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Abstract
US democracy promotion is integral to the pursuit of the grand project of the American Mission. By promoting democracy America makes its role one of international engagement as opposed to one of isolation. The first part of this paper examines the political and cultural aspects of US democracy promotion in the post-Cold War era through the bi-polar framework of the case-specific versus one-size-fits-all. To better understand USAID's democracy promotion policy, the second part takes this framework and applies it to its political reform strategy in Bosnia under the Clinton administration from 1995 to 2000 and Afghanistan under the Bush administration from 2001 to 2008. This paper confirms that America's democracy promotion simultaneously employed both the case-specific and one-size-fits-all approaches. USAID programmes and projects did at times respond to local conditions but nevertheless appear to employ a blueprint design.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Charlotte Cox and colleagues for providing feedback on preliminary drafts and to the anonymous reviewer for raising valuable points that helped improve the organization and focus of the paper.
Notes
For a discussion of isolationism see Adler, The Isolationist Impulse and Doenecke, Not to the Swift. For internationalism see Hoffman, ‘The Crisis of Liberal Internationalism’ and Doyle, Ways of War and Peace.
For a great review of the different positions in this debate see Posen and Ross, ‘Competing Visions for US Grand Strategy’.
Rostow, The Process of Economic Growth.
For a discussion on the history of the Foreign Assistance Relations Act 1961 in establishing USAID see Leonard, Encyclopaedia Of The Developing World, 1634.
President John F. Kennedy, ‘Special Message to the Congress on Foreign Aid’.
Ibid.
The transitional argument is called either transition theory or transitology. See Robinson, Promoting Polyarchy, 15–16.
Ibid., 56.
Grugel, Democratization, 56–7.
Carothers, ‘The End of The Transition Paradigm’, 5.
Ibid., 5–6.
Transitology = transition theory. Ibid.
Those countries that have not consolidated their initial democratic transition include Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Morocco, Jordan, Algeria, and Egypt. Those that have reverted to authoritarian regimes include Uzbekistan, Belarus, Togo Congo, and Turkmenistan. Taken from Carothers, ‘The End of The Transition Paradigm’.
This critical framework is utilised by a number of experts including Thomas Carothers and Marina Ottaway at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Also, Christopher Daase from the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt examines this argument using the cases of the European Union, African Union, Organization of American States, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and the United Nations.
Gerald Hyman, Senior Advisor, Center for Strategic and International Studies, interview with the author, Washington DC, 31 May 2007.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
USAID, Conducting a DG Assessment: Framework for Strategy Development, 1.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Korten, ‘Beyond Bureaucracy’.
Carothers, ‘Democracy, State and AID’.
Korten, ‘Beyond Bureaucracy’.
Marina Ottaway (Director, Middle East Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace), interview with the author, Washington DC, 29 May 2007.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Office of the Press Secretary, ‘Fact Sheet Background on Bosnia and Herzegovina’.
Rieff, Slaughterhouse Bosnia and the Failure of the West, 16.
Details in paragraph and quote taken from Figure 2 in GAO, Afghanistan Reconstruction, 8.
Ibid.
USAID, US Agency for International Development: Afghanistan Recovery and Reconstruction Strategy, 2.
Christopher Freeman called Afghanistan: ‘a pastiche of ethnic and tribal groupings trapped between neighbouring states’. Freeman, ‘Dissonant Discourse’, 542.
Ward, ‘USAID Accomplishments in Afghanistan’, 2.
USG, Fact Sheet Implementing the Peace in Bosnia.
President Clinton, ‘Presidential Statement on Bosnia Peace Agreement’.
President Clinton, ‘Speech by President to Soldiers at Task Force Eagle’ and ‘Speech by President on Bosnia Peace Accord’.
USG and TISA, ‘Joint Statement by President George W. Bush and Chairman Hamid Karzai’.
Ibid.
For example, the election speech made at a rally on 29 July 2004 Springfield, Missouri.
The aim of this section is to identify a number of examples of similarities and dissimilarities that provide an overall picture of the relationship between the two USAID missions. It is not meant to be exhaustive but to be demonstrative. For greater detail of America's democracy promotion in Bosnia and Afghanistan see Hill, ‘The Transition from Conflict to Post-Conflict’.
USAID, USAID/Bosnia and Herzegovina FY 2003 Results Review and Resource Request, 8.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ward, ‘USAID Accomplishments in Afghanistan’, 1.
Ibid.
Kunder, ‘USAID's Progress in Helping the People of Afghanistan’, 1.
USAID, USAID/Afghanistan Annual Report FY 2005, 7.
Ibid.
USAID, USAID Media Development in Afghanistan Fact Sheet, 1.
Ibid.
Taylor, An Evaluation of USAID/OTI Media Transition Grants in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 22.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Sigal and McArthur, Final Report: Building Independent Media in Afghanistan, 13.
Ibid., 14.
In the CIA World Factbook 1996 the literacy rate of the Bosnian people was reported as 91% (no age or gender breakdown recorded). In the CIA World Factbook 2000 the literacy rates of the over 15s in Afghanistan was 31.5% of the total population (broken down by gender it was 47.2% for males and 15% for females (1999 est.)).
By January 2006 40,000 radios had been handed out to ‘vulnerable populations including rural women’. USAID, USAID Media Development in Afghanistan Fact Sheet.
The International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), IFES Quarterly Report, 1.
This project ran from 1 March 2003 to 31 August 2005.
IFES, IFES Quarterly Report, 1.
USAID, USAID/Bosnia and Herzegovina Bosnian Reconstruction Program, 19.
Cepeda et al., Technical Election Advisors to the Provisional Election Commission, 7.
USAID, USAID/Bosnia and Herzegovina Bosnian Reconstruction Program, 21.
IFES, IFES Quarterly Report, 1.
See International Crisis Group, Bosnia's November Elections.
Peceny, Democracy at the Point of Bayonets, 155.
Ibid.
International Affairs and Defence Section, ‘Operation Enduring Freedom and the Conflict in Afghanistan’.
According to a USAID Bosnian report, the aim of ‘political pluralism’ is to erode ‘single party hegemony’. USAID, USAID/Bosnia and Herzegovina Bosnian Reconstruction Program, 20.
Ibid.
Center for International Development, State University of New York, Afghanistan Parliamentary Assistance Project Quarterly Report, 2.
In the case of Afghanistan SUNY was also involved in implementing a support project for the new legislature.
National Democratic Institute, Bosnia-Hercegovina: Political and Civic Organizing, 1.
USAID, USAID/Bosnia and Herzegovina Bosnian Reconstruction Program, 24.
USAID, USAID/Afghanistan Strategic Plan 2005–2010, 10.
For Clinton see USAID, USAID/Bosnia and Herzegovina Bosnian Reconstruction Program, 24–25; for Bush see USAID, USAID/Afghanistan Strategic Plan 2005–2010, 10.
Kunder, ‘USAID Reconstruction in Afghanistan’.
USAID, USAID/Bosnia and Herzegovina Bosnian Reconstruction Program, 25.
Ibid., 24.
To argue that the situation for women in Afghanistan was worse than for women in Bosnia does not dismiss the fact that there were very serious difficulties for women in Bosnia. For a detailed breakdown of the impact of Bosnian society's attitudes to women see Women for Women International, Report on Bosnia-Herzegovina.
For a comprehensive list of details regarding the plight of women in Afghanistan go to the country page at the Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN). http://www.irinnews.org/Asia-Country.aspx?Country=AFG.
USAID, USAID/Bosnia and Herzegovina Bosnian Reconstruction Program, 24.
USAID, USAID/Afghanistan Strategic Plan 2005–2010, 10.
Quotes respectively: Ibid; USAID, USAID/Bosnia and Herzegovina Bosnian Reconstruction Program, 21, and USAID, USAID/Afghanistan Operational Plan FY 2006, 10–11.
President George W. Bush, ‘Remarks to the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research’.
USAID, USAID/Afghanistan Program Overview Fact Sheet.
Management Systems International, Afghanistan Rule of Law Project.
USAID, USAID/Afghanistan Operational Plan FY 2006, 12.
Ward, ‘USAID Accomplishments in Afghanistan’, 3.
USAID, USAID/Bosnia and Herzegovina Bosnian Reconstruction Program, 22.
Ibid.
Spence, ‘Policy Coherence and Incoherence’, 23.
Carothers, ‘Democracy, State and AID’.
See Talentino, ‘The Two Faces of Nation-Building’, 562–3. Talentino comments that the first wave of democratizations with an interdependent democratic institutional framework and culture took centuries to develop. Also see Mandelbaum, ‘Democracy Without America’, 119–30. According to Mandelbaum, it takes at least a generation for the ‘social conditions conducive to liberty’ to develop in a contemporary democratization' (123).
Kiely, ‘What Difference Does Difference Make?’, 191.
Ibid.
Clements, ‘Informational Standards in Development Agency Management’, 1375.
Easterly, The Cartel of Good Intentions, 8.
Ibid.
Taken from the OECD and UNDP 1999 report, Improving the Effectiveness of Aid Systems: The Case of Mali, quoted in ibid.
Stavrakis, ‘Bull in a China Shop’.
UN, ‘Ongoing Insecurity Hampering Humanitarian Efforts in Afghanistan’.
In an interview with the author, Gerald Hyman, Senior Advisor, Center for Strategic and International Studies, supported this point. He commented on civilian workers such as those at USAID working within the PRT system: ‘They are embedded […] in a military fort all around the country, and they can barely get out, barely do any work […] security force is not as great as it should be probably, and they've got multiple missions of which building civilian institutions is one of them, but not the only one, the other one is beat the Taliban and secure the country. […] if you've got to go out in a convoy every time you meet a mayor […] the convoy's got to have shooters up front and so on and so on to protect you […] otherwise you are potentially going to get killed. If […] that is the model then that is an opportunity cost that has to be taken by every commander to move assets to protect you instead of to go and do something else. Ok, in a security environment like that what are the options? How much energy is going to be spent doing the provincial reconstruction stuff?’ Interview with Gerald Hyman, Washington DC, 31 May 2007.
The world's most powerful states include ‘the Contact Group of the US, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Russia, and leading international institutions, including the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, United Nations, OSCE and NATO’. Chandler, Bosnia Faking Democracy After Dayton, 2.
Kurlantzick, ‘Fatal Inaction’.
Tarnoff, The Former Soviet Union and US Foreign Assistance, 3.
Carothers, ‘Democracy, State and AID’.
IFES, Internews, NED (National Democratic Institute and International Republican Institute), International City Managers Association, Emerging Markets Group, Ltd., New York University, Chemonics International Inc., Development Alternatives Incorporated (DAI), International Organization for Migration (IOM), International Rescue Committee (IRC), and Save the Children UK in Bosnia, and Save the Children Federation, Inc. in Afghanistan. In order not to skew perception of the results, an organization is mentioned only once in this study but it could have multiple projects in the same or different areas operating at the same time. Findings come from unpublished research; please contact me for details.