Americans always have had a strong interest in promoting democracy, especially as their country assumed an increasingly important role on the world stage. President Woodrow Wilson, who pledged to make the world safe for democracy, was clearly a man ahead of his time. In this thought-provoking piece focusing on democracy promotion in the last years of the 20th century, Thomas Carothers, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of Aiding Democracy Abroad: The Learning Curve, examines where we are headed and looks at how Wilson's original call has been transformed into a national policy upon the world stage.

Although the current wave of democracy programs has forerunners -- the Marshall Plan of the early post-World War II period, for example, and the political development or "modernization" programs of the 1960s -- the current effort is the most extensive, systematic commitment the United States has ever undertaken to foster democracy around the world.

And the U.S. is not alone. Other countries, especially the prosperous democracies of Western Europe as well as a myriad of international institutions supported by many governments, also have embarked on a major effort to support democracy, especially in transitional countries that have recently embarked on the arduous process of renouncing totalitarian and authoritarian forms of rule.

This effort is a response to two major political developments: first, the acceleration of a global trend toward democracy in the 1980s and early 1990s, which pushed democracy to the top of the international policy agenda and challenged democratic countries to respond; and second, the end of the Cold War, which lowered barriers to international political cooperation and nudged U.S. foreign policy away from its primary anti-Communist focus to a greater emphasis on support for democracy as an end in itself.

To be sure, the U.S. commitment to democracy is not total. The country, like all countries, still has security and economic interests that sometimes conflict with the goal of supporting democracy. But as many U.S. officials have stated during the last decade, this is now much less an issue than it was during the Cold War when the U.S. -- necessarily in the views of some -- developed alliances with undemocratic regimes because of security needs deriving from the competition with the Soviet Union.

The Core Strategy

The U.S. strategy for supporting democracy in the post-Cold War era initially rested on three interrelated instincts: first, using American democracy as a model or template; second, viewing democratization as a process of "institutional modeling" in which the democratizing country attempts to reproduce the forms of institutions of established democracies; and third, assuming that democratization consists of a natural, orderly sequence of stages.

As these instincts have collided with the realities of political transitions, the strategy has begun to evolve and mature. Some American democracy promoters now rely less on an American model. They import information and ideas from other established democracies or from successful new democracies that have proven particularly relevant. They sometimes try to help other societies develop democratic forms particular to the country's own history and culture.

Increasingly, democracy promoters acknowledge the need to take account of the underlying interests and power relations in which institutions are embedded. Democratic change must be understood not as the reproduction of institutional endpoints, but as the achievement of a set of political processes that help engender a democratic culture.

At the same time, democracy promoters are facing the fact that democratic transitions often do not follow an orderly sequence. They are, increasingly, designing democracy aid portfolios to fit these various contexts rather than assuming a natural sequence. There is no magic strategy that fits all countries.

Although the menu of democracy aid programs is essentially the same today as 15 years ago -- with three main categories of programs aimed at elections, state institutions and civil society -- emphasis has shifted among these categories. Electoral aid has declined now that the phase of breakthrough elections is largely over.

Aid to civil society is now much more prominent, because of growing enthusiasm for the idea and a certain disillusionment with over-concentration on aid to state institutions. Nevertheless, the tripartite democracy template still dominates; most changes reflect the evolution of approaches within each of the specific areas:

• Elections

  This component of democracy promotion has undergone major change. Election observing has become much more sophisticated, and aid to improve the administration of elections has become a well-developed, subfield of its own. Still, many bad elections continue to be held in transitional countries, even when administrative support is provided and observers are present.

  Democracy promoters realized over and over again during the 1990s that elections do not equal democracy. There still is a large amount of assistance to political parties, but resources are increasingly allocated to the development of parties, and to using experts familiar with non- American settings. Despite the efforts to date, in most transitional countries, political parties remain among the feeblest links in the democratization chain.

• Non-Executive Bodies

  Programs to support the reform of judiciaries, legislatures and other state institutions organized around the idea of strengthening the non-executive branches of top-heavy governments -- constitute the largest of the three main categories of democracy aid. Learning has been slow in this area, and democracy promoters have had a hard time giving up their fixed models and mechanistic notions about how to foster change in large institutions.

  Aid providers are increasingly realizing that the will to reform must exist in state institutions, if change is to occur. They are also beginning to accept that resistance to reform in at least some levels of any given state institution is more the rule than the exception. The realization that institutional reform requires deeper changes among the interest structures and power relationships, is a necessary insight and underscores how slow and difficult change will be.

• Civil Society

  Democracy promoters' growing emphasis on civil society is itself part of the learning curve; they are seeking to go beyond elections and state institutions, to turn democratic forms into democratic substance. Much of the first wave of civil society aid has supported nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) devoted to public interest advocacy. With experience, however, democracy promoters are taking a harder look at the NGO world.

  They are pushing themselves and their recipients on the issues of representativity and sustainability, and expanding the range of NGO advocacy they are willing to underwrite. As they log experience with civil society work, democracy promoters are discovering that although civil society is a highly accessible place of entry for democracy aid, it is also a vast and complicated component of democracy that is not easily fostered.

  Looking at the three main categories of democracy assistance, differences in effects are visible but not dramatic. The effects of all the types of programs are often diffuse and indirect, much more so than the rationalistic approaches of democracy promoters might imply. The programs are directed at institutions and organizations but affect individuals, their greatest impact often being the transmission of ideas that will change people's behavior in other settings at other times.

• Localism

  Democracy aid stumbles most often in the implementation phase. Democracy promoters have failed in many cases to develop a sophisticated understanding of the societies in which they function, content with the misguided idea that their knowledge of democracy alone is sufficient basis for the fostering of democracy. Too often they have tried to become the agents of political change in transitional societies, treating local partners as mere assistants. Countless projects have foundered for lack of real ownership in recipient countries.

  The good news, however, is that implementation is gradually improving, largely because of a greater recognition of the importance of localism -- working through and with local officials and organizations that more fully understand local conditions. This has been hard work, however, and has been only partially successful to date.

  Democracy promoters also have been slow to give up the belief that democracy can be promoted in a one-size-fits-all manner, and the belief that democracy promotion can be segregated from traditional development aid. Moreover, they have too often shied away from more localism out of fear of losing control over the aid they are providing. A new mindset is needed: Democracy building is not something "we" do to "them" but something people in other countries do, sometimes with our help.

Evaluation of Democracy Promotion Programs

Of the many facets of democracy aid, evaluation has advanced least. Democracy programs present a challenge for evaluators because of the difficulty of agreeing on precise criteria of success in the political domain and of establishing clear causal links between specific projects and larger political trends.

In most cases during the 1990s, democracy promoters either did not evaluate their programs at all or commissioned superficial evaluations by investigators lacking real independence. However, in recent years aid providers have begun to take the subject of evaluations more seriously even though they are exceedingly complex to effectively conduct, because the effects of democracy programs may not be fully apparent for years and must be judged in the context of prevailing social, economic and political conditions.

For this reason, aid providers must give up the notion that the effects of democracy aid can be measured with calculators. They must accept the notion that in-depth qualitative analysis is the only way to gain an understanding of political events and effects, and that many of the most important results of democracy programs are psychological, moral, subjective, indirect and time-delayed.

The most important point, however, is that democracy promoters must develop a full understanding of the political realities in the societies they are trying to assist. Progress along the learning curve is then not simply a matter of concentration on technical lessons and the accumulation of experience. In a fundamental sense, democracy promoters must challenge their own ideas about politics and come to terms with how much or how little they really know about political change in other societies.

They also must challenge their own methods of operation, asking hard questions about what imperatives actually shape their programming and how they can improve their practices. All components of the learning curve are important, but not equally so. One deserves special attention: developing good methods of implementation. The knowledge of what constitutes good methods of implementation is already available and can make a major difference in any project.

Three broader issues also merit greater attention. First, democracy promoters should push to build a relationship between aid for democracy and the larger, more established world of aid for social and economic development. Much work remains to be done just in identifying the critical connections between economic and political phenomena.

Second, democracy promoters should give greater attention to the role of women in democratization. Although training efforts directed at women are often unable to overcome underlying power structures and constraints, it is impossible not to be struck by the unusually intense interest and enthusiasm that democracy programs relating to women often generate.

Third, democracy promoters have a responsibility, still largely unmet, to help governments and citizens of transitional countries understand democracy aid and become more than passive recipients. Transparency and publicity are essential if citizens are to understand, participate in, and truly benefit from such aid.

The Future of Democracy Promotion

The democratic gains in the world during the past two decades have been substantial. Yet the challenges that lie ahead for those committed to aiding democracy abroad remain monumental. It still is sobering to note the number of countries where democracy is fading, failing or still nonexistent.

The analysis of democracy aid presented here highlights a central cautionary lesson: No dramatic or quick results should be expected from democracy promotion efforts, especially in the case of those countries where the mix of economic, social and political forces remains hostile to the development of democracy.

Democracy aid, as well as the complementary tools of diplomatic and economic carrots and sticks, can do little to change the fundamental social, economic and political structures and conditions that shape political life in other countries.

Accepting that most democracy promotion efforts do not bring about rapid or decisive change does not imply that the United States -- and other countries and organizations -- should downgrade or abandon their commitment to advancing democracy abroad. It means that democracy promotion must be approached as a long-term, uncertain venture.

Policy makers must be prepared to stick to the goal for decades, to weather reversals, and to find ways to question and criticize their own methods as they proceed with what is clearly a noble endeavor. The challenge, in short, is to build into the commitment a cautious, realistic understanding of capabilities. Basing a call for a democracy-oriented foreign policy on an assumption of vast American influence over other countries' political fortunes only sets up the policy edifice for a fall.

Americans are too used to debating foreign policy from positions of realism and idealism, in which America's interests and capabilities are either systematically understated or overstated. A position based on idealistic aspirations tempered by deeply realist considerations is uncomfortable. For democracy promotion, however, it is the only real choice.

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The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the U.S. government.

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