­isation. Given that the deeply unpop­ular ‘freedom agenda’ of the Bush administration tainted

Conclusion   223 not just Amer­ican efforts but also the larger demo­cracy pro­mo­tion pro­ject, it may be an opportune, and neces­sary, time to undergo a deeper and more far-­ reaching assessment of these practices. Con­sidering the conceptual contestation that surrounds demo­cracy and demo­cracy pro­mo­tion injects a strong demo­cratic ethos of plur­al­ism into the debate, and highlights the inherently polit­ical and ideo­logical nature of these practices.

Note 1 The research leading to these results has received funding from the Euro­pean Research Council under the Euro­pean Com­mun­ity’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) ERC grant agreement no. 202 596. All views remain those of the authors.

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Index

References to notes are prefixed by n. Page numbers in italics denote tables. academia: blind spots 43; and political concepts 43 academic work: on democracy promotion 12–13 academics: and policy-makers 102, 222 accountability 105, 141–2, 155, 158 Accra development agenda 109 ActionAid Ghana 143 Adenauer, Konrad 205 Adler-Karlsson, Gunnar 77 Afghanistan 19, 178, 181 Africa: reversals in democracy promotion 19 African Union Panel of the Wise 109 An Agenda for Democratisation 194–5 ‘aggregative’ democracy 193 aid projects 53, 103 AKP: Turkey 108 al-Maliki, Nouri 180 Al-Nasser, Jamal Abd 187 Al-Qaida 186 Albright, Madeleine 210 Algeria 175 Alternative Development program 129n4 alternative models 110, 112, 113–14 altruism 202 AME (Arab Middle East): authoritarianism 183–4; context of democratisation 173–4; and democratisation 171–2, 176–8; ‘double promotion’ 181–3; electoralism 174–6; ‘imagined communities’ 184–7; ‘orientalisation’ of 179–83; postcolonial 183, 185; re-framing democratisation 183–7; religion 186–7 Amman 186 analogies 27–32

Anderson, Benedict 185 Arab Gulf states 182, 186 Arab Middle East (AME) see AME Arendt, Hannah 206–7, 208 Arias, Oscar 205 Aristide, President 193 Aristotle 32, 113 Ark Foundation 144–5 Armenia 108, 152 Arrow, Kenneth 91 Asmus, Ronald 212 Atuguba, Raymond 150n12 Austria 72 Austrian Empire 70 authoritarian regimes 25, 111 authoritarianism 183–4 autopoiesis 34 Ayubi, Nazih 183 Azerbaijan 108, 152 ‘backlash’ 2, 111, 220 Bahrain 186 Baker, G. 132 Barcelona Process 36n1 Barkan, Joel 160, 166 Ba’thist ‘imagined community’ 186 Belarus 152 Belgium 25 Belim Wusa Development Agency (BEWDA) see BEWDA Ben Ali, Zine El Abidine 36n1, 175, 180 Bentham, Jeremy 113 Bernstein , Eduard 94 BEWDA (Belim Wusa Development Agency) 144 bilateral donor support: Ghana 132 bilateral relations 66

246   Index bin Laden, Osama 187 binary social classifications 25 biological metaphors 27–32 Bismarck, Otto von 71 blind spots 47 BMEI (Broader Middle East Initiative) 181, 182, 201 Bolivia: conceptual politics approach 119–20, 127–8; consolidation 122–3; constitutional reform 123–4; decentralisation 121; early transition to democracy 119; and Germany 125, 126–7; indigenous rights 109; political reforms 121; political transformation 119–20; popular participation 121–2; and USA 125–6, 127 Bolshevik model 203–4 Bonaparte, Napoleon 69 Bouteflika, Abdelaziz 175 Boutros-Ghali, Boutros 194–5 Bretton Woods conference 75 Bretton Woods era 94, 97 Broader Middle East Initiative (BMEI) see BMEI Brown, I. J. C. 8 Burnell, Peter 5 Bush administration 41–2, 82, 111, 179, 180 Bush Doctrine 211 Bush, George 181 Bush, George W. 181–2, 202–3, 211 business actions: and democracy promotion 106–7 business courts: Middle East 106 Canada: ‘mentoring’ 182; political democracy 25; UN resolutions 195 ‘capabilities’ 114 Capability (CAR framework) 141 capitalism 68, 74, 75, 77–8 CAR framework 141 Carothers, Thomas 32–3, 36n2, 124, 131, 133, 148, 174, 177, 182, 222 Carroll, Sean 35 CDD-Ghana (Ghana Center for Democratic Development) 137, 139 Center for Indigenous Knowledge and Organisational Development 145 Centre for Policy Analysis (CEPA) see CEPA Centre for Public Interest Law (CEPIL) see CEPIL CEPA (Centre for Policy Analysis) 137, 139

CEPIL (Centre for Public Interest Law) 143, 145 Cerna, Christina 193 Chavez, Húgo 104 Chesterman, Simon 198 Chile (1973) 92 China 9, 81–2, 108, 195 Christian Council of Ghana 143 citizen participation 192 citizenship 62, 155 civic engagement 46, 51, 110–11 civic groups 110 civic movements 90 civil society 62, 90, 107, 131–2, 199 civil society assistance programmes: critiques of 133; G-RAP 133, 135–41, 146–9; RAVI 133, 141–9 civil society organisations: and RAVI 143–4 civil society strengthening: Ghana 134–5 civil war (English) 62 class division 70, 71, 72, 78, 81–2 Clinton administration 131, 210 Clinton, Bill 202 codetermination 77 coercive democratisation 3, 20, 22, 26, 181, 221–2 collective learning 86–7, 95 collective rules 87 colonialism 59, 60, 61–2, 177 Commission on Human Rights 195 Committee of European Economic Cooperation 74 common land: privatisation of 59–60 communal issues 70 communal setting 46, 47–8, 51 communism 1, 72, 74, 76, 203–4, 205 communists 54–5 communities of theorists 48–9 Community Radio Network 143 companies: and democracy promotion 106–7 ‘competitive elitist democracy’ 90 competitive markets 88 conceptions of democracy (study) 154–60, 167–9 concepts: contested 38, 39, 40–3 conceptual debate: models of democracy 7–8; process vs. product 9–10; vagueness vs. precision 8–9 conceptual politics: contexts and sites 10–13; notion of 3–4 conceptual politics approach 4–6; Bolivia 119–20, 127–8; civil society and democratisation 131–2; normative perils

Index   247 220–1; relevance 221–2; role of liberalism 218–20; strengths and weaknesses 216–17 conflict stabilisation initiatives 108–9 Connolly, W. 3 conservative radicalism 122 consolidation: biological analogy 28, 31; Bolivia 122–3; Europe 68–9, 73–8, 83 ‘constitutional engineering’ 34 ‘constitutive metaphors’ 27, 31 constructivism: mainstream 38; political 38, 39–40, 45, 46–51 contagion 28 contestation: of concept of democracy 10–12, 24, 119–20, 121–5 contested concepts 38, 39, 40–3 contextual background: conceptions of democracy 24–5 contingency thesis 55–6 corruption 55, 71, 195, 212 cosmopolitan democracy 115 cosmopolitanism 99n2, 101 ‘country-specific approaches’ 109 Crawford, Gordon 134 Crawford, James 192 criteria for success 20 critical-reflexive consciousness 97–8 critical-reflexive teleology 86 critical theorists 45, 46, 114 critical theory 5, 102–3, 111, 217, 218 Croatia 152 Croatian minorities 70 Crosland, C. A. R. 76 Cuba: UN resolutions 195 Cuban democracy 22 ‘cultivation’: as biological analogy 32–6; skills 23 cyber-activism 110–11 Czechoslovakia 201 Czechs 70 Daalder, Ivo 212 Dahl, Robert 4, 6, 111 Dalton, Russell 153, 158 de-Shalit, Avner 51 decentralisation: Bolivia 121 decolonisation era: UN 194–7 ‘decontamination’ 32–3 definitions 43–6 deliberative democracy 51, 193 democracy: and capitalism 68; conceptions of 2, 4, 9–10, 23–4, 154–60; definitional practices 8; definitions 4–5, 44–6; elitist reading of 50–1; as governing

procedures 9–10, 24; as ideal 10, 24; liberalism and 54–7; local conceptions 11–12; local contexts 24; models of 11; and social stability 68; and UN (United Nations) 191, 194–7 democracy assistance: participation in 167–9; problems with 165–7 ‘democracy backlash’ 2, 111, 220 democracy building: post-conflict 197–8 Democracy Fund 196 democracy promotion: action 3; activities 20, 21–2; actors 3, 57; agencies 10–11, 120; Ghana 134–5; and liberalism 218–20; policies 53, 57, 62; shift in conceptualisation 20–1; strategies 3, 20; teleology of 85–7; as a term 3 democracy vs. radical Islamism binary 25 democracy vs. totalitarianism binary: Cold War period 25 democratic development: obstacles to 154, 160–4 democratic enlargement 210 democratic globalism: as imperialism 208–12 democratic imperialism 105 democratic participation 132 ‘democratic peace theory’ 208–11 democratic politics: and human development 131 Democratic Republic of Congo 109 democratic revisionism 178 democratic transition theory 209–10 democratic void 183–4 democratisation: economic dimension 106; fixated structural understandings of 41–2; idea of 37n10; and security 178 Department for International Development (DFID) see DFID Derrida, Jacques 10 developing countries: and economic development 64–5 development agencies 103, 104 developmentalist ideas 95 DFID (Department for International Development) 104, 133, 141, 142, 146, 147 Diamond, Larry 131 dictatorships 70, 71 ‘do no harm’ principle 36, 196–7 domestic violence 145 Domestic Violence Coalition 145 Dominican Republic 201 ‘double promotion’: AME (Arab Middle East) 181–3

248   Index Dunn, John 107 DVC (National Coalition on Domestic Violence Legislation) 143, 145 dynastic politics 190 economic development: and democratic politics 55, 57, 81–2; developing countries and 64–5 economic dislocation 69 economic liberalism 88, 105–6 economic rights 80 economic security 155, 158 Egypt 108, 111, 175, 177, 186, 187 elections 107–8, 152, 158, 191–2 electoral democracy 5, 46, 79, 80, 107–8 ‘electoral fallacy’ 4–5, 107–8 electoralism: AME (Arab Middle East) 174–6, 177 elites: behaviours 163; and conceptions of democracy 50–1, 154 elitist model 89, 105 embedded liberalism 79 enclosure acts 60 ‘end of history’ discourse 1, 26; see also teleology, of democratic promotion Equity and Reconciliation Commission 111 essentialism: and Western approach to democratisation 179–83 ethico-political principles 92, 93, 95, 97, 98 Ethiopia 108 ethnic cleansing 74 ethnic conflicts 70, 73 EU (European Union): aid projects 53; Alternative Development program 129n4; approach to democracy promotion 9; Barcelona Process 36n1; civil society support programmes 132; contestation of concept of democracy 11; electoral democracy 108; and Ghana 134; ‘mentoring’ 182; Rwanda 109; success of 209; trade deals 105 Europe: democratic consolidation 68–9, 73–8, 83; development of democracy 69–73; and liberal democracy 64; policy makers 105; social democracy 78–81, 83 European Commission: political economy approach 105; projects 104 European policies 106, 112 ‘evidence-based’ policies: and biological perspectives 36 external actors: contestation of concept of democracy 10–12

external impediments: to democracy development 160–4 extremism 74 fascism 76 fascist parties 73 feminist epistemology 46, 47 ‘feudal democracy’ 198 Fiji 192 financial crisis 101, 104, 105 Forest Watch Ghana 144 Foundation for Female Photojournalists 143 Fourth Republic: France 76–7 Fox, Gregory 193 France: Catholic Mouvement Republican Populaire 75; Fourth Republic 76–7; ‘mentoring’ 182; Paris Commune 72; political democracy 25; post-revolution 69; protests (1948) 69–70; and revolution 96; Third Republic 72; and Venezuela 104 franchise 60, 61 Franck, Thomas 193 Franco, Adolfo 125 Frankfurt parliament 71 free association technique 24–5 free markets 91–2, 93, 95, 97 Freeden, Michael 27 freedom fighters 205 Freedom House scores: Ghana 149n3 freedom, individual: and liberalism 53, 55, 56–7; Locke on 57–62 freedoms: as element of democracy 155–7, 158–9 French Revolution 69, 96 Friedman, Milton 88, 90 Friends of the Nation 144 Fukuyama, Francis 1, 56, 86 funding 103 Funding Virtue 131 G-8 countries 182, 183; see also Western powers G-RAP (Ghana Research and Advocacy Programme) 133, 135–41, 146–9 Gadamer, G. 37n7 Gaddafi, Muammar 180 Gallie, W. B. 4, 125 gardening metaphor 23 GARI (Ghana Accountability and Responsiveness Initiative) 146, 149n2 Garton Ash, Timothy 1 GATT-agreement 97

Index   249 GAWU (General Agricultural Workers Union) 143, 144 General Competitive Analysis 91 general equilibrium approaches 91–2 Georgia 109, 152 German Christian Democrats 75 Germans 70 Germany: and Bolivia 125, 126–7; comparison with USA 120; economic liberalism 77; Frankfurt parliament 71; ‘mentoring’ 182; political democracy 25; post World War I 72; social hierarchies 73; and USA occupation 201–2, 205 Ghana: bilateral donor support 132; civil society projects 133; civil society strengthening 134–5; democracy promotion 134–5; Freedom House scores 149n3; and the Netherlands 133 Ghana Accountability and Responsiveness Initiative (GARI) see GARI Ghana Association of the Blind 144 Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) see CDDGhana Ghana Federation of the Disabled 144 Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRS) see GPRS Ghana Research and Advocacy Programme (G-RAP) see G-RAP Ghana Rights and Voice Initiative (RAVI) see RAVI Gills, Barry 6 global peace 209 global social/democratic reforms 98 globalisation 64, 97 globalism 115 GMEI (Greater Middle East Initiative) 179–80, 180–1, 187 Gorbachev, Mikhail 205 Gordon, Philip 212 Gould, Stephen Jay 30 government by consent 58 GPRS (Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy) 134 Gramsci, Antonio 39–40, 132, 133 Gramscian mechanism 39, 40–2, 50 Great Depression 73, 74 Greater Middle East Initiative (GMEI) see GMEI Guidance Note on Democracy 196 Guizot, F. 4 Habermas, Jürgen 113, 193

Habermasian mechanism 39, 42–3, 50 Habsburg Empire 70, 72 Hahn, Frank H. 91 Haiti 193, 201 Hamas 108 Harbeson, J. W. 131 Hariri family 186 Havel, Vaclav 205 Hawkesworth, Mary 47 Hayek, Friedrich 68, 88, 90 Hearn, J. 133, 147 Hegel, G. W. F. 105, 113 hegemony, theory of 39, 40 Held, David 90, 99n2, 132 Helms-Burton law 22 heuristic metaphors 31 Hezbullah 182, 187 Hobsbawm, Eric 69, 185 Hobson, Christopher 53, 82, 120 Hohe, T. 198 Hu Jintao 9 Hudson, C. M. 174 human development: and democratic politics 131 human rights 81, 82, 89, 142, 144, 191, 192, 195 human rights violations 198 Hungarians 70 Huntington, Samuel 81, 177, 180 Hurt, S. R. 132 ‘hybrid’ regimes 28 Ibn Khaldoun 188 ICB (institutional capacity building) 136, 139–40 ICCPR (International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights) 191–2, 197 identity-centred debates 105, 110 identity issues 70 IEA (Institute of Economic Affairs) 137, 139 ‘imagined communities’: AME (Arab Middle East) 184–7 IMF (International Monetary Fund) 61, 90 imperialism 105, 110; democratic globalism as 208–12 inclusion 142 indigenous forms: of representation 109 individual freedom: and liberalism 53, 55, 56–7; Locke on 57–62 industrial revolution 69 inequality 81, 83 Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) see IEA

250   Index institutional capacity building (ICB) see ICB institutional factors 154–5, 157, 158, 159, 162 ‘instrumental value’: of democracy (Bolivia) 121–3 inter-RAO networking: G-RAP 140–1 internal impediments: to democracy development 160–4 international capital: and democracy promotion 106–7 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) see ICCPR International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights 192 international institutions: and democracy 194–7 international law: and democracy 189–94; and international institutions 194–7; and national law 190; and UN 190–8 International Monetary Fund (IMF) see IMF internationalisation: of modernisation processes 64–5 interpretivists 45, 46 interviews: post-communist elections study 152–3 IR theorists 48–9 Iran 9, 181 Iraq 82, 177, 178, 186, 187, 201, 211 The Irony of American History 206, 214 Ish-Shalom, P. 10 Islam 172, 174, 179 Islamism 180 Islamists 110 Israel 181, 182 Italy 71–2, 77, 182 Ivory Coast 19 Japan 35, 182, 201–2, 205 John Paul II 205 Jordan 182 Jorion, Paul 37n8 Journal of Democracy 12 Kant, Immanuel 113 Kantian liberal world order 209 Kauffman, S. A. 30 Keane, John 10 Kenya 19 Keynes, John Maynard 76, 201 Keynesian social democratic model 96 Keynesianism 76 Kim Dae Jung 205

Kohlbergian framework 99n1 Kopstein, J. 11 Koselleck, R. 3–4 Krastev, I. 1 Kurki Milja 53, 82, 120, 130n11 Kuwait 175, 181 Kyrgyzstan 152 ‘large N’ causal models 23 Latin America: and US policy 106–7 law, international see international law Lebanon 110, 175, 186, 187 Legal Resources Centre (LRC) see LRC legitimacy 184, 193 Lévy, Bernard-Henri 110 liberal democracy: accepted notions of 5; critique of 100–1; and economic liberalism 105–6; and electoral democracy 80; elitist model 6; faith in 1; and international actors 53–4; and international law 194; postcommmunism countries 11–12; promotion 53–4, 62–5; and social democracy 79; virtue of 206–7 liberal democratic concept: of democracy 155 liberal democratic model: of civil society 132–3 ‘liberal imperialism’ 112 ‘liberal internationalism’ 201–2, 203–8 liberal jurists 210 liberalism: and democracy 27, 54–7, 62–5, 101; and democracy promotion 218–20; dominance of 111; Lockean account 57–62, 115; political and market tension 105; poor understanding of 53; and ‘Westernisation’ 83 Lindsay, James 212 linguistic conflicts 70 literature 2, 19–20 local accountability 105 local actors vs. external actors: contestation of concept of democracy 11–12 local demands 100, 102, 113, 114 local groups 110 local ownership 198, 199 Locke, John 53–4, 57–62, 62–3, 107, 113, 115 Lockean-Schumpeterian tradition 89 ‘low-intensity democracy’ 90 LRC (Legal Resources Centre) 143, 145 Lustick, Ian 41 McFaul, Michael 2, 5, 88, 112, 199, 212

Index   251 Madrid Conference 181 majority rule 55 Maliki, Nouri al 180 Mandela, Nelson 205 market-based political economy 93 market liberalism 105 Marks, Susan 199 Marshall, Alfred 90 Marx, Karl 68 Marxism–Leninism 205, 207 Marxist critique 105, 110 MAS (Movimiento al Socialismo) 123, 125, 126 Mayer, Ernst 29 Mazower, Mark 73, 74 MCC (Millennium Challenge Corporation) 126, 182 MDBS (Multi-Donor Budget Support) 134, 135, 147, 150n12 Meciar, Vladimir 152 Melia, Thomas 11 ‘mentoring’ 182–3 MEPI (Middle East Partnership Initiative) 181 metaphors 27–32 methodological pluralism 32 middle classes 61, 69, 70 Middle East: and aid programmes 104; business courts 106; local conceptions 12; reversals in democracy promotion 19 Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) see MEPI military power 112 Mill, J. S. 68, 103 Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) see MCC Milosevic, Slobodan 152 mimicry 36 modernisation policies 57, 64–5 modularity 35 Mohamed VI, King 182 monitoring 20 Morales, Evo 109, 119, 121, 122, 123, 125 Morgenthau, Henry 75 Morlino, Leonardo 37n10 Morocco 108, 111, 182 morphology: of political concepts 26–7 Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) see MAS Mubarak, Hosni 180 Mubarak regime 111 Multi-Donor Budget Support (MDBS) see MDBS

multilateralism 97, 115 multinational companies: and democracy promotion 106–7 Muqaddimah 188 Muslim Brotherhood 175 Al-Nasser, Jamal Abd 187 National Coalition on Domestic Violence Legislation (DVC) see DVC national conflicts 70 National Endowment for Democracy (NED) see NED national law: international law and 190 National Security Strategy of the United States 211 national socialist parties 73 nationalisation 76–7 nationalism 70, 72–3, 74 nationalist mobilisation 72 natural rights 91–2 Nazis 73 NED (National Endowment for Democracy) 12, 25, 125 NED survey 166–7 neo-Gramscian literature 6, 101, 105, 106–7 neo-Hegelian argument 86 neo-liberal concept: of civil society 132, 133 neo-liberal intellectuals 212 neo-liberal internationalism 207, 208–12 neo-liberal model 85, 87–92, 95, 96 neo-liberalisation 97 neo-liberalism 88–9 neo-Wilsonianism 207 the Netherlands: and Ghana 133 NETRIGHT 150n8 New Caledonia 192 ‘new world order’ 89 Nicaragua 201 Niebuhr, Reinhold 206, 207, 208, 214 Nixon, Richard 97 Nolte, Georg 193 non-intervention 26 normative and cultural definition: of democracy 46 North Korea 9 Northern Network for Education Development 143 Nouméa Accord 192–3 Nozick, Robert 90–1 ‘nurturing’: as biological analogy 32–6; imagery of term 21–3

252   Index Obama administration 179 Obama, Barack 103, 187, 212–13 obligations 142 obstacles: to democratic development 160–4 occidentalism 176–9 Occidentalists 171–3, 178 O’Donnell, Guillermo 10, 177, 199 OECD countries 89, 96–7 OECD Guidelines 200n3 Offe, Claus 78 Ohemeng, F. L. K. 137 Oppenheim, Lassa 190 orientalism 176–9 Orientalists 171–3, 178 The Origins of Totalitarianism 206–7 Orwell, George 8 Ottaway, Marina 131, 133, 148, 182 over-promotion: by Western powers 102–3 ownership 20 Pakistan 19, 181 Palme, Olof 99n6 Paris Commune 72 Paris development agenda 109 participation 142, 167–9 participatory democracy 51 patronage-based distributions: of power 108 peace, global 209 Perez, Shimon 181 the Philippines 201, 202, 204 Pipe, Daniel 179 Plattner, M. 220 pluralism 43, 46, 48–9, 51, 114, 178, 215, 220–1 pluralist model: of democracy 99n2 Poland 72 policy-makers: academics and 102, 222 political concepts 40–3 political constructivism 38, 39–40, 45, 46–51 political democracy 24–5 political economy approach: European Commission 105 political features: and liberal democracy 55–6 political instability 72, 81 political justice 93 political liberalism 49 Political Order in Changing Societies 81 political reform 57 political theory-informed perspective 53 Polyani, M. 37n6

‘polyarchy’ 6, 90 popular participation: Bolivia 121–2 population transfer 74 positivism 38, 43, 45 post-Cold War countries: democratic initiatives 19 post-Cold War era 26, 53, 194–7 post-communist elections study: hypotheses 153–4; interviews 152–3; methodology 153–4 post-conflict interventions: UN 197–8 post-conflict peace-building 196–7 post-Fordism 97 post-positivism 45 post-positivist approaches 5 post-World War I 72 postcolonial Arab states 183, 185 poverty: and democratic development 55 power: of the state 183–4 power voids 183–4, 187 ‘prejudices’ 37n7 Principles of Economics 90 principles of justice: Rawls 92–3 private enclosure acts 60 private property: and liberalism 53, 54–5, 56–7, 62, 63; Locke on 57–62; and serfdom 107 private property rights 89, 90, 91, 92, 107, 126 privatisation 61 process tracking 20 ‘promotion’: imagery of term 21–3 Public Agenda 143 public common sense 39–40, 41 public convention 40, 41 ‘quality’: of democratisation processes 28, 29 radical model: of civil society 132–3 RAOs (Research and Advocacy Organisations) 135, 136, 140–1 RAVI (Ghana Rights and Voice Initiative) 133, 141–6 Rawls, John 49, 92–4 Reagan, Ronald 213 reasonable pluralism 49 rebellions 60–1 recipient-donors 154, 157–8, 159, 160, 169 reconceptualisation 114, 115 Red Shirt supporters 81 redundancy 35 reflexivity 46 regime change: new form of 1

Index   253 Reign of Terror 69 Reisman, Michael 193 relativism 43, 220 religion: AME (Arab Middle East) 186–7 religion-based representation 109–10 religious violence 62 representation: forms of 107–11 Research and Advocacy Organisations (RAOs) see RAOs responsibility to protect 210 responsiveness 141–2 revolution 60–1, 69, 72 Rice, Condoleezza 182 Robinson, W. 6 Rocamora, J. 6 Rocha, Manuel 129n4 Romanian minorities 70 Root, Elihu 190 Rose, S. 28 Roth, Brad 193 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 113 Ruggie, J. G. 79 Russia 9 Rwanda 108, 109 Said, Edward 172, 178, 179 San Francisco Conference: UN 191 Sardar, Z. 173 Saudi Arabia: UN resolutions 195 Scandinavian countries: social democracy 11 Scandinavian model 178 Scanlon, T. 50 Schmitter, Philippe 36n2, 125 scholarship: on democracy promotion and democratisation 12–13 Schumpeter, Joseph 4, 80, 89, 113 Second Inaugural Address (G. W. Bush) 202–3 security: and democratisation 178, 201 self-determination 192, 196, 205 self-reflexive policy-learning 112 self-reflexivity 46–8, 50, 51 September 11 attacks 211 Serbia 152 Serbian minorities 70 serfdom: private property and 107 Shaftesbury, Earl of 60 Skidelsky, Robert 76 Slaughter, Anne-Marie 194, 212 Slovakia 152 Smith, Tony 122, 194 social benefits: and concept of democracy 157–8

social conflict 73 social construction 39, 40 social democracy: Europe 78–81; post1945 68, 75–8; Scandinavian countries 11 social democratic model: historicalinstitutional perspective 94–5; problems with 95–7; Rawlsian perspective 92–4; and welfare state 85 social development 103 social divisions 81–2 social justice 83 social knowledge 39, 40, 42 social market economy 88 social rights 80 social solidarity 75 social stability 68, 78–9 socialism 94 socialists 54–5 SOLACE (Solidarity Action for Community Empowerment) 144 Sousa Santos, Boaventura de 130n11 sovereignty 26, 34, 193, 194, 196, 210 Spain: transition to democracy 25–6; and Venezuela 104 Special Project Grants 140 Sperber, Jonathan 70 ‘stages’ 86 stagflation 97 state competency building 104–5 state power 183–4 Steiner, Henry 191 Steinmo, Sven 29, 30 ‘step-change’ model 25–6, 27, 34 structural conditionality: and democracy 104 structural democracy 46 substantive responsibility 50 Summit Outcome document (2005) 196 Swaziland 192 Sweden 25, 72, 77 Swedish model 94, 96 Syria 195 Taliban 110 technical assistance (TA) grants 136, 139–40 Teivainen, T. 10, 221 teleology: of democracy promotion 85–7 terrorism 179 Tesón, Fernando 194 Thailand 81 theory of hegemony 39, 40 Theory of Justice 92

254   Index ‘theory vacuum’ 36n2 Thierry, Augustin 72 Third Republic 72 ‘third wave’ democratisation 89, 174, 177 Third Way 96 Third World Network (TWN-Africa) see TWN-Africa Timor Leste 197–8 ‘tinkering’ 35, 36 Tocqueville, Alexis de 68 total state 184 totalitarianism 25 trade liberalisation 105 traditional local forms 110, 111 ‘transition paradigm’ 124 transition theory 177 transitional justice 109 transitions to democracy 25–6 transparency 46, 49–50, 51, 155 ‘transplants’ 22, 35–6 Transformismo 71 Trevelyan, G. M. 71 Tudjman, Franjo 152 Tunisia 19, 108, 175 Turkey 108, 181 TWN-Africa (Third World Network) 137, 139 UK (United Kingdom): DFID 104; liberal democratic model 11; ‘mentoring’ 182; political democracy 24–5; UN resolutions 195 Ukraine 108, 152 UN (United Nations): decolonisation era 194; and democracy 191, 194–7; and international law 190–1; post-Cold War era 194–7; post-conflict interventions 197–8; San Francisco Conference 191; Security Council 210 UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) 131 UNIFEM (United Nations Development Fund for Women) 182 unilateralism 97 United Kingdom (UK) see UK United Nations (UN) see UN United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) see UNIFEM United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) see UNDP United Nations Human Rights Council 195 United Nations Security Council 194 United Nations Transitional Authority in East Timor (UNTAET) see UNTAET

Universal Declaration of Human Rights 191 universal suffrage 54, 55 universalist social democracy 96 UNTAET (United Nations Transitional Authority in East Timor) 197–8 upheavals 60–1 US Millennium Challenge Account 126 USA (United States of America): aid projects 53; and Bolivia 125–6, 127; civil society activities funding 158; comparison with Germany 120; conceptual structures of democracy promotion 204–8; contestation of concept of democracy 11; definitional practices 9; democracy assumptions 79; disinterest 201, 202; future foreign policy 212–14; and Latin America 106–7; and liberal democracy 64; ‘mentoring’ 183; phases of democracy promotion 202; political democracy 25; post-Second World War occupations 201–2, 205; practice of democracy 88; procedures of democracy promotion 204; tragedy of foreign policy 208–12; UN resolutions 195; and Western Europe 74 USAID 125, 129n4, 131 uti possedetis 189 Václav Havel 10 Van Rooy, A. 131 Vattel, Emerich de 190 Velvet Revolutions 1 Venezuela 104 viability 28 Vienna Declaration on Human Rights 192 Vietnam 104 voice and accountability (VA) 141, 142 void of power 183–4, 187 voting rights 60, 61 WACAM 145, 146 wage-earner fund proposals 95 war on terrorism 41 weapons of mass destruction 211 welfare state 76, 77, 94, 95 Wen Jiabao 81 Western approach: to democratisation in AME 179–83 Western governments: and AME 172–3; patronising attitude 180 Western powers: conventional wisdom of 87; criticisms of 103–11, 112; democracy support strategies 115; and

Index   255 liberal democracy 101; over-promotion by 102–3; and social democracy 103; and UN Charter 191 Westminster features 25 Westminster Foundation 25 Wheatley, Steven 193 Whitehead, Laurence 112, 125, 174, 177 WiLDAF (Women in Law and Development) 144–5 Wilson, R. 6 Wilson, Woodrow 201, 202, 203–4, 207, 210–11 ‘Wilsonianism’ 201 women: treatment of 110 Women in Law and Development (WiLDAF) see WiLDAF

women’s rights organisations 137, 144, 147 working classes 69, 70 World Bank 61, 142 World Bank Governance Indicators 126 world economy: re-integration of 97 World War II 73, 74 Yanukovich, Viktor 108 Yemen 175, 186 Youngs, Richard 88 Youth Alive 145 Zakaria, F. 218, 220 Žižek, Slavoj 105