This paper contends that the problem with democracy promotion is not the over-zealous imposition of liberal norms, as much current criticism suggests. Instead, the paper argues, the problem is governments’ failure to defend core liberal norms in a way that would allow local variations and choices of democratic reform, along with genuine civic empowerment and emancipation. Current criticisms of the democracy agenda therefore risk pushing policy deliberations in the opposite direction to their required improvement.
Most critics of international policies berate Western governments for an inflexible and inappropriate adherence to a specific form of ‘liberal democracy’. While democracy promoters do understand political reform in unduly narrow ways, such admonishments do not stand up to the evidence.
Two commonly-made assumptions rest on weak empirical ground. The first is that Western powers are over-promoting liberal democracy. However, Western powers are not doing much to promote democracy of any type. Second is the supposition that where they are active in democracy support, Western powers follow a rigidly liberal template that is inappropriate and inattentive to local demands and specificities. While in some cases liberal democracy is assertively promoted, sometimes policy favours illiberal democracy; sometimes it seeks advances in liberal rights without democracy; and sometimes it is active in supporting neither the ‘liberal’ nor the ‘democracy’ strands of liberal democracy. The precise nature and balance of such policy options varies across different democracy promoters, different ‘target’ states and over different moments in time.
Seven specific criticisms are made of Western democracy promotion. These are that:
- Western powers limit themselves to supporting a form of liberal political reform that excludes any interest in social democracy. However, donors give significantly more resources for social development and efforts to reduce inequality than to political aid aimed at ‘imposing’ liberal democracy. Rather, what requires improvement is the connection between democracy promotion policies and other aspects of Western foreign and commercial policies that relate to structural impediments and injustices at the global level.
- Democracy promoters neglect the necessary role of the state. In fact, aid programmes exhibit a notable state orientation. Donors seek to strengthen both state and civic capacity, but the way this is being done actually tilts the balance too far away from the latter.
- Liberal democracy is linked with economic liberalism of a type that works against the interests of non-Western states. Democracy support can easily be used as a cloak for self-centred Western economic interest in a way that militates against high quality political pluralism. However, in most cases, Western states are more than happy to delink the commercial and democracy agendas. What they fail adequately to consider is that the pro-democratic potential of economic change is dependent on parallel change in political rights.
- Approaches to democracy promotion are largely determined by pressure from multinational companies for shallow rather than emancipatory reform. In fact, business views and actions vary enormously.
- Western democracy promoters reduce democracy to the holding of free and fair, competitive elections. Rather, Western democracy promoters now arguably under-estimate the importance of elections.
- Western democracy promoters are resistant to ‘alternative’ forms of representation. In fact, the debate has already moved on: donors that had recently been supporting traditional structures of representation have become more circumspect due to unfavourable experiences on the ground.
- Local demand is always for something other than liberal democracy. The reality is more mixed. Many local groups complain that donors have become far too indulgent of traditional forms that are deeply undemocratic. Where a new ‘conceptual politics of democracy promotion’ is required is in pre-empting qualitative shifts in the forms of citizen accountability.
It is important to more fully understand local demands. The available evidence suggests that there is demand for the essential tenets of liberal universalism, made relevant to and expressed through the language and concepts of local cultures and histories. Other implications include the following:
- It must be made clearer that military power is anathema to the standard agenda of democracy support.
- Self-reflexive policy-learning on the part of democracy promotion practitioners needs to be systematised into common, comprehensive new approaches.
- Democracy promoters need to understand how their macro-multilateral policies affect the systematic constraints and potential relevant to the vibrancy and impact of democracy at the national level. Without a rethink on this question, advances at the level of specific democracy support initiatives are likely to be over-ridden by systemic imbalances.
