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Democracy Promotion and Foreign Policy
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Democracy Promotion and
Foreign Policy
Identity and Interests in US, EU and
Non-Western Democracies
Daniela Huber
Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI), Rome, Italy
© Daniela Huber 2015
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of
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The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author
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in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988.
First published 2015 by
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DOI 10.1007/978-1-137-41447-2
To my mother Maria, my father Manfred, my sister Claudia,
and my brother Michael
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vii
Contents
List of Figures ix

List of Tables xi
Acknowledgments xii
Introduction 1
Part I Democracy Promotion – Who Does
What and t Why?
1 Who Promotes Democracy? The Protagonists 7
2 What Is Democracy Promotion? The Explanandum 22
3 Why Is Democracy Promoted? The Argument 30
Part II The United States and Democracy
Promotion in Central and South America in the
Last Period of the Cold War
4 The Return of Democracy Promotion to US Foreign Policy
51
5 A Decade of Crisis in Central and South America 65
6 The Unearthing of a Democratic Role Identity and Its
Activation in a Grand Foreign Policy Debate 73
Part III The EU and Democracy Promotion
in the Mediterranean Region since the End of
the Cold War
7 The EU’s Approach to Democracy Promotion and Its Ups
and
Downs in the Mediterranean Region 101

8 The EU’s New Security Environment 121
9 The Formation of a Democratic Role Identity, Its Hype,
and
Subsequent Stumbling 127
viii Contents
Part IV Turkey and Democracy Promotion in the
Mediterranean Region since the Early 2000s
10 The Emergence of Democracy Promotion in Turkish
Foreign Policy 149
11 The De-securitization of Foreign Policy 160
12 Turkey’s Evolving Democratic Role Identity and Its
Activation through Two Relevant Others 166
Conclusions 182
Notes 188
Bibliography y 200
Index 235
ix
List of Figures

3.1 The argument 43
4.1 Total military assistance to all countries in Central and
Latin America 1976–1989 in million historical USD 57
4.2 Total military assistance to all countries in
Central and Latin America 1976–1989 in million
historical USD by country 57
4.3 Total economic assistance to all countries in Central and
Latin America 1976–1989 in million historical USD 58
4.4 Total economic assistance to all countries in
Central and Latin America 1976–1989 in million
historical USD by country 59
6.1 Freedom House Index for the (a) Americas and
(b) worldwide by numbers of countries, 1973–2014 74
6.2 Commonality of ICCPR in per cent of UN Member States
75
6.3 Commonality of American Convention on Human Rights
in per cent of OAS Member States 76
6.4 Public support for ‘helping to bring democratic
form of governance to other nations’ and for ‘defending
human rights’ 88
6.5 Frequency of democracy and human rights in State of
the Union addresses 89
7.1 EU assistance programs in the Mediterranean region in
euro millions 111
7.2 (a) MEDA II (2000–2006), (b) ENPI (2007–2013), and

(c) reshuffled ENPI (2011–2013) by country in total
and per capita 117
8.1 Illegal migration arriving in Spain, Italy, and
Malta (1993–2006) through the Western, Central,
and Eastern Mediterranean routes (2008–2013) 123
9.1 Freedom House Index for (a) Eastern Europe/Eurasia and
(b) Middle East/North Africa by number of countries,
1991–2014 135
9.2 Status of ratification of the European Convention for the
Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms 136
9.3 Signatories Arab League Charter on Human Rights in
per cent of Member States 137
x List of Figures
9.4 Frequency of democracy and human rights in Council
Conclusions, mean by year, 1989–2013 143
10.1 Total Turkish official development aid in million
US dollars 154
10.2 Turkish official development aid in million
US dollars by recipient region 154
10.3 Turkish ODA in million US dollars by MENA country,
2010 versus 2012 156
12.1 Freedom House Index (Political Rights and Civil
Liberties)
for Turkey, 1972–2013 167

12.2 Frequency of democracy in the President’s annual
message to the Grand National Assembly of Turkey
(2003–2006 Ahmet Necdet Sezer; 2007–today
Abdullah Gül) 170
12.3 Annual TESEV ratings on the perception of Turkey
in the Arab world 178
xi
List of Tables
2.1 The substantive content of liberal democracy promotion
25
2.2 Three types of action to promote democracy 28
5.1 Civil wars in Central and South America 1977–1988 68
7.1 Status of association of Mediterranean partner
countries with EU 115
7.2 Association council meetings and human rights and
democracy subcommittees 119
xii
Acknowledgments
This book would not have been possible without the generous
intellec-
tual, professional, and emotional support of Piki Ish-Shalom
and Alfred

Tovias at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Also crucial for
this book
has been Nathalie Tocci from the Istituto Affari Internazionali;
it is a
privilege to work with her. Many ideas have also come from
exchanges
with Thomas Risse, Tanja Börzel, Arie Kacowicz, Galia Press
Barnathan,
Rony Silfen, Nava Löwenheim, and Daniela Persin. I
acknowledge the
financial support of several institutions, including the German
Friedrich
Ebert Foundation, the German Academic Exchange Service
(DAAD), and
the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The support of my family has been essential. My parents gave
me so
much love and have always supported my academic path; I am
eter-
nally grateful to them and dedicate this work to them and my
sister and
brother. My two children Niccolò and Valerie were always
patient with
me during the writing process and I have to thank their
grandparents –
Daniele and Lucia, Maria and Jürgen, and Manfred and
Marianne – for
all their help. This also applies to their aunt Claudia and to
Roberta and
Seila. Most of all I want to thank Lorenzo Kamel, whom I met
during my
time at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, for all the beautiful
ideas he
has given me, the new viewpoints and ideational doors he has
opened

up, and for all the inspiring discussions which contributed so
much to
this book.
1
Democracy promotion is a puzzling and curious foreign policy
phenom-
enon attached to democracies; indeed it is as old as democracy
itself.
Ancient Athens maybe has been the most systematic and aggres-
sive democracy promoter of all time. For Athens, this was a
strategic
policy to overthrow hostile regimes and install friendly,
democratic
ones. However, not always is this policy strategically so
straightfor-
ward. Today’s main protagonists of democracy promotion – the
United
States (US) and the European Union (EU) – are rather fighting
with the
dilemma of having proclaimed democracy as a principled
foreign policy
goal, but not pursuing it coherently when it endangers other
interests.
This has exposed them to sharp international critiques such as
being
hypocritical or even an ‘axis of double standards’, making
democracy
promotion the key issue with which ‘democracies and their
critics’ (to
paraphrase Robert Dahl’s seminal book) are struggling today,
not least
since this increasingly also applies to non-Western emerging

democra-
cies. Notably Turkey, but also Brazil, India, Japan and South
Africa, are
starting to engage in democracy promotion in their respective
regions
and have been confronted with their double standards in this
respect
as well.
Thus, democracy promotion is becoming an increasingly
widespread
foreign policy phenomenon among diverse democracies in the
world,
but at the same time seems to be such a dilemmatic foreign
policy that
no democracy applies it coherently. Why then is it that
democracy
promotion is incorporated into foreign policy in the first place?
What
drives and motivates democracies to promote it or not? What
explains
that democracy promotion is not always pursued coherently and
why
does the use of democracy promotion vary so decisively over
time and
space? What constrains democracies to follow through on
democracy
Introduction
2 Democracy Promotion and Foreign Policy
promotion? In short: What triggers democracy promotion and
what hinders

it or – more precisely – what encourages and pushes and what
constrains
democracies to promote democracy abroad?
While research on democracy promotion is an exponentially
growing
field of study in International Relations (IR), no theoretically
compre-
hensive volume that explains the origins of and impulses for
democracy
promotion and so embeds the phenomenon in IR theory has been
forth-
coming yet. This book hopes to contribute to a more rigorous
academic
discussion of democracy promotion through a comprehensive
theoret-
ical approach which situates democracy promotion in its
normative, as
well as strategic, contexts. Furthermore, it is placed in a more
recent
comparative turn of the literature. Much research has focused
on one
protagonist of democracy promotion only (usually either the
United
States or EU), and while some comparative research has
emerged, it has
typically compared US and European democracy promotion.
This book
seeks to tell a more comprehensive story of democracy
promotion by
focusing on its main protagonists – the United States and the
EU – but
also on a non-Western newcomer in the field: Turkey. It
examines the
use and non-use of democracy promotion by all three actors in
their

respective neighborhoods (Central and South America for the
United
States, the Mediterranean region for the EU and Turkey) in the
decades
in which democracy promotion first made inroads and turned
into an
established foreign policy, that is the late 1970s and 1980s for
the United
States, the 1990s and 2000s for the EU, and the 2000s for
Turkey.
This book is in four parts. The first part includes the conceptual
and
theoretical chapters, while the following parts consist of the
three case
studies: US, EU, and Turkish democracy promotion. The first
chapter
opens with a historical tour of democracy promotion’s
protagonists.
After a short overview on historical democracy promoters such
as
Ancient Athens and the French and British empires, three
generations
of contemporary democracy promoters are described: the United
States,
European democracies, and the EU, as well as non-Western
emerging
democratic powers. With the United States, the EU, and Turkey,
a case
study from each generation is chosen. The second chapter
defines the
explanandum of this study: the varying extent to which a
democ-
racy engages in democracy promotion. There are three types of
action
through which democracies can promote democracy: coercive,

utili-
tarian, and identitive measures. Finally, the third chapter
explores the
research question – what encourages and pushes and what
constrains
democracies to promote democracy abroad? – in theoretical
terms. It
argues that threat perceptions constrain democracy promotion,
while a
Introduction 3
democratic role identity – rooted internally in a democratic-type
iden-
tity and externally in international norms of democracy –
enables and
pushes for democracy promotion. A democratic role identity can
limit
the hindering effect of threat perceptions on democracy
promotion if
the relevant other is successful in mobilizing it.
The book then turns to the first case study: US democracy
promotion
in Central and South America in the last period of the Cold
War. The
fourth chapter shows how democracy promotion skyrocketed
from nil
to an important foreign policy component when President
Jimmy Carter
entered the White House, even though toward the end of his
presi-
dency this agenda had already declined. It was absent in the
first year

of President Ronald Reagan’s term, but soon started to find its
way back
into his foreign policy, especially from the mid-1980s onwards.
The fifth
chapter shows how low threat perceptions during the period of
détente
enabled democracy promotion, even though threat perceptions
then lost
their independent effect on foreign policy. The sixth chapter
explores
how the internal democratic transformation in the United States
spilled
over into foreign policy, also supported by the growth of
international
human rights norms and of democracy to the standard form of
govern-
ance during the Carter administration. While the Reagan
administration
at first rejected this reawakened democratic role identity in
foreign policy,
a grand foreign policy debate started in which the Reagan
administration
went from denying this role identity, to cheap rhetoric and its
expo-
sure through a transnationally acting human rights community,
to the
adoption of a democratic role identity in a conservative version,
making
democracy promotion a shared bipartisan foreign policy goal.
The third part of the book explores EU democracy promotion in
the
Mediterranean neighborhood since the end of the Cold War. The
seventh
chapter shows that democracy promotion started to enter the
EU’s foreign

policy agenda in the Mediterranean in the early 1990s and
received a
push in the early 2000s. From the mid-2000s onwards, however,
the
EU showed clear signals of diverting from its democracy
agenda, while
a final turning point came with the Arab Spring which seems to
have
revived this agenda again. Chapter 8 shows that EU democracy
promo-
tion started in the early 1990s in a new security environment;
low threat
perceptions enabled EU democracy promotion in the beginning,
while –
as in the US case – they lost their independent effect
afterwards. The
ninth chapter argues that the formation of the EU’s democratic
role iden-
tity was not only useful for the EU to create attachment to the
Union,
but in the 1990s it also formed in a euphoric international
environment
where democracy became a zeitgeist. This role identity
skyrocketed in
the early 2000s in face of the highly successful enlargement
process
whose logic was transported to the Mediterranean neighborhood
despite
increasing threat perceptions. However, when this role identity
was not
activated by the other, threat perceptions restrained EU foreign

policy
again and democracy promotion entered into a shaky period that
might
have ended with the Arab Spring.
The final, fourth part of the book turns to Turkey’s democracy
promo-
tion in the Middle East and North Africa since the early 2000s.
Chapter 10
explores variance in Turkey’s democracy promotion in the
Middle
East and North Africa and finds that democracy promotion
emerged
in the early 2000s mainly through a cooperative approach that
relied
on communicative-identitive means, but this approach lost
steam in
the 2007–2011 period. With the Arab uprisings, democracy
promotion
revived again, but this time through an activist, principled, and
often
confrontational approach. Chapter 11 shows that the de-
securitization
of Turkey’s relations with the Arab world in the early 2000s
enabled
democracy promotion. As in the US and EU cases, low threat
percep-
tions enabled democracy promotion in the first place and lost
their
independent effect on foreign policy afterwards. Chapter 12
argues that
the Justice and Development Party (AKP) developed a
democratic role
identity in foreign policy to prove its democratic credentials to
a broader
electorate in Turkey, as well as to the EU and the United States

who –
representing an important other for Turkey’s identity – actively
contrib-
uted to the development and activation of this role identity.
When the
EU and the United States increasingly turned away from
democracy
promotion from 2006/2007 onwards, Turkey also de-emphasized
the
theme. Turkey’s democratic role identity was once more
activated from
2011 onwards, this time by the second important other in
Turkey’s iden-
tity, the Arab world. This was also supported by internal
politics, as the
AKP government was facing domestic protest and foreign policy
became
a domain where the outlook of Turkey’s democracy was
contested.
The conclusions discuss what we have learned in comparative
perspective, how this contributes to IR theory more generally
and to
the research field of democracy promotion specifically, and
what we can
expect for the future of democracy promotion. It argues that
democracy
promotion is mainly driven by identity dynamics. The book
contributes
to constructivist literature on norms by highlighting that
international
norms also influence norm-compliers and on identity by
suggesting that
this literature should not only focus on role identity, but also
consider
the crucial role that an internal identity and the other can play

in
fostering or activating a role identity.
Part I
Democracy Promotion – Who
Does What and t Why ?
7
While democracy promotion is often perceived as a new foreign
policy
phenomenon, it has actually ebbed and flowed throughout
history along-
side democracy itself. This chapter briefly follows democracy
promo-
tion’s history with a short overview on historical democracy
promoters
such as Ancient Athens, as well as the French and British
empires, before
it moves to contemporary democracy promoters, concretely
three gener-
ations of them: the United States, Europe, and non-Western
emerging
democratic powers.
Historical democracy promoters
Democracy promotion has appeared together with democracy
itself;
indeed it was arguably through democracy promotion that
Ancient

Athens became aware of the concept of diverse forms of
governance,
the uniqueness of its own form, and the possibility to change or
choose
among them (Bleicken 1979). 1 First instances of democracy
promotion
emerged already in times of transition to democracy. With the
Thetes –
the lowest Athenian class and backbone of Athenian sea power
which
had demanded equal rights in their city – democratic ideas were
sailing
‘in persona’ throughout the Aegean (Bleicken 1979, 168). This
diffu-
sion of democratic ideas was highly explosive. The
transformation of
Athens into a radical democracy where political power was
transferred
to the poorer classes (de Ste. Croix 1954) and the growing
awareness
that this form of governance could also be transported to other
city
states represented a massive challenge to the traditional orders
in
Hellas, spearheaded by Sparta. The Peloponnesian wars were
then not
only caused by the growth of Athenian power (Thucydides
1972, I.23),
but – to paraphrase Thucydides – by the growth of Athenian
democracy
1
Who Promotes Democracy? The
Protagonists

which brought fear to the Lacedaemonians and forced them to
war. It
was precisely during the Peloponnesian wars that a debate on
the best
constitutional form appeared in the Hellenic world. 2
It was also during the Peloponnesian wars that Athenian
democracy
promotion grew and became systematic. Typically, Athens
would arrive
with a fleet to a city in which then either the local democrats
would
seize power alone or the Athenians would directly intervene. In
case of
intervention, the Athenian assembly defined which kind of
democracy
to install and Athenian officials supervised the
implementation.3 Athens
also systematically imposed massive social changes on the
cities where
it promoted democracy (Schuller 1981, 286). Wealthy oligarchs
were not
only disempowered politically, but also economically. Their
possessions
were confiscated, they were exiled, and, in the worst case,
executed.
Nonetheless, democrats that were put in power by Athens were
often
weak and thus dependent on Athenian protection in the form of
military
garrisons installed in allied city states (Schuller 1979, 83).
Democracy
promotion therefore was an instrument to ensure loyalty to the

Athenian
empire. Furthermore, allied democratic cities were more
transparent and
thus easier to monitor. Athens posted episkopoi and other
officials in
allied democratic cities who followed assembly discussions and
so were
always aware of the political directions allies were heading to.
During the course of the Second Peloponnesian War, however,
Athenian democracy promotion became increasingly violent.
While
in the Erythrae decree (about 453 BCE) confiscation of
oligarchic
property was still regulated and subsumed to jurisdiction,
during the
Second Peloponnesian War this was increasingly replaced by
executions
without judicial process. An extreme example of this is the
Athenian
toleration of the mass slaughter of oligarchs by democrats in
Kerkyrain
(today Corfu) in 425 BCE, as well as the Athenian execution of
1,000
oligarchs in Mytilene in 427 BCE. Such atrocities led to
irreconcilability
between oligarchic and democratic factions and festered endless
civil
war (stasis) in city states. Whereas up to the Second
Peloponnesian War
democracy had gained in legitimacy through Athenian
achievements
in arts, sciences, and wealth, and was hence spreading
throughout
Greece, during the course of the Second Peloponnesian War
democracy

became increasingly associated with the violent rule of the mob
due to
Athens’s aggressive behavior. It did not only instill stasis in
city states
through democracy promotion, but was also involved in mass
atroci-
ties, most famously perhaps in Melos, and engaged in disastrous
mili-
tary campaigns as in Sicily – leading ultimately to the
disqualification of
democracy by history.
Who Promotes Democracy? The Protagonists 9
For a long period democracy had a negative connotation. Not
only
did Plato criticize democracy (in The Republic, written about
380 BCE
[Plato 1980]), but Aristotle also saw democracy as a perversion
of the
best regime type – polity – and argued for a mixed constitution
in Politics
(Aristotle 1977, written about 350 BCE). Reflecting on
Athenian experi-
ences, philosophers as diverse as Thomas Aquinas, Niccolò
Machiavelli,
and James Madison were either critical of democracy or
cautious about
some of its shortcomings (Roberts 1994). The concept of
democracy only
started to gain ground again when the idea of representative
democracy
emerged in the 17th century. James Mill called this the ‘grand
discovery

of modern times’ (quoted in Ball 1992, xx) and by the late 18th
century
‘it was obvious and unarguable that democracy must be
representative’
(Dahl 1989, 28–29). Representation was not only seen as a
bulwark
against the instability of direct democracies, but also became
associated
with international peace. In 1795 Immanuel Kant argued in
Perpetual
Peace that republics (states with representative governments and
separa-
tion of powers) are more peaceful since all citizens would be
responsible
for their decisions and bear the results of war (Kant 1957).
Democracy
had lost its negative connotation and was making inroads in
North
America, France, and England.
It was the American Revolution and the US Declaration of
Independence
of 1776 that represented ‘the high point of the radical
democratic surge’
(Dolbeare 1989, 25) of that period. While the United States did
not
actively seek to promote democracy abroad at the time,
democratic
ideas diffused to Europe, above all to France which had
supported the
American revolutionaries in order to balance against the British
Empire
and thus allowed the distribution of American literature in
France. What
most impressed French readers about the American Revolution
‘was

the very act of constitution-making itself, the constituting or
reconsti-
tuting of government through the principle of the people as
constituent
power’ (Palmer 1969, 266). Thus, while the American
Revolution did
not directly drive the French Revolution, it did encourage the
belief in
the possibility of change in France.
The French Revolution had the same effect in Europe, and
European
monarchs and nobilities immediately perceived it as an
ideational threat
to their power. When revolts started to occur in countries like
Holland,
Geneva, or Poland, foreign monarchs intervened right away to
suppress
them, stirring fears in France about an eminent foreign
reactionary
intervention in their country (Palmer 1969, 484). The first
revolutionary
wars can therefore be seen as ‘preventive wars’ which initially
aimed at
creating buffer zones between France and hostile monarchies
such as
Germany and Austria (Blanning 1986; 1996). In these zones the
French
revolutionary armies systematically introduced radical
institutional
changes including the abolition of serfdom, quasi-feudalism, the

power
of the clergy and of the guilds in the cities, as well as the
establishment of
equality before the law (Acemoglu et al. 2009, 11; Grab 2003).
Many of
these reforms were later on continued by Napoleon, notably
through
the Code Napoléon (Woolf 2002; Grab 2003). While these
often radical
institutional changes were accompanied by what came to be
called
la Terreur (Andress 2006), they also destroyed the institutional
underpin-r
nings of the power of oligarchies and elites (Acemoglu et al.
2009) and
made reforms such as due process in courts, the abolition of
privileges,
and civil law systems difficult to reverse in the reactionary time
period
heralded by the Concert of Europe in 1815.
Ideas of the French Revolution were also incorporated in the
official
doctrine associated with France’s imperial conquests: the
mission civili-
satrice. But rather than exporting the French Revolution, the
way the
revolution was remembered in France4 made the French feel
superior to
their colonial subjects, implying that ‘France’s colonial subjects
were too
primitive to rule themselves, but were capable of being uplifted’
(Conklin
1997, 1). Thus, rather than transferring the values of the
revolution to
their colonies, the French believed they first had to ‘modernize’

their
colonial subjects, often through despotic means, before they
would
be able to rule themselves. Like the French, the British also
perceived
themselves as superior due their political, economic, and
technological
breakthroughs in the 19th century and saw their colonial
subjects as
‘uncivilized’ nations, incapable of self-rule. As James Mill
argued,
If we wish for the prolongation of an English government in
India,
which we do most sincerely, it is for the sake of the natives, not
of
England. India has never been anything but a burden; and
anything
but a burden, we are afraid, it cannot be rendered. But this
English
government in India, with all its vices, is a blessing of
unspeakable
magnitude to the population of Hindustan. Even the utmost
abuse of
European power is better, we are persuaded, than the most
temperate
exercise of Oriental despotism. (quoted in Pitts 2005, 125)
The Empire’s official doctrine became that it was spreading
liberal prac-
tices throughout its colonies, notably through colonial
assemblies,
free trade, and evangelical missionaries. The justification ‘of
British
imperial rule ... through much of the nineteenth century, began
to rest

primarily on arguments that Britain brought (and was alone
capable
of bringing) good government to India’ (Pitts 2005, 16), despite
the
fact that democratic institutions were exported only sporadically
and
mainly to Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. In India limited
repre-
sentative institutions were introduced only toward the end of the
19th
century. Democracy promotion has never been a systematic
policy of
the British Empire.5
Contemporary democracy promoters
Democracy promotion came back in a systematic manner only in
the
20th century when the United States abandoned its policy of
isolation
and entered the stage of world politics. The United States can
indeed be
seen as a first-generation contemporary democracy promoter
since its poli-r
cies and experiences have influenced and shaped democracy
promotion
policies of later generations of democracy promoters through
direct (the
United States has urged other democracies to participate in
democracy
promotion) as well as indirect influence (other democracies

have copied
US policies). It was under President Woodrow Wilson that the
essential
understandings of the purposes, meanings, and instruments of
democ-
racy promotion were laid which influence the conceptualization
of this
policy until today.
While Thomas Jefferson tried to protect US democracy from
corrup-
tion from Europe by a policy of isolation which prevented the
US from
participating in Europe’s imperial race, Woodrow Wilson
sought to
protect American democracy by ‘making the world safe for
democracy’
(Tucker 1993). Sporadic democracy promotion had already
started in
the Philippines (1899) and was pursued by Wilson in Mexico
(1914),
Haiti (1915), and the Dominican Republic (1916). After World
War I and
the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Wilson
sought to
set up democracies in newly established states such as
Czechoslovakia,
Poland, and Yugoslavia. Besides democracy promotion through
bilat-
eral means, he also pursued democratic aims in multilateral
rela-
tions and tried to create a Pan-American Liberty Pact (Drake
1991).
Membership in the League of Nations was limited to
democracies, as
Wilson believed that a ‘steadfast concert for peace can never be

main-
tained except by a partnership of democratic nations. No
autocratic
government could be trusted to keep faith within it or observe
its cove-
nants’ (Wilson 1917; T. Smith 1994, 84–109; Cohrs 2006). 6
However,
maybe Wilson’s approach was too idealistic, maybe the world
was
not ‘safe for democracy’ yet. In any case, democracy could not
estab-
lish itself in Europe and the League of Nations failed. With the
Great
Depression this first activist approach to democracy promotion
came
to an end (Drake 1991; Munoz 1998).
After the World War II, the United States was more concerned
with
the stability of allied states than democratization. There were
two
striking exceptions to this rule: the cases of Germany and Japan.
In no
other historical instance was democracy promotion pursued with
such
a massive financial and systematic effort. In other cases, like
Turkey
and Greece, for example, democratization was ignored for the
sake of
stability. The United States found itself ‘in the uncomfortable
position

of actively supporting authoritarian regimes, and this in the
name of
fostering a liberal democratic world order’ (T. Smith 1994,
139). But the
low point of US democracy promotion was yet to come. From
the liber-
alism of Wilson to the liberal realism of Franklin D. Roosevelt,
the United
States moved to the active overthrow of democratically elected
regimes
in Iran (of elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh,
1953) and
Guatemala (of elected President Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán, 1954)
during
Dwight D. Eisenhower’s presidency. Containing communism
took
precedence over democracy promotion (Light 2001, 77) and a
Cold
War consensus emerged in which almost any means was
justified. This
period was shortly interrupted by the presidency of John F.
Kennedy,
who sought to escape the dilemma of containing communism
and
promoting democracy by keeping up strong alliances with
autocracies
and investing billions of dollars into the Alliance of Progress to
change the
socio-economic structure of neighboring countries. Following
Kennedy,
stability became the ‘holy grail’ (Schoultz 1998, 358) of the
Lyndon
B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Gerald Ford administrations.
The Nixon/
Ford-Kissinger administrations pursued a realist policy that
turned a

blind eye to any democratic concerns and did not even try to
cover this
foreign policy with democracy rhetoric. Another democratically
elected
government was overthrown with US involvement: the
government of
Salvador Allende in Chile. Kissinger commented that he did not
‘see
why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist
due to the
irresponsibility of its own people’ (quoted in Schoultz 1998,
349). Later
on Kissinger also instructed US ambassador to Chile, David
Popper, who
had confronted the Chilean government with allegations of
torture, ‘to
cut out the political science lectures’ (quoted in Schoultz 1998,
349).
Kissinger, however, had based his rationale on a comprehension
of the
international system which was already out of tune with the new
under-
standings of the era. Democracy and human rights became the
call of
the time, not only inside the United States, but also in the world
arena.
Following profound changes in American democracy and the
normative
structure of the world order, the consensus on Realpolitik
disintegrated
and gave way to new conceptions of foreign policy.

With President Jimmy Carter a radically new foreign policy
agenda
entered the White House. Inspired by the rights consciousness
within
the United States, Carter incorporated human rights and
democratic
freedoms into his foreign policy toward Central and South
America
on an unprecedented level and sparked a foreign policy debate
in the
course of which democracy promotion became a shared
bipartisan
foreign policy goal. During the last period of the Cold War a
bureaucracy
and script for democracy promotion was developed which
guides US
democracy promotion until today. The Carter administration
strength-
ened the Bureau of Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs in
the
State Department, the Reagan administration established the
National
Endowment of Democracy (NED), and the Clinton
administration made
democracy promotion one of the three main pillars of its foreign
policy,
created United States Agency for International Development’s
(USAID’s)
Democracy and Governance program, its Office of Transition
Initiatives
(OTI), and the State Department’s Human Rights and
Democracy Fund
(HRDF). The surge of US democracy promotion activities,
however, came
with the first Bush administration. Facing a highly uncertain

world after
September 11, it began to see the lack of democracy in the Arab
world
as the breeding ground for ‘the ideologies of murder’ (Bush
2003) and
developed its Freedom Agenda which made democracy
promotion a US
mission toward ‘every nation and culture’ (Bush 2005), with a
primary
focus on the Middle East. Besides the justification of the Iraq
War with
democracy rhetoric which damaged the whole Western
democracy
agenda (Carothers 2009b ; Whitehead 2009), the Bush
administra-
tion established the US–Middle East Partnership Initiative
(MEPI), a
democracy assistance program for the Middle East, and the
Millennium
Challenge Corporation (MCC). This democracy euphoria,
however, was
soon dampened when electoral gains of political Islam were
made in
relatively free elections in Iraq, Egypt, and Lebanon in the
2005–2006
period. Crowned by the electoral victory of Hamas in the 2006
parlia-
mentary elections in Palestine, this represented a foreign policy
disaster
for an administration that had been entirely driven by its
Freedom
Agenda in pushing the Palestinian Authority to hold free
elections and
that consequentially was caught off guard by Hamas’s electoral
victory.
As a result, the Bush administration backtracked on its Freedom

Agenda
and what emerged ‘was a policy caught between free trade
liberalization,
as the positive route to eventual democratization, and
domination, to
the extent that it increasingly favored regional stability, the
continuation
of long-term security interests and the undermining of regimes
that
challenged its hegemony over the region’ (Hassan 2012, 127).
Barack
Obama’s rise to the presidency imbued people in the region with
hopes
for a ‘new beginning’ (Obama 2009). Facing not only a world
but also a
home public increasingly doubtful of democracy promotion, the
Obama
administration at first de-emphasized the issue, but was soon
pulled
back into it through democratic breakthroughs in the world
(Carothers
2012), notably the Arab uprisings, even though its reaction to
them has
been marred by contradictions (Huber 2015).
In parallel to the re-emergence of democracy promotion in US
foreign policy, in the late 1970s, a new second generation of
democracy
promoters emerged in Europe. Nordic countries began to
incorporate
principles of human rights and democracy into their foreign

policy at
the time and other European countries followed suit (Laakso
2002).
The most important mechanism for the promotion of democracy,
however, became the European Community (EC)/European
Union
(EU). It anchored and promoted the transitions in Spain,
Portugal, and
Greece in the mid-1970s and the Eastern transitions after the
end of
the Cold War (Pridham 1995). While the EU might have less
capa-
bilities to promote democracy through coercive means than a
nation
state, with the accession process, it has arguably the most
effective
democracy promotion instrument at its disposal which nation
states
like the United States do not possess. The EU has tried to
project this
capacity also on the Eastern and Southern neighborhood through
the
European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) which mirrors the
enlargement
process in its set-up, even though association has proven less
effec-
tive than accession (Schimmelfennig and Scholtz 2008).
Furthermore,
the EU has introduced other specific instruments into the
democracy
promotion catalog such as the incorporation of respect for
human
rights and democratic principles in its contractual relations with
third
countries or the use of multilateral forums to promote
democracy. In

addition to its specific instruments, the EU also uses similar
instru-
ments to the United States, notably democracy assistance
through the
European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights
(EIDHR) and
other funding instruments. In 2010, the 16 leading European
donor
states plus EU institutions spent almost 3 billion euros for
democracy
promotion worldwide (European Commission 2012a). Like the
United
States, the EU has institutionalized democracy promotion,
namely
through the Directorate General EuropeAid which is responsible
for
EIDHR and the Commissioner for Enlargement and the
European
Neighborhood Policy. The High Representative of the EU which
now
heads the European External Action Service (EEAS) is also
engaged in
democracy promotion through diplomatic means.
Finally, a third generation of democracy promoters is emerging,
that is,
non-Western democratic powers such as Brazil, India, Japan,
South
Africa, and Turkey. They have been qualified as sporadic
(Brazil) (Burges
and Daudelin 2007), quiet (Japan) (Akaha 2002), or reluctant

(India)
(Mohan 2007) democracy promoters, even though their
commitment to
democracy promotion can be characterized as growing, not only
due to
pressure from the United States (Carothers and Youngs 2011,
3), but also
as a result of their own search for international prestige. Their
efforts
typically focus on their own region and neighborhood.
In South America first instances of democracy promotion
started when
the Southern Cone – Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay –
democratized.
In the 1980s the reformers of Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay,
Colombia,
Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Mexico initiated ‘a veritable
carousel of bilat-
eral and subregional summit meetings’ (Raymont 2005, 249–
250) which
represented the peak of what Arie Kacowicz has described as
the ‘strong,
long-lasting, and under-studied tradition of formal support for
democ-
racy and human rights in the region’ (Kacowicz 2005, 62).
Argentina
was specifically active in this respect (A. F. Cooper 2006, 18).
For newly
elected Argentinean President Raul Alfonsín the support of
democratiza-
tion within South America was essential for anchoring
democratization
at home (Fournier 1999). Being surrounded by authoritarian
regimes
in the region and fearing autocratic foreign intervention in the

young
Argentinean democracy, he started to pursue an active approach
of
advancing democratic norms and values in the neighborhood to
lock
them in at home. This approach included increased cooperation
with
European democracies, the forging of a democratic alliance with
the
democratizing countries Brazil and Uruguay, support for
democratiza-
tion in Uruguay and Bolivia, the naming and shaming of
authoritarian
neighbors, and concrete help to the Paraguayan democratic
opposition
(Fournier 1999). Alfonsín also promoted the Protocol of
Cartagena de
Indias which was adopted in 1985 as an amendment of the
charter
of the Organization of American States (OAS). In the preamble
repre-
sentative democracy was now called ‘an indispensable condition
for the
stability, peace, and development in the region’ and democracy
promo-
tion became an explicit purpose of the OAS which now obliged
itself
‘to promote and consolidate representative democracy, with due
respect
for the principle of nonintervention’ (OAS 1985). As the norm
of sover-
eignty remained strong in the region, democracy promotion was
accept-
able only in cases of coups d’état which deposed elected leaders
or in

failed state contexts. Today, Brazil is one of the most active
regional
powers in the Americas for democracy promotion (Santiso
2003).
Brazil has not only opposed coups d’état in the region, but has
also
contributed to state- and democracy-building as part of its
peacekeeping
mission in Haiti. Furthermore, it has promoted the inclusion of
democ-
racy requirements into multilateral instruments such as
Mercosur or the
Inter-American Democratic Charter of the OAS which entered
into force
in 2001 and declares that ‘(t)he peoples of the Americas have a
right
to democracy and their governments have an obligation to
promote
and defend it’ (OAS 2001). Brazil prefers to promote democracy
through
multilateral venues and the OAS has an array of means at its
disposal
today, including electoral observation, development of public
adminis-
tration, anti-corruption, education for democratic practices and
values,
and support for legislative institutions.
Like Brazil, India also adheres to a strong norm of non-
interference
and has shown a preference to promote democracy through
multilateral

forums. It is one of the largest contributors to the UN
Democracy Fund
and a founding member of the Community of Democracies
(Carothers
and Youngs 2011, 8). However, in contrast to Brazil which lives
in a
rather democratic neighborhood and can promote democracy
through
regional multilateral institutions like the OAS or Mercosur,
India is
located in a comparatively more autocratic region where norms
of
human rights and democratic freedoms do not have a similarly
long
trail as in South America. This impedes Indian efforts to
promote democ-
racy through multilateral forums, even though such vehicles are
devel-
oping. In 2007, at the initiative of the United States, the Asia
Pacific
Democracy Partnership (APDP) was founded with Australia,
Canada,
India, Indonesia, Japan, Mongolia, New Zealand, the
Philippines, South
Korea, Thailand, the United States, and East Timor. Its first
election obser-
vation mission was Mongolia’s 2008 parliamentary elections.
The South
Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), founded
in 1985,
adopted a Charter of Democracy in 2011. Member states are
Afghanistan,
Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri
Lanka.
Furthermore, India is supporting democratic institution-building
in

Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. Indeed,
its work
in Afghanistan is important for the international community
since it
is the fourth largest bilateral donor there and supports the
building
of Afghan bureaucracy, parliament, elections, as well as
infrastructure
in the country (Twining and Fontaine 2011). Like India, Japan
is also
part of the APDP, but nonetheless its democracy promotion
efforts have
been focused on bilateral democracy assistance, accounting for
about
3 per cent of its total official development aid (ODA). Of
almost 20 billion
USD ODA, 614 million were spent for governance and civil
society in
2011 (OECD Statistics 2013).7 Living beside the autocratic big
power of
China, Japan like India has shied away from more offensive
practices of
democracy promotion like naming and shaming of violations of
human
rights or democratic freedoms of countries in its neighborhood.
In contrast to Japan, as well as Brazil and India (with which it
forms
IBSA), South Africa has more clearly made democracy part of
its foreign
policy identity after the fall of apartheid and even engaged in an

inva-
sion in Lesotho in 1998, arguably to protect an elected
government from
a coup d’état. Indeed, the norm of non-intervention is weaker in
Africa
than in Asia or South America; the African Union was a
pioneering inter-
national organization in that it enshrined the responsibility to
protect
into its Constitutive Act (African Union 2000). This enables
South Africa
to drive more active democracy promotion policies in its region.
At the
same time, this outspoken foreign policy identity of South
Africa has –
as in the case of the United States and the European Union –
exposed
Pretoria to criticism where it did not meet its own rhetoric,
leading it to
scale down its democracy talk (Landsberg 2000). Nonetheless, it
is one
of the top contributors to peacekeeping missions in Africa
(Heinecken
and Ferreira 2012), seeks to prevent coups d’état, provides
electoral
assistance on the continent, and has advocated the African Peer
Review
Mechanism in which states can voluntarily be reviewed by their
African
peers in areas such as democracy and political governance,
economic
governance, corporate governance, and socio-economic
development.
Finally, Turkey also has started to include democracy into its
foreign

policy identity, specifically since the Justice and Development
Party
(AKP) came to power in the early 2000s. Turkey perceives itself
as a demo-
cratic model for Muslim countries and the AKP as a model for
democratic
conservative Islamic parties. While Turkey had incorporated a
democ-
racy component into its development aid and adopted pro-
democratic
stances in multilateral forums such as the Organization of the
Islamic
Conference (OIC) already before the Arab Spring, its
democracy promo-
tion policy was hampered by the autocratic nature of its
neighboring
regimes with which AKP-led Turkey established good relations
in a push
for a greater regional reach. However, the Arab Spring has
changed this
picture fundamentally and Turkey has firmly placed itself on the
side
of the revolutions while struggling with its own problems with
democ-
racy. It has harshly criticized the military coup against ousted
Egyptian
President Mohamed Morsi, has invested political and economic
capital
in post-revolutionary Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya, and supports
the Syrian
opposition. Turkish observers even argued that Turkey conducts

its
foreign policy there ‘very much on the liberal principles that
underpin
the normative bases of the international order. More
importantly, this
development underscored not only Turkey’s similarity to
Western values
but also its dissimilarity from potential contenders to the global
order’
(Kardas 2012). For Turkey democracy promotion has become an
impor-
tant part of its power projection in a transforming region.
The three case studies of this book
This short historical tour of democracy promotion’s most
important
protagonists shows that the amount of potential case studies of
democ-
racy promotion is extensive and does not justify the tendency of
the
research field to look at single Western cases only. Research
should
now become comparative – some studies have emerged in this
respect
(Tocci 2008; Magen, Risse, and McFaul 2009; Carothers and
Youngs
2011; Börzel, Dandashly, and Risse 2015) – notably also to
arrive at a
more comprehensive theoretical discussion of democracy
promotion.
Since the previous section has identified three generations of
democracy
promoters – the United States, European democracies and the
EU, as
well as non-Western emerging democratic powers – this book

explores a
democracy promoter from each of these generations, not only to
high-
light potential learning effects from one generation to the next,
but
also to study Western, as well as non-Western, democracy
promoters.
Concretely, this book looks at the United States, the EU, and
Turkey.
The United States has been the most important protagonist in
the field
without which a discussion of democracy promotion hardly
makes sense.
Regarding the second generation of democracy promoters –
European
democracies and the EU – this study examines the EU, since it
is not only
the main venue through which European democracies promote
democ-
racy, but has special instruments at its disposal and has
arguably been
one of the most successful democracy promoters leading to
‘mimicry’
and imitation of its democracy promotion policies by other
regional
organizations such as the OAS or nation states like the United
States and
recently Turkey. Finally, from the third generation, Turkey is
chosen due
to the relatively high profile democracy promotion has recently
received
in its foreign policy compared to other emerging democratic
powers.
Each of these cases is studied singularly based on process
tracing (see
the section on methodology in Chapter 3) to identify the

mechanisms
that trigger or hinder democracy promotion. The three cases are
then
discussed comparatively in the conclusion of this book.
To enable such a comparative discussion, however, the range of
these
three cases has to be limited. Given that democracy promotion
is still
under-theorized (Wolff and Wurm 2011, 77) and that – as Peter
Burnell
has pointed out – it is questionable if a comprehensive theory
can be set
up to explain it in face of the ‘number and range of dramatis
personae
who are now engaged in democracy assistance, the diversity of
organi-
zational forms, approaches and principal concerns’ (Burnell
2000, 34),
complexity has to be reduced. Therefore this study limits the
time
periods when and the space where democracy is promoted. In
terms of
time, this study focuses on those periods when democracy
promotion
made first inroads into American, European, and Turkish
foreign poli-
cies and became an established foreign policy principle, namely
the late
1970s and the 1980s for the United States, the 1990s and 2000s
for the
EU, and the 2000s for Turkey. All time periods have been

characterized
by decisive ups and downs in democracy promotion of the
respective
actors and so enable an observation of the initial triggers of
democracy
promotion, as well as what keeps encouraging and constraining
democ-
racies in pursuing this policy over a relatively extended period
of time.
In terms of space, this book focuses on democracy promotion in
the
neighborhood, 8 that is, the United States in Central and South
America,
and the EU and Turkey in the Middle East and North Africa
(MENA).
While the US has capacities to promote democracy worldwide,
this
applies less to the EU and even less to Turkey. Thus, to hold the
capa-
bility factor constant across the case studies, it makes sense to
examine
democracy promotion in the neighborhood only, where all three
actors
have been comparatively more powerful than their democracy
promo-
tion targets in terms of military, economic, and political weight
and
thus had and have the capability to promote democracy. By
keeping the
capability to promote democracy constant, we can concentrate
on exam-y
ining variance in the willingness of democracies to pursue this
foreign
policy.
Finally, in terms of comparability of the cases, it should be

noted that
with the United States and Turkey this study examines two
nation states,
while the EU is a new actor in world politics which has been
diversely
defined as a quasi-federal state (Sbragia 1992), a
‘multiperspectival
polity’ (Ruggie 1993), a ‘postmodern state’ (James A. Caporaso
1996), a
‘multilevel polity’ (Hooghe and Marks 2001), a ‘fusionist state’
(Wessels
1997), ‘a hybrid polity’ (Manners and Whitman 2003), and ‘a
polycen-
tric “polity” possessing a multilevel governance “regime”’
(Bellamy and
Castiglione 2004). This raises the question how comparable the
cases are
in terms of actorness. Following Caporaso and Jupille (1998),
actorness
can be assessed with four criteria: recognition, authority,
autonomy, and
cohesion. Recognition is the ‘acceptance of and interaction of
an entity
with the others’ (Caporaso and Jupille 1998, 214). The United
States,
EU, and Turkey have all been accepted in their respective
regions as
distinctive actors through de facto as well as de jure interaction,
even
if this acceptance did not imply that the others found the
behavior of

these three actors legitimate. Quite to the contrary, all three
actors also
suffer from a lack of legitimacy in their neighborhoods, not
least due to
the imperial luggage they carry. The three actors are also
comparable in
terms of authority, the ‘legal competence to act’ (Caporaso and
Jupille
1998, 214). Since the Maastricht Treaty the EU has developed
complex
but stable rules and mechanisms for decision-making in foreign
policy
(Keukeleire and Delreux 2014). Thus also in terms of authority
the EU
is comparable to the United States and Turkey. Autonomy is
‘distinc-
tiveness, and to some extent independence from other actors,
particu-
larly state actors’ (Caporaso and Jupille 1998, 217). This might
be the
criterion where the EU differs most from the United States and
Turkey,
since member states can interfere in matters sensitive for them,
notably
through the Council. However, the Commissioner on
Enlargement and
European Neighborhood Policy, as well as the High
Representative and
the External Action Service, have sufficient autonomy to act in
order to
see the EU as an actor in its own right. Furthermore, if the EU
is analyti-
cally treated as a single actor, the compartmentalization of EU
foreign
policy 9 can be compared to nation states such as the United
States and

Turkey, where foreign policy has been subject to virulent
infighting
among the White House, the Departments of State and Defense,
as
well as Congress in the United States (Woodward 2003) or
between the
elected government and the security establishment in Turkey
(Robins
2003, 52–92). Indeed, the definition of foreign policy adopted
in this
book as presented later on alludes to the growing
compartmentaliza-
tion of foreign policy that applies to nation states, as well as the
EU.
Finally, Jupille and Caporaso also raise the criterion of
cohesion or
coherence in foreign policy which, as Tanja Börzel, Assem
Dandashly,
and Thomas Risse argue, is not necessarily an ingredient for
assessing
actorness. ‘Whether an actor pursues an inconsistent and
incoherent
foreign policy is an empirical question, not a definitional
criterion’
(Börzel, Dandashly, and Risse 2015). They propose capability
as a fourth
criterion and, again, the EU has acquired most of the traditional
foreign
policy tools – that is, military,10 economic, and diplomatic
tools – as well
as specific EU ones that nation states have traditionally not
possessed
(K. Smith 2003, 67) but which they are starting to copy (see,
e.g., the

case of Turkey in this book). In all, as this short discussion of
the actor-
ness question showed, the EU does not only possess sufficient
actorness
in foreign policy, but can be treated as a state-like actor and
rather well
compared to the United States and Turkey specifically in the
field of
democracy promotion. Nonetheless, to prevent conceptual
misunder-
standings, the evolution of competences of the EU in democracy
promo-
tion will be elaborated in more detail in Chapter 7 on EU
democracy
promotion.
22
The first chapter focused on the protagonists, but what
identifies this
policy? What is democracy promotion and how can we measure
its
varying use over time? This chapter defines democracy
promotion
and then outlines three types of actions to promote democracy
which
serve as the basis to measure variance in the (non-)use of
democracy
promotion.

Defining democracy promotion
Democracy promotion is a specific type of foreign policy.
Adapting the
definitions of Christopher Hill on the one hand, and Stephan
Keukeleire
and Tom Delreux on the other, foreign policy is here defined as
the sum
of official activities conducted by an independent actor that are
directed
at the external environment with the objective of influencing
that envi-
ronment and the behavior of other actors within it. This
definition is
sufficiently wide to allow for the foreign policies of states, as
well as
other important actors in world politics such as the EU.
Furthermore, by
focusing on ‘sum’, it includes all kinds of output from diverse
parts of
their governing mechanisms and thus reflects the growing
reality that
foreign policy nowadays is conducted not only by foreign
offices but by
an array of domestic institutions and actors (Hill 2003, 3).
Finally, this
definition alludes to the differentiation between relational and
struc-
tural foreign policy as suggested by Keukeleire and Delreux,
according to
which the former is a ‘foreign policy that seeks to influence the
attitude
and behavior of other actors as well as the relations with and
between
other actors’, while the latter is a ‘foreign policy which,

conducted over
the long-term, aims at sustainably influencing or shaping
political,
legal, economic, social, security or other structures in a given
space’
2
What Is Democracy Promotion?
The Explanandum
What Is Democracy Promotion? The Explanandum 23
(Keukeleire and Delreux 2014, 27–28). Democracy promotion –
even
though it might also rely on relational foreign policy activities –
is in
its essence a structural foreign policy as it complies with one of
its main
characteristics, that is to ‘shape the organizing principles and
rules of
the game and to determine how others will play that game’
(Keukeleire
and Delreux 2014, 28) as will be further elaborated in the
theory part of
this book.
Democracy promotion is then defined as all those foreign policy
activities which aim at fostering the transition to, consolidation
of, or
improvement of democracy in other states and their societies.
Since this
study examines the motivations of democracy promoters, this
defini-
tion focuses on the goals of the democracy promoter and not

the effec-
tiveness of this policy. It excludes cases where a foreign policy
is not
explicitly aimed at promoting democracy, even though it might
effec-
tively do so as an unintended side effect,1 or where a foreign
policy is
propagated as democracy promotion, even though this just
serves as
window dressing. 2
This goal-oriented definition, however, also implies that
democracy is
a subjective, rather than objective, category: democracy is in
the eye of
the beholder; it is what the democracy promoter believes it to
be. Such
a definition is a double-edged sword: on the one hand it
acknowledges
that democracy is an essentially contested concept (Gallie 1955)
and
that there are diverse models of democracy (Held 2006). On the
other
hand, the promotion of almost any form of governance – such
as, for
example, ‘sovereign democracy’ through Russia – can then be
classi-
fied as democracy promotion, making the concept an empty
category.
This is related to the parallel discussion in the democratization
litera-
ture triggered by David Collier and Steven Levitsky (1997) who
pointed
out that in the wake of the third wave of democratization
democracy
has lost its conceptual validity through adding adjectives to

democracy
such as ‘authoritarian democracy’ or ‘military-dominated
democracy’.
Hence, to uphold conceptual validity and to limit complexity, it
makes
sense to define democracy and therewith the substance of
democracy
promotion.
Today’s democracy promotion tends mainly toward a liberal
model
of democracy. This applies to US and European democracy
promotion
(Hanau Santini and Hassan 2012; Teti 2012; Huber 2013), as
well as to
Indian approaches (Pogodda and Huber 2014) or those of
Turkey (Aras
2013). According to Jürgen Habermas who has distinguished
three
contemporary normative models of democracy – the liberal,
republican,3
and deliberative model4 – liberal democracy sees the human
being as a
homo oeconomicus and society as a ‘market-structured network
of inter-
actions among private persons’ (Habermas 1996, 21) in which
rational
interests of individuals are aggregated into a competitive
political system
through elections; votes are expressions of preferences.

Contributions
to liberal democratic thought range from John Locke, James and
John
Stuart Mill, and Joseph Schumpeter to Robert Dahl, or – in an
extreme
form – Friedrich Hayek and Robert Nozick. Since Robert Dahl’s
definition
has not only became paradigmatic in political science, but also
provides
clear criteria for assessing democracy, this study uses it as a
definitional
anchor point. Democracy is reached when all citizens have
equal oppor-
tunities for expressing their preferences, for setting the agenda
and
deciding on different outcomes (effective participation), for
expressing
a choice (voting equality at the decisive stage), and for
discovering and
validating (enlightened understanding); when the people have
the
exclusive opportunity to decide how matters are placed on the
agenda
(control of the agenda); and when equality extends to all
citizens within
the state (inclusiveness) (Dahl 1989).
In this model of democracy, fair rules of the game are
guaranteed
through the rule of law as well as human rights in the liberal
under-
standing of the term which mainly includes liberal defensive
rights, civil
and political rights, and a certain level of social and economic
rights (at
least in Dahl’s definition which supposes some degree of socio-

economic
equality). Indeed, the rule of law and human rights are central
back-
ground conditions of this model of democracy. None of Dahl’s
criteria is
imaginable without classic civil and political rights, such as the
freedom
of speech and assembly. This explains why liberal democracy
promoters
tend to group democracy, human rights, and the rule of law
together –
all three belong to the substantive content of liberal democracy
promo-
tion. Turning from background conditions to the essence of
democracy,
in the process of ‘contestation and participation’ (Dahl 1971),
free and
fair elections are central, but so are actors such as political
parties, civil
society organizations (CSOs), and the media. Finally, on the
level of
citizens, enlightened understanding and inclusiveness
presupposes an
educated citizenry, as well as the guarantee of minority rights.
Table 2.1
sums up the substantive content of liberal democracy
promotion.
Types of actions to promote democracy
Democracy can be promoted through diverse actions, namely
coercive,
utilitarian, and identitive ones.5 Coercive democracy
promotion is democ-
racy promotion by force through military intervention, the
threat of

intervention, or covert force. Possible examples of a unilateral
pro-
democratic military intervention would be the US invasion of
Panama
(1989) or the invasion of Iraq (2003) which had both been
justified with
democratic motives (among other reasons); a bilateral instance
is the
French intervention in Mali in 2013 at the request of Mali’s
govern-
ment; and a multilateral example is the United Nations Security
Council
authorized intervention in Libya in 2011. However, this type of
action
to promote democracy is problematic from several viewpoints.
First, it
does not actually aim at any of the three targets outlined above,
but at
regime change only. The more substantive work which follows a
military
intervention classifies as utilitarian or identitive democracy
promotion.
Thus it makes more sense to look at the efforts invested after a
military
invasion than at the invasion itself. Second, military invasions
usually
do not aim at building democracy only. Either democracy
promotion
Table 2.1 The substantive content of liberal democracy
promotion

Targets Goals Means
Fair rules of the game Democratic constitution Assistance for
constitutional
reform
Civil and political rights Accession to international
human rights treaties,
constitutional reform,
support to CSOs
Rule of law Support for justice, ministries,
police, anti-corruption
measures
Channels for
representation and
democratic-will
formation
Free and fair elections Assistance for electoral law
reform
Electoral support and
monitoring
Effective parliament Legislative strengthening
Effective political parties Party assistance
Active civil society
organizations
Assistance to NGOs,
trade unions, business
associations, social

movements, etc.
Strong independent
media
Assistance to ‘classic’ and
social media
Citizen Politically educated
citizenry
Civic education
Inclusiveness Support to minorities
Table created by author; compare to Babayan (2012, 34),
Schmitter and Brouwer (1999, 44),
and Carothers (1999, 88).
did not constitute a direct reason for participation in a war as,
for
example, in the often cited case of the entrance of the United
States into
World War II against Germany and Japan, where democracy
promotion
came in after the war in utilitarian, not military, form; or
democracy
promotion was named as one of the reasons besides security or
economic
goals as in the US invasions in Panama and Iraq; in these cases,
however,
it is unclear if democracy only served as a rhetorical device or

indeed
constituted one of the reasons to intervene. Added to these
challenges
are normative concerns. Military democracy promotion is not a
peaceful
foreign policy and arguably not a democratic one. Mlada
Bukovansky,
for example, terms military democracy promotion an
‘undemocratic act’
(Bukovansky 2007, 176–177) and Piki Ish-Shalom shows how
an under-
standing of democracy in normative terms cannot lead to a
strategy of
promoting democracy at gunpoint (Ish-Shalom 2007, 545). It
might also
hurt democracy per se, at home and abroad (Whitehead 2009;
Bigo 2010;
N. P. Gleditsch, Christiansen, and Hegre 2004). Due to this
ambivalence,
it makes sense to exclude military democracy promotion from
the class
of phenomena of democracy promotion examined in this study
and to
focus instead on the utilitarian or identitive commitments which
follow
a military invasion.
Utilitarian democracy promotion either seeks to manipulate the
incen-
tive structure of a regime through negative and positive
conditionality
which would then build democratic structures by itself or a
democracy
promoter might also directly invest into building democracy
through
democracy assistance. Negative conditionality (the ‘stick’

approach)
usually limits or cancels military or economic aid in response to
repres-
sion or unwillingness to reform. An example is US President
Jimmy
Carter’s policy of canceling military aid to South American
human-
rights violating regimes unilaterally in the late 1970s/early
1980s. It can
decisively hurt and weaken the economic strength of a regime,
but is
a one-way road: once foreign aid to a country is cut, the
democracy
has no instruments of pressure anymore. Positive conditionality
(the
‘carrot’ approach) strengthens the economic and political
resources of
a regime in response to improvements. The EU’s enlargement
process
in which democratizing states can gain entrance into the Union
are a
bilateral example of this policy. Democracy assistance is more
diverse
than conditionality and does not necessarily have to work with
target
governments; it can directly support grass-roots groups as well.
This is
pursued unilaterally, for example, through the European
Instrument
for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR) or through the
Middle East
Partnership Initiative (MEPI) of the United States, bilaterally
through the

commonly steered EU Task Forces with Arab Spring states, or
multilater-
ally through initiatives such as the United Nations Democracy
Fund.
Identitive democracy promotion, in contrast, does not work
through
financial means. It seeks to persuade the other of one’s values
or to
change the other’s behavior in accordance with one’s values
through
speech acts. Speech acts are utterances which do not only ‘state
some-
thing’, but actually ‘do something’ (Austin 1962, 12).6
Regarding
democracy promotion, speech acts can be unilateral, public
speeches
that either name and shame violations of democratic freedoms
or lack
of progress in democratizing, urge for and demand democratic
progress,
or laud progress in democratizing. The speaker’s audience is not
only
the addressee, but also her/his home public and the home public
of the
speaker. Besides such unilateral speech acts, there are also bi-
or multi-
lateral exchanges on issues of democracy, which are often not
public.
Examples are the EU’s bilateral democracy and human rights
commit-
tees in the framework of the Euromed Partnership or its
multilateral
platforms such as the Euromed Parliamentary Assembly. Such

instances
of identitive democracy promotion differ from utilitarian
democracy
promotion in their logic of action: while utilitarian democracy
promo-
tion relies on the logic of consequentialism, identitive
democracy
promotion is based on the logic of arguing (Risse 2000). The
strategic use
of speech (Schimmelfennig 2001) is also included here, since it
is under-
standing-oriented (Müller 2004) and might even send clearer
signals, if
interaction has so far been dominated by strategic, not
communicative,
speech acts. Finally, the power of the good example (on the side
of a
democracy) and mimicry/voluntary imitation (on the side of the
autoc-
racy) also belongs to instances of identitive democracy
promotion.
Measuring the explanandum
This book answers the question what triggers and hinders
democracies
to promote democracy abroad and therewith seeks to explain
why the
use of democracy promotion varies over time. Thus, the
explanandum
of this study is the varying extent to which a democracy
engages in utili-
tarian andd identitive actions to promote democracy. This is
measured in
two steps. First, the actions are observed according to their
substantive

content to make sure that what is declared as democracy
promotion
is democracy promotion as defined in this study. This
measurement is
based on the indicators outlined in Table 2.1 (substantive
content of
democracy promotion). Second, the actual extent of democracy
promo-
tion is measured through an observation of the actions of a
democracy
based on the indicators outlined in Table 2.2 (types of action to
promote
democracy).
To screen the substantive content of democracy promotion of
the
United States, the EU, and Turkey, each case study starts out
with
surveying the definitions of democracy provided by the democ-
racy promoters. In the US case, the analysis focused on the
concep-
tual sections of the Country Reports on Human Rights published
by
the US Department of State, while in the EU case the annual
human
rights and democracy reports of the European Council were
surveyed,
as well as those communications and regulations from the
European
Commission which deal with democracy promotion. For the
Turkish

case study, the annual reports of the Turkish International
Cooperation
and Development Agency (TIKA) and the home page of the
Turkish
Foreign Ministry were observed.
The varying extent of democracy promotion was then measured
through the extent to which the United States, the EU, and
Turkey
Table 2.2 Three types of action to promote democracy
Unilateral Bilateral Multilateral
Coercive Unilateral military
invasion by single
state or ad hoc
coalition (e.g., Iraq
2003)
Military intervention
as requested by a
government (e.g.,
Mali 2013)
Military
intervention
backed by UNSC
Resolution (e.g.,
Libya 2011)
Utilitarian Positive and negative
conditionality
(US Millennium
Challenge
Corporation),

Democracy
Assistance (EIDHR,
MEPI)
Bilaterally agreed
conditionality
(Article 2 in
EU Association
Agreements),
commonly
steered democracy
assistance (EU Task
Forces)
HRDP steered
through a
multilateral
organization
(UNDEF),
conditionality to
receive aid (World
Bank)
Identitive Naming and
shaming, power of
the good example
(Turkey’s policy
of representing a
model)
Persuasion through
bilateral committees
(EU democracy
and human rights
committees)

Persuasion through
multilateral
platforms
(Euromed
platforms),
international
human rights
treaties (ICCPR,
ICESCR)
Source : Table created by author.
engaged in utilitarian and identitive type of actions to promote
democ-
racy. Utilitarian democracy promotion includes democracy
assistance, as
well as positive and negative conditionality. Democracy
assistance was
assessed through the amount of aid that was allocated for
democratiza-
tion with relevant data being published by the three actors
themselves,
as well as the OECD statistics database. To follow the use of
negative
and positive conditionality, the developments in each target
country in
the neighborhood and the reaction in terms of punishments or
rewards
by the respective democracy promoters were systematically
observed
over time. In respect to identitive democracy promotion, only
public

documents were surveyed, as access to confidential documents
on meet-
ings behind closed doors was limited. In the US case,
statements to the
press after bilateral meetings, as well as the speeches of the
presidents
or secretaries of state to the Organization of American States
(OAS) were
followed; these can be found in the Public Papers of the
President andt
the American Foreign Policy Current Documents . In the EU
case, besides
unilateral speech acts of the High Representative and the
Commissioner
for Enlargement and European Neighborhood Policy,
resolutions of
the European Parliament and European Council conclusions,
which
are all published on the home pages of the Commission,
Parliament,
and Council, were surveyed. Also, the setup and
institutionalization of
bi- and multilateral platforms to discuss these issues and EU
reports on
such meetings were included in the analysis. In the case of
Turkey, the
speeches of the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister, and the
President
published on the respective home pages were observed.
30

The first two chapters answered the who promotes what
questions, but t
why is it that democracies promote democracy abroad? y What
triggers
democracy promotion and what hinders it or, more precisely,
what encourages
and pushes and what constrains democracies to promote
democracy abroad?
This is the main puzzle of this study, the nature of which this
chapter
explores in theoretical terms.
While literature on the effectiveness of democracy promotion
and
the international dimension of democratizations is well
developed,
rationales of democracies to pursue this foreign policy are still
under-
theorized. Jonas Wolff and Iris Wurm point out that ‘what is
still a
largely unexplored desideratum is the challenge to theoretically
grasp
“democracy promotion” as an aim and strategy of democratic
foreign
policies – that is, to embed the empirical research on democracy
promo-
tion in theoretical perspectives on international relations’
(Wolff and
Wurm 2011, 77). This theoretical underdevelopment is
regrettable, since
democracy promotion is increasingly significant in world
politics. Thus
it makes sense to start out ‘by problematizing a politically
important
outcome’ (Jepperson, Wendt, and Katzenstein 1996, 65) in order
to test

existing theories, combine theories, and develop new theory on
democ-
racy promotion. The empirical puzzle that this study deals with
is the
varying extent to which a democracy has engaged in democracy
promo-
tion over time. Hence, the factors that enable, push, or hinder
democ-
racy promotion have to be identified. This section is taking
account of
the literature on democracy promotion which has emerged in
different
strains of IR theories, namely Realism, Liberalism, Critical
Theory, and
Constructivism. Since much of the literature on democracy
promo-
tion has been self-referential within theoretical disciplines as
well as
within the US and Europe, it is important to review it in order
to start a
3
Why Is Democracy Promoted?
The Argument
Why Is Democracy Promoted? The Argument 31
more comprehensive theoretical discussion on the issue which
bridges
geographical and theoretical gaps to substantiate existing
arguments.
Thus, the following section should be read as a critical
engagement with
the literature as a basis on which the argument of this book is

then
developed.
Realism and democracy promotion
Realism deals with states as rational, unitary actors in an
anarchic envi-
ronment in which they seek to acquire power to defend their
pre-given
national interests. Structural realists are suspicious of idealistic
policies
like democracy promotion. John Mearsheimer or Christopher
Layne,
for example, see democracy promotion as a dangerous
undertaking that
will lead to ‘disastrous military interventions abroad, strategic
overex-
tension, and the relative decline of American power’ (Layne
1994, 329).
Kenneth Waltz claimed that ‘crusades are frightening because
crusaders
go to war for righteous causes which they define for themselves
and try
to impose on others’ (Waltz 2002, 36). Besides, structural
realists also
regard democracy promotion of ‘second-order normative
concern’ and
argue that it can surface only if security or vital economic
interests are
not at stake and when systemic pressures are indeterminate
(Hyde-Price
2008, 39). The most comprehensive theorizing on democracy
promo-
tion from a structural realist perspective has been set up and
tested for
the US case by Benni Miller who argues that only under

hegemony will
democracies promote ideology abroad, pursuing it by offensive
means in
a highly threatening environment and by defensive means in a
benign
one (Miller 2010). Mark Peceny’s study on US military
interventions
for democracy contradicts this theory in two respects: first, he
finds
instances of US democracy promotion before and during the
Cold War,
that is, under multi- and bipolarity, and argues, secondly, that
higher
threats also hinder offensive democracy promotion (Peceny
1999, 10).
What might be missing in the realist discussion of democracy
promo-
tion is a more rigorous elaboration of democracy promotion and
its rela-
tion to the security interest of democracies which will be
pursued later
on in this chapter.
Liberalism and democracy promotion
In the 1980s realism increasingly lost its ‘hegemonic status’ in
IR theory
due to the development of other theories, such as
institutionalism, liber-
alism, critical theory, and constructivism. Liberalism opens the
‘black

box’ of the state. Its objects of studies are not states as actors,
but indi-
viduals and groups within states. Preferences are not given, but
endog-
enized: ‘For liberals, the configuration of state preferences
matters ... not,
as realists argue, the configuration of capabilities’ (Moravcsik
1997, 513).
Moravcsik distinguishes three types of liberalism: commercial,
repub-
lican, and ideational.1 Possible explanations for variance in the
scope of
democracy promotion will now shortly be discussed in light of
all three
of them.
In the logic of commercial liberalism, companies could have an
interest
in promoting democracy abroad in order to reach certain
preconditions
for investment in other countries and thus lobby for such a
foreign policy.
At the same time, democratizing countries are too volatile for
invest-
ment and companies might actually be interested in lobbying
against
democracy promotion if they either directly deal with autocrats
or if
they prefer stable autocracies which ensure predictability for
business.
So commercial liberalism is rather indeterminate in explaining
variance
in the scope of democracy promotion. This also applies to
theories on
democracy promotion that could be subsumed to republican
liberalism.

Peceny has argued for the US case that democracy promotion
becomes
more likely if international liberalists are present in the policy
process
(Peceny 1999, 10). Since the 1980s, however, conservatives also
have
developed a pendant to liberal internationalism (Nau 2008).
Regarding
EU democracy promotion, it has been argued that Northern
member
states are more favorable toward democracy promotion than
Southern
member states which ‘remained wed to more traditional views
on secu-
rity than their northern counterparts’ (Youngs 2002a, 44).
Democracy
promotion could then increase (or decline) when Northern
European
countries succeed (or not) in setting this foreign policy on the
agenda.
But this argument leaves a crucial question open: Why are
Northern
Europeans favorable to democracy promotion and Southern
Europeans
not? The answer might again be that Southern Europeans have
higher
stakes in terms of security interests in the Mediterranean than
Northern
Europeans, for whom it is easier to follow an identity-guided
foreign
policy. So we are back in the identity-security interests square
which
might function as a selector or filter of such foreign policy
preferences.
Finally, ideational liberalism also deals with the sub-systemic
level and

(trans)national actors, but, in contrast to utilitarian liberalism,
these
actors are not assumed to act out of pre-given interests, but in
accord-
ance with norms, values, and knowledge. Change is driven by
norm
entrepreneurs (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998) or epistemic
communi-
ties (Adler and Haas 1992). Such actors can indeed be crucial to
push
democracies to pursue democracy and human rights promotion,
as
Thomas Risse and Kathryn Sikkink (1999) have shown.
Transnationally
acting human rights groups can, for example, lobby a
government in a
democracy or influence the public discourse in a democracy to
promote
democracy and human rights in a specific country. This
mechanism
is part of the argument of this study which will be further
developed
below.
Critical theory and democracy promotion
Critical theory challenges the supposedly non-normative
appearance
of realism and other problem-solving theories by arguing that
they
are based on normative assumptions (Cox 1996). At the same

time it
also provides a theoretical framework for analyzing the
behavior of
capitalist states. Of the many different strains of critical theory,
tran-
snational historical materialism can contribute to the analysis of
democracy promotion. Transnational historical materialism
relies on
the theory and ideas of Antonio Gramsci, for whom hegemony
is not
only maintained through coercion, but more importantly so
through
the propagation of a common culture. The ruling class needs
some
degree of acceptance and thus creates an ideology and
institutions that
seem to represent all classes without actually harming the
interests of
the ruling class. In International Relations theory, Gramsci’s
ideas were
applied, for example, by Robert Cox, who argues that world
hegemony
‘is expressed in universal norms, institutions and mechanisms
which
lay down general rules of behavior for states ... rules which
support the
dominant mode of production’ (Cox 1993, 61). In this logic,
democracy
promotion could be a policy to create a common culture in a
hegemonic
bloc. Indeed, William Robinson applies this to US democracy
promo-
tion and argues that the promotion of ‘low-intensity democracy’
serves
the interest of a transnational capitalist elite ‘to secure the
underlying

objective of maintaining essentially undemocratic societies
inserted into
an unjust international system’ (Robinson 1996a, 6).2 The
puzzle then
turns from why democracy is promoted to why it has not always
been
promoted. Robinson explains the US shift from supporting
dictatorship
toward promoting democracy in South America in the 1980s by
the rise
of global capitalism (Robinson 1996b, 616). However, by
focusing on
economic rationales only, he omits other political-strategic, as
well as
normative, concerns and neglects that democratic ideas are not
owned
by the West, but also developed and find much resonance
outside of it,
as Amartya Sen (1999) has forcefully argued.
Constructivism and democracy promotion
Constructivism had its ‘breakthrough’ in international relations
theory
with the end of the Cold War, not least since Realism did not
deal with
important new phenomena in world politics, such as the
emergence and
influence of transnational actors or the ‘power of human rights’
(Risse,
Ropp, and Sikkink 1999). Constructivism per se is not an IR
theory like

realism or liberalism, but rather a meta-theory which deals with
the char-
acter of things, the constitution of actors, and their interaction
(Risse 2003,
100–102). Instead of the ‘logic of consequences’, actors follow
the ‘logic of
appropriateness’, meaning that they go by rules and that action
‘involves
evoking an identity or role and matching the obligations of that
iden-
tity or role to a specific situation’ (March and Olsen 1998, 951).
Material
factors are not disregarded, but ‘ideas and communicative
processes define
in the first place which material factors are perceived as
relevant and how
they influence understandings of interest, preferences and
political deci-
sions’ (Risse and Sikkink 1999, 6–7). How can this approach to
the study of
international relations explain variance in the scope of
democracy promo-
tion? While constructivism is a meta-theory, there is
nonetheless a broad
and ever-growing array of empirical research (Adler 2002, 103).
Regarding democracy promotion specifically, constructivist
research
has focused on the question of identity, while the role that
international
norms can play for democracy promotion has been neglected. To
be
concrete, two literatures have emerged on identity and
democracy promo-
tion – one on the EU and one on the United States – both
characterized by

the tendency to perceive their cases as ‘sui generis’. In his
seminal study of
US democracy promotion, Tony Smith (1994) refers to a
specific American
identity conception flowing from the evolution of US
democracy. Also,
Henry Nau (2000) sees the US democratic self-image as a
central explana-
tory factor. Similarly, a European literature on identity and
democracy
promotion which was triggered by an article of Ian Manners
presents the
EU as a sui generis case. Manners argued that because
of its particular historical evolution, its hybrid polity, and its
consti-
tutional configuration, the EU has a normatively different basis
for
its relations with the world. ... (N)ot only is the EU constructed
on
a normative basis, but importantly ... this predisposes it to act
in a
normative way in world politics. (Manners 2002, 252)
Besides their ‘sui generis’ approach, or indeed as a result of
this, none of
these theories has established how and under what conditions
identity
influences foreign policy (except for the realist critique that
denies any
such influence in the first place). Thus, what is needed is a

more rigorous
discussion of how identity dynamics affect democracy
promotion from
a constructivist perspective.
The argument of this book
The discussion of democracy promotion as a foreign policy in
the frame-
work of IR theories has revealed two desiderata: a more
rigorous discus-
sion of democracy promotion in the context of the security
interest of
democracies and a more rigorous discussion of democracy in the
context
of identity dynamics. Both issues will now be elaborated and
then be
confronted with each other.
Democracy promotion and the security interest
The assumption of many structural realists that democracy
promotion is
opposed to the security interest and of second-order normative
concerns
is contested. Democracy promotion cannot only be seen as
opposing
the security interest, but also as a distinct security policy which
reduces
threats and fosters a stable order (Ikenberry 2000, 103–126).
Neo-classical,
motivational realist theories on the democratic peace (i.e., the
obser-
vation that democracies do not wage wars against one another)
have
pointed to reasons why it is a rational long-term policy for

democracies
to promote democracy abroad and why, in general, democracy
promo-
tion can be seen as a perfectly realist foreign policy.
Democracies are
perceived as ‘sheep in sheep’s clothing’ (Kydd 1997), that is, as
security
seekers. Their transparency enables them to send reliable
signals and
thus alleviate the security dilemma which is the reason for the
lack of
trust and cooperation in the international system (Fearon 1994;
Kydd
1997; Schweller 2000). But not only utilitarian-inspired
considerations
present motivations to promote democracy. It also helps to
pursue
security interests from an identity-driven perspective: for
constructiv-
ists, the security dilemma among democracies is reduced, since
they
trust one another which equals complete information (Risse-
Kappen
1995, 32). In addition, when other states are ‘converted’ to
democracy,
their ontological threat of representing other values and norms
in the
international system is removed.3 Democracy promotion
manipulates
how other states perceive the international system, seeing the
power of
democracies as favorable and as ‘no threat to their fundamental
visions
of societal order’ (Owen 2002, 257). Thus, with democracy
promotion
democracies can also counter the challenge of rising non-

democratic
powers in the international system. In 2008 one of the most
renowned
scholars on democracy, Larry Diamond, assessed a backlash
against
democracy around the world, led by Russia, China, but also by
Iran and
Venezuela, representing strategic sponsors for many autocracies
in the
world (Diamond 2008a, 12). Thus, democracy promotion could
also be
seen as a policy of democracies to contain not only these
powers, but
the very values and norms that they are representing.
Hence, from a neo-classical realist viewpoint democracy
promotion
should be perfectly coherent with classical material security
interests,
such as preventing conflict and setting up stable alliances, as
well as
with more ontological security interests, such as protecting
one’s own
system of values and norms. Therefore, the puzzle becomes not
why
democracy is promoted, but why democracy promotion has not
always
been promoted. Decisive in answering this question is what is
called in
this book the democracy dilemma: in the long term democracy
promo-

tion might be a strategic policy to foster security interests, but
in the
short term it is risky when applied toward allied autocracies.
Transition
states are the most war-prone states, with several power centers
compli-
cating reliable signaling.4 They are volatile, unpredictable, and
might
bring actors to power that are perceived as threatening and
might defect
from alliances. In a benign environment democracies can afford
a risky
policy of democracy promotion for the benefit of long-term
security,
but if they find themselves in a highly threatening, conflictual
environ-
ment they will be risk-averse and pursue short-term-oriented
security
policies. In other words, they will refrain from a risky policy of
democ-
racy promotion for the sake of short-term security interests.
Thus rising
threat perceptions from the environment should be a central
hindering
variable of democracy promotion. This applies to this study
specifi-
cally, since in all three cases – US, EU, and Turkish democracy
promo-
tion in the neighborhood – we are dealing with dilemmatic cases
of
democracy promotion where democracy is promoted in allied
autocra-
cies. The logic of democracy promotion changes when pursued
toward
unfriendly regimes. In these cases, the democracy dilemma does
not

exist and democracy promotion fosters the security interest in
the short
and long term; rising threat perceptions might then not hinder
democ-
racy promotion, but influence the means by which it is pursued,
as has
been argued by Miller (2010).
Democracy promotion and identity dynamics
Identity is a vague concept and diversely defined (Fearon 1999).
Alexander Wendt has introduced a typology of identities in
which
corporate identity relates to the material base of an identity
such as the
body in the case of the person or the territory in the case of
states; type
identity to the regime type of a collective; role identity to the
perception
of the self through the eyes of the other; and collective identity
to the
identification between the self and the other (Wendt 1999, 224–
233).
In IR theory, identity has usually been conceptualized as role
identity
to account for social interaction among states. The paradigmatic
defini-
tion of Jepperson, Wendt, and Katzenstein, for example,
maintains that
identity ‘comes from social psychology, where it refers to the
images

of individuality and distinctiveness (“selfhood”) held and
projected by
an actor and formed (and modified over time) through relations
with
significant “others”. Thus the term (by convention) references
mutually
constructed and evolving images of self and other’ (Jepperson,
Wendt,
and Katzenstein 1996, 59). Democracy promotion fits into this
picture
par excellence. Promoting democracy abroad constructs an
image of
the self as democratic and the other as undemocratic and
continuously
projects and enforces these images on the self and the other, as
well as
on the broader international community. Through promoting
democ-
racy Western democracies lay international claim on the
prerogative
to interpret what and who a democracy is. This explains why
democ-
racies would promote democracy abroad, but why then do
democra-
cies not always promote democracy abroad? To answer this
question,
one needs to dig deeper into the roots of a democratic role
identity, that
is, an identity that is constituted by democracy being a shared
foreign policy
purpose that defines a community’s relations with the
‘undemocratic other’.
This identity is highly complex and Janus-faced; it stands at the
inter-
face of the domestic and the international level; it is always
internally

and externally oriented. Thus, this section will now debate the
role that
an internal democratic type identity, international norms, and
interac-
tion with the other play in the evolution and activation of a
democratic
role identity in foreign policy. It will also discuss under what
conditions
threat perceptions – which have been identified above as a
central factor
that constrains democracies to use democracy promotion in
foreign
policy – can/cannot hinder the translation of a democratic role
identity
into concrete foreign policies.
A salient democratic type identity
To start with the internal level, a democratic role identity is
rooted within
a democratic type identity, that is, the constitutive values and
norms
that define membership in a democracy. A democratic type
identity is
necessary for democracy promotion to begin with; it enables it.
But can
it also push more concretely for democracy promotion? In the
following
I will argue that it can in certain scenarios, assuming that
political
actors are self-reflexive about identity and use foreign policy

for identity
purposes. While identities are always in flux, some scholars
argue that
there can be times when they are ‘settled and stable enough that
we
can almost treat them as social facts’ (Risse 2010, 29).5 In
these times a
democratic type identity enables democracy promotion in
general, but
it might not concretely push for it. This is different, however,
when a
democratic type identity is salient, that is, when constitutive
norms and
founding values are contested on the public agenda. They can be
posi-
tively contested when a community debates deepening and
widening
democratic founding values and constitutive norms; they can be
nega-
tively contested when these values and norms are called into
question
by a group within a state that opposes its democratic character
(e.g.,
extremist groups) or by a group outside a community which
denies
it recognition as a democracy (if, e.g., Western democracies
refuse to
recognize a state as a democracy). In all these scenarios, foreign
policy
can become part of the process of identity affirmation.
Concretely, four
mechanisms can be thought of.
First, if a democracy fears that its basic democratic values are
threat-
ened by non-democratic groups, foreign policy can serve to

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