‘Bringing the outside in’: illustrations from Haiti and Mali for the re-conceptualization of democracy promotion

Abstract

This article is about the conceptualization of democracy promotion in political science. It argues that democracy promoters in aid-dependent states do not influence the change and stability of political regimes mostly ‘from without’, as typically assumed in academia. Instead, it mainly takes place ‘within’ the supported political system. Empirical findings from democracy assistance in Haiti and Mali challenge the typical conceptualization and shed light on factors that have been dismissed so far. By scaling-up these findings, the article concludes that a change of perspective from a static to a dynamic, process-oriented, and context-sensitive understanding of democracy promotion on the one hand, and the integration of findings from academic research on political regime change and development research on the other, would generate a conceptualization of the phenomenon that could help discover how democracy promotion works. Finally, empirical illustrations suggest that the incorporation of donors' formal and informal institutions into the supported political system, and the dense interaction between donors and local actors during democracy promotion, are likely to undermine democratization in aid-dependent states.