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Chapter 1

Georgia and the Democracy Promotion Project

On November 22, 2003, a group of young Georgian politicians and activists led by former justice minister Mikheil Saakashvili stormed into the first session of the newly—and fraudulently—elected Georgian parliament. Holding aloft a single red rose—the symbol of thousands who had taken to the streets in the days before—Saakashvili marched forward, shouting “Resign!” as President Eduard Shevardnadze stood at the rostrum, addressing the parliament’s members. Moments later, a very old and disoriented looking Shevardnadze, known to most people in the West as Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev’s courageous Soviet foreign minister during the waning days of the Cold War, was hustled out the back door of the chamber by his concerned security guards. The next day Saakashvili, former speaker of parliament Zurab Zhvania and sitting speaker of parliament Nino Burjanadze forced Shevardnadze, Georgia’s president of ten years, to officially resign.

Shevardnadze’s resignation, which took place after almost three weeks of protests and vigils in the center of Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital, marked the culmination of what has come to be called Georgia’s Rose Revolution. Immediately following the resignation, Burjanadze took over as interim president, as specified by the constitution. Less than two months later, on January 4, 2004, Saakashvili was elected president with an overwhelming 96 percent of the vote in balloting broadly assessed as free and fair.

After Shevardnadze left office, interim president Burjanadze assured the international community that Georgia’s new government would place the country on a course oriented toward the West and democracy. Saakashvili, upon taking office, offered the same assurances to the United States and Europe. The United States and Europe, for their part, recognized the Rose Revolution as an important democratic breakthrough and assured Georgia’s new leaders that they would provide as much support as needed to help Georgia consolidate its new democracy.

The Rose Revolution can be understood and studied in many ways. It represents more than just the last, best hope for one small, impoverished, semidemocratic country in a remote corner of what once was the Soviet empire. It also can be seen as the beginning of what proved to be a short-lived fourth wave of democratization that quickly spilled over into countries such as Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, and Lebanon. Others, however, see it as just another case of old wine in new bottles, as the new leaders retreat from their initial democratic promises.

After the Rose Revolution, Georgia was quickly and visibly claimed by the United States and Europe as a success story for democracy assistance. Saakashvili was feted in Washington and other Western capitals. Money poured into Georgia to help the new democracy consolidate its gains. U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell was one of many Western dignitaries who flew to Tbilisi for Saakashvili’s inauguration. President George W. Bush and other cabinet members issued statements of support for the new regime and visited Georgia during the first years of Saakashvili’s presidency. Not surprisingly, the West’s—especially Washington’s—previous strong support for Saakashvili’s predecessor, Shevardnadze, is rarely mentioned any more.

The story of democracy assistance in Georgia, particularly from the United States, is not, however, the simple success story the post-Rose Revolution American narrative suggests. Looking at democracy assistance and democratization policy toward Georgia both before and after the event makes this clear. The Rose Revolution and the evolution of democracy in Georgia in general also tell us a great deal about U.S. democracy promotion policies. Through a close study of Georgia, it is possible to raise, and answer, central questions about the wisdom of American democracy promotion policies, the efficacy of these policies, and the direction in which they should move in the future.

A number of largely uninformed observers attributed the Rose Revolution primarily to the work of the U.S. government, often through NGOs funded by the United States.¹ This view is held among many in the former Soviet Union, including both supporters and opponents of democratic reforms. Former Russian president Vladimir Putin’s remarks shortly after the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine make this view very clear: “It’s extremely dangerous to try to resolve political problems outside the framework of the law; first there was the ‘rose revolution,’ and then they’ll [the United States] think up something like ‘blue.”’² I have encountered similar sentiments frequently in Russia, Kyrgyzstan, and Azerbaijan, where I have been told by politicians and members of parliament that the United States forced Shevardnadze out, created Mikheil Saakashvili as a political force, and funded the demonstrations. Often those who viewed events in Georgia this way told me they saw little difference between U.S.-supported democracy assistance efforts and the CIA.

Others viewed the events as an indigenous Georgian phenomenon in which the United States played at most a peripheral role. I have heard this view from senior figures in the Georgian government as well as from several Georgian civic activists, many of whom were not deeply involved in the Rose Revolution. Civic activist Giorgi Kandelaki asserted that “many observers have overstated the contributions of civil society and foreign actors to the Rose Revolution. … Most of the international actors involved were too willing to compromise and make deals with Shevardnadze despite the demands of the Georgian people.” He added: “During the revolution not only were Western actors unhelpful, but at times they were detrimental.”³ While Kandelaki seems to bear a grudge against the West for the role it played in the Rose Revolution, the sentiment he expressed is not uncommon in Georgia.⁴ Nor is it without a kernel of truth, as I will show later. For example, one senior official in the Georgian government said, somewhat flippantly, of American support, “What the hell did the U.S. do?”⁵ The truth, I argue, lies somewhere in between, which is why examining the actual and perceived impact of democracy promotion work is so important.

Some in the U.S. government sought to encourage perceptions that the United States had played a larger role in the Rose Revolution. Lorne Craner, then an assistant secretary in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor at the Department of State (he has since become president of the International Republican Institute), and Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), at a July 7, 2004, meeting of the House Subcommittee on International Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Human Rights, demonstrated the views of some within the U.S. government on this question. Craner remarked that

in the 1990s, the United States supported South Africa’s democracy movement, which helped produce a new era of freedom in a country that some believed would descend into chaos. And for the last decade, we’ve worked with opposition leaders and NGOs in places like Cuba and Burma and Zimbabwe, and also in places like Georgia, where last year, the time and the energy and the heart of our effort, and the effort of so many others, culminated in the peaceful Revolution of Roses.⁶

Rohrabacher added: “Why do they [Georgians] like us now? Because yes, we are taking care of business in Georgia, because we are supporting the democratic elements and the more that our country supports the good guys around the world who want democracy, want their people to live in freedom and to have mutual respect for other people’s rights, the more we are going to live in a more peaceful world.”

Strong ties between Saakashvili, Zhvania, and important figures throughout the U.S. foreign policy community had certainly existed for years, but the U.S. role was, in fact, relatively ambiguous. Shevardnadze, largely on the strength of his stature in the West, his role in winding down the Cold War, and his warm personal relations with many in Washington, Berlin, Brussels, London, Strasbourg, and other European capitals, had succeeded well into 2003 in maintaining not only Western support, but the perception that he was a reformer. From the time Shevardnadze took over as president of Georgia in 1993 until his resignation in 2003, he was seen almost as much as an engine for democratization in Georgia as the obstacle to change he had become by the end of his term. Accordingly, Georgia received substantial democracy assistance as well as other funds during these years to help reform Shevardnadze’s government and move it more toward democracy. Between fiscal years 2001 and 2003, Georgia was given $268.8 million in U.S. support—more than any other former Soviet republic other than Russia and Ukraine, each of which has more than ten times the population of Georgia.⁷

There is ample evidence that by 2003 the United States wanted Shevardnadze to move Georgia in a more democratic direction, with a special focus on the parliamentary elections scheduled for November of that year. Money for various kinds of election support was increased, and high-level visitors—including former secretary of state James Baker, former deputy secretary of state Strobe Talbott, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff John Shalikashvili, and Senator John McCain—came to Georgia to urge Shevardnadze to conduct fair elections. But there is virtually no concrete evidence that the U.S. sought his overthrow. Moreover, in March 2003 Shevardnadze was one of a small number of world leaders to join the U.S.-led “coalition of the willing” in Iraq. Given how difficult it was for the Bush administration to recruit countries to join the “coalition of the willing,” we can be reasonably certain the administration would not have done anything to remove a pro-war government from power.

The U.S. role, the unwillingness of the international community to see Shevardnadze as an obstacle to democracy, and the impact of years of previous democracy assistance form an important battery of questions with regard to Georgia before Saakashvili. The post-Rose Revolution period also raises questions that are central to democracy promotion policy more generally. These concern the depth of U.S. commitment to helping the development of strong, enduring democracy, the ability of democracy promotion tactics to consolidate democratic gains once the breakthrough has occurred, and the viability of democracy in the post-Soviet space.

Why Georgia?

Georgia is an unusual case study of American democracy assistance, but it is a valuable one because it involves many of the key questions at the core of such assistance. Moreover, because the discussion, especially in the popular media, is increasingly dominated by Iraq—a democracy assistance project that is exceptional in many ways—it is important to look beyond Iraq to examine those issues that have bearing on democracy assistance more broadly.

American policy toward Georgia both before and after the Rose Revolution requires special emphasis. Aspects of democracy assistance and other forms of aid from the United States, beginning in the 1990s, played a role. For example, Saakashvili was a former Muskie Fellow at Columbia University, and other civic and political leaders of the Rose Revolution had been trained in the U.S. as well. Saakashvili, Zhvania, and Burjanadze had worked intensively with the party institutes from the U.S. (in the case of Saakashvili and Zhvania, for years preceding 2003). Georgia’s vibrant civil society was largely funded by democracy assistance money from not only the U.S., but also the EU, individual European countries, and George Soros’s Open Society Institute (OSI).⁸ Indeed, the parallel vote tabulation and exit poll that played a key role in persuading the Georgian people that the November 2003 election had been stolen were funded almost entirely by OSI or the U.S. government and supported by American and European expertise.

There is, however, another side to this story. Even as Georgia became a major recipient of democracy assistance, Georgian democracy deteriorated after an initial burst of optimism around Shevardnadze and his party, the Citizens’ Union of Georgia (CUG), in the mid-1990s. In spite of years of assistance, by early 2003 many viewed Georgia as a failure of democracy assistance and a virtually failed state. The government had only grown more corrupt and elections more fraudulent. The reformers who surrounded Shevardnadze early in his term, most notably Saakashvili and Zhvania, had left government and were relatively ineffectual in the opposition. The failure of the economy to grow did not help the situation either. The Rose Revolution was, in reality, a surprise to many foreign observers, raising questions about the extent of causality between the millions of dollars of democracy assistance and the democratic breakthrough of late 2003 and how successful these programs actually were.

Later U.S. policy toward Georgia raises a different set of questions and issues about democracy assistance more generally. As discussed above, the United States responded to the Rose Revolution with enthusiasm and support. In the months following those dramatic events, Washington did whatever it could to support the new government. This included increasing assistance for infrastructure and energy and renewing discussions on security cooperation, along with making Georgia one of the countries of the Millennium Challenge Corporation program, which seeks to provide substantial U.S. assistance to countries that have met a series of criteria demonstrating a commitment to reform and democracy.

Yet consolidating the democratic gains of the Rose Revolution has been a difficult task for Georgia. Positive developments in areas like fair elections, fighting corruption, and education reform have been offset by problems regarding separation of the governing party and the state, media freedom, concentration of too much power in the hands of the president, and the crackdown on demonstrators and the state of emergency declared after large street demonstrations in November 2007. The U.S. response to these issues has led to skepticism about how sincere U.S. commitment to true democracy in Georgia really is. This speaks to a very serious issue for democracy promotion, one raised by many of its critics.

Shortly after the Rose Revolution, the United States began to offer unambiguous political support to the new government. It was as if the U.S. government viewed the Rose Revolution not just as a pivotal moment in Georgia’s democratic and political development, but as a line that, when crossed, transformed Georgia from a kleptocratic, weak, semidemocratic regime into a consolidated democracy in a period of weeks. Washington reduced democracy assistance to civil society and the media because the government of Georgia was now viewed as the engine of democratization. As will be discussed in Chapter 5, this continued despite evidence that the pace of democratization began to slow dramatically after Saakashvili was elected president in January 2004.

Thus, U.S. policy after the Rose Revolution in Georgia leads one to ask just what kind of democracy the U.S. seeks to help nurture in the politically developing world and how strong the commitment is to strengthening democracy as opposed to simply nurturing and supporting friendly governments. Other less dramatic but equally important questions about democracy assistance after a democratic breakthrough that are relevant not only to Georgia include how to encourage democratic consolidation after a breakthrough and to institutionalize barriers between state and party, particularly in a post-Soviet state.

It remains true that if democracy cannot be consolidated in Georgia, it is not clear where it can be consolidated. As difficult as the challenges are, the outlook in Georgia still looks brighter than in most of the rest of the nondemocratic world. As I argue in this work, the country enjoys numerous advantages that are not shared with most other democratizing countries. First, Georgia is a strongly pro-Western and pro-American country. Both leaders and people see the United States and Europe as the models for political development. Because of this orientation, ideas from the West and American and European support for these ideas are generally viewed as positive. The Rose Revolution was unusual among political transitions in that demonstrators waved American flags—and even a few Israeli flags—while calling for the end of the corrupt Shevardnadze regime. This occurred even though there was a history of U.S. support for Shevardnadze. Within weeks of Shevarnadze’s resignation a billboard was erected in downtown Tbilisi displaying the words “Thank You U.S.A.” Georgians, like many others around the world, often see democracy as an idea from the outside, specifically from the West, but, in contrast to many other countries, in Georgia there is no negative sentiment attached to that view.

In Georgia, no ideology seriously competes with the Western democratic model. There is little nostalgia for the Soviet Union; no fundamentalist religious model has any support in Georgia; and Asian or corporatist development models have no traction at all. Western democracy is the only political path that has support in virtually any area of Georgian society. Georgia’s difficult relationship with Russia, its neighbor to the north, serves to reinforce the country’s pro-Western orientation because Europe and the United States are viewed as counterbalances to Russia.

Georgia’s pro-Western outlook is buoyed by its leadership. Many of Georgia’s new leaders, beginning with President Mikheil Saakashvili, were educated in Western universities and have a strong understanding of how politics works in the West, particularly the United States. Many cabinet members, MPs, and other key leaders of the new government were at least partly trained in the West. Some returned specifically to help build the new Georgia after Saakashvili made an appeal when he became president. Few if any countries in the democratizing world boast a group of leaders who have as much Western education and training as those in Georgia.

Moreover, this leadership has been explicit with domestic and particularly with international audiences that its goal is to make Georgia a modern democratic state. Since the Rose Revolution, Georgia’s leadership has maintained that it is committed to building a democratic Georgia even when its actions have suggested otherwise. This is a promise Saakashvili and his team have made to everyone—from farmers in rural Georgia to President Bush. The government cannot easily move away from this commitment and may find its ability to democratize at least a partial component of how its success is measured.

Georgia enjoys other advantages that would seem to predispose it to a smooth democratic transition. The country is relatively ethnically homogeneous. Over 85 percent of the population are ethnic Georgian, with the two biggest minorities being ethnic Azeris and Armenians. While tension certainly exists between these groups and the ethnic Georgian majority, it is not a driving force in Georgia’s political life. It continues to be difficult for the government to fully incorporate these groups into the country’s cultural, economic, and political life, but there is no violent conflict between groups, as is the case in many democratizing countries.

Georgia is also overwhelmingly Christian, with a small Muslim and a tiny Jewish minority. Georgians see themselves as part of the extended European community—a community that considers democracy absolutely essential. Georgian Christianity is Orthodox, so European and Georgian Christianity do not overlap entirely, but there certainly are Orthodox Christian countries, most notably Greece, that have adapted well to democracy. Huntington (1991) argued that there is a strong link between the spread of Western Christianity and democracy. Western Christianity is not growing very quickly in Georgia, but Christianity, even in its Eastern form, strongly reinforces the country’s Western orientation.

Because Georgia lacks valuable minerals, oil, or natural gas, the “resource curse” will not impede democratic development either.⁹ Its economy has traditionally been primarily agricultural and remains so today. Economic growth relies on increasing trade, tourism, and foreign investment. For this reason, Georgia’s economic future will greatly benefit from strengthening democratic institutions, such as rule of law and an open society.

From this cursory glance it would seem that Georgia is poised to consolidate its democratic gains. However, the challenges are strong. Joblessness and an economy growing too slowly for many Georgians, underdeveloped democratic institutions, and the devastating Soviet legacy demonstrate that even when preconditions for twenty-first-century democratization are as strong as possible, there are still barriers to the American democracy promotion project.

Other countries in the former Soviet Union and other parts of the world enjoy similarly positive positions from which to consolidate their democracy. Ukraine since the Orange Revolution of 2004 is especially relevant. Yet even Ukraine—like Georgia a major recipient of European and American assistance since the democratic breakthrough—finds itself in a more difficult situation than Georgia in terms of consolidating democratization. Ukraine does not enjoy such an unambiguously pro-Western orientation as Georgia, since its relationship with Russia remains very close even after the Orange Revolution. The divisions between a Russia-leaning east and a more independent-minded western half of the country are much stronger in Ukraine than any comparable division in Georgia. Moreover, the Orange Revolution has stalled more than once because of the continuing strength of Victor Yanukovich’s Party of Regions, the candidate who sought to steal the 2004 election from Viktor Yushchenko. Yanukovitch became Ukraine’s prime minister in 2006, prompting a difficult period of power sharing with Yushchenko and early elections in 2007.¹⁰

A Note on Russia

It is not possible to fully understand Georgia, the dominant concerns of the Georgian government and people, and Georgia’s behavior in international affairs without looking closely at the relationship between Georgia and Russia. Issues of territorial integrity, particularly in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, energy policy and security, the presence of foreign troops on Georgia soil, the opportunity for export and economic development, indeed, the existence of Georgia as an independent state, are all part of the complex relationship between Georgia and Russia. Russian hostility toward post-Rose Revolution Georgia in particular has represented a major threat and obstacle. Russian efforts to weaken the economy by boycotting Georgian wine and mineral water, intransigence with regard to the disputed territories of Abkhazia and Ossetia, and expulsion of Georgian citizens working in Russia in 2006 are only some of the ways this hostility has made life difficult for Georgia.

Georgia’s fate has been closely tied to Russia for several centuries. For over a century, Georgia was the southernmost outpost of the czarist empire, and for more than half a century after that it was part of the far-flung Soviet empire. A central challenge of any government of independent Georgia is to develop a relationship with Russia that guarantees Georgia’s independence, resolves frozen conflicts between the two countries, and allows for fruitful cooperation on issues of trade, energy, and the like. This would be an extremely difficult task for any Georgian government.

Georgia’s relationship with Russia has been addressed elsewhere.¹¹ The focus in this volume will be more narrowly on issues of democratization in Georgia. The Georgian-Russian relationship will be discussed where it has bearing upon democratic development in Georgia, but it will not be a central theme in the chapters that follow.

Democracy Assistance and American Foreign Policy

Before turning to a more detailed discussion of Georgia and democracy promotion, it is useful to spend some time on a brief look at the history, theory and practice of promotion of democracy as part of American foreign policy. For decades democracy promotion has been, in one form or another, part of American foreign policy. It was central to President Woodrow Wilson’s post-World War I vision of how to organize relationships between states. World War II was at times framed as a battle to protect freedom and democracy. The Cold War era was often similarly framed as a conflict between the democratic West and authoritarian communism, but during this period anti-communism in practice trumped democracy promotion among policymakers and scholars. This meant there was little U.S.-backed effort to support democratization in authoritarian noncommunist regimes. However, late in the Cold War democracy promotion began to reemerge, initially in the guise of Jimmy Carter’s emphasis on human rights during his presidency in the late 1970s.

As democracy promotion has been given a more central role in foreign policy, the foundations underlying it have evolved and changed. Not surprisingly, the policy has also come under substantial criticism. For President Woodrow Wilson at the end of World War I, democracy promotion rested on the notion of making the world a safer place for the United States. This was a forerunner of what has come to be known as the peace rationale for democracy promotion. The rhetoric of making the world safe for democracy that characterized World War II and the Cold War was an extension of Wilson’s ideas and proposed democracy as an alternative to, and bulwark against, first fascism and then communism.

During the Cold War, democracy promotion was generally seen only in the context of anti-communism, but the rationale for the limited democracy promotion that took place during this period was that freedom and democracy were an appealing alternative to communism. Unfortunately, the notion that these were also appealing alternatives to right-wing authoritarians regimes seemed to be lost on too many Cold War era policymakers in the United States.

It was America’s first born-again Christian president, Jimmy Carter, who introduced an explicitly moral dimension to democracy promotion by stressing the import of human rights in foreign policy.¹² Carter’s notion that the internal workings and human rights record of a country should influence American policy toward that country was initially scoffed at by many who felt that during the Cold War the only consideration was how a government aligned itself between the two superpowers.¹³ However, as we will see later, it was the neoconservatives during the presidency of George W. Bush who, ironically, revived this morally driven view in their strong support of democracy promotion—even in some countries which were U.S. allies but not democratic.

Carter’s introduction of human rights into American foreign policy gave way to the presidency of Ronald Reagan and the prosecution of the Cold War with renewed vigor. Reagan incorporated democracy promotion into his Cold War strategy through “Project Democracy,” which included exchange programs and other cultural activities aimed at exposing people from communist countries to American-style democracy.¹⁴ These programs were, not surprisingly, focused on the ideological struggle of the Cold War and sought to contrast Reagan’s America with, for example, late and post-Brezhnev Soviet Union. The battleground of the Cold War at that time was primarily Central America, where the leftist Sandinista revolution had just occurred in Nicaragua, so much of Reagan’s democracy promotion, like his Cold War strategy in general, was focused on that region.

Reagan’s democracy promotion strategy was not, however, limited to these types of programs. In 1983, the administration, with support from Congress, funded and initiated the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), an organization that funds democracy assistance advocates in the U.S. and abroad as well as providing funding for its core grantees, including NDI and the International Republican Institute (IRI). NDI and IRI are U.S.-based implementing organizations with similar democracy assistance mandates. They are loosely affiliated with the Democratic and Republican parties respectively.

Thus, much of the infrastructure for the modern era of democracy promotion was created in the 1980s and initially perceived as part of an effort to win the Cold War. The perception of the NED as an instrument of the Cold War changed somewhat after the NED supported democratization efforts in the Philippines in 1986 and the presidential plebiscite in Chile in 1988. Interestingly, not only did this infrastructure continue after the Cold War ended, but the post-Cold War period saw these organizations’ biggest impact.

The collapse of authoritarian regimes in the late 1980s and early 1990s—especially in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union—also consolidated the idea that democracy was a human right rather than the system of government or ideology of a handful of countries.¹⁵ The Vienna Declaration on Human Rights, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1993, declared democracy a universal right, adding that “The international community should support the strengthening and promoting of democracy, development and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms in the world.”¹⁶ The evolution of democracy from a political ideology and system of government to one of the poles in the bipolar world of the Cold War and then to a political right, the consensus form of government, and ultimately a human right, is a key development for international politics and democracy promotion.¹⁷

With the end of the Cold War, democracy promotion began to take on a qualitatively different role in U.S. foreign policy, and to a lesser extent in many European countries as well. For the United States, it was no longer an abstract principle with a vague impact on policy, nor did it continue to be seen as an often inconvenient consideration when broader strategic questions were examined. Instead, it began to become increasingly central to foreign policy with programs and budgets to match this centrality. These budgets remain a relatively small fraction of overall foreign policy monies, but budgets are bigger than ever.¹⁸ Moreover, measuring democracy promotion’s import simply by looking at how much money goes to democracy promoting organizations misses a great deal because democracy promotion can also take other forms, such as the public statements of diplomats and policymakers and the components of larger aid packages. Furthermore, democracy promotion programs are not usually expensive because they rarely include the direct delivery of goods or services.

In the initial period following the end of the Cold War, roughly 1989 to 2001, democracy promotion began to focus on the post-Communist countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Once the dust had settled on the rapid transformation of the former Soviet empire, Europe and the United States began to commit resources to building democratic institutions throughout the region. Although the collapse of the former Yugoslavia, along with genocide and wars there throughout the 1990s dominated the news, there are also many, quieter success stories as countries like Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, and the Baltic states made rapid strides toward democracy before joining the European Union in the early twenty-first century.

Democracy promotion and democratization in the 1990s were not limited to the post-Communist world. The third wave of democratization that had begun in Southern Europe in the 1970s broke onto the shores of Asia, South America, and Africa as well.¹⁹ Taiwan and South Korea continued to consolidate their democratic gains from previous years; dramatic breakthroughs occurred in Chile, South Africa, and elsewhere; and less dramatic steps toward democratization took place in other countries in other parts of Africa, Asia, and South America.

Although democracy made substantial gains globally throughout most of the 1990s, a number of formerly authoritarian countries seemed to slide backward as the decade came to a close. Other countries had proved to be very difficult environments for building democratic institutions as some parts of the world, notably China, North Korea, and the Middle East, had shown themselves to be largely unaffected by the third wave of democratization. Thus, as the new century began there was still a great deal of democratization to be done, but the initial excitement had worn off. Instead, a structure of donors, NGOs, governmental organizations, consultants, and private businesses had emerged to implement the complex American democracy promotion policies, which had begun to assume a more a more central position in American foreign policy.

Democracy promotion became a central component of American foreign policy during the administration of President Bill Clinton. In the 1995 National Security Strategy of Engagement and Enlargement, the Clinton administration identified democracy promotion as one of its three central security goals. The document also asserted that

All of America’s strategic interests—from promoting prosperity at home to checking global threats abroad before they threaten our territory—are served by enlarging the community of democratic and free market nations. Thus, working with new democratic states to help preserve them as democracies committed to free markets and respect for human rights, is a key part of our national security strategy. One of the most gratifying and encouraging. (22)

Nonetheless, it was America’s second born-again Christian president, George W. Bush, who was strongest in stressing the moral dimension of democracy promotion. In the years following the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, democracy promotion assumed an even more central role in foreign policy as Bush aggressively, and with stunning lack of success, sought to democratize the Middle East, one of the world’s least democratic regions. Bush made democracy promotion a centerpiece of his foreign policy and linked it closely to American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Bush spoke explicitly about the moral dimension of democracy. He often referred to democracy, or “freedom,” as a right that had been given to all humanity by God. This moral dimension informed more than just Bush’s words as his presidency was marked by an aggressive democracy promotion strategy that included military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, substantially increasing resources for democracy promotion programs around the world, linking fair elections to attempts to resolve decades-old problems such as the Israel-Palestine situation, claiming strong links between democracy abroad and security—primarily from terrorism—at home, and supporting, and in some cases encouraging, democratic breakthroughs in countries like Ukraine and Lebanon in addition to Georgia. Bush’s support for democracy promotion was so strong that many on both sides of the country’s increasingly partisan divide began to view democracy promotion as a Republican policy, ignoring its deep, bipartisan roots.

While Bush’s rhetoric regarding democracy promotion differed in quantity and emphasis from his predecessors, democracy assistance programs under the Bush administration did not look very different than they had under Clinton. Election support, assistance to legislatures, local governments and other government institutions, support for nascent civil society organizations and NGOs, as well as the occasional program seeking to expand political participation on the part of women or young people remained the primary ways the United States sought to strengthen democracy around the world. The exception was, of course, Iraq, which has dominated almost all discussions of Bush foreign policy, including democracy assistance, and will be discussed in more depth later. Yet if Iraq is taken out of the equation, and Bush’s rhetoric is discounted, there is strong continuity between democracy assistance during the presidencies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

As democracy promotion has taken on an increasing role in U.S. foreign policy, it has matured as an “industry” as well. Before the mid-1980s, it would have been impossible to discuss a democratization “industry.” To the extent that democracy promotion, as distinct from anti-communism, was part of American foreign policy, it was an element informing decisions on military and financial assistance, sanctions, clandestine operations, trade policy, and other traditional foreign policy approaches. It also was part of American propaganda efforts abroad through organizations like the United States Information Agency (USIA). However, very few organizations or individuals saw their work strictly in terms of building and promoting democracy overseas.

Although this situation began to change in the mid-1980s, it was largely beginning in the 1990s that a democracy promotion industry began to emerge and mature. While this industry is in many respects less developed than many other industries, it is a significant sector of the foreign policy community. The democracy promotion industry today can be said to include governmental organizations, such as parts of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI); nongovernmental organizations like the NED, NDI, IRI, Freedom House, American Bar Association (ABA) and International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), all of which rely heavily on the U.S. government for funding; numerous private contracting companies such as Chemonics, Associates in Rural Development (ARD), Management Systems International (MSI), Development Associates International (DAI), Development Associates (DA), and hundreds of small businesses, consultants, and scholars.

In recent years this business has become more professionalized with fewer firms and organizations using volunteers and one-time consultants for projects, relying instead on a growing network of trained and experienced professionals. As democracy assistance has matured it has begun to take on the characteristics of many other industries that rely on the government for a substantial amount of their funding. While it is still far too soon to speak of a democracy industrial complex, some of these issues are worth exploring.²⁰

Unlike twenty or even ten years ago, there are now dozens of American businesses and thousands of American individuals who have a financial stake in the perceived needs not just for democracy promotion, but for the U.S. approach to democracy promotion, aspects of which rely substantially on expensive training and resident American experts, consultants, and staff and offices in the United States. It is not my intention to propose that the democracy promotion business is characterized by financial self-interest or corruption, but merely to suggest that the financial motives, particularly among the for-profit contractors, for maintaining and expanding democracy promotion exist, are becoming stronger, and play some role in discussions of democracy assistance and its implementation.

As the policy implementing apparatus entrenches itself more in the government, private, and NGO sectors, it has become more difficult to evaluate the needs of democracy promotion. “Will this country benefit from direct democracy promotion assistance?” is rarely asked about a particular country. Instead, the question “what kind of democracy promotion will benefit this country?” or even “what kind of political party/civil society program will benefit this country?” are increasingly among the first questions asked. In some respects this is a positive development: the need to promote democracy no longer must to be explained or defended in a particular country. However, it also reflects an implicit assumption that the best way to support democratization in every country is through an essentially similar battery of democracy promotion programs.

The Democracy Assistance Debate

As George W. Bush’s first term in office came to an end in 2004, a debate had begun to reemerge in foreign policy circles about the wisdom and efficacy of democracy promotion. Although this debate had been around for years, new life was breathed into it during the Bush administration. To some extent, this debate began to get traction because of the use of democratization by the administration as a way to justify the unpopular war in Iraq, but the debate was much more complex than that, with many critiques and defenses along numerous different dimensions. Moreover, it did not lend itself easily to partisan or ideological leanings.

Proponents of democracy promotion based their support on several occasionally overlapping notions. Some shared the moral outlook of President Bush, believing that democracy was, essentially, a God-given right that Americans should help the rest of the world to achieve. Others took a more ideological and less moral view, simply arguing that democracy was the best and most fair system of government and that all people should have the right to self-governance. Arguments based on stability, security, and economic development were made as well.²¹

In general, views on democracy promotion can be grouped along two dimensions: the moral-ideological dimension and the U.S. interest dimension. There are several positions on the moral-ideological dimension. First, there are proponents who for ideological, moral, or religious reasons believe that democracy is the right thing for all people and that the United States should do its part in helping people by promoting democracy whenever it can. This has been the position of the Bush administration, but it is shared by others as well. For years, the notion that people should have a right to choose their own government was a core value of the American non-communist left. This seems to be changing now.

Within this moral-ideological dimension two arguments can be found to oppose democracy promotion. These two arguments overlap to some degree but are presented differently. The first, often associated with the right, is that not all people are ready for democracy. With regard to some countries, the argument is that a longstanding attachment to another form of government, overarching religious views, or lack of political modernity leaves the people simply unprepared for democracy. While few academics make this precise point, it is a frequently encountered sentiment in opinion pieces, blogs, and comments by politicians. This belief is often presented with a tone of exasperation as if the speaker or writer were stating the obvious. A comment by Senator Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) sums this view up very succinctly “You cannot in my opinion just impose a democratic form of government on a country with no history and no culture and no tradition of democracy.”²²

The second argument, generally associated with the left, is that democracy promotion on the part of the United States is not genuine. Rather, it is thinly veiled self-interest and a twenty-first-century form of imperialism. This critique is particularly prominent when applied to countries like Iraq, where democracy promotion has been accompanied by military intervention, but it is also used to describe countries where U.S.-supported elections have led to a new government, more friendly to the United States, taking power.²³

The second dimension of the democracy promotion debate is centered around the idea that expanding democracy worldwide is somehow good for the United States. The best-known explanation for why democratization is good for the United States is the theory of the democratic peace. This theory holds that no two democratic countries have ever gone to war with each other, therefore increasing the number of democratic countries would reduce the possibilities for war in different parts of the globe.²⁴ After September 11, 2001, the democratic peace position was expanded so that building democracy was considered an important defense against terrorism. A NED strategy document from January 2002 summed this view up well, asserting that the “global defense of democracy is the appropriate and most effective response to the threat posed by Islamic extremists … the universal aspiration for democracy is the banner under which the battle for the defense of our national interest can most effectively be waged.”²⁵ This view was not grounded in much empirical data, but it dovetailed well with the Bush administration’s democracy promotion agenda.

Democratization was also viewed by many as in the U.S. interest because democracies were seen as the most stable form of government.²⁶ Stability is in the interest of the United States because instability and failed states can produce terrorists or other threats to national security. Once the stability of the Cold War ended, the United States worked quickly to replace that system with another stable system in much of the world.

Economic reasons have also been used to explain why democratization is in the interest of the United States. Democratic countries are viewed as good trading partners. Because markets in these countries are governed by their legal systems, Americans doing business are on stronger footing in democratic countries. Moreover, democratic countries are usually less corrupt, so businesses do not need to pay bribes or risk being at the caprice of corruptible, undemocratic leaders. This was the position of the Clinton administration in the 1990s.²⁷

While most critics agree that democratic countries generally do not go to war with each other, there have been several critiques of using the democratic peace theory to support a policy of democracy promotion. Some have argued that while democratic countries do not go to war with each other, they are no less likely to go to war with nondemocratic countries. Therefore democracy in some countries does not preclude those countries going to war. The exception to this might be a whole region, for example, Eastern Europe after the Cold War, that democratizes more or less together. Indeed, the likelihood of war in Eastern Europe is now quite small, unless Belarus becomes more belligerent with its neighbors.²⁸ Others have argued that while democratic countries do not go to war with each other, the process of democratization, particularly with an emphasis on elections, can lead to instability and violent conflicts, including wars with neighbors, disputes over territories. and civil wars.²⁹ Some have posited that it is not democracy but affluence that keeps countries from going to war with each other, and that as less affluent countries become democratic they will remain likely to get involved in wars over resources or other economic issues.³⁰

Democracy promotion, perhaps in a less public and militarily oriented fashion, is likely to remain part of U.S. foreign policy. For this reason, it is useful to move beyond discussions of whether or not democracy promotion is the right policy for the United States and to ask whether we are doing it in the most effective way possible.³¹ Policy makers, some of whom may question the wisdom of democracy assistance generally, rarely question whether our democracy promotion programs are actually the best way to promote democracy. However, democracy promotion programs themselves have come under scrutiny by a number of scholars

Carothers (2002) has pointed out that the battery of U.S.-funded democracy promotion projects look similar across very different countries with quite different challenges and histories. It may be that, for example, civic education about anti-corruption, campaign training for political parties, watchdog NGOs, and workshops for lawyers and judges really are necessary in every democratizing country, but it is also possible that different countries have different needs. Political development professionals now speak of a “standard political party program” or “the typical democracy and governance program” in a particular country.

Carothers and other scholars of democracy promotion have further asserted that practitioners lack sufficient knowledge of non-American forms of democracy; that many in the field lack sufficient language skills and cultural familiarity to do their jobs; and that democracy assistance programs are viewed in the host countries as founts of grant money and little else. The first part of this criticism seems less true now than it did five or ten years ago as American NGOs and contractors increasingly use people from many different countries in their efforts to find the best match for the challenges of a particular democratizing country.

The USAID reliance on a training approach to democratization reflects the abilities of democracy assistance organizations more than the needs of democratizing countries. Stressing training suggests that democracy is just a technical concern that must be understood better so it can be implemented. While there is a technical side to most aspects of democracy, this reliance on training and technical issues often forces implementers of democracy promotion policies to focus less on the political aspect of democratization, which is often more critical.

What Kinds of Democracies?

A key question for the democracy assistance community and the government agencies and officials who are making policy is what kind of democracy. This is particularly relevant in the case of Georgia. The question of when a country can be considered a democracy is central to understanding and evaluating democracy assistance. Freedom House offers a graded scale along two dimensions, the civic and the political, that are updated and evaluated annually. The Freedom House measurements are used by many to categorize regimes for the purposes of further study.³² Others, such as Huntington (1991), argue that changing governments through free and fair elections is the lynchpin of democracy. Dahl (1989) described eight institutional guarantees that must exist in a democracy. Linz and Stepan (1996) argue that a country has consolidated democracy when democracy is viewed as the “only game in town.” In practice, the U.S. government makes decision about democracy assistance based on when countries have reached certain, often subjectively measured thresholds in areas such as election fairness, civic freedoms and strength of democratic institutions.

Democracy, even in advanced democratic countries like the United States or much of Europe, is also not yet complete and is constantly evolving and developing. Questions of the rights of immigrants, the role of money in politics, or whether gay people should be allowed the legal rights and protections of marriage are seen as central to defining Western democracies. Advanced democracies are characterized by intense debates over expanding rights and freedoms and balancing liberties and claims between competing groups that result in policies that expand suffrage, grant civil rights to previously excluded groups of people, or offer new protections to citizens. The democracy that is built in the developing world should be equally vibrant with institutions that are able to allow citizens to resolve these types of issues.

Building mature democracies able to engage in these serious issues is extremely difficult, but must be the goal of democracy assistance. We should not be satisfied with weak democracies that do not offer citizens the full range of choices and freedoms we enjoy in more advanced democratic systems. Much of the literature on democratization has sought to create taxonomies to describe the various kinds of semidemocratic or democratizing systems.³³ Looking more closely at these systems is important, but we must recognize that democracy assistance must seek to do more.

Ordinary citizens in democratizing countries, particularly in the post-Communist world, where the promise of democracy and its associated benefits has been so strong, often become disenchanted with democracy, making it much tougher to build strong democracies. This disenchantment is often exacerbated because citizens have been told that the semidemocratic post-Soviet, corrupt system they have is actually democracy. U.S. democracy assistance programs must be careful about contributing to this problem by defining countries as democratic before they have established a resilient democracy. In this way, the U.S. imprimatur that democracy is in place for states that have not yet achieved democracy may well undermine the future of democracy in those places. The extreme example of this is Iraq, which has sometimes been described by President Bush as a democracy, but other examples include numerous semidemocratic states such as Egypt and, indeed, Georgia.

A related challenge, which is particularly acute in the post-Soviet world, is that people have unrealistically high expectations for democracy. Many citizens of these countries expect democracy to alleviate poverty, create jobs, return stability to the country, and rebuild the infrastructure relatively quickly. When these unrealistic goals are not met, confidence in the new system wanes and democratic consolidation becomes very difficult.

Civic education programs in democratizing countries often are quite successful in communicating key aspects of democracy, such as voting procedures, roles of local government or citizen’s rights to citizens. However, it is often equally important to explain to citizens of new democracies what democracy is not. Democracy is not a guarantee of a job, freedom from crime or terrorism, or a quick way for the country to grow rich. By managing these expectations, democratizing countries can give their new democratic institutions a better chance of becoming stronger.

It is in the context of these challenges regarding democracy assistance that we will begin to look at democratization in Georgia before, during, and since the Rose Revolution, as well as the role of democracy assistance in this development. There has been backlash, both in the United States and internationally, against democracy assistance. The international backlash has occurred largely because authoritarian leaders do not want any color revolutions in their own countries. At the same time, in the United States democracy promotion has been misused to explain the problems in Iraq. By learning from cases like Georgia, this critical policy can be retooled and become effective again.