Obama drops democracy. Or does he?

Posted on February 24th, 2009 Jack 1 comment  Print This Post

Saturday’s NY Times piece is causing a stir. These snippets capture the essence:

[Obama's] Inaugural Address a few days later was a sharp contrast from Mr. Bush’s four years ago. Where Mr. Bush called the spread of freedom the central goal of American policy, Mr. Obama made just passing reference to those who silence dissent being on “the wrong side of history.” Indeed, his secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, outlined a policy of the “Three D’s” — defense, diplomacy and development. The fourth D, democracy, did not make the list.

And:

To many Democrats, [democracy promotion] ought to be lower on the agenda. America should not lecture others, if only because quiet diplomacy may work better, they argue. In this view, the whole focus on elections, particularly, is misplaced when so much of the world is suffering from poverty, hunger and disease. Mr. Obama seems to side with that point.

Going by the quotations, many in the democracy business are concerned that Obama’s foreign aid approach will emphasize AIDS, cholera and mosquito nets in rural Zimbabwe, for instance, over political reform in the capital city Harare. We cannot reject the possibility, however, that this is a recalibration of democracy assistance in light of new challenges.

The Third Wave has crested. As measured by Freedom House, the number of democracies in the world has declined for the third year in a row. Just as Huntington identified reverse waves of dictatorship following each of the first two democratization waves, we appear to be in the midst of a third reverse wave.

At a symposium held jointly by IFES and Georgetown last December, several experts and practitioners discussed the challenge and how to respond.¹ In sum, authoritarian leaders have become more sophisticated in the means by which they maintain power. They back each other in multilateral institutions like the UN, support each other with bilateral aid and share best practices on stymieing opposition without resort to naked repression.²

These manifestations of reversal call conventional democracy assistance methods into question. Conventional democracy assistance refers to the usual programs: political party development, NGO development, election assistance, training journalists, et cetera. It is important to note that, most often, these programs require permission from host governments. Broadly speaking, from the perspective of promoting democracy, there are three kinds of countries:

1) New democracies where underdevelopment poses a latent threat to the legitimacy of democratic institutions. These states represent the Third Wave’s most stable gains. These are the countries with leaders most amenable to democracy assistance. Therefore they can benefit from it most. At the same time, persistent underdevelopment combined with the current financial crisis means these regimes are at risk of losing performance legitimacy. Frustration with democracy’s perceived inability to solve complex social problems can make non-democratic ‘solutions’ palatable to populations. So development assistance and governance reform are as important as democracy promotion in these cases.³

2) Weaker democracies whose leaders are ambivalent about democratic institutions. The number of regimes in this category is shrinking, most recently with the exits of Venezuela and many Central Asian states. Now Pakistan and Ukraine are at risk. In these countries, leaders may tolerate democracy assistance programs, but pressure at the top to respect democratic institutions is more likely to produce results. Likewise, development assistance is important for building bottom-up demand for institutions of limited government.

3) Closed regimes. These are countries where leaders do not tolerate democracy assistance at all (North Korea) or only to the point where an opposition might win an election (Egypt, Morocco). There is little sense in running programs to build opposition – that is, conventional democracy assistance – when leaders are unwilling to transfer power after a free and fair election. In these cases, combined pressure at the top and development assistance are jointly more important than conventional democracy assistance.

Gone are the days of smooth transitions. Most of those happened in Eastern Europe. Three factors explain much of their success: post-Soviet window of opportunity, strong incentives for economic and political reform and concerted, high-level pressure to effect it. The last two factors resulted from European Union expansion. The EU unfortunately does not exist in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America or Eurasia. The challenge, then, is to replicate elsewhere the conditions that advance political liberalization, free markets and more equitable distributions of wealth.

If the above is correct, Obama’s recalibration is not based solely on a widely recognized need to tone down democracy rhetoric. It reflects recognition that, in today’s political landscape, conventional democracy assistance is insufficient for consolidating and ineffective at creating democratic gains. Perhaps we are moving toward the unification of democracy and governance assistances with a dose of incentives to liberalize. In light of that possibility, it is worth revisiting a line from the President’s inaugural address:

To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

1. The causes of democratic breakdowns are multiple and beyond the scope of this short blog post.
2. Several means have been covered on this blog. See our tag on authoritarian upgrading.
3. Paradoxically, however, these states get the least democracy assistance. States in the other two categories get more.