Is Democracy Exportable?

This books explains the normative and empirical issues behind the concept known as 'democracy promotion'.

Zoltan Barany (Edited by), Robert G. Moser (Edited by)

9780521764391, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 6 July 2009

316 pages, 3 b/w illus. 1 table
24 x 16 x 2.2 cm, 0.57 kg

“This book provides a long-overdue corrective to the neglect of the empirical underpinnings of an increasingly important dimension of foreign policy and international relations – efforts to export or promote democracy around the world. It is a creative and solid piece of scholarship that examines this issue from virtually all relevant perspectives.”
– Richard Gunther, The Ohio State University

Can democratic states transplant the seeds of democracy into developing countries? What have political thinkers going back to the Greek city-states thought about their capacity to promote democracy? How can democracy be established in divided societies? This books answers these and other fundamental questions behind the concept known as 'democracy promotion.' Following an illuminating concise discussion of what political philosophers from Plato to Montesquieu thought about the issue, the authors explore the structural preconditions (culture, divided societies, civil society) as well as the institutions and processes of democracy building (constitutions, elections, security sector reform, conflict, and trade). Along the way they share insights about what policies have worked, which ones need to be improved or discarded, and, more generally, what advanced democracies can do to further the cause of democratization in a globalizing world. In other words, they seek answers to the question, Is democracy exportable?

Introduction: promoting democracy Marc F. Plattner
Part I. A Moral Imperative?: 1. The morality of exporting democracy: an historical-philosophical perspective Thomas L. Pangle
Part II. Structural Preconditions: 2. Re-integrating the study of civil society and the state Sheri Berman
3. Encountering culture M. Steven Fish
4. Does democracy work in deeply divided societies? Daniel Chirot
5. Democracy, civil society, and the problem of tolerance Adam Seligman
Part III. Institutions and Processes: 6. Electoral engineering in new democracies: can preferred electoral outcomes be engineered? Robert G. Moser
7. Does it matter how a constitution is created? John Carey
8. Building democratic armies Zoltan Barany
9. Democratization, conflict, and trade Edward Mansfield and Jack Snyder
10. Exporting democracy: does it work? Mitchell Seligson, Steven Finkel and Aníbal Pérez-Liñán
Conclusion Nancy Bermeo.

Subject Areas: Comparative politics [JPB], Politics & government [JP]