Regime Transitions and External Democracy Promotion

Zusammenfassung

Promoting democracy has become a foreign policy goal for all major Western democracies. Its effects are expected to improve international security, create regional stability, protect human rights and contribute to economic development. Some of the dominating issues of present world politics relate more or less directly to external democratization. To mention only a few: military intervention in Iraq was legitimized as a democratic intervention, with unforeseen consequences; in Kosovo, the European Union will govern a de facto protectorate and is tasked with institution- and nation-building; failed states (e.g. Afghanistan, Sudan, Pakistan, ex-Yugoslavia) and their consequent resistance to rule of law have long been identified as the harbor of organized crime and terrorism. For some, however, promoting democracy from abroad is just another experiment by “international ‘mad scientists.’”¹