Democracy promotion in Kosovo: mapping the substance of donor assistance and a comparative analysis of strategies

From the perspective of Kosovo, this article contributes to a growing literature focusing on the substance of donor-driven democracy promotion. Drawing on extensive empirical research between 2010 and 2012, the research provides greater insights into which donors are providing what sort of assistance; how the content and focus of aid are decided and formulated; and the behaviour of the European Union (EU) and other large donors compared with small bilaterals and private foundations. By including the category of ‘governance-oriented’ assistance to classify donor initiatives, a more nuanced mapping of priorities and strategies is offered, which distinguishes between those measures designed to engage civil society (developmental), those focusing on institutions and elite level change (political), and interventions specifically designed to promote closer interaction between government and nongovernmental actors. The conclusion reached is that, although overall levels of aid to Kosovo have remained relatively stable since 2008, donor behaviour is in flux, with evidence of an emergent distinction between what larger donors offer and the provision of smaller bilaterals and private foundations. This, it is argued, has serious implications for the capacity of the EU to continue providing extensive aid across a wide range of issues and policy areas as part of its pre-accession assistance.     

Critical Commentary: The Assumptions of Democracy

The United States' project of democratisation in the Arab and Muslim world relies upon three core assumptions, revealed in Andrew S Natsios's account: the moderating power of democracy, a relationship between the nature of government and the condition of fear, and the tenacity of the US government in promoting democratic values in the region. Using the account of Iraq in Ambassador Edward Chaplin's article, this commentary seeks to show how each of these assumptions is contestable, and the likely consequences for the politics of the region if they do not conform to US expectations.     

The Imperfection of Democracy

Generally speaking,democracy has promoted prosperity and peace.In most people's opinion,democracy is about respect for the individual.The vote embodies the respect we have for each other.This is not to...     

Promoting Democracy after Conflict: The Difficult Choices

This article examines the democratic reconstruction model advocated by western countries for postconflict societies. It finds that the model has not been implemented successfully, in part because of a lack of international political will and financial resources, in part because the model has grown too complex. As the international community learned from successive experiences with postconflict reconstruction, the model grew in sophistication and complexity. While this is good in theory, in practice it widens the gap between the ideal and what can actually be accomplished with limited international resources and weak local governments. Even in Bosnia, where international commitment has been large, this maximalist approach to state reconstruction has met with only limited success. The international community must rethink its approach to postconflict reconstruction and scale it down to something that can realistically be achieved.     

美国国家民主捐赠基金会

一、历史沿革与宗旨美国国家民主捐赠基金会(TheNationalEndowmentforDemocracy,缩写为NED,简称民主基金会)是美国非政府组织中的“龙头老大”,属于具有政府背景的非政府组织,地位相当特殊。民主基金会的成立直接源自1982年美国前总统里根在英国议会发表的演讲,当时他在该演讲中提议西方大国共同资助“非民主国家”的民主建设,包括自由的媒体、     

The Limits of Electoral Democracy in Ukraine

In the past two years Ukraine has held new elections for both its parliament and president. Some might claim that these elections are evidence of democratic progress. However, elections are only a necessary, not sufficient component of democracy, and to make judgements about democratic consolidation solely on the basis of elections is to fall victim to the fallacy of 'electoralism'. While it is true that Ukraine does possess an electoral democracy, democratic consolidation remains elusive and is susceptible to a variety of problems. These include a weak civil society and weak political parties, regional divisions, unstable political institutions and a lack of the rule of law. By some measures Ukraine may even have regressed from 1994, as an oligarchy has consolidated itself and authoritarian trends are readily discernible.     

The Practice of Deliberative Democracy: A Study of 16 Deliberative Organizations

This article investigates 16 organizations that attempt to foster better public deliberation in local and national communities. It develops a typology of these organizations and discusses them in the context of the scholarly literature on deliberative democracy. It particularly focuses upon the contributions these organizations may make to debates within the literature between advocates of relational and rational modes of deliberation. It finds that, much like the literature, practitioners of deliberative democracy wrestle with the competing demands of inclusiveness and group cohesion. Organizations attempt to solve this dilemma by stressing group action. However, this emphasis on action raises another dilemma associated with the relation between deliberative and representative models of politics. The essay concludes by suggesting that these organizations have accepted the challenge of improving public life through discourse that has been laid down by deliberative democratic theory. As such, they represent a natural experiment in deliberative democracy that deserves the serious attention of the scholarly community.     

Children and development assistance: The need to re-orient priorities and programmes

This article argues that if children were the focus of more deliberate attention on the part of donors, it could result in more effective use of the resources available for poverty reduction. Instead, development assistance neglects some of children's most pressing needs, and fails to take advantage of the long-term benefits to be gained by ensuring their physical and psychosocial welfare. The article focuses especially on the living environments of children in poverty, an area which receives little attention, but which is integral to poverty reduction.     

Coercive or Corrosive: The Negative Impact of Economic Sanctions on Democracy

This article seeks to analyze the impact that sanctions have on democracy. We argue that economic sanctions worsen the level of democracy because the economic hardship caused by sanctions can be used as a strategic tool by the targeted regime to consolidate authoritarian rule and weaken the opposition. Furthermore, we argue that economic sanctions create new incentives for the political leadership to restrict political liberties, to undermine the challenge of sanctions as an external threat to their authority. Using time-series cross-national data (1972–2000), the findings show that both the immediate and longer‐term effects of economic sanctions significantly reduce the level of democratic freedoms in the target. The findings also demonstrate that comprehensive economic sanctions have greater negative impact than limited sanctions. These findings suggest that sanctions can create negative externalities by reducing the political rights and civil liberties in the targeted state.     

对拉美民主的解析--读《拉丁美洲的民主:公民民主的未来》

20多年前拉美民主化进程启动时,拉美精英阶层、普通民众以及国际社会都对拉美民主化发展充满期待。然而,进入新千年以来,拉美民主化进程正面临着前所未有的危机,拉美国家已有多位总统迫于民众压力提前卸任;一些国家的选举投票率下降,民众示威抗议等活动时有发生。2004年4月,联合国开发计划署发表了由专家学者完成的关于拉美18国民主现状的报告《拉丁美洲的民主:公民民主的未来》(UNDP,DemocracyinLatinAmerica:TowardsaCitizens’Democracy,Argentina,2004)。这份理论与事实并重的报告对拉美民主问题进行了独到的解析,为深入了解拉美民…     

主权民主:普京对俄罗斯民主理论与实践的探索

普京执政以后,主张在加强国家权威主义的基础上发展符合俄罗斯国情的民主政治。普京的“主权民主”思想,既是维护俄国家政治、经济、军事权益的现实需要,也是为保证后普京时代俄国家政治体制得以继承与发展的一项战略举措。     

联合国的民主及其治理

冷战结束后,联合国在众多国际领域的治理及其影响日益广泛,对联合国的民主问责便成为理论和现实中的一种必然要求.本文从联合国成员内部的民主、成员间民主和全球民主三个层次考察了联合国的民主之内涵.在此基础上阐述了联合国的民主治理及其治理机制完善的主要变革途径.     

EU FTA negotiations with India: The question of liberalisation of public procurement

The proposed bilateral free trade agreement (FTA) between India and the European Union has thrown up many contentious issues among which public procurement is an important one. While India is reluctant to include public procurement in FTA, the European Union (EU) has been insisting that FTA without liberalisation of public procurement is not on the negotiating table. What makes India particularly attractive to the EU is not only the size of its public procurement market but also its rapidly growing economy and demand for infrastructure which presents EU firms with an opportunity to gain market access into this sector under the FTA setting. The EU is insisting on national treatment and non-discrimination as also transparency in Indian procurement system. Indian companies aspire to crack open public procurement market in the EU by entering it through the services sector. However, they are finding EU procedures for ‘data adequacy’ and policies relating to work visa difficult. India’s reluctance to negotiate government procurement under the FTA framework is also attributed partly to administrative costs required for making changes to existing framework and for establishing institutions to implement bilateral obligations. Though several deadlines have been missed, an agreement that could bring mutual benefit for both the EU and India is not out of reach.     

The Centrality of Reciprocity to Communication and Democracy

“The Centrality of Reciprocity to Communication and Democracy” by Dianne Rucinski. Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 8, 2 (June 1991) 184–194.     

The Arab middle east and the question of democratization: Some critical remarks

While many of the contemporary writings on Middle Eastern political change contend that democratization is under way in the Arab world, this article maintains that much of the recent optimism is due to a lack of terminological clarity. Neither are there any Arab democracies today, nor is there any tangible democratization in this region. Adherents of the democratization hypothesis in the Arab world invoke mainly two arguments: that of a strengthened civil society and that of economic transformation, which are supposed to trigger democratization. Both arguments are discussed with the finding that they do not provide convincing evidence to support such hypotheses. Rather, systemic transitions from non‐democracies to other non‐democratic systems are likely developments in the Arab Middle East. Comparative research should therefore focus not only on the ‘breakdown of democratic regimes’ or ‘democratic transitions’, but develop models better to grasp non‐democratic transitions.