Democracy Assistance Programs Research Articles

Sisyphus in the Castle: Improving European Union Strategies for Democracy Promotion and Governance Conditionality

This study sets out to assess the thrust, direction and scope of the current reform of European Community (EC) aid policies, strategies and structures, as it pertains to the efforts of the EC to encourage democracy, strengthen good governance and prevent violent conflict in developing countries. It explores the difficult combination of democracy assistance and governance conditionality to prevent democratic decay in developing countries. It argues that recent reforms have a technocratic bias, as they tend to focus on improving the administrative and managerial dimensions of European foreign aid. Less attention is paid to enhancing its political thrust and devising effective operational strategies. The study assesses the conceptual foundations of the EC's new policies for electoral assistance and conflict prevention and underlines their inadequacy to address the contemporary challenges of democratic governance. The strategic challenges of European foreign aid reside not only in designing efficacious strategies to consolidate democracy and strengthen governance in developing countries, but also in devising the right mix of positive and negative measures to respond to democratic decay and crises of governance. The article concludes with a series of proposals for enhancing the European Commission's ability to manage democracy assistance programmes and governance conditionality.

Carrots and sticks for democracy in the OAS: Comparison with the east European experience

Regional European organizations have been heavily involved in promoting democracy in Eastern Europe over the past decade. This article summarizes tools that exist in the Council of Europe and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) for promoting democracy, and suggests similar mechanisms that the Organization of American States (OAS) could adopt in order to enforce and encourage member states’ adherence to the principles included in the OAS Democratic Charter. These organizations are examined because their composition and power are similar to those of the OAS. The author suggests modifications to the Inter‐American human rights process and norms of election monitoring, as well as ways of structuring democracy assistance programs to maximize effectiveness.

For democracy's sake: foundations and democracy assistance in Central Europe

Assisting democracy has become a major concern of the international community since the end of the cold war. Not only governments, but private actors-foundations and other non-governmental organizations-are playing a growing role in these efforts, rivaling that of governments and international institutions. This pathbreaking study examines foundations' democracy assistance programs in Central Europe in the years immediately following the fall of the Berlin Wall, both measuring their size and evaluating their strategies. For Democracy's Sake assesses such efforts in post-cold war Central Europe through extensive field research, a rare series of workshops in which Central Europeans knowledgeable about democracy efforts participated, and the author's own experience as a foundation executive. The book includes chapters concentrating on foundations' efforts in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia, a chapter on regional initiatives, and a chapter on the philanthropy of George Soros. This timely volume offers broadly applicable lessons regarding the most effective strategies, approaches, and techniques for helping others develop their own versions of democracy.