Democracy Promotion ― A Critical Introduction

Democracy promotion is an actively pursued policy aim amongst Western foreign policy actors, notably the US and the EU, and has in the last two decades come to include a wide-range of instruments from democracy promotion through electoral monitoring and institutional reform to democracy facilitation from below through civil society support.

This book seeks to provide students with an accessible but nuanced introduction to democracy promotion – its diverse manifestations, its important and deep-running effects on societies and its challenging and often contradictory characteristics. The authors introduce the key actors in the policy field, their motivations for engaging in democracy support, and their key modes and instruments of democracy promotion.

As the role of democracy promotion and assistance continues to expand, this book is both timely and necessary in generating more nuanced debate and action on democracy promotion; it is essential reading for all students in the area.

Milja Kurki Professor of International Relations Theory at Aberystwyth University. She is the Principal Investigator of ‘Political Economies of Democratisation’, a four year project funded by the European Research Council. She is the author of Causation in International Relations (Cambridge University Press, 2008) and co-editor of International Relations Theories: Discipline and Diversity (Oxford University Press, 2007; 2^nd edition 2009) and Conceptual Politics of Democracy Promotion (Routledge, 2011). She has published in journals such as International Studies Review, Review of International Studies, Millennium, International Theory and International Politics. She is the associate editor of International Relations and member of editorial boards of International Studies Review and Review of International Studies.

Jeff Bridoux is Lecturer in International Politics/Post-Conflict Reconstruction at the Aberystwyth University. He is the author of American Foreign Policy and Postwar Reconstruction (Abingdon: Routledge, 2011), a monograph seeking to understand the outcome of US-led postwar reconstruction by providing a new analytical framework relying on a Gramscian concept of power.