Conceptual Politics of Democracy Support
Heinrich Böll Stiftung, Brussels, 28th February, 2012
Seminar disseminating the findings of ‘Political Economies of Democratisation’-project (funded by the EC under FP7 (2007-2013), European Research Council research grant number 202 596)
Abstract
We live in a time of transition with regard to the role of democracy and democracy promotion in the world system. Following a period of disillusionment, the Arab Spring has raised new hopes and opportunities for democracy support, even if it has also initiated calls for adjustments and shifts in democracy support agendas of major actors. Debate on opportunities and reforms in democracy support, however, takes place in a curious context. Simultaneously to the shifts in the Middle East, deep underlying sets of challenges are posed within Western democracies. The on-going financial crisis as well as the rising fortunes of non-liberal non-Western states is raising deep questions about the models of democracy and economy that the West has been encouraging and, it follows, about the underlying legitimacy of Western democracy support. In today’s context more than ever the ‘field is open’ for paradigm shifts in thinking about democracy and democracy support, and more than ever calls for rethinking of the ‘conceptual foundations’ of democracy as well as concrete practices of democracy support are made. But what do such calls mean and what are the conceptual foundations of democracy support?
This seminar offers a window of opportunity to analysts, activists and practitioners of democracy promotion to discuss the future of democracy promotion policy in the light of the current conceptual as well as practical challenges. It does so through disseminating and debating the findings of a four-year European Research Council-funded research project ‘Political Economies of Democratisation’.
This project is built on three pillars. 1) It contends that serious effort needs to be once again expended on thinking about the conceptual paradigms which underpin democracy support, notably the concepts of democracy supported. Instead of wishing away conceptual regulation of democracy support practices by democratic visions or ideologies of actors, we need to pay close attention to them, and their plurality, in today’s less and less straightforwardly ‘liberal’ world order. 2) The project operates with a politico-economic approach to conceptualising democracy and hence democracy promotion activity. Models of democracy are always economic as well as political in nature: a characteristic which needs to be better appreciated in democracy support. 3) The project finds that there is an urgent need to acknowledge and tackle the ‘contested’ nature of democracy in today’s world order and hence in democracy support. Some efforts to do so have been advanced by some democracy promoters, but these efforts continue to be stunted by the influence of ‘implicitly liberal’ and ‘depoliticised’ conceptual currents in democracy support. More systematic engagement with different models of liberal democracy as well as extra-liberal notions of democracy is possible and desirable in current democracy support.
This seminar seeks to show: A) why conceptual reflection on the meaning of democracy is important in democracy support analysis today; B) what we find when we pay attention to conceptual underpinnings of democracy support; and C) what conceptual reflection concretely provides for policy practitioners, including NGOs and foundations, in terms of developing concrete solutions to the problems of democracy support. The session will encompass a 45 minute introduction to findings by Milja Kurki, the Principal Investigator, followed by a 45 minute period of open discussion. Please note that any views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the European Community.
