Institutions Not Individuals Posted by Michael Cohen

Cong. David Price (D-NC) is quickly becoming one of my favorite US Congressman. Not only did he co-sponsor legislation expanding the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction to cover private security contractors (a long overdue effort to ensure greater accountability of PSCs) but he has an excellent article in this month's Washington Quarterly that makes a number of important points about the future of U.S. democracy promotion,

There is a lot of good material here, but this graf is worth noting:

Democracy is not just about elections. What is equally essential to lasting democracy is what happens between elections. Democracy requires strong institutions in legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government. An important threshold is reached when a free and fair democratic election is held. Yet advancing voters’ concerns through peaceful, constitutional, and responsive means requires moving beyond elections to the practical work of developing the capacities of democratic institutions.

Too often, U.S. democracy promotion efforts have failed to penetrate beyond the rhetorical or superficial, and the Bush administration’s track record in this regard is decidedly mixed. The most consequential mistake has been to assume that democracy could spring fully formed from the barrel of a gun, most notably in the case of Iraq. Bush’s failure to avoid the errors of his predecessors, despite acknowledging and disavowing them, has also been damaging. Like many executives before him, the current president has allowed a myopic, short-term view of foreign affairs to obscure our national security vision.

. . . Admittedly, U.S. commitment to democracy abroad cannot always be absolute, after all, the United States is a nation with a complex and extensive agenda on the international stage. Yet, it is imperative that the United States be far less ready to sacrifice the democracy agenda for other goals. Supporting the growth of democracy extends beyond supporting democratic reforms and pressing non-democratic leaders. It must also include the difficult, sustained work of building and supporting democratic institutions.

This is precisely the sort of road map that our democratization efforts should be following - and while it may to some seem intuitive, it has been inconsistently advanced as a part of America's democracy promotion agenda.

Read the whole thing here.

Comments

[Jaime]

The "democracy from the barrel of a gun" comment is said well here by Cong. Price. The key to understanding why this is bad are the 'Bush' mistakes (aka. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Gen. Franks, etc. mistakes). We keep talking about the mistakes as just 'mistakes', but let's revisit them so we can really see how much of a calamity this war was from the White House. http://commera.blogspot.com/2008/12/path-to-victory.html While being taken on this 'trip down memory lane' you'll be amazed when you remember how bad it really was politically (I was and I wrote it).

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Representative David Price (D-NC) represents the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area of North Carolina. He chairs the House Democracy Assistance Commission (HDAC) and the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, and formerly taught political science and public policy at Duke University.