Democratic Futures

Re-Visioning Democracy Promotion

Milja Kurki

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9781135102289
• Subtopic: Political Economy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Democracy promotion has been an influential policy agenda in many Western states and international organisations, and amongst many NGO actors. But what kinds of models of democracy do democracy promoters promote? This book examines in detail the conceptual orders that underpin democracy support activity, and the conceptions of democracy that democracy promoters, consciously or inadvertently, work with. Such an examination is not only timely but much-needed in today's context of multiple democratic and financial crises. Contestation over democracy's meaning is returning, but how is this contestation reflected, if at all, in democracy promotion policies and practices?

Seeking to open up debate on multiple models of democracy, this text provides the reader not only with the outlines of various possible politico-economic models of democracy, but also with a close empirical engagement with democracy promoters' discourses and practices. Drawing on a broad spectrum of examples, it exposes the challenges faced by Western governments in trying to reshape the political and economic landscape across the world and tentatively advances a set of concrete policy provocations which may enable a more pluralist and flexible democracy promotion practice to emerge.

This innovative new work will be essential reading for all students of democratisation, democracy promotion and international relations.

1 Introduction

Democracy, crises and contestation: revisiting conceptual foundations of democracy promotion

The rights and liberties which were such vital factors in the origins and earlier stages of industrial society . . . are losing their traditional rationale and content. Freedom of thought, speech, and conscience were – just as free enterprise, which they served to promote and protect – essentially critical ideas, designed to replace an obsolescent material and intellectual culture by a more productive and rational one. Once institutionalized, these rights and liberties shared the fate of the society of which they had become an integral part . . . Independence of thought, autonomy and the right to political opposition are being deprived of their basic critical function.

(Marcuse, 1964: 19, italics in original)

As this book was being prepared, the Western nations were dithering over whether to get involved in Syria, having intervened in Libya in the previous year in defence of democracy. These cases demonstrated to many people that Western democracy promotion suffers from inconsistencies and defects: democracy promoters, whatever their rhetoric, seem to be unable consistently to stand by democratic forces against authoritarian leaders.

While inconsistencies in ‘high politics’ of democracy promotion surely persist, it would be a mistake to view democracy promotion as insignificant, as something to be seen as mere rhetorical claptrap. This is because not only is the advancement of democracy one of the most powerful international policy dynamics in the post-Cold War era, it is also now a broad-ranging, relatively well-funded and firmly institutionalised policy field. Note that democracy promotion is today often discussed in terms of ‘democracy support’. While shifts in democracy advocacy have taken place, here the terms ‘promotion’ and ‘support’ are used interchangably for democracy support is seen as the continuation of the generic democracy promotion agenda.¹

Democracy promotion enjoyed a particularly prosperous context in the early 1990s. In the post-Cold War years not only was there agreement on the importance and universality of democracy as a principle of organising social life and ‘modern-ising’ post-communist states, there was also a consensus on the view that democracy could be promoted, or supported, by multiple actors, states, international organisations and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) (Sen, 1999; McFaul, 2004/5). At the same time as a side effect, if you like, of the rise to prominence of democracy promotion of Western states, democratic countries in the West became hailed as the ‘high achievers’ of democratic content and substance, and as such both legitimate role models and promoters of democratic values.

Yet, not only is Western democracy – as Marcuse above reminds us – far from unproblematically ‘democratic’ or conducive to fostering a real sense of democratic criticism, but also the role of democracy promotion can be rather ‘undemocratic’ in democratising societies where it can facilitate some power factions over others in far from egalitarian and dialogical ways. This is not only because democracy is often advanced in the interest of democracy-promoting states or societies themselves, a fact pointed to by many realist and critical observers, but also because it is often advanced according to their preferred ‘models’ of democratic governance, which are not necessarily reflective of the democratic thought and practice in target countries or the kinds of democratic visions that inform the multiplicity of actors who have a stake in the advance of democracy on the ground (Abrahamsen, 2000; Carothers and Ottaway, 2000).

Unfortunately, much of the current literature on democracy promotion, and importantly current policy practice, is ill-equipped to inform an in-depth debate about the visions of governance that Western democratisers and development actors promote. In part this is because a consensus has come to reign in the discourses and practices of democracy support: there is now a consensus on the need for democracy support in global politics and, perhaps even more significantly, a consensus on what democracy broadly means (see also Smith, 1994; Burnell, 2000; Gershman and Allen, 2006; Kurki, 2010). Thus, even when Western actors accept that they do not always promote democracy, or do everything they can in defence of democracy, they agree broadly on what should be promoted when democracy is promoted. Curiously, despite an increasing interest in facilitating local variations in democratic paths and the need for ownership of democracy aid, the democracy promotion paradigm comes with a consensual discourse that specifies the confines within which realistic and reasonable debate on democracy’s meaning should be accommodated. Below a ‘diversity-appreciating surface’, a surprisingly agreed-upon idea of democracy emerges.

This is partly because there has been a distinct lack of interest among democracy promoters, and democracy promotion scholars, to seriously interrogate, reflect on and debate the various conceptual meanings that democracy can take. While liberal democracy is seen as the core ideal to be promoted, the contested meanings this concept can take are not systematically tackled. As a result, few practitioners or scholars have a good sense of what participatory democracy, social democracy and cosmopolitan visions of democracy actually entail; just as advocates of these visions have argued that realistic democratic practice needs to recognise the inadequacy of the traditional ‘liberal democratic’ paradigm.

This lack of interest in reflecting on democracy’s multiple potential meanings itself reflects in part the dominance of what might be called an ‘instrumental’ ‘problem-solving’ attitude in the study and practice of democracy promotion. Democracy promotion practitioners have been primarily interested in instrumental questions of implementation – that is, how to deliver democracy promotion more successfully – and as a result have been concerned with practicalities which trouble democracy promotion, rather than exploration of the underlying visions of democracy, which condition its practice (Chandler, 2006b: 5). Many scholars too have preferred to stick to ‘problem-solving’ theorising and analysis. This is well evidenced in a forum on ‘meanings of democracy’ which appeared recently in the prominent Journal of Democracy (Diamond, 2010). While attempting to accommodate and reflect on the differences in meanings attached to the idea of ‘democracy’ globally, the forum’s key concern was, in fact, how to measure support for ‘liberal democracy’ – a specific understanding of democracy’s meaning – in non-Western states. Contestation over democracy’s meaning between political actors was not discussed.

This book is informed by the belief that the failure to probe the conceptual underpinnings of democracy support is an important, and a consequential, weakness of current democracy support scholarship and practice. This is because instrumental approaches which ignore conceptual contestation over democracy’s meaning come to delimit democratic debate over democracy and, thus, frank discussion over what is at stake in adopting one interpretation of the idea of democracy over another. Such approaches depoliticise democracy support practice – a practice once conceived (rightly) as deeply normative and ideological in nature!

To counter such instrumentalist tendencies, this work is informed explicitly by a critical theoretical impetus, which contrasts sharply with the problem-solving approach that is dominant at present in both study and practice of democracy support (Cox, 1981; see also Hobson and Kurki, 2011). Instead of seeking merely better implementation of democracy support, I focus on analysis of the hidden conceptual contours of existing practices, and their hidden ideological assumptions, power relations, conformities and contradictions. I study, from a broad critical theory perspective, the current conceptual foundations in democracy promotion, and notably the models of democracy that are promoted by core democracy promotion actors today. I seek to understand which models are promoted exactly by which actors. My focus is on understanding the ‘high philosophies’ of democracy promotion, but also the way in which they play themselves out in democracy promotion ‘common sense’ – implicitly or explicitly, systematically or unsystematically.

The aim here, then, is to go ‘behind the appearances’ of democracy support. I am not just interested in what is done or not done in democracy support and how ‘effective’ it is, but also in how patterns of thinking, social relations, power and room for political alternatives are structured through this policy agenda. Thus, I challenge here the more positivist approaches to democracy support, which conceive the policy area as normatively pre-given and thus primarily technical in nature. Instead I explicitly explore – and invite the reader to explore – the multiple diverse traditions of thought on democracy which motivate many democratic activists and agitators in the West as well as in the many target countries of democracy assistance. While I cannot explore all possible meanings which democracy can take in the multiplicity of local and global contexts, I seek to put forward some possible alternatives and examine how they are, and can be, engaged with in democracy promotion.

I challenge the assumption that democracy promotion, or even democracy per se, is inherently progressive or emancipatory: critical theory reminds us that easy conclusions about the emancipatory edge of specific processes (e.g. democracy under capitalist hegemony) tend to hide rather more complex, and rather darker, truths. Often, forms of conformism, lack of critical thought and thus ‘hidden’ forms of oppression of both thought and action can lie behind seemingly emancipatory ideals. Yet, being more attuned to the positive critical theory of early Horkheimer rather than late Adorno, I am not merely sceptical of limits of emancipatory practices.

Perhaps, rather controversially for many critical theorists, I too seek, in my own way, to construct room for better democratic and democracy support practice. I seek room for revitalisation of alternative modes of thought within the existing policy agenda. There are then not only negative critical insights offered here, but also praxaelogical proposals for reformulation, revitalisation and re-empowering of critical thought, and through it, the practice of democracy promotion. Indeed, critical theory as conceived here necessitates that we open up the possibility of engagement, rather than mere critique, with those who formulate policies, practices and programmes of democracy support (see Kurki, 2011b).

This means that liberalism and liberal democracy promotion – identified as key conceptual shapers of current practice, albeit in somewhat varied and sometimes disguised forms – are not merely critiqued but engaged in a constructive fashion. Thus, I do not mean to suggest, for example, that liberal democratic assumptions and hence practices – elections, rights discourses or rule of law – cannot be progressive and emancipatory. Surely, in Syria or Libya, liberal democratic rights are crucial in defence of the interests of people of various classes and political affinities. These rights and even their promotion, then, are surely preferable to support for authoritarian rule.

However, I argue for a revitalisation of democratic principles even within the ‘liberal democratic’ paradigm. Equality, pluralism and rights are contested values and thus liberal democracy itself is something that should be recognised to be ideological and contested rather than ‘fixed’ and ‘technical’ in nature. Indeed, opening up debate on the meaning of liberal democracy as well as democracy more broadly is a key aim of this work. This is crucial today, for not only is debate on democracy’s meaning returning to political practices with a vengeance, but also most democratic theorists and practitioners remind us that liberal democratic practices may now be dangerously ‘behind the curve’: in rapidly changing structures of political and economic power, and with new forms of democratic agitation arising, classical liberal democratic ideals may be quite incapable of meeting the requirements of meaningful democratisation today (see e.g. Held, 1995; Crouch, 2004; Keane, 2009).

Crises of democracy support

I analyse the conceptual contours of democracy support in a context of a dual crisis of democracy promotion (Kurki, 2012b). The dual crisis is partly a crisis of democracy promotion itself. Democracy promotion, as many commentators have noted, has experienced an intense backlash in the years following the Iraq War (Gershman and Allen 2006; Whitehead, 2009, 2010). As Carothers (2006b) argues, this war, more than anything else, delegitimised democracy support in the eyes of many political actors and target states, which had already started to question the ability and the legitimacy of Western democracy promoters to transform other societies.

This is not all. A deeper, systematic, and I would argue a more substantial, challenge now threatens democracy and democracy support. The repeated financial crises of the last 10 to 15 years have demonstrated the fallibility of Western economic and political models of governance. The changing power structures in world politics – the relative decline of US power, resurgence of the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) and the increasing confidence of non-liberal states – are all placing some pressure on Western democracy promotion policy. To what extent should Western liberal countries and their development organisations lead in structuring the societies elsewhere when their own political, social and politico-economic structures are failing, both in terms of effectiveness and legitimacy?

Indeed, in the context of today’s crises, no longer is democracy promotion a straightforwardly uncontested agenda (if it ever was). Not only are democracy promoters today more circumspect, if not apologetic, about their policies and practices, but also recipient states and populations too have demonstrated significant scepticism of the West’s agenda (see e.g. Sadiki, 2000, 2004; International IDEA 2009a). Moreover, some commentators have explicitly called for greater awareness of the problems of Western democratic governance models in the context of democratisation (Armony and Schamis, 2005; O’Donnell, 2007; Rupnik, 2010).

Yet, the democracy support industry has not relinquished its power, and shows little sign of disappearing from Western policy agendas. Whether it be developments in Libya, or Syria, or North Korea, it is still predominantly in the name of democracy ‘promotion’ – or the ‘rebranded’ somewhat less pushy notion of ‘democracy support’ – that such countries are engaged by Western actors. The instruments and projects of Western development agencies and NGOs show little sign of losing interest in democratisation of third countries. What is interesting to note is that the democracy support agenda rolls on, despite the challenges facing democracy promotion in the context of the crisis of the legitimacy of Western foreign policy interventions and the crisis of Western models of democracy and economics. (For arguments in defence, see e.g. Diamond, 2008a; Mandelbaum, 2007; McFaul, 2010.)

However, what is not often noted is that the agenda today rolls on in very interesting new ways. The last 10 to 15 years have brought about interesting conceptual as well as practical shifts in democracy support, and their nature and significance are in part what I am interesting in examining in my analysis of the conceptual basis of democracy support. What does the move to local ownership, civil society aid, and language of diverse paths to democracy mean for democracy support? The conceptual approach adopted here speaks not only to current debates on what kind of democracy should be promoted, and the power relations of democracy support, but also to debates about the capacity of democracy support to shift their practices and ideals in an arguably shifting liberal world order.

These dynamics are not, it would seem, fully addressed or appreciated in contemporary studies of democracy support. Why?

Literature – state of the art

Current studies can be divided into roughly two camps. In academia, the mainstream literature on democracy promotion that is relevant to policy has been getting more substantial and detailed. Much has been written on democracy support, its actors, its targets and its instruments. However, the so-called ‘mainstream democracy promotion literature’ also has very specific interests. Almost exclusively, it focuses on analysis of one of three things.

For many, the core puzzle involves analysis of why democracy promotion should be engaged in and what its relevance and impact are in international politics (see e.g. Carothers, 2005; Diamond, 2008a; Mandelbaum, 2007; McFaul, 2010; Youngs, 2010). Others analyse the motivations which specific kinds actors have to engage in specific types of democracy promotion (see e.g. Smith, 1994; Cox et al., 2000; Carothers and Ottaway, 2000, 2005; Carothers 2005, 2006a, 2009a; Youngs, 2001, 2010; Pridham, 2005; Hyde-Price, 2008; Magen, Risse and McFaul, 2009; Lavenex and Schimmelfennig, 2010) or analysis of why democracy promotion unfolds as it does today (Burnell, 2000; Kumar, 2005; Zeeuw, 2005; Barany and Moser, 2009; Burnell and Youngs 2010; Texeira, 2009; Barkan 2011). A third group of analysts focus on interrogating the specific successes and failures of democracy support, in specific cases or across cases (Teixeira, 2008; Youngs 2010; Burnell, 2011; Wolff, 2009). There is much interest also in working out when and where democracy support succeeds and under what conditions. Further, more and more work today is focused on analysing the different modes of operation of democracy support: problems of electoral support vis-à-vis civil society support, or development aid vis-à-vis military intervention (Burnell, 2000; Carothers, 2006a; Huber 2008).

Studies such as these are both systematic and evidence-based and cover more and more ground in terms of cases and regions. They are then very welcome additions to the academic study of democracy promotion, which some decades ago was rather meagre. Yet, such studies are also problematic, or rather incomplete, in two ways. First, as already mentioned, they tend to focus on analysis of concrete implementation problems on the ground and their interests are, in the language of critical theory, ‘problem-solving’ (Cox, 1981). They tend to want to identify what goes wrong in democracy support and how to make it better. Second, there is little reflection in the literature on the conceptual assumptions on which democracy promotion, support, and assistance are based. Most studies work within a paradigm which sees democracy as an uncontested good, and crucially as a concept, the meaning of which is self-evidently captured by Western liberal democratic understanding of democracy (Burnell, 2000; Whitehead, 2002). Democracy entails elections, civil and political rights and rule of law, and – crucially – is assumed to go together with a capitalist market economy (see Kurki, 2010 for detailed analysis).

Even those who note the historical contingency of such conceptual leanings acknowledge that these conceptual decisions are necessary in today’s context, given that liberal ideals seem to dominate (Burnell, 2000; Whitehead, 2002). As a result, the literature does not engage with the differences of views over democracy among target populations or the donors (Abrahamsen, 2000; Sadiki, 2004; Bell, 2006), nor the power relations involved in the promotion of specific concepts of democracy (Robinson, 1996; Gills et al., 1993).

This is the case, despite the fact that recently some more reflective ‘conceptually oriented’ studies have emerged from the mainstream. Collier and Levitsky’s (1997) conceptual study initiated some conceptual reflexivity, for example. They discussed the various options political scientists have to speak of ‘democracy with adjectives’ and noted various ways to proceed as well as various dangers involved in ‘conceptual stretching’. Yet, this effort did not involve dealing with normative visions of democracy beyond an essentially liberal paradigm, nor exploration of the ideological debate that is attached to definitions of democracy. In not touching on these aspects of conceptu...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Interventions
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: Democracy, crises and contestation: revisiting conceptual foundations of democracy promotion
• PART I Democracy as a contested concept: surveying politico-economic visions of democracy
• PART II Politico-economic models of democracy in democracy promotion practice
• PART III Conclusions and policy provocations
• Notes
• References
• Index