Is successful democracy promotion possible? The conceptual problem

Bibliographic Data

ID6252903
AuthorsHans Agné (0000-0002-8777-2534, Stockholm University, corresponding author)
Year2014
Volume21
Issue1
Pages49-71
Publication date2014-01-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueDemocratization (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1351-0347 • E-ISSN: 1743-890X
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13510347.2012.709240
OpenAlexW1990683049
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited36

Is it even logically possible for democracy promotion policies to succeed in the sense that they increase democracy in other countries? Empirical research on the conditions for success in democracy promotion must assume an affirmative answer to this question. To study something empirically, it must be logically possible in the first place. Some critical and normative theorists, on the other hand, answer the same question negatively. They suggest that promotion of democracy from the outside is a contradiction in terms, in particular cases or more generally. This article offers a framework for clarifying this disagreement and for facilitating dialogue across empirical research and normative and critical theory. I draw on this framework also to suggest a conception of democracy that maximizes the political relevance of both normative and empirical analyses of democracy promotion (DP), while freeing that same research from the intellectual blockages of potential contradictions. Such intellectual advantages follow, I argue, by defining democracy as an ideal while making its institutional implications explicit; as an exercise of either constituent or constituted power, depending on the political phase being studied; and as located in the internal relationships of world politics.Keywords: democracydemocracy promotionpolitical theorycritical theoryglobalizationconstituent powerexternalparadoxcontradictionempirical and normative research AcknowledgementsFor useful reactions to earlier version of this article I thank Ludvig Beckman, Simon Birnbaum, Nicolas Bouchet, Naima Chahboun, Jasmina Nedevska Törnqvist, Magnus Reitberger, Martin Vestergren, Jonas Wolf, and two anonymous reviewers of Democratization. Earlier versions of the article also benefited from reactions to presentations at meetings of ECPR's Standing Group of International Relations in Stockholm 2010, of BISA in Manchester 2011, and of the Stockholm Political Science Department in 2012. My research has been supported economically by the Swedish Research Council, Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, and the European Research Council.Notes on contributorHans Agné is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Stockholm University. His research interests include normative and empirical problems of democracy and international relations, as published in ‘Why Democracy Must Be Global: Self-founding and Democratic Intervention’, International Theory (2010); ‘Does Global Democracy Matter? Hypotheses on Famine and War’, in Transnational Actors in Global Governance, ed. Christer Jönsson and Jonas Tallberg, 2010; ‘Answering Questions in Parliament During Budget Debates: Deliberative Reciprocity and Globalisation in Western Europe’, Parliamentary Affairs (2011); ‘The Autonomy of Globalizing States: Bridging the Gap between Democratic Theory and International Political Economy’, International Political Science Review (2011); ‘Democratic Founding: We the People and the Others’, International Journal of Constitutional Law (forthcoming).Notes1. Thus, the term ‘DP’ can be applied more broadly than ‘democracy assistance’; see Burnell, Democracy Assistance, 6–10. Useful definitions of DP also demand more than policies being aimed at democratization of other counties. A state can aim at influencing other countries towards democratization while believing that a policy of remaining silent and inactive with regard to the domestic rule of other states is the most or only effective strategy to reach that aim, and an empirically useful definition should not include such policies of self-restraint as instances of DP.2. E.g. Dahl, Democracy and its Critics, 1.3. E.g. Whitehead, International Dimensions; Carothers, Aiding Democracy; Burnell, Democracy Assistance; Pickering and Peceny, ‘Forging Democracy at Gunpoint’; Bueno de Mesquita and Downs, ‘Intervention and Democracy’; Jarstad and Sisk, War to Democracy; McFaul, Advancing Democracy.4. Beetham, ‘Contradiction of Democratization by Force’, 443; Archibugi, Global Commonwealth, 224; Habermas, ‘Interpreting the Fall of a Monument’, 369; Mill, ‘A few words on non-intervention’. A similar view was also adopted by US president Barack Obama in his speech in Cairo, 2009: ‘I know there has been controversy about the promotion of democracy [...] So let me be clear: no system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by any other’.5. Barzun, ‘Is Democratic Theory for Export?’, 25; Hardt and Negri, Multitude, 237. Robinson, ‘Globalization, World System and “Democracy Promotion”’, continually put quotation marks around the term democracy when juxtaposed with promotion.6. In this I follow the language used by, among others, Beetham, ‘Contradiction of Democratization by Force’. In the study of logics, the term contradiction is sometimes used differently.7. Recent initiatives to bring greater conceptual awareness to research on DP (traditionally dominated by empirical studies) include Hobson and Kurki, Conceptual Politics of Democracy Promotion. So far, however, these initiatives have not brought conceptual analysis to bear on the relationship between DP and democracy itself.8. Linz and Stepan, Democratic Transition and Consolidation, 26.9. Møller and Skaaning, ‘Stateness First?’10. Also including some classical contributions, see e.g. Rousseau, Social Contract; Schmitt, Constitutional Theory; Ackerman, We the People; Honig, Democracy and the Foreigner; Hardt and Negri, Multitude; Kalyvas, Democracy and the Extraordinary; Agné, ‘Democracy Must be Global’.11. E.g. Held, Democracy and Global Order; Grugel, ‘Democratisation Studies Globalisation’; Goodin, ‘Enfranchising All Affected Interests’; Macdonald, Global Stakeholder Democracy.12. The distinction between institutions and ideals is applied for instance by Dahl, Dilemmas, 4–11. For contrasting views on the right balance between institutions and ideals in useful definitions of democracy, see Huntington, Third Wave; and Kurki, ‘Democracy and Conceptual Contestability’ (who supplies a useful survey of earlier contributions on this point). See also Whitehead, ‘On “Cultivating” Democracy’.13. North, Institutions, 3.14. North, Institutions, 3.15. As argued, for instance, by Huntington, Third Wave, 6–7.16. Dahl, Dilemmas, 4–11; see also Whitehead, ‘On “Cultivating” Democracy’. Needless to say, many researchers combine idealist and institutionalist definitions, typically by viewing institutions as implications of ideals. Even when institutional and ideal characteristics are combined in a single concept, however, only one level of abstraction can be prioritized to reach a determinate conclusion in cases in which ideal and institutional definitions point in different directions.17. Chesterman, You, The People.18. Of course, this is not to say that an institutionalist conception must reject theories that explain democratization as an endogenous process, since it surely allows the empirical testing of such theories.19. E.g. Burnell, Democracy Assistance, 7.20. E.g. Beetham, ‘Contradiction of Democratization by Force’.21. E.g. Bohman, Democracy Across Borders.22. E.g. Held, Democracy and Global Order; Rousseau, Social Contract.23. E.g. Goodin, ‘Enfranchising All’.24. Cf. Allison and Beschel, the ‘Can the United States Promote Democracy?’25. This holds until we consider cases where intervention is relevant for humanitarian reasons, for instance in the face of mass-killings, in which there is on the other hand no need to justify an intervention in view of effect on democracy. The argument discussed above does play a role, however, in normative judgments of forceful democratization driven by domestic actors. Because a domestic rebellion against an authoritarian government requires significant popular support in order to succeed, it is often assumed that forceful democratization driven by domestic actors does not contradict the democratic ideal of politics as a reflection of the will of the people as long as it in fact establishes a new government. Revolutions become legitimate by being successful.26. Most clearly in Beetham, ‘Contradiction of Democratization by Force’, but see also, for instance, Rawls, Law of Peoples; Archibugi, Global Commonwealth, 224; Habermas, ‘Interpreting the Fall of a Monument’, 369.27. Most clearly in Beetham, ‘Contradiction of Democratization by Force’, but see also, for instance, Rawls, Law of Peoples; Archibugi, Global Commonwealth, 224; Habermas, ‘Interpreting the Fall of a Monument’, 369.28. Schmitter, ‘The Influence of the International Context’, 30. Other scholars who conceive of conditionality as coercive, at least in particular cases, include Sadurski, ‘Accession's Democracy Dividend’; Hyde-Price, ‘“Normative Power Europe”’, 227; Hurt, ‘Co-operation and Coercion?’, 166.29. Cf. Pridham, ‘Complying with the European Union's Democratic Conditionality’, 1223; Sjursen, ‘Why Expand?’, 495.30. Sedelmeier and Schimmelfennig, The Europeanization of Central and Eastern Europe; Agné, ‘European Union Conditionality’.31. Agné, ‘A Dogma of Democratic Theory and Globalisation’.32. E.g. Schmitt, Constitutional Theory, 264.33. Rousseau, Social Contract, 18.34. Linz and Stepan, Democratic Transition and Consolidation, 26. Møller and Skaaning, ‘Stateness First?’35. Rousseau, Social Contract; Schmitt, Constitutional Theory; Ackerman, We the People; Honig, Democracy and the Foreigner; Hardt and Negri, Multitude; Kalyvas, Democracy and the Extraordinary; Agné, ‘Democracy Must be Global’.36. Rousseau, Social Contract; Habermas, Between Facts and Norms; Nozick, Anarchy, State, Utopia.37. Sieyès, Political Writings.38. Honig, Democracy and the Foreigner.39. These doctrines do not imply that a foreign intervention cannot liberate a people from a dictator (although that could be denied as well, on the basis of John Stuart Mill's argument that sustainable freedom must be fought for and earned; see his ‘A Few Words on Non-intervention’). Rather, what these doctrines say is that democracy requires something more than being liberated, namely that a free people must prove willing and capable of establishing political order by themselves. If a foreign intervention succeeded in removing a dictator when the people were incapable of founding a new state or a new constitution, the political result would be something like anarchy or foreign domination, or a mix of the two, but not democracy; as perhaps seen in Iraq in the years following the US declaration of victory in 2003.40. For a theoretical reconstruction, see Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, in particular 118–26.41. E.g. Whelan, ‘Prologue’; Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox; Näsström, ‘What Globalization Overshadows’.42. I hope that in a later production stage of this article, some more visually talented person than me can step in and improve the perspectives in this figure. If not, I would like to do some more work on it myself.43. Held, Democracy and Global Order.44. Barry, ‘Size and Democracy’, 494–5.45. This conception of democracy is reflected in commonly used democracy indices, such as Polity and Freedom House. These democracy measures are sensitive to whether a functioning state exists at all, but offer extremely limited and unspecific grading (Freedom House) or no grading at all (Polity) of a state's policy autonomy or vulnerability to domination by international actors.46. Weber, ‘Politics as Vocation’.47. Thus far, this critical dimension of democracy has been absent, even from as new and ambitious an attempt at measuring democracy as that of Coppedge and Gerring, ‘Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy’.48. Agné, ‘Why Democracy Must be Global’; Bartelson, ‘Globalizing the Democratic Community’.49. E.g. Breen and O'Neil, After the Nation

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