Is democracy promotion in developing countries a feasible idea? (2019, 15 Marks)
Democracy promotion is the effort of external actors, from states and regional bodies to the UN and private foundations, to build or consolidate democratic institutions elsewhere through aid, conditionality, diplomacy and, at the extreme, force. Its feasibility turns less on a society’s “readiness” than on the means chosen: democracy can be supported from outside, but it cannot be exported.
The case for scepticism
- Structural obstacles. Hamza Alavi (1972) called the post-colonial state “overdeveloped”: a bureaucratic-military apparatus inherited from colonial rule that towers over weak domestic classes and easily captures elections. Samuel P. Huntington (Political Order in Changing Societies, 1968) warned that participation outrunning institutions produces political decay.
- Form without substance. Sukarno’s “guided democracy” in Indonesia, Muhammad Ayub Khan’s “Basic Democracies” in Pakistan and Iran’s elections under clerical guardianship kept democracy’s vocabulary and dropped its substance. Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way (2010) call the modern variant competitive authoritarianism; where institutions are captured, it slides into kleptocracy.
- Coercion and backlash. Iraq (2003) and Libya (2011) produced state collapse, not democracy. Thomas Carothers (“The Backlash Against Democracy Promotion”, 2006) traced the counter-move: foreign-agent laws and curbs on foreign funding, defended as sovereignty.
- Selectivity and retreat. Democracy is demanded of rivals and waived for friendly autocrats, and the leading promoter has withdrawn: USAID ceased to operate as an independent agency in July 2025.
The case for feasibility
- Not a luxury good. Adam Przeworski and Fernando Limongi (1997) found that income explains why democracies survive, not why they emerge. India adopted universal adult franchise in 1950 amid mass illiteracy, against the predictions of modernisation theory. Amartya Sen (“Democracy as a Universal Value”, 1999) adds that no famine has occurred in a functioning democracy with a free press.
- Some instruments work. EU accession conditionality consolidated post-communist democracies, and Levitsky and Way show that linkage (trade, travel, media) predicts democratisation better than pressure. Election assistance and civil-society grants are cheap and rarely resented.
- The demand is domestic. The information revolution has amplified protest from the Arab Spring to Hong Kong (2019), Thailand (2020), Bangladesh (2024) and Nepal (2025), where the uprising ended in the election of 5 March 2026. For all democracy’s flaws, citizens keep judging the alternatives worse.
India’s model
India practises demonstration without conditionality. It was a founding donor to the UN Democracy Fund (2005), its Election Commission trains officials from many countries, and Panchsheel’s non-interference rules out imposing a regime. C. Raja Mohan (2007) describes India’s struggle to balance interests and values; engaging Myanmar’s junta while backing Nepal’s 2006 transition shows that balance at work.
Conclusion
Democracy promotion is feasible as support for a domestic demand, through capacity, linkage and example, and infeasible as export by force or decree. With V-Dem’s 2026 report finding democracy for the average person back at its 1978 level, progress will be non-linear. Democracy is a process societies win for themselves; outsiders can only lower its cost.