Development

2010

This paper examines the evolving pattern of democracy promotion by three emerging donors: India, Brazil and South Africa. It first asks how the emerging donors promote democracy through their development assistance. The paper argues that despite the risk of compromising security and trade interests, the emerging donors have adapted to a 2 £ 2 (two by two) model of democracy promotion by which they circumvent risk by promoting procedural democracy through bilateral means and non-procedural democracy through multilateral frameworks. Second, the paper asks why these three countries exhibit the same pattern of democracy promotion in spite of not having coordination among them. In response, the paper provides a structure-agent explanation. The paper contends that the structural constraints imposed on emerging donors are conducive to the operation of the 2 £ 2 model in promoting democracy. While the model safeguards the emerging donors from criticism of being undue interveners in other countries' domestic affairs, it also privileges them with international recognition for being responsible partners in democracy promotion.

This paper examines the evolving pattern of democracy promotion by three emerging donors: India, Brazil and South Africa. It first asks how the emerging donors promote democracy through their development assistance. The paper argues that despite the risk of compromising security and trade interests, the emerging donors have adapted to a 2 x 2 (two by two) model of democracy promotion by which they circumvent risk by promoting procedural democracy through bilateral means and non-procedural democracy through multilateral frameworks. Second, the paper asks why these three countries exhibit the same pattern of democracy promotion in spite of not having coordination among them. In response, the paper provides a structure–agent explanation. The paper contends that the structural constraints imposed on emerging donors are conducive to the operation of the 2 x 2 model in promoting democracy. While the model safeguards the emerging donors from criticism of being undue interveners in other countries’ domestic affairs, it also privileges them with international recognition for being responsible partners in democracy promotion.

2021

The study examines how foreign aid donors react to changes in levels of democracy in recipient countries. After observation a variation in behavior among developed countries, the thesis explains such patterns through a twofold theory. We theorize that the major donors such as the UK, US, the Nordic countries, Germany, Japan and France diverge in their reaction to democracy because of two key factors: variations in their respective political economies and degree of foreign aid independence from foreign policy. The political economy analysis shows that aid priorities are part structurally determined: donors with liberal market-economies will not tolerate bad governance in aid recipients and will look for the more efficient recipients to provide aid; however, donors with coordinated market-economies may tolerate governance weakness in recipient countries to help with state-building. Second, a high degree of foreign aid independence from larger foreign policy makes it more likely that foreign aid is disbursed in pursuit of good governance outcomes in recipient countries rather than to fulfill the strategic priorities of donors. Donors with liberal market-economies who have relatively independent foreign aid agencies like the US, UK and the Nordics are more reactive to democratization (or lack thereof) in recipient countries. Countries like France and Japan that are coordinated market-economies and do not have a fully independent aid disbursing agency do not react to democratization. Germany that is a coordinated market-economy but has an independent foreign aid agency reacts moderately to changes in democracy among recipient countries. We theorize that smaller regional donors purse strategic interests and thus provide aid as a "reward" for democracy only when it is convenient. We utilize a Tunisian as a case study to show the differences among donor disbursement before and after its democratization in 2011. We bolster that case study through a regression analysis. The case study and the regression analysis support our theoretical arguments.

In the past ten years, democracy promotion initiatives have seen a resurgence in both funding and interest, while institutions that work in the arena of democracy promotion have multiplied. However, this renewed interest has been escorted by a gloomy attitude on account of failed promises of democracy promotion in what has been called, an age of diminishing expectations This backlash is manifested in democratic recession from liberal democracies, in pushback and innovation from resilient authoritarian or hybrid regimes, and by the bad press which resulted of past maladies in democracy promotion interventions. Donor institutions are to change and adapt to this new context, and become a second generation of democracy promotion workers. This paper aims to contribute to the democracy promotion field by analyzing the theory and practice of donor institutions that perform democracy promotion. It describes the characteristics of a second generation of democracy promotion institutions, first by performing a structured aggregation of the insights in current democracy promotion literature and practice. Second, this paper tests the framework constructed by performing an in-depth analysis of two paradigmatic cases: the United Nations Democracy Fund and the European Endowment for Democracy. The resulting descriptive analysis provides proof that these two cases are evidence of a shift in donor practice towards a second generation model. These agencies have a broad, more complex conception of democracy, adopt a post-institutional, agency oriented understanding of democratization and are focused in demand side support and complementing the traditional work of older institutions, with which the coexist Finally, a political analysis of the creation process of both institutions provides insight on donor mechanisms regarding timing and rationale of the creation of those two institutions. The following discussion provides a better understanding of the interaction between democracy promotion theory and practice and some policy recommendations for donors and democracy promotion activists.

International Studies Quarterly, 2011

As democratization has advanced in the developing world, developed countries such as the United States have implemented explicit strategies of democracy promotion by providing assistance to governments, political parties, and other non-governmental groups and organizations through a variety of channels. This analysis examines the relationship between democracy support by the US Agency for International Development and democratization in the developing world between 1988 and 2001. In a model that examines the simultaneous processes linking democratization and democracy aid, we argue that carefully targeted democracy assistance has greater impact on democratization than more generic economic aid packages. We test the relationship in a simultaneous equation model, supplemented by several time-series crosssectional regressions. Our data reveal a positive relationship between specific democracy aid packages and progress toward democracy. We conclude by weighing the implications of these findings for democratization and democracy promotion policies.

2012

Over the past two decades, donors increasingly linked foreign aid to democracy objectives in sub-Saharan Africa. Yet systematic research on this topic typically focuses on how aid influences democratic transitions. This study investigates whether and how foreign aid affects the process of democratic consolidation in sub-Saharan Africa by examining two potential mechanisms: (1) the use of aid as leverage to buy political reform, and (2) investment in the opposition. We test these mechanisms using five dependent variables that capture different aspects of democratic consolidation. Using survival analysis for the period from 1991 to 2008, we find that democracy and governance aid has a consistently positive effect on democratic consolidation. Economic aid, on the other hand, has no effect on democratic consolidation.

1999

Most of us, ardent democrats all, would like to believe that democracy is not merely good in itself, it is also valuable in enhancing the process of development. Of course, if we take a suitably broad concept of development to incorporate general well-being of the population at large, including some basic civil and political freedoms, a democracy which ensures these freedoms is, almost by definition, more conducive to development on these counts than a non-democratic regime. We may, however, choose to look at freedoms as potentially instrumental to development, as is usually the case in the large empirical literature that aims at finding a statistical correlation between some measure of democracy and some measure of a narrower concept of development (that does not include those freedoms as an intrinsic part of the nature of development itself). I have in general found this empirical literature rather unhelpful and unpersuasive. It is unhelpful because usually it does not confirm a causal process and the results often go every which way. Even the three surveys of the empirical literature that I have seen come out with three different conclusions: One by Sirowy and Inkeles (1991) is supportive of a negative relationship between democracy and development; one by Campos (1994) is of a generally positive relationship; and the one by Przeworski and Limongi (1993) is agnostic ("we do not know whether R. Wade, Governing the Market: Economic Theory and the Role of the