Democracy Promotion
For all the talk of “democracy promotion” in the US political debate, there’s very little acknowledgment that the EU expansion process has probably been the most successful democracy promotion endeavor anyone’s ever come up with. See, for example, what lies in store for Croatia now that Slovenia’s no longer holding up their accession process:
It is certainly a big leap forward for Croatia after months in which talks had stalled, thanks to the veto by Slovenia.
Now that the joint border dispute appears to be close to a resolution, talks are once again under way.
Croatia still has some work to do though – its fight against corruption, the efficiency of its courts and public administration bodies, and co-operation with The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia all present considerable challenges.
The carrot of EU membership is tasty enough that it can actually force incumbents in transitional states to make serious efforts on these issues. Absent that kind of carrot, the tendency is for democracy to be a useful slogan for opposition movements that gets dropped by whoever’s in power at the moment.
34 Responses to “Democracy Promotion”
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October 5th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
For all the talk of “democracy promotion” in the US political debate, there’s very little acknowledgment that the EU expansion process has probably been the most successful democracy promotion endeavor anyone’s ever come up with.
Excellent Matt. This little stint in Europe seems to be paying off. Seriously. This strong post (at least judged from what a lot of Americans know, this is CW in Europe) stands in contrast to this bit of nonsense you posted recently re: EU politics:
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/03/the_eu_and_the_crisis_beginning_of_the_end_or_end_of_the_beginning.php
October 5th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
the EU expansion process has probably been the most successful democracy promotion endeavor anyone’s ever come up with
Uh, no. That would be the Cold War.
October 5th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
The Cold War was not a “democracy promotion endeavor” Al. The US (and conservatives!) were happy to let Franco rule Spain. EU expansion is specifically linked to democratization. If you don’t democratize and reform–though how much reform is needed is debateable–you don’t join.
October 5th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
I think Al actually has a decent point. The cold war was a little different in a few ways, but preserving democracy is also pretty valuable. I think EU expansion has done the most to accelerate the development of democracy, though. I think that point is pretty clear.
October 5th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
Uh, no. That would be the Cold War.
Ask a Pole (or any other Eastern European) what they think would have happened without EU enlargement. Most would probably say they would just have wallowed in corruption, Moldova-style.
US and NATO security guarantees kept the Soviets at bay until they bankrupted themselves and withdrew from Eastern Europe. This was necessary, but not sufficient (and indeed, most Europeans would thank Gorbachev for this as much as Reagan).
NATO kept alive the possibility that these nations might enter the first world, but it was EU nation building that brought them in. It is genuinely debatable which is more extraordinary.
October 5th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Interesting that democracy isn’t the carrot but access to an economic union is. Meanwhile the world raves about Chinese capitalism under a Communist heirarchy. And Israeli-Palestinian peace will happen economically, at least in the eyes of Tony Blair.
The world is a giant, extrinsically motivated Skinner Box.
October 5th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
The cold war was a little different in a few ways, but preserving democracy is also pretty valuable.
Okay, but the “Cold War” also trapped millions of people from achieving democracy who might have been inclined to pursue it: the Poles, Czechs, Hungarians, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, etc.
In other words the “Cold War” is not an actor, and it certainly wasn’t an actor pursuing democracy. Even if we change the “Cold War” to mean US efforts to fight the Soviet Union, you still have the problem that the US was happy to side with dictators as long as they opposed Communism. If you want to restrict things to non-Iberian and Greek Western Europe then I guess, yeah the US supported democracy in the Cold War, but again the mechanics are less obvious as to how the US’s support “democratized” anything. But I guess you could mean US efforts in WWII and the Cold War. In any case, all of this is too generous to Al and Matt is right that the current EU efforts to explicitely require democratic reforms in order to join combined with positive economic incentives to joining are a very effective democracy promotion effort. One that neo-conservatives who love to fantasize about blowing up…er…democratizing other countries should study more.
October 5th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
The cold war was only concerned about stopping communism. If democracy was involved, that was a nice plus, but just take a look at Chile to see how much we really cared about democracy.
October 5th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
Chile might have some thoughts on Democracy preservation and the Cold War.
October 5th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Chile appears to me to be a democracy.
Without the Cold War, the countries in Eastern Europe would have continued to be communist for a lot longer than they were (not to mention that countries that were democracies during the Cold War may have become communist).
October 5th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
Who’s Allende?
Al has a point: if you ignore (or forget) all the dictators supported by the US during the Cold War, and the democratically elected leaders killed or deposed, the Cold War was actually great for democracy.
October 5th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
I still think some of you are beating a dead horse with the cold war. Sure, the US supported some lousy governments during that time. But on the balance, I doubt many of those countries would have had democratic governments either way. Even if it wasn’t the explicit goal, preserving the democracies of western Europe counts for quite a bit, in my opinion.
But the EU expansion as a pro-active democracy expansion effort wins hands down.
October 5th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Have a fucking banana, Al.
October 5th, 2009 at 1:44 pm
Re Matthew’s comment “Absent that kind of carrot, the tendency is for democracy to be a useful slogan for opposition movements that gets dropped by whoever’s in power at the moment. ”
——————
That is actually hilarious given Frank Rich’s OpEd yesterday re the “Rabbit Ragu Democrats” in Washington — i.e., how the lobbying environment of Big Money interests seems not to have changed at all. Except we now have Heather Podesta instead of Jack Abramoff. (Podesta? Podesta? Where have I heard that name before?)
See http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/opinion/04rich.html?_r=1
(The name comes from the Italian restaurant Ristorante Tosca
on F Street )
October 5th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
Al has a point: if you ignore (or forget) all the dictators supported by the US during the Cold War, and the democratically elected leaders killed or deposed, the Cold War was actually great for democracy.
Yes, and that is in fact what we do. So: good for democracy.
October 5th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Why oh Why:
Who’s Allende?
Al has a point: if you ignore (or forget) all the dictators supported by the US during the Cold War, and the democratically elected leaders killed or deposed, the Cold War was actually great for democracy.
Well with the Cold War over you would think the Capitalist West would bare its teeth and turn all of South America into dictatorships. Why didn’t that happen? I mean that is what I was led to believe and yet it never happened.
Regarding the EU, they stop making up reasons to not allow Turkey to join, however difficult the transition would be.
October 5th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
Well with the Cold War over you would think the Capitalist West would bare its teeth and turn all of South America into dictatorships. Why didn’t that happen? I mean that is what I was led to believe and yet it never happened.
My point was that the US’s reason for fighting the Cold War was to stop the Soviet Union, and therefore it was willing to make all kinds of compromises. That is to say, the point of the Cold War was not to democratize places without democracy it was to protect the US and Western Europe. (And while it is true that US conservatives were a little too comfortable with right-wing dictators, I do think even they, if they had their druthers, would have preferred to have been dealing with democratic allies.) The point of the EU expansion process is, among other things, to democratize and integrate the EU’s eastern neighbors.
October 5th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
Well with the Cold War over you would think the Capitalist West would bare its teeth and turn all of South America into dictatorships. Why didn’t that happen?
Exactly: the Cold War is over, and now most countries in South America are democracies. Some of them are even led by sociallists without a resulting CIA-supported coup d’etats (except, of course, a failed one in Venezuela).
October 5th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
There is not a single real democracy in the world. And the capitalist system’s bourgeois democracy facade that you guys apparently believe is some sort of god’s gift to men is nothing to brag about. It’s fundamentally undemocratic.
October 5th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
Now that the Cold War is over, Hugo Chavez is turning countries that used to be democracies back into dictatorships.
October 5th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
Al would probably think that Chile under Pinochet was a democracy, if he knew who Pinochet was.
October 5th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
Hugo Chavez takes some rich swine’s wealth and gives it to the poor. To you, my friend, that equals to “undemocratic”. That tells me everything I need to know about your definition of “democracy”.
October 5th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
Re: Hugo Chavez takes some rich swine’s wealth and gives it to the poor. To you, my friend, that equals to “undemocratic”. That tells me everything I need to know about your definition of “democracy”
I rarely if ever agree with Mr. Abb1, but he is correct here
Re: Well with the Cold War over you would think the Capitalist West would bare its teeth and turn all of South America into dictatorships. Why didn’t that happen? I mean that is what I was led to believe and yet it never happened.
Don’t be f*cking ridiculous. The US cared about Latin American right-wing dictatorships as a bulwark against Left-wing revolution. They don’t care so much if those countries are ‘democratic’ or ‘dictatorial’ once the threat of revolution is gone. Though President Bush did back the overthrow of the government in Haiti in 2004, in the aftermath of which several thousand people were killed in right wing purges.
Re: Uh, no. That would be the Cold War.
Uh, Greece? Nicaragua? Chile?
Scr*w the EU, scr*w the Cold War, and scr*w liberal capitalism. And while I’m at it, scr*w democracy promotion too. The partisans of the Cold War in Central America are cordially invited to go get s*cked off by a herpetic horse.
October 5th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
The Cold War was nothing but a war between a bunch of scums*cking thugs dressed in blue on one side, and a bunch of scums*cking thugs dressed in red on the other. In Eastern Europe the thuggery tended to be more on the Soviet side, and in Latin America it tended to be on the American side. The only honourable thing in the Cold War was to stay neutral.
October 5th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
Re Poptarts at 16: “Well with the Cold War over you would think the Capitalist West would bare its teeth and turn all of South America into dictatorships. Why didn’t that happen? I mean that is what I was led to believe and yet it never happened.”
—————
Oh, bullshit.
Look at the the Gini Coefficients for South America — that show the worse maldistributions of income on the planet.
http://dawnsearlylight.blogs.com/photos/uncategorized/gini_coefficient.gif
Why do you think the people of Argentina haven’t killed every fucking elite down there? Could it have something to do with the “DIrty War” –where people were picked up off the street by Argentina’s military, flown out over the Atlantic and dropped overboard?
Why do you think that South America isn’t ruled by dictatorships?
What do you think is the purpose of US SOUTHCOM? Of the School of the Americas at Fort Benning?
October 5th, 2009 at 6:52 pm
Re: To you, my friend, that equals to “undemocratic”. That tells me everything I need to know about your definition of “democracy”.
In the case of Chavez, undemocratic means setting himself up as President for Life and closing down any media outlet that criticises him. Had George W Bush done that most of us here would have cussed him out as a fascist dictator, and we would have been right.
October 5th, 2009 at 7:04 pm
Re: In the case of Chavez, undemocratic means setting himself up as President for Life and closing down any media outlet that criticises him.
He still faces an election in 2013. Moreover, in the US the Democrats hadn’t enacted a coup, killed 40 Republican activists during the single day they held power, launched two general strikes, suborned the DC police to commit mutiny, assassinated hundreds of peasant activists, called for the secession of California, murdered the attorney general, taken money from the Iranian government and the Taliban, kept up a nonstop barrage of “Bush=Hitler” propaganda, promised to suspend the entire constitution if they won an election, conspired with the Chinese Army to invade Alaska, and generally fostered as much mayhem as they possibly could with a complete disregard for the common good. Nor is the Democrats’ entire agenda based on the DC hipsters monopolizing the entire national economy and subsidizing vacations in Paris while the people of Texas are starving to death.
October 5th, 2009 at 7:06 pm
That is to say, if the Venezuelan opposition were civilized people, instead of a bunch of oligarcho-fascist thugs, you might have a point. In point of fact, they are _not_ (for the most part) civilized people. Would you support Steve Sailer’s right to run a radio station if the Klan was still lynching people right and left?
October 6th, 2009 at 3:17 am
@26, this is bullshit, they have elections in Venezuela more meaningful than in the US. He won in 2006 with 63%. They do national referenda, which never happens in the US. Rich swine don’t own all of their media in Venezuela anymore, which is far better than the US. Venezuela is far more democratic.
However, democracy is only a means to an end and it doesn’t always work; sometimes what’s necessary is a revolution, terror, and dictatorship for a while. See The French Revolution.
October 6th, 2009 at 5:50 am
An EU is going to form South of us, isn’t it. It’s coming. It might take decades for South and Central America to achieve what the EU has, but it’s coming. The United States is soon to be surrounded by powerful blocks of nations, if it is not already. Nation-states working in large groups to the mutual advantage of all. Like the National Football League.
Who do we got? Nobody. The actor I feel bad for is Canada. They are trapped on this ever more isolated island with this big goofball that seemingly is never going to figure shit out. They have to trade their asses off with us, and provide us with an ever increasing amount of “dirty” oil, but it seems like Canada would prefer, at this stage, to start severing some ties.
Who can blame them? The US will probably be left with Mexico! We have been joined at the hip in different places over the centuries, so it might seem natural. But this has proved disastrous for Mexico, hasn’t it, especially recently. I expect Canada’s future is to look East/West, and Mexico, to look South.
And the United States will be left isolated and alone, staring at its worn shoes, repeating to over and over to itself “Capitalism works, Capitalism works, Capitalism works….”
October 6th, 2009 at 6:32 am
One thing that hasn’t been touched on all that much about the World Economic Crisis, the United States blew up much of the world’s banking system. Blew it sky high! Our ideas, our brilliant theories, wrecked UK banking. Not to long ago London was the financial center of the world, now their banking system is shattered, and quite possibly the worst on the planet. And the tight ass Germans fell for our snake oil pitch. German banking is in trouble, who woulda thought! And poor Ireland and Iceland, they got fucked big time too, believing in “The Magic!” And so many others. Sorry Spain!
Some countries were left unscathed, smart enough to keep psychotic American banking theories from leaching their way into their systems. Savvy Canada, for one, so close to us, and yet almost untouched by American wrecklessness. Canada, so vastly different in their approach, light years away, and China, the giant and ruthless machine, laughing at us, our stupid theories, blowing past us and planting their flag firmly on the summit of world economic hegemony.
Who is going to listen to us now? No one! And yet America is still stumbling around, like a big and obnoxious drunk, talking the same old shit. “Get you Hedge Funds and Naked Shorting, hereah! Popcorn! Hedge Funds! Naked Shorting! Peanuts!”
October 6th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Cold war democracy promotion? What the hell? During the cold war, American policy was capitalism promotion, not democracy promotion. Stritcly right wing capitalist dictatorship were strongly prefered over center left/left Democracies. No poor US dependent country could even get away with what UK or France did at the time. Many military coups were supported against legimiate democratic governments when they dared to do the evil socialism (=nationalice a few big companies ). Its no coincidence that South America became much more democratic after the cold war.
October 6th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
Re: An EU is going to form South of us, isn’t it. It’s coming. It might take decades for South and Central America to achieve what the EU has, but it’s coming.
Wrongo. it will never happen. Because the people of South and Central America are men and women of virtue, not soulless Brussels hipsters, and they will never acquiesce to the sort of hedonist paradise of playboys which England, France and Germany seems sadly to be slouching towards.
South America does not want to be like the West, they want to be better than the West. And God bless them in that endeavour.
October 6th, 2009 at 8:43 pm
Europe has been no more effective than the US in promoting democracy in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Central Asia, the Ukraine, the Caucasus.
The US has been relatively effective in promoting democracy in Latin America at the tail end of the Cold War and in the 1990s.