Uncertain Democracy. Lincoln A. Mitchell
of the democratic peace. This theory holds that no two democratic countries have ever gone to war with each other, therefore increasing the number of democratic countries would reduce the possibilities for war in different parts of the globe.24 After September 11, 2001, the democratic peace position was expanded so that building democracy was considered an important defense against terrorism. A NED strategy document from January 2002 summed this view up well, asserting that the “global defense of democracy is the appropriate and most effective response to the threat posed by Islamic extremists … the universal aspiration for democracy is the banner under which the battle for the defense of our national interest can most effectively be waged.”25 This view was not grounded in much empirical data, but it dovetailed well with the Bush administration’s democracy promotion agenda.
Democratization was also viewed by many as in the U.S. interest because democracies were seen as the most stable form of government.26 Stability is in the interest of the United States because instability and failed states can produce terrorists or other threats to national security. Once the stability of the Cold War ended, the United States worked quickly to replace that system with another stable system in much of the world.
Economic reasons have also been used to explain why democratization is in the interest of the United States. Democratic countries are viewed as good trading partners. Because markets in these countries are governed by their legal systems, Americans doing business are on stronger footing in democratic countries. Moreover, democratic countries are usually less corrupt, so businesses do not need to pay bribes or risk being at the caprice of corruptible, undemocratic leaders. This was the position of the Clinton administration in the 1990s.27
While most critics agree that democratic countries generally do not go to war with each other, there have been several critiques of using the democratic peace theory to support a policy of democracy promotion. Some have argued that while democratic countries do not go to war with each other, they are no less likely to go to war with nondemocratic countries. Therefore democracy in some countries does not preclude those countries going to war. The exception to this might be a whole region, for example, Eastern Europe after the Cold War, that democratizes more or less together. Indeed, the likelihood of war in Eastern Europe is now quite small, unless Belarus becomes more belligerent with its neighbors.28 Others have argued that while democratic countries do not go to war with each other, the process of democratization, particularly with an emphasis on elections, can lead to instability and violent conflicts, including wars with neighbors, disputes over territories. and civil wars.29 Some have posited that it is not democracy but affluence that keeps countries from going to war with each other, and that as less affluent countries become democratic they will remain likely to get involved in wars over resources or other economic issues.30
Democracy promotion, perhaps in a less public and militarily oriented fashion, is likely to remain part of U.S. foreign policy. For this reason, it is useful to move beyond discussions of whether or not democracy promotion is the right policy for the United States and to ask whether we are doing it in the most effective way possible.31 Policy makers, some of whom may question the wisdom of democracy assistance generally, rarely question whether our democracy promotion programs are actually the best way to promote democracy. However, democracy promotion programs themselves have come under scrutiny by a number of scholars
Carothers (2002) has pointed out that the battery of U.S.-funded democracy promotion projects look similar across very different countries with quite different challenges and histories. It may be that, for example, civic education about anti-corruption, campaign training for political parties, watchdog NGOs, and workshops for lawyers and judges really are necessary in every democratizing country, but it is also possible that different countries have different needs. Political development professionals now speak of a “standard political party program” or “the typical democracy and governance program” in a particular country.
Carothers and other scholars of democracy promotion have further asserted that practitioners lack sufficient knowledge of non-American forms of democracy; that many in the field lack sufficient language skills and cultural familiarity to do their jobs; and that democracy assistance programs are viewed in the host countries as founts of grant money and little else. The first part of this criticism seems less true now than it did five or ten years ago as American NGOs and contractors increasingly use people from many different countries in their efforts to find the best match for the challenges of a particular democratizing country.
The USAID reliance on a training approach to democratization reflects the abilities of democracy assistance organizations more than the needs of democratizing countries. Stressing training suggests that democracy is just a technical concern that must be understood better so it can be implemented. While there is a technical side to most aspects of democracy, this reliance on training and technical issues often forces implementers of democracy promotion policies to focus less on the political aspect of democratization, which is often more critical.
What Kinds of Democracies?
A key question for the democracy assistance community and the government agencies and officials who are making policy is what kind of democracy. This is particularly relevant in the case of Georgia. The question of when a country can be considered a democracy is central to understanding and evaluating democracy assistance. Freedom House offers a graded scale along two dimensions, the civic and the political, that are updated and evaluated annually. The Freedom House measurements are used by many to categorize regimes for the purposes of further study.32 Others, such as Huntington (1991), argue that changing governments through free and fair elections is the lynchpin of democracy. Dahl (1989) described eight institutional guarantees that must exist in a democracy. Linz and Stepan (1996) argue that a country has consolidated democracy when democracy is viewed as the “only game in town.” In practice, the U.S. government makes decision about democracy assistance based on when countries have reached certain, often subjectively measured thresholds in areas such as election fairness, civic freedoms and strength of democratic institutions.
Democracy, even in advanced democratic countries like the United States or much of Europe, is also not yet complete and is constantly evolving and developing. Questions of the rights of immigrants, the role of money in politics, or whether gay people should be allowed the legal rights and protections of marriage are seen as central to defining Western democracies. Advanced democracies are characterized by intense debates over expanding rights and freedoms and balancing liberties and claims between competing groups that result in policies that expand suffrage, grant civil rights to previously excluded groups of people, or offer new protections to citizens. The democracy that is built in the developing world should be equally vibrant with institutions that are able to allow citizens to resolve these types of issues.
Building mature democracies able to engage in these serious issues is extremely difficult, but must be the goal of democracy assistance. We should not be satisfied with weak democracies that do not offer citizens the full range of choices and freedoms we enjoy in more advanced democratic systems. Much of the literature on democratization has sought to create taxonomies to describe the various kinds of semidemocratic or democratizing systems.33 Looking more closely at these systems is important, but we must recognize that democracy assistance must seek to do more.
Ordinary citizens in democratizing countries, particularly in the post-Communist world, where the promise of democracy and its associated benefits has been so strong, often become disenchanted with democracy, making it much tougher to build strong democracies. This disenchantment is often exacerbated because citizens have been told that the semidemocratic post-Soviet, corrupt system they have is actually democracy. U.S. democracy assistance programs must be careful about contributing to this problem by defining countries as democratic before they have established a resilient democracy. In this way, the U.S. imprimatur that democracy is in place for states that have not yet achieved democracy may well undermine the future of democracy in those places. The extreme example of this is Iraq, which has sometimes been described by President Bush as a democracy, but other examples include numerous semidemocratic states such as Egypt and, indeed, Georgia.
A related challenge, which is particularly acute in the post-Soviet world, is that people have unrealistically high