Talk:Democracy promotion

Key actors POV
The "Key actors" section as a whole should be removed as POV, since examples of democracy promotion cannot possibly be provided without first asserting a paradigm of usage for the term 'democracy'. For example, I would dispute the claim that USAID, which (for example) distributed supplies primarily to affluent areas of Haiti after the 2010 earthquake while working with the US military to ensure that the poor did not become a threat to that system, was concerned with promoting democracy.82.23.135.169 (talk) 01:16, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

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Merge from democracy building
This article already mentions this term as a synonym, so I think this stub could be safely merged here. Thoughts? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 01:05, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I support the merger. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 01:36, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
 * ✅ Klbrain (talk) 17:42, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

Democracy promotion versus democracy support
hi. You democracy support should be distinguished from democracy promotion, in that democracy support is more about supporting grassroots, bottom-up democracy in other countries, while democracy promotion is more (neo)-colonial, to put it bluntly. So I don't see how your references support your claim that there's a significant difference in usage.
 * In https://www.oecd.org/derec/norway/48085855.pdf I see:
 * no definition anywhere that I could find (but fashionable pontification saying methodology instead of method; why not methodologicalisationalism, which is even more intellectually elevated, but unfortunately wouldn't last for longer than 30 seconds in Wikipedia?)
 * page xi, Democracy promotion today is only one aspect of a much broader international agenda to support 'good governance', one which often tends to assume that ... - unclear if this is the neocolonialist perspective
 * the titles of sections 2 and 3 suggest that the two terms are synonyms
 * page xii, In Norway in 1992-1999, democracy support was a stated priority .. The focus shifted in 2002-2005 ... In 2008-2009, democracy strengthening became much less central. Norway currently lacks an up-to-date and coherent policy on democracy promotion, although important ... - sound like synonyms to me;
 * xiii, Several studies find that democracy promotion through civil society alone produces positive effects at micro level but, - sounds like democracy promotion is bottom-up
 * page 7 - Democracy promotion has constituted a significant part of development assistance in the past two decades, although it remains only one aspect of a much broader ... - unclear if this is more grassroots supports or neocolonialism
 * p 13 - From a peacekeeping perspective, democracy is a means to achieve stability, just as democracy promotion is seen by UNDP primarily as creating a 'conducive environment' to fight poverty. Similarly, the High Commissioner for Human Rights approaches democracy promotion from a human rights perspective. - UNDP and OHCHR are more like supporters of the grassroots than neocolonialists like USAID/NED/IRI/NDI, as far as I know
 * p 16 - Civil Society and Democracy Promotion - sounds more grassroots than neocolonial
 * In https://www.europarl.europa.eu/globaldemocracysupport/en/home/home I see:
 * Supporting democracy around the world. Actively supporting the European Union's international efforts to promote democracy and human rights ... - no distinction made here.

On the other hand, your point seems to be about how EPD describes itself, and we currently have the lead saying that this is how EPD describes itself, not how EPD is. Moreover, as you say, several different terms seem to be used fairly interchangeably, without clear conventions in distinguishing them, so it can't hurt to put a pipe to EPD's preferred term. Boud (talk) 00:08, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Just to clarify for people reading this - EPD is European Partnership for Democracy - so this discussion overlaps between the topics of this page and the EPD page. Boud (talk) 00:59, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Carothers (2009) (now in Democracy Promotion), pages 13/14, says that in Europe, "Official discourse often even eschews the language of 'democracy promotion.' More anodyne process-oriented aims are usually pronounced: 'the transformation of particular sectors'; 'political modernization'; 'the rule of law'; 'pluralistic civil society.'" Distinguishing "democracy support" from "democracy promotion" is not the main point of his article, but he does comment briefly on terminology preferences, and he describes the Bush attack on Iraq as giving a bad name to the term "democracy promotion". Boud (talk) 01:10, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Hi, thank you for the interesting discussion. It's an interesting field that EPD is contributing to as a think-and-do tank.

In one report, the distinction is made as follows:

"Democracy support:  the  most  widespread  term  used  to  refer  to  efforts  to reinforce or create democratic development or to halt autocratisation. These efforts may be political or financial. We use this term as the main overarching  term for EU action. Democracy  assistance:  this  can  sometimes  be  mixed  up  with  ‘democracy  support’ but we use this term in order to refer to financial flows. This follows in the spirit of ‘international assistance’ as a linguistic proxy for financial aid. Democracy  promotion:  the  term  is  often  used  by  academics  to  refer  to  the stimulation  of  democracy  abroad  by  states.  It  has  a  more  active  and  often  coercive connotation compared to ‘democracy support’. Support is something  given to existing internal efforts for democratisation while promotion does not  require any such internal (national) desire. We use this term to highlight more coercive types of democracy support (e.g. at the most extreme this would be  military intervention)." .

Maybe we could include these distinctions in the "definition" part, quoting EPD as the institution that proposes the distinction? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Coffeebreak12 (talk • contribs) 09:38, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

By the way, the term Democracy support is also used by the EU in policy documents such as the EU Action Plan on Human Rights and Democracy 2020-2024.

December 1, 2021, 10:22 CET


 * I agree that Louder than words ? ... seems like it would be a valid reference for defining these, and attributing to EPD would be useful. The subsection title could also probably become Definitions rather than Definition, since there are several terms to define, and the section might evolve to include different definitions by different organisations or academic researchers. Boud (talk) 11:03, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

From Definition to Definitions
Hi all, hi Boud. Following our exchange, I propose to add the following paragraphs below the exisiting ones within the section 'Definition'. Feel welcome to revise the wording and content before including it in the article.

In its 2019 Review of European Democracy Support, the European Partnership for Democracy makes the distinction between democracy promotion, support and assistance as follows:

Another definition of democracy support can be drawn through the OECD Development Assistance Committee's aid flow database. The classification makes the distinction between different types of aid flows relevant for democracy assistance, such as democratic participation and civil society, elections, legislatures and political parties, media and free flow of information, human rights, women's rights organisations and movement and goverment, decentralisation and support to subnational government institutions, and anti-corruption organisations and institutions.

The type and objectives of democracy assistance aid delivered by international donors depend on the history of their own country with democracy, and may explain the diversity of democracy promotion contexts. If historically Western countries championed democracy promotion worldwide, new non-Western actors have emerged in the last decades with particular goals and geographical reaches, participating in the construction of a broad definition of democracy promotion worlwide.

Coffeebreak12 15:01, 2 December 2021 (CET)


 * That's going into way too much blabla from EPD, and giving WP:UNDUE weight to EPD. Sooner or later we'll find definitions by other organisations, and we don't want a huge mass of text that the reader has to decode listing each organisation's pontification. :) Summarising the core content is acceptable, but not echoing longwinded minor details. Just a few examples of superfluous redundant unnecessary repetitive text: essential for understanding some of the nuances in thinking and action (there's no need to justify the need for defining terminology); We use this term as the main overarching term for EU action (the reader doesn't really need to know that the EPD uses this for EU actions but, presumably, not for non-EU actions? it's probably obvious that this is a term that the EPD recommends, which is enough). Anyway, a brief summary of the key elements of the definition would be reasonable, not a longwinded quote that might make sense if we want to learn about the EPD in depth, but is superfluous if we just want EPD's definitions of the terminology. No promises, but if I have time I may have a go at this...

By the way, if you re-read the instructions at reflist-talk, and if you look at the mediawiki source of this page, you'll notice that just one usage of at the end of the section is needed; you don't include it with individual references. For this section, I've fixed this up, so you don't need to fix it. :) Boud (talk) 15:41, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Hello Boud, thanks for your guidance once again. I agree with you, it would be better to summarise the quote into a sentence or two. Here's an attempt of re-writing the first paragraph:

The European Partnership for Democracy defines 'democracy support' as the political or financial "efforts to reinforce or create democratic development or to halt autocratisation", while 'democracy assistance' refers to financial flows "in the spirit of ‘international assistance". EPD further acknowledges that 'democracy promotion' is the term widespreadly used by academics but has a more active and often coercive connotation compared to ‘democracy support’. Support is something given to existing internal efforts for democratisation while promotion does not require any such internal (national) desire. "

Looking forwards to keep working with you on this theme! Coffeebreak12 10:40, 6 December 2021 (CET)

Democracy promotion: poisoned chalice versus holy grail
The Role of External Support in Nonviolent Campaigns – Poisoned Chalice or Holy Grail? by Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan has some useful research results that would be good to integrate into this article. Some "democracy support" is useful, some is detrimental, per the research presented in this paper. What's good is that types of the "support" are clearly defined - it's not just the vague word "support" without explaining what is meant explicitly. Boud (talk) 21:43, 31 October 2022 (UTC)