Democratic Peace?

This chapter argues that democracy aid is underachieving because it is constrained by the conceptual dominance of Modernisation Theory, the Democratic Transition Paradigm, and the Democratic Peace Theory. Taken together, these three paradigms dominate development aid politics—and especially democracy aid—to limit the autonomy of recipients of democracy aid in deciding the shape of their political future. The first part of the chapter traces the historical contours of the evolution of the concept of democracy in Western countries and defines what democracy means. The second section observes the kinetic development of democracy with a focus on Democratic Peace Theory and efforts to spread democracy in the world from 1945 onwards. The final section interrogates the relevance of democracy promotion in the light of post-2001 international developments. While democracy promoters allowed for some degree of variation of the model of democracy promoted in countries in transition, it rarely managed to meet the expectations of the populations it tried to convert to democracy. There is a fundamental contradiction at the heart of democracy aid_ it attempts to impose a concept that, itself, embodies the will of the people. The chapter concludes that democracy promotion never quite managed to overcome this fundamental contradiction because of a lack of imagination as to how non-European societies could conceptualise their future. Societies must be free to imagine and live their chosen political futures.