Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
The awarding of the Nobel peace prize to President Obama reflects just how strongly many Europeans felt that a rift opened up between the United States and the rest of the world during the Bush years. In their view, Obama’s global reengagement itself merits reward.
Despite concerns that the global economic crisis will lead to political instability around the world, research shows that governments are more often resilient in the face of economic hardship.
World leaders should avoid overestimating the degree of consensus about what building the rule of law means in practice, reducing the concept down to a procedural minimum, and embracing the idea that the rule of law should precede democracy.
Fixing the image problem of U.S. democracy promotion won't happen by curtailing aid programs. The only remedy is to change the actions that damaged its image in the first place.
Democracy assistance, once a bipartisan initiative, has come under threat in recent years, but the Obama administration has a unique opportunity to effectively promote democracy around the world.
Good news on democratization, though often less visible, has occurred in roughly equal proportion to bad news. By taking on this more balanced perspective, the Obama administration can ensure that unnecessary pessimism does not hinder important U.S. support for democracy around the world.
The Obama administration can find a positive new way forward on democracy promotion by changing how the United States supports democracy abroad rather than what emphasis to place on it relative to other interests.
The divide between the political and developmental approaches to assisting democracy starts from contrasting ideas about both democracy and democratization and leads to very different configurations of assistance programs. Yet this division need not represent a rift in the world of democracy aid. Both have a significant place in U.S. and European efforts in supporting democracy around the world.
The next U.S. administration will have to go beyond simply righting the wrongs of President Bush’s democracy promotion policies and reformulate the United States’ understanding of the relationship between its own democracy and the struggling democratic systems it seeks to help abroad.
Though Iraqi political life since the ouster of Saddam Hussein may appear formless, it is following certain patterns familiar from other post-authoritarian settings. All countries where an authoritarian regime suddenly collapses go through a period of decompression in which political oxygen flows very rapidly into a previously closed system, producing disorientation and confusion.
