Peacebuilding and democracy promotion

Abstract

The promotion of norms and institutions associated with liberal democracy constitutes a core element of mainstream peacebuilding strategies. According to a broadly accepted definition, democracy promotion refers to all measures of external actors that aim explicitly and directly at establishing, strengthening, improving or defending democracy in a given country. With a view to the actual practice of democracy promotion, which is dominated by North-Western governments including the European Union, this implies that democracy promotion usually means liberal democracy promotion. This chapter explains that these challenges to democracy promotion result inter alia from a multiple crisis of legitimacy, and that this crisis of legitimacy can be traced to fundamental normative problems with which the overall idea of promoting democracy from the outside is confronted. Whether the aim is to promote democracy or to build peace, political experience and academic research tells us that what external actors can achieve is rather limited, while the potential for collateral damage is considerable.