21st Century Democracy Promotion in the Americas

Standing up for the Polity

Jorge Heine, Brigitte Weiffen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780415626378
• eBook ISBN: 9781317626190
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Globalisation
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This volume examines the promotion and defense of democracy in the Americas. Taking the Inter-American Democratic Charter (IADC) of 2001 as a baseline, it charts the evolution of the issue over the past decade.

Although it considers historical antecedents, the main focus of the book is on key instances of promotion and defense of democracy in the Western hemisphere since the adoption of the IADC. It analyzes democratic norms, norm enforcement mechanisms and how they work in practice. Special attention is paid to the 2009 Honduras coup, the issues raised by it and the debates that surrounded it, as this was the first instance in which a member state was suspended in accordance with the IADC. Three central themes guide the analysis: the nature of challenges to democracy in Latin America; the role of regional organizations as democracy promoters; and the transformation of Inter-American relations.

The book unveils the key achievements and limitations of the OAS in the field and will be of great interest to students and scholars of democratization, US-Latin American relations, international relations of Latin-America and international organizations.

1 The challenges of regional democracy promotion

• The trend towards regional democracy promotion
• Mechanisms for regional promotion and defense of democracy
• Regional democracy promotion in comparative perspective
• Limitations and challenges
• Conclusion

For a long time, democratic transition and consolidation were regarded as driven predominantly by domestic factors. As late as 2006, when introducing the topic of defense and promotion of democracy by the OAS, Cooper and Legler felt impelled to justify why multilateralism should be considered a relevant influence on democracy. According to them, international influences on democratization had by then mainly been accounted for in terms of structures, if at all.¹ By now, the role of international actors attempting to foster democracy across the globe has attained high visibility. Governments, government agencies, international organizations (IOs) and internationally active nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) engage in democracy assistance and democracy promotion abroad. Along the same line, regional instruments to promote and protect democracy are created. Most regional organizations such as the European Union (EU), OAS, and the African Union (AU) have adopted multilateral frameworks to help strengthen democracy and human rights norms and practices in their member states. Sub-regional organizations such as MERCOSUR, CAN, UNASUR, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the Southern African Development Community (SADC), and even the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have followed suit.

Democracy promotion is also an expanding field of research, relevant to scholars in comparative politics, international relations, and development studies. The creation of multilateral mechanisms for the promotion and defense of democracy within regional organizations is studied mainly by scholars in the field of international relations. They discuss the new phenomenon under different labels, including broader ones like regional organizations as democratizers or regional democracy promotion regimes,² and more specific ones like the legalization of international norms promoting domestic democracy, the commitment to democratic norms, norm enforcement, or democracy clauses.³ The focus of this book is on multilateral mechanisms for the protection and defense of democracy when it is unconstitutionally interrupted or threatened. Yet, this chapter takes a more general look at the role of regional organizations as promoters of democracy in order to set the stage for an exploration of the OAS collective defense of democracy regime, its genesis and key features, and its application in situations of democratic crisis in Latin America. The first section reviews rival theoretical explanations for the emergence of regional democracy promotion regimes. The second makes some terminological clarifications and explores how and by what means regional organizations contribute to democratization. The third provides a global overview of the adherence to democratic norms and multilateral mechanisms for norm enforcement. The fourth section then examines the problems and pitfalls of regional democracy promotion regimes.

The trend towards regional democracy promotion

Proponents of liberal peace theory have long argued that membership in IOs promotes and strengthens democracy. Recent evidence suggests that regional organizations play an important intermediary role between the nation-state and global institutions. One should expect more effective influence on the domestic governance structure from a regional entity, as regional organizations tend to operate with fewer actors and higher levels of interaction than global organizations. In addition, since the vast majority of economic and military agreements are made under the auspices of regional organizations, they are more likely to be able to wield leverage to influence the democratic development of their member states.⁴

To explain the proliferation of regional multilateral democracy promotion regimes and the fact that some regional organizations have advanced more than others in their attempts to bolster democracy, structural and agency-centered explanations have been offered. According to structural explanations, the trend towards regional democracy promotion is an offshoot of a profound, historic diffusion of democracy and human rights norms across the globe.⁵ The end of the Cold War lifted the obstacles to democracy promotion as a foreign policy objective. The diffusion of democracy and human rights was also helped by globalization with its increased trans-border flows of goods, services, capital, knowledge and ideas, and the growing trans-nationalization of civil society organizations and protest campaigns resulting from the information technology and telecommunications revolutions.

The global diffusion of democratic norms is most likely to lead to regional democracy promotion regimes when those norms have spread equally across a particular region and when regional actors unanimously subscribe to the same values. Thus, the adherence of more and more member states to democratic norms will result in a normative change within regional organizations. Hawkins and Shaw have pointed out that multilateral institutions are typically built around robust norms.⁶ Norms are considered robust when they have been in effect for some time, have been upheld even in times of crises, and ultimately are taken for granted and are not challenged. Thus, it usually takes an evolutionary process until norms can be considered robust. Several regional organizations rhetorically endorsed democracy long before they actually established monitoring and enforcement mechanisms.

According to Pevehouse, the promotion of democratic transition and consolidation is strongest in regional organizations with a higher democratic “density,” that is, with the highest share of permanent members that are democratic.⁷ Hence, homogenously democratic organizations reflect existent democratic norms in their member states. Building on those explanations, Hawkins argues that the diffusion of democratic norms is also reflected in the openness of regional organizations to civil society actors. He argues that “institutional permeability”—defined as the extent to which regional organizations are accessible to non-state and civil society actors—helps explain differences in multilateral provisions for democracy promotion: “The higher the level of institutional permeability, the more likely it is that the institution’s policies and practices will seek to constrain state behavior through increasing levels of precision and obligation.”⁸

Agency-centered explanations look at the impact of individual states’ preferences on the development of democracy clauses. By creating international standards, states may want to protect their own fledgling democratic regime. They may also want to exert pressure on other states to become democratic, either because the promotion of democracy is declared a foreign policy priority for reasons of domestic legitimacy, or because states hope that expanding the number of democracies will bring economic and political advantages, such as an expansion of interaction opportunities for trade and cooperation.

In times of political transition, there is often a functional demand by governments of member states to expand an organization’s mandate to democracy promotion or to improve the organization’s democracy promotion instruments. In a study on the evolution of human rights regimes in post-war Europe, Moravcsik found out that the membership in binding international regimes might be in the domestic political selfinterest of national governments when the benefits of reducing future domestic uncertainty outweigh the sovereignty costs of membership.⁹ This “lock-in effect” denotes the aim to embed newly attained norms in a binding regional regime as a means to stabilize the domestic status quo. Following this logic, countries that have recently experienced a democratic transition are expected to be the most active in constructing regional democracy promotion regimes that are meant to prevent returns to authoritarian rule and seek to bind the hands of future leaders.¹⁰

Apart from the democratic status of member states and the organization as a whole, the distribution of power within the region also influences the crafting of democracy promotion regimes. A crucial factor is whether the dominant mode of decision making is unilateral or multilateral. Following a realist understanding of world politics, the interests and preferences of powerful states determine the shape of international institutions. New programmatic initiatives within these institutions are launched by powerful states to serve their interests: “The most powerful states in the system create and shape institutions so that they can maintain their share of world power, or even increase it.”¹¹ This might imply that powerful states inject their ideologies into international institutions in an effort to project their political system and values on weaker states. For regional organizations, this perspective would expect that a regional hegemonic power drives organizational development and leaves its imprint on the organization.¹² A countervailing explanation suggests that the adoption of democracy clauses is more likely in a multilateral setting. According to this view, states are more willing to commit to rules and accept constraints on their behavior under conditions where they do not fear an abuse of the established norm for unilateral intervention into internal affairs. The lower the threat that powerful states use legalized rules in unwanted ways, the greater the likelihood of strong democratic norms.¹³

The decision to institutionalize democratic norms might also result from crucial events or “shocks.” One such challenge is a process of enlargement. In the face of applications for membership, an organization has to clarify whether political conditions should be set for accession. Another challenge is posed by acute political crises. When democratic norms are under attack in a particular member state, regional organizations might decide to establish mechanisms for the defense of democracy in response to the crisis.¹⁴

While each of the approaches contributes a piece to the puzzle, it is difficult to distil generalizable explanatory factors. First, some of the approaches focus on particular regions—often, Europe and the Americas— and neglect others. Legler and Tieku thus highlight the importance of path dependency. They propose that the unique constellation of actors and processes that initially created the regional regimes continues to shape their operation and reinforces distinct modes of democracy promotion and defense.¹⁵ Second, the approaches do not always seek to explain the same phenomenon. While some of them look at the general propensity to establish a common democracy norm in the region, others explore the intensity of commitments, the progress and stagnation of such regimes over time, or the existence of particular instruments, such as accession requirements or monitoring. The following section will thus dissect in more detail what is meant by democracy promotion and how it works on the regional level.

Mechanisms for regional promotion and defense of democracy

Democracy promotion has different meanings. It has become a catch-all term that refers to any effort by international actors to encourage or facilitate the creation and consolidation of democratic institutions.¹⁶ The term is increasingly perceived as denoting a field of scholarship at the intersection between comparative politics, international relations and development studies, related to a field of practice on how to support democratization from the outside.¹⁷ At the same time, democracy promotion is a particular type of external support for democracy that needs to be kept apart from the defense of democracy. The terms refer to different phases and challenges in the process of democratization. Democracy promotion is any attempt to foster and support democratic transition, i.e. the retreat of a non-democratic regime, the holding of elections and the establishment of democratic institutions. However, democracy promotion does not end with democratic institutionalization. It might also contribute to what Pridham termed “positive” consolidation. This is the attitudinal shift in society towards democratic values at both elite and mass levels. It entails the remaking of the political culture towards systemic support for a new democracy.¹⁸ In contrast, defense of democracy deals with “negative” consolidation, involving “the solution of any problems remaining from the transition process and, in general, the containment or reduction, if not removal, of any serious challenges to democratization.”¹⁹ It denotes measures to prevent democratic backsliding as well as reactions to democratic backsliding, and, in the most extreme case, reactions to democratic breakdown. Put differently, the promotion of democracy fosters a movement towards more democracy, while the defense of democracy is meant to hinder or halt democratic decline.

Promotion and defense of democracy in regional organizations can further be differentiated according to their target. Typically, democracy promotion is outward-oriented. It targets third countries and employs various instruments to persuade or pressure them to adopt democratic reforms. In some cases, the externally induced democratization process opens the path to accession to the organization. The example of democratic socialization of Eastern Europe (and currently, Southeast Europe) in order to prepare them for accession to the EU is a case in point.²⁰ However, democracy promotion might also be directed towards member states. Börzel and her coauthors speak of “governance transfer” if regional organizations explicitly demand and/or intentionally and actively promote standards for legitimate governance institutions like democracy, human rights, the rule of law and good governance in member states.²¹ Democracy promotion in its inward-oriented version fosters “positive” consolidation. Measures like election supervision support the institutionalization of the democratic system and the adherence to the democratic rules of the game.

The defense of democracy is typically inward-oriented, codifies the democratic consensus of the member states and applies enforcement measures when members deviate from the mutually agreed-upon norms. However, there are also a few cases of defense of democracy by regional organizations in non-member countries, usually confined to diplomatic measures, such as the condemnation of a coup attempt in a third country. In very few instances have regional organizations gone beyond that and carried out enforcement measures to defend or restore democracy in non-member states.²²

Mechanisms to promote democracy vary in their degree of coerciveness. Soft instruments, like consultation, socialization and persuasion, are used for information only and without obligation. Target states will be convinced of the benefits of democracy by dialogue and exchange. The most common and most analyzed variant of democracy promotion is democracy assistance. It is usually based on consent of the target country and therefore employed when domestic actors have already embarked on the process of democratization.²³ According to Carothers, democracy assistance occurs when international supporters allocate resources (i.e., money and/or expertise) to governments or civil society actors for specific tasks. These can involve training judges, rewriting municipal laws, or providing electoral support and supervision.²⁴ Dimitrova and Pridham further distinguish top-down procedures that target the national level from bottom-up practices that build on local participation. They also differentiate between different addressees of democracy assistance, like capacity building for the national or local governments, training for political elites, political parties or civil society organizations, or measures of political education of the wider public.²⁵

Democracy promotion furthermore refers to activities that do not presuppose consent, but offer tangible or intangible rewards to the target state. In line with Schmitter, democratization might be fostered by convergence or by positive conditionality.²⁶ Convergence happens when the attainment of certain democratic standards is a prerequisite for membership in an association of countries. While states face certain constraints, they embark on the process voluntarily in the first place, following a drive to join an international organization in order to protect domestic democracy and to reap the associated macroeconomic benefits, security protection, and desirable political status. Democratization by conditionality—where democratic reforms are a condition for the allocation of foreign aid or the approval of a loan—is more c...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. The challenges of regional democracy promotion
• 2. The emergence of the OAS democratic paradigm
• 3. The Inter-American Democratic Charter
• 4. The OAS democratic paradigm in action: democratic crises of the twenty-first century
• 5. The OAS democratic paradigm in action: the case of Honduras
• 6. The future of the OAS democratic paradigm
• 7. Conclusion
• Select bibliography
• Index
• Routledge Global Institutions Series