Democracy promotion, empowerment, and self-determination: conflicting objectives in US and German policies towards Bolivia

Abstract

Promoting democracy implies fostering political empowerment and self-determination. Although this creates obvious problems for any external policy seeking to change authoritarian regimes, mainstream thinking on democratization in the case of post-transition countries would predict a somewhat easier task for potential democracy promoters: cooperation with the elected government strengthens the democratic regime, while democracy assistance that supports institutional capacities and civil society participation simultaneously contributes to the protection and deepening of democracy. This article argues that such a view is far too simple. In the broad range of 'normal' post-transition countries, democracy promotion can be confronted with a variety of conflicts of objectives associated with the fact that there is no democracy without some kind of self-determination and no process of democratization without some degree of political empowerment. The article presents a typology of these conflicts of objectives and applies it to the case of Bolivia. Subsequently, it offers an analysis of how two important democracy promoters in the country - namely, the US and Germany - reacted to Bolivia's 'democratic revolution' and handled their respective conflicting objectives.