Engineering Revolution
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The nonviolent overthrow of Balkan dictator Slobodan Milošević in October 2000 is celebrated as democracy promotion at its best. This perceived political success has been used to justify an industry tasked with «exporting» democracy to countries like Belarus, Ukraine, Tunisia, and Egypt. Yet the true extent of the West's involvement in Milošević's overthrow remained unclear until now. Engineering Revolution uses declassified CIA documents and personal interviews with diplomats, aid providers, and policymakers, as well as thousands of pages of internal NGO documents, to explore what proponents consider one of the greatest successes of the democracy promotion enterprise. Through its in-depth examination of the two decades that preceded and followed Milošević's unseating, as well as its critical look at foreign assistance targeting Serbia's troubled political party landscape, Engineering Revolution upends the conventional wisdom on the effectiveness of democracy promotion in Serbia. Marlene Spoerri demonstrates that democracy took root in Serbia in spite of, not because of, Western intervention—in fact, foreign intervention often hurt rather than helped Serbia's tenuous transition to democracy. As Western governments recalibrate their agendas in the wake of the Arab Spring, this timely book offers important lessons for the democracy promotion community as it sets its sights on the Middle East, former Soviet Union, and beyond.
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Engineering Revolution
The Paradox of Democracy Promotion in Serbia
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Today political party assistance is the prerogative of several dozen organizations based primarily—though not exclusively—in Western Europe and the United States. Foremost among these are the two American party institutes—NDI and IRI—and the six German Stiftungen—FES, KAS, the Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung (FNS), the Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung (HSS), the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung (HBS), and the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung (RLS). In recent years, other established European democracies have followed suit, including Sweden, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, France, and Spain, each of which has established organizations such as the Olof Palme International Center, the Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD), the Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy (NIMD), Fondation Jean-Jaurès, and the Fundación Pablo Iglesias, respectively. A handful of young postcommunist democracies—themselves former recipients of democracy assistance—have also undertaken efforts to distribute political party assistance, as have several multilateral organizations such as the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). Others, like the Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA), have opted to serve as knowledge banks on political party development and party aid.
Of direct implementers, American and German party aid organizations are not only the oldest but also the largest, working in more than eighty countries across the globe. Their combined annual budgets exceed $550 million.7 By contrast, the budgets of Europe’s smaller party aid providers run from just under $1 million to $4 million. Many work in only a small number of countries, devoting their limited resources to specific geographic regions. Table 3 provides an overview of the main organizations currently providing democracy assistance to political parties abroad.
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