Improving Democracy Assistance Building Knowledge Through Evaluations and Research (2008) / Chapter Skim
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4 Learning from the Past: Using Case Studies of Democratic Transitions to Inform Democracy Assistance
4 Learning from the Past: Using Case Studies of Democratic Transitions to Inform Democracy Assistance
Pages 99-118
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From page 99... ...
The recommendations were to include "a plan for cross-national case-study research to determine program effectiveness and inform strategic planning." There is a substantial and growing literature of case studies of democracy assistance programs, many of them commissioned by USAID or other agencies engaged in democracy assistance. The goal of such case studies is to learn what has worked and what has not among the varied democracy and governance (DG)
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From page 100... ...
look at media, human rights, and election programs in nine postconflict states. While these studies have generated valuable insights into how programs were carried out, how they were received, and how participants and donors perceived their effects, they are not ideal either for "determining program effectiveness" or to "inform strategic planning." This is because such studies focused almost entirely on specific DG projects, rather than on the broader context of democratization in the countries being studied.
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From page 101... ...
One can often learn more from tracing the causes of program failure than from studies of successes, especially if such success rests on chance factors that supported a program but are not observed or reported in the study. Yet case studies of DG assistance rarely seek out failures for sustained examination -- there are few rewards in the current incentive structure of donors for seeking out failures and investing in their study. This chapter develops guidelines for case studies that better explore the roles that democracy assistance programs may play in varied contexts of social change.
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From page 102... ...
," or "Based on what we know about the time and volume of assistance it usually takes to build and stabilize democracy in postconflict societies with these characteristics, we can give you some broad parameters regarding the expected time and financial support required to have a realistic chance of attaining that goal in country Y." For these objectives a clustered set of case studies, tracing the processes through which advances toward democracy were made from various sets of initial conditions, is an appropriate mode of investigation. A sufficient number of case studies would help build a knowledge base to answer questions such as the following: "For most countries we have observed with initial conditions X, Y, and Z, what have been the observed trajectories of political change, and which factors A, B, C (and others)
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From page 103... ...
For example, Terry Karl of Stanford University noted that one major conclusion of her research was that agreements, which she terms "pacts," should be developed among elites before elections, rather than holding elections first and hoping to bring agreements among elites afterward. As an academic finding, this seems impeccable -- an increasingly large body of empirical and theoretical work argues that elections can be stabilizing if they affirm agreements that bridge social cleavages and unite diverse elites in a commitment to abide by democratic rules, but tend to be destabilizing if the elections harden or polarize prior social cleavages and pit rival elites against each other in a zero-sum struggle for control of society (Berman 1997, 2001; Goldstone and Ulfelder 2004; Zakaria 2004; cf.
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From page 104... ...
, a more structured forum in which policymakers and academics can spend time focusing on discussing one particular type of policy intervention, or one group of countries, is needed if academics and policy professionals are to become able to understand each other fully and gain from each other's knowledge and experience. It often appeared in the committee's meeting that academics were interested in offering broad general insights or developing abstract categories to sort out developments in a large number of states, while policy professionals worried more about what would help them deal with the rapidly changing conditions and diverse pressures they face on the job.
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From page 105... ...
: "Although external actors can perhaps do more to avoid legitimating political window-dressing and thwart the incentives for corrupt activities, in the end it is up to domestic political leaders to stop these practices." Third, the inability to control context means that the success of democracy assistance efforts can rarely be judged in the short term with regard to overall progress toward democracy. Rather, such success has to be judged in terms of whether any steps that may contribute to future democracy are leaving a demonstrable footprint on institutions or behavior; whether reactions to opportunities were prompt, creative, and effective in using such opportunities to assist democratic reformers and efforts to secure democracy; and whether steps that reverse democratic progress are being discouraged.
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From page 106... ...
argues that during many years of President Leonid Kuchma's regime, democracy assistance aimed at strengthening the media, improving the autonomy of the judiciary, upgrading election commissions, and building civil society and party organizations had little or no impact on the nature of Ukraine's regime. However, when an opening for democratic action arose during the maneuvering around elections to choose Kuchma's successor, particularly around suspicions that the elections were fraudulent, the institutions that had been strengthened by external democracy assistance helped challenge the efforts of the Kuchma regime to control the electoral outcome.
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From page 107... ...
The scholars at the Stanford conference identified at least three distinctive contexts in which donors have been active in providing democracy assistance: (1) currently authoritarian and semiauthoritarian regimes, (2)
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From page 108... ...
In the authoritarian context, major advances toward democracy are usually dependent on crisis events that weaken the regime but that democracy assistance donors cannot create or control. Typically, such crises include war, fiscal or monetary collapse, a looming succession, exposure of corruption, a major repressive overstep by the regime, natural disasters, or an electoral surprise (e.g., unexpected results in an election that would normally be fully controlled by the regime)
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From page 109... ...
The list of actions needed to support democratic stabilization is lengthy, for during this period many aspects of democratic institutions may need nurturing or protection, and the society is relatively open to receiving such support. Areas that might benefit from assistance in this phase include assuring the competitiveness of multiple political parties that are inclusive and able to compromise; consolidating free, fair, and inclusive electoral procedures; developing legislatures that are effective in writing and passing needed legislation; improving the accountability of government at national and local levels; supporting varied media; promoting transparency, human rights, and fighting corruption; building a fair and effective criminal and civil justice system (police and judiciary)
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From page 110... ...
If these steps are not successfully completed, other steps -- such as building political parties or holding elections -- are unlikely to bear fruit, and conflict is likely to recur. One of the problems of democracy assistance programs in places such as Iraq or other postconflict contexts has been a tendency by donors to jump to the activities listed under B above without first achieving the five items listed here for postconflict regimes.
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From page 111... ...
and are capable of leading their supporters and engaging in effective political negotiations should thus become a priority wherever political protest has played a major role in democratic transitions. Institutions that can mediate conflicts -- such as supreme courts, national election commissions, or representative parliaments -- are also vital factors in stemming the violent confrontation between popular groups and unpopular authorities.
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From page 112... ...
Thus the committee could agree unanimously to recommend that USAID invest in improving its project evaluations, as described in the following chapters, but not that USAID fund additional case study research of democracy assistance. If USAID decides to invest in supporting case study research, the committee recommends using a competitive proposal solicitation process to elicit the best designs, similar to what the Strategic and Operational Research Agenda (SORA)
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From page 113... ...
The previous discussion identified three major contexts in which USAID operates programs of democracy assistance: predemocratic (authoritarian and semiauthoritarian) regimes, transition and posttransition regimes (places where authoritarian regimes no longer hold sway and democratic institutions have begun to dominate)
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If a comparative study that included countries with emerging political parties but few donor projects for party assistance showed that for countries without assistance, political parties tended to deteriorate more rapidly (or to more extreme levels) in regard to corruption, nepotism, factionalism, exclusion, and violence, one might argue that party assistance is effective, at least in holding the line against party capture by individuals or agendas adverse to democracy.
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From page 115... ...
To better understand how democracy assistance affects a country's trajectory In addition to the CDDRL project, which seeks to place democracy assistance programs in the long-term and national context of diverse factors bearing on trajectories toward democracy, a number of other policy or academic works are exceptional in their breadth and quality of analysis, attending to both domestic and international factors and varying contexts and outcomes. These include particularly the work of Whitehead (1996)
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From page 116... ...
However, for USAID to benefit from ongoing academic research, as well as the studies of DG assistance being undertaken by think tanks and NGOs, it will be necessary for USAID to organize regular structured interactions between such researchers and USAID DG staff. As the committee learned from the Stanford conference, academics do not always present their findings in ways that DG policy professionals find relevant; structured exchange with give and take on specific topics allows academics and professionals to bridge gaps in concepts and policy needs more effectively than passive consumption of such research.
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From page 117... ...
Such case studies should seek to map out long-term trajectories of political change and to place democracy assistance in the context of national and international factors affecting those trajectories, rather than focus mainly on specific democracy assistance programs. REFERENCES Abbink, J., and Hesseling, G., eds.
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From page 118... ...
1995. The Political Economy of Democratic Transitions.
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