Tentative conclusions on democracy & governance
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The Future of Democracy Promotion
Yesterday’s New York Times ran a story by Peter Baker about the new administration’s approach (thus far) to democracy promotion. Anyone in the democracy promotion business – or those interested in starting in that business – would do well to read it.
Simply put, the author suggests that the Obama administration is “demoting” democracy.
While many of the practitioners interviewed for Baker’s piece worried that Obama might write off democracy promotion, most of them agreed that we need to lower our profile, so to speak. Thomas Carothers, who is releasing an article soon (for those interested in such happenings), expresses the sentiment well for the practitioners when he writes,
“Caution and moderation on democracy promotion are very much in order, including a careful post-Bush process of repair and recovery,” he wrote. “At the same time, however, President Obama and his foreign policy team should not, either explicitly or implicitly, embrace a broad realist corrective.”
It seems what most practitioners worry about is a “realist” backlash, whereby we remove democracy promotion from our foreign policy, on account of the hangover we worked up from eight years of an often hypocritical democracy promotion agenda.
Jennifer Windsor, assistant director at Freedom House, also captures the mood of democracy promoters when she says,
“The challenge for the Obama team is to find words and concepts that enable the administration to distinguish itself from the Bush administration, but not to downgrade support for democracy and civil and political rights,” she said. “So far, I haven’t seen them even try.”
It’s too early to pass judgment but so far it seems the administration is, understandably so, putting democracy promotion on the back-burner while they attempt to save the economy (oh, and Pakistan and Afghanistan). It will be interesting to see how they Obama-ize democracy promotion abroad.
3 responses to to “The Future of Democracy Promotion”
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Maybe this also is the reestablishment of democracy assistance within a wider development framework.
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Austan Mogharabi February 23rd, 2009 at 09:46
Perhaps. I’m skeptical though. It seems to me we’re developing a “Governance” focus: provision of needs, delivery of services, etc.
That’s not necessarily wrong…in fact I still haven’t decided how I feel about it…but I think there is a definite distinction between democracy assistance and governance assistance.
Now, we’ve read a lot of the same articles and a big problem with “democracy promotion” is that it talks a big game but then fails to deliver. In this view, the move by Obama et al is a good decision. They’re going to focus on the ability of governments to provide for their people. However, if you help Azerbaijan “provide” for its people, you’re basically helping an authoritarian government to survive.
If you provide that support to India or many of the other democratic countries (varying in “democraticness”) that need our help, you’ve got a great policy. We help democracy deliver, thereby increasing the value of the “brand” and making it more desirable on its own.
That would require a huge shifting of development assistance funding (as you know) and so I don’t think it’s going to happen. Instead we’ll be improving the ability of non-democratic governments to provide for their people and thereby extend their rule. There’s good in that: the people that we help will be marginally better off. But there’s also bad: we keep authoritarians (who abuse powers and deny right very often) in power.
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Promoting democracy in the Obama administration: recalibration or relegation? | Democracy Digest February 23rd, 2009 at 16:18
[...] the Obama administration putting democracy promotion on the back-burner or simply toning down the previous administration’s Freedom Agenda oratory? Is promoting [...]
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