Thomas Carothers :
(From previous issue)
If we look just at the enterprise of democracy aid itself, we see an assistance domain that is growing considerably in size and reach and absorbing some valuable lessons, albeit more slowly and partially than one might wish. Yet a wider focus is essential: The international context in which this enterprise operates has changed tremendously, especially in the past ten years. Democracy aid has entered murky, troubled waters, creating fundamental challenges for it.
When democracy aid came of age in the 1990s, an interlocking set of positive assumptions about the place of democracy and democracy aid in the world prevailed. It was assumed that:
democracy was spreading globally; doors were opening to democracy aid in many parts of the world;
Western liberal democracy commanded respect and admiration globally and neither had nor was likely to have any strong ideological rivals; and the weight of democracy as a foreign-policy priority of established Western democracies was increasing and would continue to increase.
Over the past decade, a cascade of negative developments has called into question or even toppled each of these rosy assumptions. Democracy practitioners confront a daunting set of harsh new realities. These include:
1) A loss of democratic momentum: The global stagnation of democracy is one of the most significant international political developments of the past decade. Democracy’s failure to keep expanding has hurt the democratic-assistance field in at least two ways. First, it has sapped energy and impetus. Democracy-aid providers know that tough cases in which transitions are blocked or never really get underway are facts of life. What compensates for them are the promising cases-the times and places when democracy does break through and gain a foothold. These exciting opportunities are crucial. They make other parts of the policy community take notice, and indeed give life and force to the whole democracy-assistance enterprise.
Over the past ten years, the flow of such good news has slowed to a trickle. Stories about how the democratic spirit is manifesting itself in this or that surprising place have been cast into shadow by persistent democratic deficiencies or backsliding in Afghanistan, Hungary, Iraq, Mali, Russia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and many other places. For a short time in 2011, the “Arab Spring” looked as if it might be the start of a new global democratic wave, but that initial burst of hope has given way to pessimism. Now, many Western policy makers and analysts are asking whether efforts to foster democracy in the Arab world even make sense given the instability and conflict that political change has brought. With the democratic cause stalled (or even losing ground) around the world, democracy-aid providers must battle a growing sense in the Western policy community that the historical moment for democracy aid has passed.
Furthermore, the loss of democratic momentum raises questions in the wider policy community about the impact of democracy aid. The welter of factors that affect transitions makes it problematic to assess the effect of such aid based just on democracy’s macro-level progress. Yet when democracy is on the rise in many places, democracy aid almost inevitably gains credibility by association. And when democracy is faring poorly in the world, hard questions about the effectiveness of democracy assistance are asked. Some recent or ongoing cases offer sobering examples of the limits of democracy aid:
In Russia, long-term benefits from the wide range of Western democracy programs that got underway in the 1990s and operated into the last decade-including rule-of-law aid, electoral aid, political-party building, work with independent media, and support for civil society-may not be entirely absent, but they are certainly limited at best.
For years, Western aid providers held up Mali as one of Africa’s democratic success stories. Yet the vertiginous collapse of the Malian government in 2012 underlined how hollow even apparent success stories of democracy support can be.
The United States and others have provided substantial rule-of-law aid to El Salvador for thirty years. Despite this, El Salvador today is notoriously beset by shockingly high crime levels that have overwhelmed its criminal-justice system.
Moreover, the fact that some of the largest investments in democracy assistance have been made in such difficult locales as Afghanistan and Iraq, with deeply problematic results, has contributed to the questioning of its impact.
2) Closing of doors: When some governments that had previously allowed in significant amounts of prodemocracy aid began pushing back against it in the early 2000s, observers thought this might be a short-term phenomenon. The George W. Bush administration’s emphasis on democracy promotion in its intervention in Iraq, along with Western support for some of the civic groups that were active in the “color revolutions” in Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, and Ukraine, had triggered heightened sensitivities about democracy aid in various places, especially Russia and other post-Soviet countries. But even as the color revolutions faded into the past and a new U.S. president took a far less assertive stance on democracy promotion, the backlash kept growing.
In just the past few years, dozens of governments, in every region of the world, have been taking a medley of formal and informal measures to block, limit, or stigmatize international aid for democracy and human rights, especially civil society support, political-party work, and election monitoring. Aid from the United States is sometimes the principal target, as in 2013 when the Bolivian government charged that USAID was meddling in politics and ordered it to leave the country. Yet the backlash is hitting other providers as well: To cite just one of many examples, the Hungarian government recently began harassing Hungarian civil society organizations for their acceptance of Norwegian government funding.
Pushback-which is often strongest in countries where democratization is in trouble and outside assistance is most badly needed-has multiple negative effects. Most obviously, it often prevents democracy-aid providers from operating. Central Asian governments, for instance, decided about a decade ago to limit externally sponsored aid for civil society development, and looking around the region today one sees a greatly reduced pool of such aid. Restrictive measures by Egypt and some other Arab countries have similarly reduced outside support for nongovernmental organizations in their territories.
Even when pushback does not reduce the amount of democracy aid that reaches a country, it may end up changing the type of democracy support that is offered. To avoid problems, democracy promoters may hold back from politically challenging types of assistance, such as aid for independent human-rights groups or media organizations, and limit themselves to soft-focus governance programming. Similarly, pushback may cause some activist groups receiving democracy aid from abroad to avoid activities that they fear their governments may find too challenging.
3) The troubles of Western democracies: The struggle of Western liberal democracy to maintain the unrivaled pride of place that it enjoyed in the 1990s also affects democracy aid. Democracy’s travails in both the United States and Europe have greatly damaged the standing of democracy in the eyes of many people around the world. In the United States, dysfunctional political polarization, the surging role of money in politics, and distortions in representation due to gerrymandering are particular problems. In Europe, the euro crisis, the rise of extremist parties, and challenges surrounding the social integration of minority communities are raising doubts about democracy’s health. At the same time, the growing self-confidence and assertiveness of other political systems, especially authoritarian or semiauthoritarian regimes in China, Russia, Turkey, Ethiopia, and elsewhere, are making some people in transitional countries wonder whether the keys to decisive governance and economic dynamism do not in fact lie down some path other than that of liberal democracy.
These developments inevitably weaken Western democracy-aid efforts. A U.S. group going abroad to offer advice and training on how to strengthen a country’s parliament will face punishing questions about the credibility of its offerings given the manifest deficiencies and unpopularity of the U.S. Congress. The same will be true for a European group seeking to help another country bridge a sectarian divide based on religious differences. Of course, smart democracy assistance does not seek to export a particular national model but instead offers insights gleaned from comparative experiences and tries to help locals craft their own solutions. Nevertheless, all Western democracy promoters must work harder than before to establish their credibility in other parts of the world, and in some quarters (East Asia, for example) they sometimes barely receive a hearing. Moreover, they can no longer assume that their task is to help local actors move ahead with democracy. Instead, they now often face the harder, more fundamental task of convincing locals that democracy is preferable to other systems.
Furthermore, Western democracy promoters are increasingly finding their efforts challenged and sometimes undercut by nondemocratic powers intent on influencing the political trajectories of other countries. A Western-sponsored anticorruption program in an African country may be outweighed by the deleterious effects on governance of a Chinese economic-aid package that creates perverse political-economy incentives. A program to help create a level playing field among political parties in an Arab country may be undermined by large streams of Iranian or Gulf money flowing to one of them. An undertaking to support free and fair elections in a Latin American country may be distorted by Venezuela’s engagement aimed at tilting the elections toward a preferred candidate.
Russia, China, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Qatar, Rwanda, Ethiopia, and other nondemocratic countries seeking heightened influence in the political life of their neighbors (or further afield) are not always bent on checking the influence of Western democracy-promotion efforts. And their actions are not necessarily aimed at promoting autocracy per se. But often they do cut against Western democracy aid and push other countries in an antidemocratic direction. Western democracy aid, having come of age at a time when it was often the dominant external form of political influence in most transitions, is now facing a markedly harsher, more competitive environment.
(To be continued)
(Thomas Carothers is vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is the founder and director of the Democracy and Rule of Law Program and oversees Carnegie Europe in Brussels.)
