Source: Carnegie
A forum responding to Thomas Carothers' "The End of the Transition Paradigm," which was published in January 2002 in The Journal of Democracy. The forum includes contributions by Guillermo O'Donnell, Ghia Nodia, Kenneth Wollack, Gerald Hyman, and "A Reply to My Critics" by Thomas Carothers.
Guillermo O'Donnell argues that the scholarly literature on democratic transitions is more subtle than the practitioner approach to democracy promotion described by Carothers. Ghia Nodia defends the transition paradigm as a way of measuring how near or far a given country is from democracy, which is still the only desirable goal of government evolution. Kenneth Wollack of the National Democratic Institute and Gerald Hyman of USAID argue for the efficacy of democracy promotion programs based on prevailing ideas of democratic transition. Finally, Thomas Carothers addresses each of these authors' essays.
