Democracy Promotion: The End of the Transition Paradigm?

Democracy Promotion:
The End of the Transition Paradigm?

In this special symposium, leading democracy expert Thomas Carothers presents a broad-ranging critique of the framework that the United States and the international community uses to understand and intervene in processes of democratic transition around the world. Drawing on cases as diverse as Russia, Argentina, Egypt, and Pakistan, he will argue that democracy promoters are stuck in a model derived at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall but unsuited to the challenges of today's world.

Professor Guillermo O'Donnell of the University of Notre Dame and Kenneth Wollack, president of the National Democratic Institute, comment. This symposium was co-sponsored by the Carnegie Endowment and the Journal of Democracy.

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THOMAS CAROTHERS, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment, is the founder and co-director of the Endowment's Democracy and Rule of Law Project, a research endeavor that analyzes the state of democracy in the world and the efforts by the United States and other countries to promote democracy. He is the author of Aiding Democracy Abroad: The Learning Curve (Carnegie Endowment, 1999) and "The End of the Transition Paradigm," Journal of Democracy (January 2002).

GUILLERMO O'DONNELL, professor of government and international studies at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame, is one of the most widely cited scholars of democratization.

KENNETH WOLLACK, president of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, is one of Washington's most experienced democracy promoters.

Windows Media Audio
Intro
Carothers
O'Donnell
Wollack
Carothers Commentary
Q and A