Democracy Promotion and Conflict: Successes and Continuing Challenges
Dresden, Jennifer Raymond, Thomas Edward Flores, and Irfan Nooruddin. 2020. "Democracy Promotion and Conflict: Successes and Continuing Challenges.” Democracy and Autocracy 18 (1): 10-16.
7 Pages Posted: 19 Oct 2020
Date Written: February 1, 2020
Abstract
Dresden, Flores, and Nooruddin document the maturation of democracy promotion towards more narrow and technical efforts to patiently develop democracy’s “supporting infrastructure,” through programs that measurably increase civic participation, inter-ethnic cooperation, and government responsiveness. Yet while these interventions may have positive short-term effects, here we encounter what Dresden, Flores, and Nooruddin call the “levels of analysis” problem: we cannot readily demonstrate that micro-level “tactical successes” aggregate upwards into macro-level democratic change. The process by which the combined effects of small-scale interventions might eventually accumulate into full-blown democratization is merely assumed, not verified.
Keywords: Democracy Promotion
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