Democracy Assistance Fails: Front Line

Democracy Assistance Fails: Front Line

Regrettably, our human rights and democracy assistance programs continue to face obstacles that impede their effectiveness. With the fragmentation of resources and capabilities, gaps in the delivery of certain types of assistance and lack of flexibility--be it through Presidential initiatives or congressional funding directives--taxpayers simply aren't getting an adequate return on their investment.

While those deficiencies are not unique to human rights and democracy, these programs are particularly sensitive and deserve special attention. We have seen how ham-handed attempts to insert the United States in the political processes of other countries runs the risk of failing to achieve meaningful reform, and even endangering those who would dare to speak out against the policies of their own governments.
EXTERNAL DEMOCRACY PROMOTION FAILS – ARAB SPRING PROVES NEED FOR GRASSROOOTS SUPPORT

Aiman Saikal, Political Science Professor-Australian National University, 2013, American Democracy Promotion in the Changing Middle East: From Bush to Obama, eds. Akbarzadeh, MacQueen, Piscattori & Saikal, p. 112

At the same time, the strength of the “Arab Spring” is a powerful testimony to the general assumption that the best way for reformist structural changes to materialize in a traditionally authoritarian society is through grassroots movements. They cannot be imposed by outside powers, if the people and conditions in that society have not reached a reasonable stage of impregnation for change. It is this delicate process and balance within democratization that the United States and its allies need to keep in mind.
USAID WEAKNESSES UNDERMINE DEMOCRACY ASSISTANCE EFFECTIVENESS

Thomas Carothers, Vice President Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2010, House Hearing: Human Rights and Democracy Assistance: Increasing the Effectiveness of U.S. Foreign Aid, June 10, [http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-111hhrg56888/html/CHRG-111hhrg56888.htm]

I ask the committee and the House not to think of putting more and more procedures, regulations, requirements on an agency that is already in a sense groaning underneath those that weigh upon it. It doesn't need, obviously, to be let loose from legislation, but it needs freedom. It needs air to breathe. It needs the possibility of debureaucratizing itself and operating more in the spirit of democracy itself.

Stephen Browne, UN Aid Program Director, 2006, Aid & Influence: do donors help or hinder? p. 43

“The more active the donors become, the more they get drawn into the murky, and often, perverse rules of the game that they wish to change. In the end, their activism may help neither the integrity of the democratic process nor the substance of the reform measures that the national institutions are encouraged to implement.” Devendra Raj Panday, Former Finance Minister of Nepal, 2005.

“The International Financial Institutions have radically overestimated their own power in attempting to induce reform in very poor policy environments. They have, in effect, ignored domestic politics.” Paul Collier, Former World Bank Director of Research, 1999.

Dionysis Markakis, Center for International and Regional Studies- Georgetown University, 2016, US Democracy Promotion in the Middle East: The Pursuit of Hegemony, p. 19

Liberal democratic systems are characterized by an emphasis on institutional arrangements, in particular periodic elections, which constitute the primary source of legitimacy under contemporary Western norms of governance. Referring to this reification of electoral legitimacy, Ralph Miliband observed:

“The act of voting is part of a much larger political process, characterized…by marked inequality of influence. Concentration on the act of voting itself, in which formal equality does prevail, helps to obscure the inequality, and serves a crucially important legitimizing function.”

This is especially relevant in the context of democracy promotion, given the emphasis placed by the US on the role of elections in the countries in which it operates. The fundamental inquiry of contemporary electoral politics is demonstrated by the determinant role finance assumes in the process. For example, in 2000 the American presidential candidates spent a combined total of $500.9 million, in 2004 this figure rose to $802.3 million, while in the 2008 elections a total of $1.7 billion was spent. In 2012, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney’s campaign budgets surpassed the $2 billion mark. In each of these cases, the winning candidate had the financial advantage. This is not the primary issue however, rather that merely to participate, electoral candidates have to command inordinate amounts of capital. This is clearly not the manifestation of any democratic ideal.
FOREIGN DEMOCRACY ASSISTANCE PRIVILEGES ELITES AND EXCLUDES MOST COMPETENT LOCAL PEOPLE

Doyle Stevick, Education Professor-University of South Carolina, 2008, Advancing Democracy Through Education: US influence abroad and domestic practices, eds. E. Stevic & B. Levinson, p. 111-2

While foreign partners did not have a great deal of success advancing specific views, they did have a significant influence, however inadvertently, in three areas: in privileging English-speakers, in shaping the forms that civil society would take, and in shaping the agenda. English language ability was not widespread among adults in the former Soviet Union, so projects or partnerships that required English-language ability as a criterion immediately eliminated a great number of worthy – perhaps the most worthy – partners. Those who already had some knowledge of English often constituted a (relatively) privileged group. Bruno observed this pattern in Russia itself, “presumably involuntarily, donor agencies are offering, through development projects, new sources for reinforcing the elitist, feudal-type system of social-stratification” (as cited in Wedel, 2001, p. 114). This kind of reinforcement of elites occurs in part because, as Chris Hann explains, “the focus [on NGOs] has tended to restrict funding to fairly narrow groups, typically intellectual elites concentrated in capital cities” (as cited Wedel, 2001, p. 114). These elites, in turn, are those most likely to have English language skills, although that criterion is no guarantee that an appropriate partner will be found, as Jay Austin points out:

“Elevating a class of English-speaking people who can absorb enough buzzwords from and RFP [Request for Proposals] in order to put together something that looks like a Western budget may or may not be the kind of people that we’d like to most encourage in the environmental sector.” (as cited in Wedel, 2001, p. 120).

Joan M. Nelson & Stephanie J. Eglinton, Overseas Development Council, 1993, Global Goals, Contentious Means: issues of multiple aid conditionality, p. 53-4