Five Questions: Larry Diamond on Promoting Democracy

Larry Diamond is Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy. At Stanford University, he is professor by courtesy of political science and sociology, and he is Director of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), within the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI).  Diamond, author of the Great Decisions 2012 article, Promoting Democracy, spoke with Sarah Marion Shore about recent developments in the field.
 

1.  In your Great Decisions article you note that as of May 2011, only 13% of Americans believe that democracy promotion is a foreign policy priority, and many equate the practice with large-scale military intervention, such as in Iraq. Has that changed with the Arab Spring?

I think that Americans have been inspired by the Arab Spring, but are exhausted with foreign entanglements and military interventions. The country was deeply divided on Libya, about 50/50 before we intervened militarily, which I think was the right, strategically important and morally necessary thing to do. And of course because it was successful, they now look back on it more supportively than they did at the time. It was another incident, necessary though I think it was, of military force being somehow bound up with public perceptions of democracy promotion. I think the American people have been inspired by the Arab Spring, but they still remain pre-occupied by domestic problems, wary of becoming too drawn in to foreign conflict; Syria is the latest example. I think probably many American citizens remain confused about the fact that promoting democracy is an activity that overwhelmingly happens, and should happen, through peaceful means.  

2.  Egypt has been cracking down on U.S. Congress-backed democracy promotion groups; what ramifications does this have for other civilian-led democracy promotion efforts in the region?

This profound issue has been raised by the decision of the Egyptian government to legally intimidate and harass these people, and this could not have happened in a country that remains as authoritarian today as Egypt is, without the full knowledge and support of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.

If the United States were to stand by and say well, it’s a domestic process, we can’t really do much about it, and let the essentially military government of Egypt prosecute American citizens -- as well as Egyptians that they have been working with and people from other countries, including recent democracies -- for peaceful, open, transparent work that they have been doing to try and help build democratic parties and political institutions, no international or American democracy promoter will be safe in any country around the world.

Why has Egypt allowed or supported these crackdowns?

I can only speculate, but I think one reason is that the SCAF is very tenuous and weak in its legitimacy; it has given numerous indications that it really doesn’t want democracy and wants to hang on to power behind the scenes indefinitely, perhaps in something like the way, but to a greater degree even, than the Pakistani military has. And so periodically it stimulates diffusions of nationalist resentment; it creates a boogie-man and rallies the society around their leadership, while at the same time obviously diffusing or distracting the pressure for democratic accountability within Egypt.

At the same time I think we need to stand back and reflect on the way that democracy assistance, particularly from the United States, has unfolded since the Arab Spring- the extremely high profile of it, the very large footprint, large number of Americans on the ground there, a lot of publicity around what we are doing. I think what we may learn is that although it’s important for us to take a very energetic and substantial role in trying to support these democratic transitions in these countries, we have to also factor in local perceptions of what we’re doing.



3.  The U.S. government has been quiet regarding the recent protests against unfair election practices in Russia. Should the U.S. openly support these demonstrations?

There’s a common undercurrent to the challenges we face with respect to encouraging and supporting movements for democratic change in both Russia and Egypt, and it is the long-standing nationalist pride and sensitivity of both countries and both societies. The reason why the Obama administration and our ambassador in Russia now, who is a life-long scholar of Russia and Russia’s quest for democracy, the reason why they have not been more frontal and blunt about some of these matters is that they’re trying not to play into the hands of these nationalist political forces, many of whom are clearly backing and even doing the bidding of Vladimir Putin. Therefore, I think the reality is in many of these places we need a more subtle approach.

4.  Many countries face elections this year, emerging democracies such as Ghana, and more authoritarian countries like Burma and Zimbabwe; is the U.S. taking action to monitor or support these elections?

There is a lot of concern among Ghanaian civil society leaders that the very good record that Ghana has accumulated in institutionalizing democracy could be significantly rolled back, so Ghana is going to be a place to watch. I think sometimes we tend to cross countries off of a list of material and moral support and engagement because we come to a premature conclusion that democracy is institutionalized. I think that conclusion is premature in Ghana and it’s premature in a number of other places where we’ve ramped down some forms of democracy assistance.

Election monitoring is still on the agenda in U.S. democracy assistance. It’s still something that I’m sure USAID missions, and certainly, NDI, IRI, IFES, and other American NGOs that do this kind of work, know needs to be done in a number of these countries. This is an unusual year where there is just an astonishing number of elections in critical countries outside the West, and we need to be doing more of this.

5.  A new study found that fewer countries use the U.S. Constitution as a model for governance. Has the U.S.’ stature as a role model for new and emerging democracies waned?

I think that U.S.’ stature has certainly waned, there’s no question about that. And the most important reason why is our disappointing and lackluster record in making our own democratic institutions work to solve our problems, with the failure to address our looming fiscal crisis as the most obvious manifestation of this disappointment. It’s one of the most important things, I feel, about American democracy promotion. I do not think we can separate what we do to advance and affirm democracy aboard from what we do to advance, affirm, and make work more transparently and effectively our own democracy at home. I’m not particularly troubled that other democracies are not really using the American Constitution as a model. We have more veto players in our constitutional system than most other democracies, it’s a pretty difficult system to make work, and I think in a lot of countries, parliamentary rule would be better than presidential rule. But there are basic constitutional principles of the Bill of Rights, separation of powers, judicial independence, and respect for the rights of the individual; these sorts of things are now universal principals and are being drawn upon in new democracies even when they’re not specifically thinking that they’re using the American Constitution as the model for their own system.


 


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