The Elusive Synthesis: Exploring the Changing Relationship Between Democracy Support and Development Aid

Once separate, the arenas of democracy support and development aid have become increasingly interconnected in recent years. Cooperation between the two communities, however, remains uneven at best. To assess the evolution and implications of this critical relationship, the Journal of Democracy published a set of articles on the topic in its October 2010 issue. The Journal of Democracy and the Carnegie Endowment co-sponsored a panel discussion with the primary author of this series, Carnegie’s Thomas Carothers, and the authors of the two response articles, Brian Levy of the World Bank and Scott Hubli of the National Democratic Institute (who co-authored his essay with Ken Wollack, also of the National Democratic Institute). 

Toward Convergence

Carothers traced the growing overlap and interconnections that have occurred between democracy aid and development aid over the past two decades.

• Common priorities: In the 1990s Western donors embraced the idea that democracy and development can complement each other. The two practitioner communities recognized that they share common priorities, such as the rule of law and the creation of a strong middle class, Levy noted.
   
• Taking politics into account: Developmentalists who once shunned political involvement began acknowledging the role of good governance in advancing economic development, Carothers said. The focus on good governance gradually moved beyond mere efficiency to more politically normative goals such as enhancing the accountability, transparency, and responsiveness of governing institutions.
   
• Helping democracy deliver: In the same years the democracy community shifted its emphasis from helping democratic breakthroughs occurs to strengthening fledging democratic governments emerging from such breakthroughs.  This shift also involved attention to governing institutions and began touching on socioeconomic issues, Carothers explained. Reflecting the concern that new democracies may fail if they do not meet the socioeconomic demands of their citizens, in 2005 the National Democratic Institute launched a “Helping Democracy Deliver” initiative.
   
• Institutional integration: These shifts by the two communities led them to work on similar sectors and toward increasingly similar objectives. Some major development aid agencies began incorporating democracy elements into their work. The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) has gone far to fuse the two domains, defining poverty as comprising not just socioeconomic deprivation but an absence of political freedom as well, a move praised by Hubli.

Continuing Divisions

Despite this evolution, serious differences remain between development and democracy promotion communities.

• Diminishing consensus: While the development community has accepted the need to consider politics in its programmatic thinking and action it is not convinced about the utility of democracy for development, Carothers argued. For instance, China’s rapid economic growth under an authoritarian government has provided an alternative development model and increased skepticism in many quarters about democracy’s relevance for development.
   
• Persistent stereotypes: Hubli noted that stereotypes continue to inhibit dialogue between democracy and development communities. For instance, development practitioners often assume democracy advocates are primarily engaged in promoting revolutionary change, when in fact much democracy work concerns gradual institution building.
   
• Country ownership: Development organizations work primarily with domestic governments and are wary of injecting politics into the development equation out of fear it may endanger their relationships with key decision makers, Carothers noted. The democracy community, on the other hand, is often challenging to host governments and questions the legitimacy of authoritarian governments claiming to speak for their country, Hubli said.
   
• Consider the consequences: Development programs have the potential to harm democracy by legitimizing authoritarian governments. Hubli argued that development experts need to do more to consider the possible negative consequences of their programs and ensure they are not strengthening anti-democratic actors.
   
• Moving from good ideas to programs: Even when democracy and development practitioners take into account each other’s concerns in overall assessments and objectives, these issues are often not jointly addressed at the project level, Hubli added.

An Evolutionary Approach

Levy warned against creating a binary division between democracy and development, and urged a more fluid approach to the common end-goal of high incomes and open societies.

• Divergent paths: Countries begin at different starting points, and follow many different paths toward the end goal of strong middle classes, a robust private sector, and democratic institutions, Levy contended.
   
• Work with the grain: Given these different paths, Levy suggested international aid agencies should focus on available opportunities to nudge countries toward political reform rather than push for immediate democratization. For instance, in some situations strengthening government institutions will be a priority while in other cases it is unlikely to be effective.
   
• Social accountability: Levy said the development community has embraced the idea of increasing local participation rather than focusing only on high-level institutional reform. This change will improve the ability of communities to push for accountability, although members of the audience questioned how useful it is to increase civil society capacity if state institutions are closed and unresponsive.
   
• How long will we wait for democracy? Carothers asked how patient the development community will be in the face of authoritarian governments that are not moving toward increased openness. Levy responded that, given the record of greater political success in wealthier developing countries, he would be more proactive in pushing for democratic reform in middle-income countries than in low-income settings.

Is Synthesis Desirable?

• Uneasy and unequal: Carothers described integration between democracy and development communities as an uneasy and unequal convergence. The democracy community is wary of getting lost in the larger pool of development aid. On their end, the development community still questions the value of democracy for development even while embracing governance goals that converge closely with democratic ones.
   
• Different specialties: Democracy and development programs have different comparative advantages, Hubli noted. For instance, democracy aid has a significant role to play in some middle-income countries where development agencies are less needed.
   
• Trade-offs: Audience members pointed out that there can be real trade-offs between democratic representation and development efficiency, even if neither side wants to speak openly about such trade-offs. For instance, Iraq’s political system is open to participation from a wide variety of groups, but this has not led to political stability or solid institution building.