A New Approach For Democracy Promotion Posted by Michael Cohen

Regular readers of DA may have noticed that in recent weeks and months I've been spending a lot of time writing about democracy promotion - well it's not just because I love freedom! With my partner in crime at New America Foundation, Maria Figueroa Kupcu, I've been writing a report that we are unveiling today on revitalizing US democracy promotion and reforming the foreign assistance bureaucracy. After the past eight years, and the failures of the Freedom Agenda, I think we would all agree such a revitalization is much needed.

Of course, the inauguration of Barack Obama brought with it the hope that the image of the United States, particularly when it comes to democracy promotion issues, would immediately improve. But it is naive to think that such a transformation is simply a matter of changing national leaders. The challenges confronting America’s ability to seed democracy are numerous, and meeting them will require far-reaching institutional changes that go to the heart of this country’s approach to foreign assistance.

Beyond the pressing need for institutional reform, there is also the critical challenge of engaging with local non-state and civil society actors in fledgling democracies. These are the groups often best positioned to foster positive democratic outcomes, and many of the recommendations that we offer in this report are focused on both directly and indirectly bringing non-state actors to the forefront of U.S. democratization initiatives. 

It is these two points - how we engage more effectively with local civil society actors and how we strengthen the foreign assistance bureaucracy so that it operates more effectively and lends support to these local groups - that form the basis of this report.

You can read the full report here, but check out our key conclusions/recommendations after the jump.

This report lays out six steps for revitalizing U.S. democracy promotion efforts and reforming the U.S. foreign assistance bureaucracy:

1) The first and most crucial step is to raise the profile of international development as an objective of U.S. foreign policy. This means turning the current United States Agency for International Development (USAID) into a new cabinet-level agency, the Department of International Development, which would have primary responsibility for all U.S. development, democratization, humanitarian, and public health assistance, as well as for post-conflict reconstruction. All government-wide development and democracy assistance programs (which are now scattered among many government agencies) should either be relocated to or managed by the new agency.

2) Sharper delineations should be made between strategic assistance, development and democratization aid, and humanitarian, public health, and disaster relief assistance. Each of these categories defines different political and strategic U.S. objectives and each should be treated separately so as to avoid confusion among aid recipients and to ensure a more efficient allocation of resources. In particular, bilateral and strategic assistance should only be distributed through the State Department, and all development, democratization, and humanitarian aid should be under the guidance of the proposed Department of International Development.

3) An increasing percentage of U.S. development assistance should be conditioned on the criteria currently utilized by the Millennium Challenge Corporation. In order to reduce the fragmentation of the U.S. assistance bureaucracy, consideration should be given to incorporating the MCC into the new Department of International Development. At the very least, steps should be taken to create a clear division of labor between the MCC and the new department. In addition, stakeholders, especially local NGOs, should be more directly integrated into the design and implementation of assistance programs, and, where possible, a significant portion of MCC funding should be earmarked for local, non-state actors.

4) The National Endowment for Democracy must continue to serve as a focal point for U.S. democracy assistance to non-state actors. Funding for the NED should be doubled. In addition, other avenues should be sought to increase assistance to non-state actors. This should include expanded U.S. support for multilateral and regional organizations, including the United Nations Democracy Fund. To improve the allocation of resources to non-state actors, a $50 million fund for U.S. nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) with proven track records in democracy promotion should be established and administered by the new Department of International Development.

5) A position of foreign assistance coordinator should be created in each U.S. embassy. The primary responsibility of the individuals holding this post would be to coordinate all U.S. assistance to the recipient country in order to streamline the aid process and to ensure that the work of local non-state actors and other private and nongovernmental organizations was incorporated into decision making regarding U.S. assistance.

6) U.S. diplomatic efforts should be more clearly geared toward protecting non-state actors and ensuring that foreign countries uphold, support, and do not interfere with the work of civil society organizations.

Comments

[Don Bacon]

Cheez, Michael, I don't know. Do you really think that other countries want to take government lessons from a country with such poor public health programs and terrible foreign aggression campaigns, a place noted for its high incarceration, suicide, murder, and infant mortality rates, where public debt is now up to $36,000 per citizen and finance criminals help to run the government, where elections are characterized by scandals requiring court intervention and an imperial presidency allows war criminals like Bush and Cheney to go scott free?

It's going to be a tough sell. What's it going to cost? Maybe we ought to get China to back us on it. Oh, that's right, China already is our principal banker (and manufacturing source).

[Zathras]

Thank goodness the "God Damn America" critique of this proposal is already covered here.

I'd better read the full report before reacting, but this summary appears to describe a program to centralize development assistance, segregate it from assistance explicitly intended to promote American interests overseas, and empower non-governmental organizations whether they are American or not. Whatever the merits of a proposal like this, I'm not clear how it addresses the main obstacle to a muscular international development program -- extremely limited political support for it in the United States.

I have one observation as to a detail that I'm not sure I understand. AID development assistance is to be separate from bilateral and strategic assistance in Washington, but coordinated by one person in each embassy? If that really is what is being proposed here, how would it work in practice? Your foreign assistance coordinator would either be an FSO coordinating aid programs of his own department with those of another, new department, or an employee of the new department asserting jurisdiction over State Department bilateral/strategic aid programs while reporting to an ambassador. I may have a mistaken idea of the intent here, so the potential for paralyzing bureacratic conflict I see in this scheme may be less than it appears to me.

[Don Bacon]

Zathras, you need to get out more, visit some foreign countries, talk to some people outside your normal box, and see how high your American flag flies. Or if you're unable to do that, read some Pew Global Research polls to see where the US stands in the estimation of the other 95% of the people of the world, particularly the Muslim world but also South America, Europe and South Asia.

If you can't do either of those then you might at least address the relevant facts and statistics rather than fall back on the fool's defense, ad hominem attacks.

[Don Bacon]

On a lighter note, I'm reminded of a joke a tour guide told on a visit I made to Croatia recently.

Q: What do you call someone who speaks three languages?
A: Trilingual

Q: Two languages?
A: Bilingual

Q: Only one language?
A: American

[Peace]

I believe that the United States should work more closely with groups that it really does not like which includes the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. Even though these groups have an ideology that the Americans do not like, they could becaome deradicalized if they would included more in the governing process and listened to by the United States. Also the adminsiotration could strengthen the global enviromental movement. Enviromental NGOs have a great deal of local popular support even in countries such as Russia,China, and Iran. By making America's economy greener and signing onto the Kyoto agreemnent, the administration could expand the influence of the enviromental movement which than in turn could help shape a democratic culture in authoritarian countries through the expansion of local enviromental NGOs.

[Don Bacon]

It was a clumsy attempt by Zathras to tie me to Obama's "God Damn America" ex-pastor, and not worth much, but it does highlight a point I'd like to make, and that is that America is not the US government. Many people incorrectly conflate the two. Back in the 60's anti-war people, who were against government policies at the time, were told to "love it [America] or leave it." And so now if one is against the government policies which have morally and financially bankrupted the government and made life miserable for many Americans, then one is labeled as anti-American.

America is not the government, it is lakes and streams and fields, it is terrific people of various extractions, it is wonderful choices on where to go and what to do and what to be. That's America, a country currently not blessed with a properly functioning democracy but rather with severe election problems as well as a bought-and-paid for congress, which shortcomings have brought Americans the difficulties I outlined above, and more.

Therefore it is not a democracy that ought to be promoted to people in the world who know how the US government behaves both domestically and internationally. They're not stupid, after all. Many of them have a more vibrant and free press than Americans enjoy.

[Zathras]

I suggest to Don Bacon, as respectfully as I can, that he start taking some toughen-up pills. If he's going to go on, as he regularly does, about "finance criminals," "war criminals," a "bought-and-paid-for Congress" and so forth, he ought to learn how to take a punch, or at least a pulled punch.

America, like most countries, has always had a certain number of people disposed to fly to the defense of whatever its government's policies happen to be at the time, even and sometimes especially when those policies were unwise or worse. This is not invariably a good thing, but neither is its flip side: the much smaller number of Americans driven by the personal alienation a large, complex, dynamic and sometimes very intimidating society can generate to reflexively blame everything that goes wrong in the world on the United States, find a hero in every enemy of the United States, and find much to loath in everything about the United States except those aspects of it that please them personally. Lakes and streams and fields, indeed.

Out of respect for Michael Cohen, whose democracy promotion report I really do want to read and comment on more fully when I have time, I'll stop there. One throwaway sentence this morning produced an afternoon's worth of reaction, and I don't want to give anyone a heart attack, let alone further clog up a thread with off-topic material.

[Don Bacon]

Zathras, you are the perfect foil again, as you have been for years. Thank you for that. And thanks to DA we do have democracy here, at least, and the readers can decide.

[Gucci handbag]

Out of respect for Michael Cohen, whose democracy promotion report I really do want to read and comment on more fully when I have time, I'll stop there

[Gucci handbag]

Out of respect for Michael Cohen, whose democracy promotion report I really do want to read and comment on more fully when I have time, I'll stop there

[Tiffany replica Money Clip]

Out of respect for Michael Cohen, whose democracy promotion report I really do want to read and comment on more fully when I have time, I'll stop there

[michael jordan shoes]

Cheap Jordan shoes and Gucci shoes are on sale

[cheap coach handbags]

http://www.zetinopvoetbal.nl/forum/index.php

[cheap coach bags]

Great comments! You are so nice, man! You never know how much i like'em!

[cheap coach purses]

Yes, that's cool. The device is amazing! Waiting for your next one!

[r4 firmware]

The Bush’s administration’s highly problematic legacy on democracy promotion and general pessimism about the global state of democracy create pressure on the Obama administration to pull the United States substantially back from supporting democracy abroad.