Promoting Democracy: Opportunities and Issues

With the people of more than one hundred nations living under totalitarian or authoritarian rule, the promotion of democratic development and democratic institutions is likely to be a complex and difficult endeavor for many decades to come. In this collection of papers, eight experienced practitioners and scholars report and analyze what they have learned regarding practical complexities and difficulties. The opening chapter sets current United States' endeavors at promoting democracy into historical context, describing the American sense of mission regarding the promotion of democracy. A second chapter indicates how different authoritarian regimes require different democratizing approaches. Next, an analysis is presented to the consequences--intended and otherwise--of political aid for donor-recipient relationships. Recent efforts, particularly under Foreign Assistance Act programs, are reviewed and assessed, with special attention to the failures. Four chapters are devoted to the role of labor unions, business associations, agrarian workers' organizations, and various types of cooperatives have played in democracy promotion. A more theoretical chapter identifies the intimate connections between freedom of economic associations, political democracy, and the development of thriving market economies. The concluding chapters report on efforts to bring together a formal association of democracies; on the advantages of separating out nongovernmental from governmental programs of political aid; and on the empirical problems of program design and evaluation in the democracy promotion field.