This article examines the role of the democratic emerging powers – India, Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia, and Turkey – in promoting democracy beyond their own borders. It argues that while these countries have potential advantages compared to western democracy promoters, namely, their own experiences in transitioning from authoritarian to democratic rule and their greater familiarity with neighbouring non-democratic regimes, these advantages have not been realized due to fears of fostering political instability, damaging vital security and economic interests and creating inroads for extra-regional rivals.
Key findings:
- With the partial exception of Turkey, all five countries have enacted and pursued policies to promote democracy beyond their own borders, albeit with different emphases and different levels of priority, and not necessarily using this precise term. Even Turkey has reached out to its immediate neighbourhood, taking initiatives to help mitigate and resolve conflicts.
- All five democratic emerging powers have experienced tensions between normative policy drivers, pushing for more and more decisive initiatives to further democratic principles and human rights, and interest-based ones, often calling for “pragmatic” accommodation with neighbouring autocracies and restraint in the face of systemic competition with large authoritarian powers.
- Despite some limited collaboration in some cases, all five democratic emerging powers have mostly kept their distance from Western democracy promoters, sometimes insisting on regional or “southern” solidarity over human rights concerns. And finally, all five democratic emerging powers have faced capacity and financial shortages, which limited the reach and effectiveness of their policies.
- Notwithstanding these similarities, there are also some crucial differences, in terms of the level of engagement in favour of democracy, the reach and range of pro-democracy policies pursued, and the management of trade-offs between such policies and broader economic and security interests.
Four key factors stand out in explaining these differences:
- First, recent memories of successful democratic transitions processes clearly play a role in shaping subsequent democracy promotion policies. Indonesia, the most recent entrant into the democracy promotion field among the five countries examined, has also been one of the most vocal, certainly within its own region. In Brazil, whose transition dates further back, or in India, which has been democratic since 1950, this has been much less of a factor.
- Second, the relative strength or weakness of the democratic fabric – which includes legislatures and parliamentary committees, civil society groups, and the media – can have a similar effect. In Indonesia, a pro-active legislature, supported by civil society groups and an alert media, has helped to keep democracy promotion issues on the political agenda. In South Africa, by contrast, worries over domestic governance deficits have increasingly drawn attention away from external democracy promotion efforts. Domestic democracy deficits, however, can also lead to a reinvigoration of the democratic fabric when they provoke a public response, as recently seen in Brazil in the context of the demonstrations surrounding the Confederations Cup, in India with regard to the protest against gender violence, or in Turkey with respect to the Gezi Park protests.
- Third, the presence of significant security challenges, especially in conjunction with systemic competition with authoritarian powers, militates against external democracy support, even when such a stance corresponds with long-term strategic interests. India is a case in point: It had to carefully calibrate its efforts to support democracy in neighbouring states, so as not to exacerbate existing differences with regional rivals – especially Pakistan – and to limit the influence of extra-regional competitors – particularly China. These challenges are less acute in the case of the other democratic emerging powers examined, although both Indonesia and South Africa are facing growing Chinese influence in their regions.
- Fourth, strong economic interests and the potential for expansion into the markets of neighbouring states can reinforce pressures for pragmatic accommodation with authoritarian regimes. Brazil, South Africa and Turkey in particular have been facing such pressures, given their already dominant positions in their respective regional economies and obvious interests to expand further. If gone unchecked, such interests can marginalise other policy concerns, notably democratisation and greater respect for human rights. They can also lead to charges of economic dominance and disregard for the legitimate interests of smaller, less powerful countries.
A shift to a more proactive stance would require the democratic emerging powers to make some critical choices as to how to fill their new regional and global leadership roles. To influence these processes and to build viable partnerships, Western democracy promoters would need to acknowledge that the democratic emerging powers face distinct challenges, while insisting on commonly held democratic standards and principles.