*Topicality/Definitions Democracy Promotion Includes Military Intervention
Democracy Assistance Fails: Colonial/Political Considerations Preclude Success
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- Democratic Transitions Difficult
- Democracy Promotion Difficult in Mideast
Democracy Assistance Fails: Colonial/Political Considerations Preclude SuccessCOLONIAL TIES MORE IMPORTANT THAN DEMOCRATIC OPENNESS IN DETERMINING AID PRIORITIES Stephen Browne, UN Aid Program Director, 2006, Aid & Influence: do donors help or hinder? p. 9 Aid follows the non-developmental objectives of donors. As we shall see in the chapters that follow, aid is a means of influence that may be related to factors of commercial, geopolitical, strategic/security or historical importance to donors. To take just the last factor, for example, patterns of aid allocation are still skewed by former colonial ties. For all the talk of supporting democracy and economic openness, the former colonial powers still give about twice as much aid to their former colonies that are not democratic or that have relatively closed economies, than they give to democratic and open non-colonies (Rogerson, 2005).
Marina Ottaway, Carnegie Endowment, 2008, Beyond the Façade: political reform in the Arab world, eds. M. Ottaway & J. Choucair-Vizoso, p. 7-8 The idea of a paradigm shift as the central element of the process of democratization is rather different from the usual concept of how transitions occur offered by students of democratization and adopted by democracy promoters. In the more common approach, democratization is seen as a three-phase process: a period of liberalization, followed by a transition represented by the holding of competitive multiparty elections, followed finally by a prolonged period of democratic consolidation. The problem with this conceptualization of the process of democratization is that may countries experience a period of liberalization and hold competitive elections without truly democratizing. They erect the façade of democracy but not the building behind it, and become what I have called elsewhere semiauthoritarian countries. These countries have not experienced a paradigm shift but have simply superimposed the formal processes expected by the international community on the old assumptions about how power is generated and exercised.
Lael Brainard, Brookings Institute-International Economics, 2007, Security By Other Means: foreign assistance, global poverty, and American leadership, ed. L. Brainard, p. 25-6 However, it is also important to be able to deploy assistance rapidly to capitalize on those windows of opportunity that have truly transformational potential. The clearest examples are cases where a country has emerged from conflict into a fragile peace or where newly elected leaders in a young democracy must quickly demonstrate some type of democracy dividend to impatient constituents with unrealistic expectations. As has been recognized by some members of Congress, the U.S. government needs a more robust capacity to anticipate these opportunities and to quickly commit technical assistance, including security assistance, as well as funding, trade preferences, investment guarantees, and debt relief where appropriate.
Larry Diamond, Senior Fellow Hoover Institute, In Search of Democracy, 2016, p. 160 During democratization’s third wave, democracy ceased being a mostly Western phenomenon and “went global.” When the third wave began in 1974, the world had only about 40 democracies, and only a few of them lay outside the West. By the time the Journal of Democracy began publishing in 1990, there were 76 electoral democracies (accounting for slightly less than half the world’s independent states). By 1995, that number had shot up to 117 – three in every five states. By then, a critical mass of democracies existed in every major region of the world save one – the Middle East. Moreover, every one of the world’s major cultural realms had become host to a significant democratic presence, albeit again with a single exception – the Arab world. Fifteen years later, this exception still stands. TRADITION OF LIBERALIZED AUTOCRACY IN THE MID EAST COMPLICATES US DEMOCRACY PROMOTION POLICY Dionysis Markakis, Center for International and Regional Studies- Georgetown University, 2016, US Democracy Promotion in the Middle East: The Pursuit of Hegemony, p. 57 It is nonetheless important to note that the degree of authoritarianism is not uniform across the region; in fact it is subject to considerable variance from state to state. Daniel Brumberg distinguishes between “total” autocracies, for example Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran, and “partial” autocracies, for instance, Morocco, Egypt, and Kuwait, claiming the former is the “exception rather than the rule in the Arab world.” He accurately observes that: “liberalized autocracy has proven far more durable than once imagined. The trademark mixture of guided pluralism, controlled elections, and selective repression in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Algeria, and Kuwait is not just a ‘survival strategy’ adopted by authoritarian regimes, but rather a type of political system whose institutions, rules, and logic defy any linear model of democratization.” This clearly poses a significant challenge to US attempts to promote democracy in the Middle East and achieve harmony. US DEMOCRACY PROMOTION IN THE MIDEAST FAILS DUE TO CONTRADICTORY POLICY GOALS – SHORT TERM VS. LONG TERM STABILITY Dionysis Markakis, Center for International and Regional Studies- Georgetown University, 2016, US Democracy Promotion in the Middle East: The Pursuit of Hegemony, p. 176 The case studies demonstrate the different relationships and interests held by the US with each of them, and by association the differing degrees of emphasis on democracy promotion within them. But they also reveal certain shared characteristics in the US’s approach to democracy promotion in the region, which are broadly true of the strategy in other parts of the world. First, they illustrate the American position that authoritarian governance may well be preferable in certain cases. In the context of the Middle East, the continuity of authoritarian regimes, with relatively few challenges to their rule, has meant ongoing US support. Stability remains the paramount American interest in all of the countries addressed above, as well as the broader region. This was demonstrated in the aftermath of 11 September, when American alliances with various authoritarian states such as Libya, were in fact augmented under the “war on terror”. This evidences the security concerns that underlie US democracy promotion. It reflects a fundamental dilemma at the heart of US policy in the Middle East, which is torn between its existing relationships with authoritarian proxies, which have by and large ensured stability through coercive means, and the desire to encourage political reform in the region, in the hope of introducing a more enduring form of stability, based on more consensual forms of rule. This tension severely impedes the prospects of the US successfully propagating its ideology in the region, and moreover of achieving hegemony, not least because it alienates the very societies it seeks to co-opt. DEMOCRACY ASSISTANCE PARTICULARLY DIFFICULT IN THE MIDEAST Marina Ottaway & Thomas Carothers, Carnegie Endowment, 2005, Unchartered Journey: promoting democracy in the middle east, eds. T. Carothers & M. Ottaway, p. 251 To have a chance of success, democracy-promotion efforts in the Middle East will require new approaches carefully tailored to the regional circumstances, as well as a willingness to go beyond low-risk indirect approaches to take on the harder more central challenges of expanding the depth and breadth of political contestation and encouraging real redistributions of power. Duplication of the kinds of democracy-promotion programs carried out in countries where authoritarian regimes had already fallen and the population looked to the West as a political model simply will not be enough. Strategies will need to take into account the complexity of relations between the Arab world and the West, as well as the special problems that make political change in the Middle East unusually difficult, particularly the possibility that the outcome could be considerably worse than the status quo. Without a realistic appreciation of and response to these factors, it is unlikely that the new rhetoric about promoting democracy in the Middle East will bear fruit. U.S. LACKS CREDIBILITY TO CARRY OUT EFFECTIVE DEMOCRACY ASSISTANCE PROJECTS IN THE MIDEAST Marina Ottaway & Thomas Carothers, Carnegie Endowment, 2005, Unchartered Journey: promoting democracy in the middle east, eds. T. Carothers & M. Ottaway, p. 252 As Marina Ottaway points out in chapter nine on the problem of credibility, the United States has no credibility in the Arab world as a prodemocratic actor. The likelihood that it will gain such credibility anytime soon is remote. Arab publics, as innumerable surveys make clear, simply do not believe the U.S. government is sincere when it talks about promoting democracy. Arab governments, while deeply annoyed at the critic ism Washington metes out to them with increasing frequency, are not really convinced that in the end those rebukes will have real consequences. They do not believe that Washington will take steps that might destabilize long-standing allies and run the risk of making the Middle East an even more dangerous place than it already is.
Marina Ottaway & Thomas Carothers, Carnegie Endowment, 2005, Unchartered Journey: promoting democracy in the middle east, eds. T. Carothers & M. Ottaway, p. 254-5 Neither the problem of credibility nor the related issue of conflicting interests will go away anytime soon. No matter which party is in the White House, the United States and the Arab world will see the Palestinian-Israeli conflict through different lenses, the United States will remain dependent on Middle East oil, and Washington will look to the security services of many of the autocratic governments of the region for help on counterterrorism operations. These realities do not mean that the United States has no role to play in promoting democracy in the Middle East, but they must be factored into the new wave of U.S. policies and programs focused on supporting positive political change. DEMOCRACY ASSISTANCE INAPPROPRIATE IN OIL-RICH MIDDLE-EASTERN COUNTRIES Lael Brainard, Brookings Institute-International Economics, 2007, Security By Other Means: foreign assistance, global poverty, and American leadership, ed. L. Brainard, p. 26-7 Although foreign assistance is a critical tool in advancing American values, interests, and security, an old aphorism reminds us that having a hammer in hand creates a temptation to treat all problems as nails. Foreign assistance is not an appropriate tool for all circumstances and may sometimes be counterproductive or impotent or profitably replaced with trade or technical assistance. Most obviously, while foreign assistance may be critical in promoting reform in resource-poor countries in the Middle East, it is the wrong tool for promoting such economic and political modernization in oil-rich countries.
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