Module 18: Democracy Promotion in US Foreign Policy

1. According to lecture and the reading (Section 19.1), what is democracy? Describe Robert Dahl’s three “procedural minimal” conditions of democracy. 

• Democracy is

  • a regime type with competitive “free and fair” elections to determine who holds the top political offices. It is a definition based on process rather than political or policy outcomes, and is typically understood as describing a continuum, meaning that regimes are labeled as more or less democratic rather than democratic or nondemocratic

• Robert Dahl’s three “procedural minimal” conditions of democracy are/the three preconditions necessary for free and fair elections.

  •  public contestation, 

    • requires that multiple parties compete in elections but also that citizens have the right to freely express themselves, form associations, and receive information from alternative sources in the media (freedom of the press). 

    • electoral competition 

      •  Without all of these freedoms, even if there are multi-party elections, elections are not fully free and fair.

      • Individual liberties promote competition by allowing different interests to contest elections.

    • Individual freedoms

      •  Individual freedoms are also necessary for vibrant debate over options and the opportunity to gain the information necessary to make a choice between those options.

  • inclusion, 

    • In addition to civil rights and liberties, a democratic system must allow universal and equal participation by all segments of society. 

    • universal suffrage

      • If a part of society—such as women or an ethnic minority—is systematically excluded from the political process, then that country does not meet the minimal procedural threshold of democracy. 

        • Note how difficult this precondition has been to meet, even for Western democracies. Inclusion through the extension of full voting rights for women and minorities was only achieved in parts of the United States with the Voting Rights Act of 1964.

  • democratic sovereignty

    • requires that elections must result in the establishment of truly powerful decision-making bodies, such as legislatures and chief executives.

      •  If a country holds competitive elections but the most important decisions are made by unelected bodies like the military or religious authorities, then the country is not a democracy. Elections to bodies without any real political power do not count.

2.  Discuss how restrictions on voting rights affected American democracy. What are the major historical expansions of voting rights during American history and how have expanded voting rights affected descriptive representation of women and ethnic minorities? How has universal suffrage affected election outcomes?

•  restrictions on voting rights affected American democracy by

  • causing democracy to emerge gradually with countries first adopting public contestation and democratitic sovereignty but restricting who can participate in competitive elections

  • democratic polities became increasingly Democratic arguably only when they expanded voting rights 

• the major historical expansions of voting rights during American history are

  • og voters had to be white male property owners who paid taxes

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3. According to the reading (Section 19.2), how does democracy affect foreign policy? Explain how mass participation through elections expands the range of societal interests that can affect foreign policy. Explain how competitive elections create a punishment mechanism that influences foreign policy.

•  democracy has affected foreign policy by

  •  Democracies are less likely to implement foreign policies that disproportionately benefit small sections of society because their more open political systems allow more groups a say in policymaking

  •  a range of institutional checks and balances within democracies empower societal groups and politicians to block foreign policy changes that they oppose. These internal constraints on foreign policy change can include regular and competitive elections; the division of political authority among executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government;

  • and a free press that keeps the public aware of any attempt to alter the foreign policy or obligations of a government. These institutions facilitate cooperative agreements with other states by helping democracies to solve the commitment problem associated with contracting over time.²⁸⁰

  • Other states are more likely to make cooperative trade, alliance, or legal arrangements with democracies because they expect checks and balances within democracies to empower domestic groups to protect and preserve these agreements. Thus, democracies worry less about the cheating problem long associated with anarchy in international politics. 

  • open participation, elections, and separation of powers help to foster a larger cooperative collective identity among democracies. A politician, for example, might publicly voice support for the foreign policy decisions of a fellow democracy because it is a member of the larger democratic community of nations. This collective identity enhances the views held by societal groups in democracies relative to other democratic governments.²⁸¹ Domestic public opinion in democracies is more likely to oppose war or a confrontational foreign policy if the target is a fellow democracy. 

•  mass participation through elections can expand the range of societal interests that can affect foreign policy by

  • by enabling mass political participation through elections, democracy expands the range of societal interests within a state that can be represented in its foreign policy. Competitive and free elections give most groups within society a means to influence public policy outcomes. They can mobilize other voters, organize campaign rallies, make campaign donations, or make public statements to have their views heard in the selection process that determines which political leaders will rule and what policies those elected leaders will pursue. 

• competitive elections can create a punishment mechanism that influences foreign policy by

elections create a punishment mechanism that pressures governments to implement policies favored by a majority of voters. If governments pursue policies opposed to their interests, their citizens can vote them out of office in the next election. These electoral constraints are frequently invoked to explain why democratic regimes have been so successful in avoiding wars with other democratic states.²⁷⁹ The credible threat of being removed from office for fighting unpopular wars against fellow democracies helps preserve peace among democracies

4. According to lecture and the reading, (Section 19.3), what is the democratic peace theory?  How do the factors that contribute to democracy’s influence over foreign policy in general – electoral constraints, institutional constraints on power such as checks and balances, and a shared democratic identity – help to explain peaceful relations between democracies?

•  The factors that contribute to democracy’s influence over foreign policy are in general 

  • – electoral constraints, 

    • First, elections make war less likely by raising the domestic political costs of war. Elections give broad portions of society the electoral means to punish foreign policy decisions they oppose. They make it difficult for a government to impose the costs of war, such as military casualties and higher taxes, on the public. The fear of electoral punishment then helps prevent democratic leaders from entering wars in the first place.

  • institutional constraints on power, such as checks and balances

    • , One way to view these mechanisms is through the bargaining model of war presented in Module 8. According to this model, a key cause of war is private information that prompts states to miscalculate the potential costs of war. Democratic institutions and competitive elections help ease problems of private information that make war more likely. Electoral competition and the existence of opposition groups provide information to other governments about the domestic political costs a democratic government will face for going to war. Public statements threatening to confront an adversary with military force expose a democratic leader to audience costs and electoral punishment if they subsequently back down in an international crisis.

    • Similarly, adversaries can acquire information about how resolved a democratic government is by observing the behavior of its opposition groups.²⁸⁸ The support of opposition groups, say from the party out of power, suggests that a government will not pay high domestic costs for waging a war that is popular at home. In a military crisis, an opposing government may then opt to back away from the crisis and make concessions to preserve peace. Opposition support in a democracy for military confrontation can thus make war itself less likely by signaling resolve and widespread domestic support for war.

    • Third, elections and internal checks and balances within democracies can help solve the commitment problem discussed in Module 9.²⁸⁹ These institutional constraints empower domestic groups to prevent future governments from withdrawing from international agreements and peace accords. This helps democratic states avoid war in the first place by raising the confidence of all parties that they will all uphold their obligations in any subsequent peace settlement. This possibility also implies that democracies do not exploit favorable shifts in the distribution of power to demand new concessions from another democratic state. Such arguments have been used to explain the post–World War II peace in Europe. Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States could sustain the peace there because robust democratic institutions in each state helped prevent any government from trying to alter the larger peace settlement reached in 1945 among them

  • a shared democratic identity – 

    • Fifth, democratic norms and institutions promote peace by facilitating a larger collective identity among democracies.²⁹² Citizens within democracies hold more favorable views of their fellow democracies and are more likely to oppose military conflict with them.²⁹³ The adoption of democratic processes to resolve internal conflicts is associated with a series of related values—like respect for political dissent, free speech, and the rule of law—that shape the foreign policy interests of democracies. Democracies tend to possess common foreign policy interests supporting democratic reform in other countries, multilateral decision making in international organizations, and open trading policies. This collective identity among democracies suggests that they avoid war with each other largely because democracies simply lack any political reason to go to war with other democracies.

Moreover, democracies approach foreign policy conflicts with fellow democracies differently than with autocracies. Democracies resolve their differences short of war because they expect that internal norms of nonviolent conflict resolution will be externalized when they interact with each other.²⁹⁴ They are less confrontational with other democracies because they expect those same democracies to approach them with less hostility as well. Alternatively, the absence of these domestic norms and institutions in autocracies leads democracies to view them with more distrust and hostility.

5. According to the reading (Section 19.4), what are some critiques of the democratic peace theory?

•  critiques of the democratic peace theory are

  • One critique on the Democratic of Peace theory is that the absence of military conflict between democracies might have been due to  The Casual ramifications of democracy on the international order. essentially it just so happened that there are so few democracies in the world that they never really came into military conflict with one another.  it wasn't until after World War II and the Cold War that democracy and peace began to see a correlation.

  • Peace between democracies during the Cold War may be explained by shared interests among Western democracies rather than the pacifying effects of democracy. For example, countries in Western Europe that had fought two world wars with one another in the first half of the twentieth century may have avoided conflict during the Cold War because of their shared interest in thwarting the military threat of the Soviet Union

  • Another alternative explanation for the absence of conflict between democracies is the pacifying effects of global capitalism. Trade can deter military conflict because trading partners do not want to allow such conflict to disrupt reliable and profitable markets. 

  • Another challenge to the democratic peace theory is the finding that states undergoing democratization may be more conflict-prone than both established democracies and stable authoritarian regimes.²⁹⁸ Transitional democracies are more conflictual because they lack some crucial features that restrain more established democracies from fighting one another. For example, new democracies tend to lack robust constitutional checks on executive power or competitive media markets marked by professionalized journalists who refrain from using news coverage that fosters ethnic nationalism. Under conditions of weak democratic institutions, politicians may actually use nationalist appeals to attract popular support in competitive electoral contests. Thus, the same mechanisms that scholars identify as constraining mature democracies—the pacifying effects of competitive elections—may have the opposite effects when democratic institutions, structures, and norms are underdeveloped.²⁹⁹ This observation does not necessarily contradict the central premise that democracies do not fight one another. However, it does limit its scope to established democracies. This has important policy implications for democracy promotion.

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6.  How and why has Democracy Promotion been a more or less important element within U.S. foreign policy over the years?

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  • However it's relative important in US foreign policy is very over time the first major way of democracy promotion in us for policy came under Withrow Wilson Wilson sought to leverage American participation World War 1 to expand the number of democracies in the world in particular he helped facilitated democratic transition in Germany after the war and support itself determination as a device to empower local groups demanding Democratic Rule and independence from Colonial powers

  • During the Cold War the actual practice of promoting democracy arguably took a back seat to the primary Mission of containing communism 

  • At the end of the Cold War the collapse of Communism seriously undermined the idea that the US had to choose between pursuing its ideological Goal of democracy promotion and its security goal of containing communism. rather the manner in which Communism Collapsed and the cold war ended suggested the exact opposite the spread of democracy went hand in hand with greater Security of the United States 

    • One of the biggest reasons that communism ultimately collapse in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union Was due to internal pressure from citizens living under communism for more freedom and more democracy 

      • the communist regimes collapsed due to that popular pressure

7.  Describe some of the efforts by the United States to promote democracy around the world. What are the political challenges associated with American efforts to promote democracy?  What are the benefits and drawbacks associated with promoting democracy around the world?

• some of the efforts by the United States to promote democracy around the world

  • the Clinton Administration Justified it's intervention in the former Yugoslavia on both humanitarian grounds namely the imperative to stop genocide and in terms of the goal to spread democracy President Clinton even articulated portions of the democratic peace Theory when justifying his efforts to expand NATO to Eastern Europe

•  the political challenges associated with American efforts to promote democracy are

  • Expectations regarding the emergence of democracy in post communist Russia which had some rather chaotic moves toward democracy under his first popularity elected president boris yeltsin

  • democracy promotion was also a major part of the new conservative arguments undergirding the bush administrations foreign policy particularly the iraq war regime change and the introduction of democracy in the Middle East was a major part of bushes strategy to counter the threat of terrorism after 9/11 however the negative effects of the Iraq War and its domestic unpopularity within the United States resulted in greater skepticism regarding democracy promotion particularly through the use of military force

  • While the Obama Administration continued to emphasize American commitment to Liberal values and democracy it was committed to withdrawing American military force from Iraq and keeping the United States out of similar long-term military engagements such as in Syria 

  • the Trump administrations emphasis on America First and reducing the economic burdens of hegemony further diminished the United States earlier embrace of democracy promotion as a centerpiece of its foreign policy

  • The views on Democracy are really played out between the support of Ukraine or non-support

    •  the Biden Administration said Ukraine should be supported by the US to defend democracy

      • the expectation that if Ukraine is conquered it will no longer be Democratic and integrated into Russia 

    • The Trump Administration has been much less willing and much more skeptical of support for intervention And much more willing and Ukraine and much more willing to negotiate and deal  and form closer ties with authoritarian Regimes like Vladimir Putin in Russia 

• promoting democracy around the world

  •  benefits 

  • drawbacks

8.  Using the module’s reading (Section 19.5), describe historical waves of democracy and the possible causes of these waves such as demonstration effects, neighborhood effects, conditionality of international organizations, and the influence of hegemons.

• waves of democracy

  • Transitions away from authoritarian rule toward democracy across multiple states. these ways tend to be regionally  concentrated and occur over a common span of time there are often followed by reverse waves

    • Reverse waves are a period of transition away from democracy towards autocracy across multiple states. tends to be regionally concentrated and over a common span of time. often follows waves of democracy 

• Waves of democracy and the international forces that promote them raise a question regarding the mutual relationship between international peace and democracy. The democratic peace theory suggests that domestic democratic institutions promote peaceful relations among fellow democracies through institutional and normative mechanisms. However, democratic waves suggest the opposite causal relationship. Peaceful environments between countries—as found in Europe and reinforced by the European Union, NATO, and American hegemony—promote the spread and consolidation of democratic regimes.³⁰⁹

• the  historical waves of democracy are 

  • The first long wave of democracy lasted for most of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries leading up to World War I. Gradually, over the span of approximately 100 years, partial democratic regimes emerged primarily in Europe and the United States. Democracies remained rare and were significantly outnumbered by nondemocratic regimes. This first wave of democracy was followed by a reverse wave in the interwar period between World War I and World War II. The breakdown of fragile democracies in Germany and Italy and the rise of fascist governments under Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini marked this retreat from democracy. Russia saw its autocratic Tsarist regime collapse in 1917, only to be replaced with an authoritarian communist system.

  • A second short wave of democracy followed World War II. Western Europe saw the emergence of democratic governments in West Germany, Italy, and Austria, supported in large part by American hegemony. Japan, also heavily influenced by American occupation, established a democratic government. There were also several brief democratic experiments launched in Latin America. A second reverse wave took hold in the 1960s and 1970s with breakdowns of democratic regimes across Latin America and the emergence of military dictatorships across the region.

  • Finally, a third wave of democracy took hold beginning in the late 1970s with the democratization of Spain, Portugal, and Greece in Europe, followed by the widespread collapse of military rule in Latin America and its replacement with democracies in the late 1970s and early 1980s. At the end of the 1980s, communist regimes collapsed in quick succession in Eastern Europe and eventually in the Soviet Union.³⁰² Most of these former communist regimes initially replaced these communist dictatorships with democratic systems, although many reverted back to autocratic rule. Some have argued that this third wave of democracy is now being followed by a reverse wave as countries such as Russia have returned to authoritarian rule.

  • For instance, in 2011, mass protests in several North African and Middle Eastern countries sparked hope of a regional shift toward democracy. However, eight years on, we have seen instead that many authoritarian regimes in this region have been succeeded by new autocratic regimes, or clashes between democratically oriented opposition groups and incumbent governments that have devolved into long and bloody civil wars, such as in Syria.³⁰³

• the possible causes of these waves 

  • demonstration effects, 

    • A mechanism of diffusion, whereby actors in one state try to reproduce the actions and outcomes that took place in another state. for example, when Mass protests of autocratic regimes are successful in one state, they may Inspire Mass protests against autocracies in neighboring states 

  • neighborhood effects,

    •  One of the mechanisms of diffusion that describes the tendency of states that emulate the level of democracy of their neighboring states. this creates Regional environments that are more or less conducive to the emergence of democracy 

    • The Middle East, for example, has historically been a region inhabited by autocratic regimes, while Europe has many more democracies. Thus, in a region full of democracies, a state that cracks down on peaceful protests or holds a less than freely contested election may get diplomatic and economic pressure to end such undemocratic behaviors. Conversely, in a region dominated by authoritarian regimes, a state facing popular protests calling for more open politics may be pressured by its neighbors to suppress these actions

  • conditionality of international organizations,

    • Conditionality is the method of indicating certain behaviors by making the conferment of some benefit dependent upon the receiver acting in a certain way 

    • Regional organizations, most notably the European Union, have been instrumental in reinforcing these regional neighborhood effects by making membership in attractive economic and military organizations like the EU and NATO conditional on achieving a certain level of democracy. This conditionality creates powerful incentives for elites to adopt democratic reforms in order to enjoy the economic and political benefits of membership in powerful organizations.³⁰⁸

  • the influence of hegemons

Finally, another key international factor affecting the diffusion of democracy are the actions of international hegemons. In particular, the actions of the United States and the Soviet Union were instrumental in the spread of democracy or lack thereof during the Cold War. During the height of superpower conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union, both countries greatly influenced the internal politics of states within their sphere of influence. After World War II, the United States installed democratic regimes in West Germany and Japan. Moreover, massive aid programs, such as the Marshall Plan, were designed to rebuild devastated economies in Western Europe so that mass publics would not turn to radical ideologies due to economic dislocation. The Soviet Union installed communist governments in countries it controlled in Eastern Europe and used military force to keep them in power in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.

9.  According to the Krasner reading, what are the two main tendencies within US foreign policy regarding democracy promotion and dealing with authoritarian regimes?  What third option does Krasner propose in how the U.S. should deal with long-standing dictatorships?