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Democratic Transition  economic growth – Foreign Aided: Why Democratization Brings Growth When
Democracy Does Not

Hariri, Jacob GernerView Profile. British Journal of Political Science45.1 (Jan 2015): 53-71.
Working
Brazil Counterplan
1NC
 Off
The Federative Republic of Brazil should promote good governance in Africa, Asia,
Latin America, and Oceania.

The Counterplan solves democracy but the Aff doesn’t – a Brazilian campaign for good
governance activates global modeling
Stuenkel, PhD Political Science, ‘13 (Oliver Stuenkel holds a PhD in political science from the
University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany, and a Master in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of
Government at Harvard University, where he was a McCloy Scholar. He is an Assistant Professor of
International Relations at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV) in São Paulo, where he coordinates the
São Paulo branch of the School of History and Social Science (CPDOC) and the executive program in
International Relations. He is also a non-resident Fellow at the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi) in
Berlin and a member of the Carnegie Rising Democracies Network. His research focuses on rising
powers; specifically on Brazil’s, India’s and China's foreign policy and on their impact on global
governance, “Rising Powers and the Future of Democracy Promotion: the case of Brazil and India,” Third
World Quarterly 34:2 p. 339-355, 2013)
Conclusion As the analysis makes clear, a realist approach is best at accounting for rising democracies’ behaviour. Brazil and India promote
democracy as long as doing so is aligned with their overall strategic and economic interests, and if they are willing to adopt democracy
promotion as means to legitimise their growing influence. In this respect their approach is similar to the Western practice. While promoting
democracy may endanger India’s foreign policy goal of maintaining regional stability, it is increasingly aligned with Brazil’s
national interests as a regional hegemon. Given that autocratic leaders are more likely to endanger
Brazilian investments in the region, for example by expropriating Brazilian investments, democracy promotion has
become a key tool with which to contain threats against the legitimacy of the established order and to defend Brazil’s
growing economic presence in South America. Yet rising democracies fundamentally differ from
established actors in that they rarely justify their democracy-related activities in the context of the larger liberal narrative often used by
European and US policy makers. Both Brazil and India remain suspicious of the at times sweeping Wilsonian liberal
rhetoric and concepts used by European and US democracy promoters, a rhetoric which policy makers in
Brasília and New Delhi consider to be both ineffective and smacking of cultural imperialism. It is worth noting that,
despite their democracy-related activities, no Indian and Brazilian policy maker or civil society representative
describes these as ‘democracy promotion’—very much contrary to Europe and the USA, were the
term is common. Therefore it is no surprise that neither Brazil nor India has embraced US ideas such as the ‘League of Democracies’. As a
consequence, observers in Europe and the USA have generally seen the scope for cooperation with rising democracies on democracy-related
activities as limited. Nevertheless comparisons between Western and non-Western views about democracy promotion often overlook the fact
that there is ample room for cooperation. Emphasising
the more technical terms—such as ‘good governance’—
rather than the ideology-laden liberal ‘democracy promotion’ may be an important step to facilitate
cooperation, particularly on the multilateral level. In this context the ‘European approach’, which often seeks to avoid the
term ‘democracy promotion’ in order not to estrange the host government105 (for example by promoting ‘good governance’ or by
strengthening ‘civil society’ 106), may provide more room for collaboration between established democracy promoters and rising democracies.
For example, when US President Barack Obama visited India, the USA and India signed an Open Government Partnership to start a dialogue
among senior officials on open government issues and to disseminate innovations that enhance government accountability.107 These less
visible approaches are likely to be more acceptable to rising democracies than being asked to join established powers in condemning autocrats
openly. Emerging
powers’ position matters greatly because they are located in regions of the world
where democracy’s footing is not yet firm. In addition, there are indications that Brazil’s and India’s credibility
among poor countries may exceed that of the rich world—perhaps precisely because they are rarely
perceived as overly paternalistic or arrogant. Perhaps most importantly Brazil’s and India’s societal
structures—high inequality, a high degree of illiteracy (in India’s case) and pockets of poverty—are similar to those in
many countries that are struggling to establish democracy. Seen from this perspective, Brazilian and Indian policy
makers have much more experience in making democracy work in adverse environments. In Brazil’s
case an additional asset is a very recent experience of successful transition to democracy. Emerging
power such as Brazil and India are therefore in a much better position to share their experience of
democracy than Europe or the USA, whose democratisation lies in the distant past, and whose
societies look very different from those in the rest of the world. Finally, in a world where an increasing
number of national leaders look to China as an economic and political model to copy, India and Brazil
provide powerful counter-examples that political freedom is no obstacle to economic growth.108 In
this sense, as Pratap Mehta points out, Brazil’s and India’s own success may do far more for
democracy promotion than any overtly ideological push in that direction could ever hope to
accomplish.109
 Net Benefit
U.S. democracy promotion destabilizes the international order and incites perpetual
warfare – all democratic progress has occurred in spite of, and not because of America
Smith, Econ Professor at Yale, ’12 (Tony Smith is Professor of Economics and Director of
Undergraduate Studies for the Department of Economics at Yale, “America's Mission: The United States
and the Worldwide Struggle for Democracy (Expanded Edition)”,
http://site.ebrary.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/lib/umich/detail.action?docID=10594477, Princeton
University Press, February 2012)

The irony of American liberal internationalism by late 2011 was that a framework for policy that had
done so much to established America’s preeminence in world affairs between 1945 and 2001 should
have contributed so significantly to its decline thereafter. Following 1945, American control over West Germany and
Japan had allowed it to transform these two lands politically and economically, integrating them into Washington’s orbit in a manner that gave
the free world a decisive advantage over its Soviet and communist rivals. If containment had been the primary track for U.S. foreign policy
during the cold war, a secondary track, consolidating the political and economic unity of the liberal democratic countries through multilateral
organizations under American leadership, had had decisive influence over the course of the global contest. The power advantage the United
States enjoyed was basic, to be sure, as were the personalities of Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, who brought the contest to a
successful conclusion that very few anticipated. But Woodrow
Wilson’s hope to make America secure by making the world
peaceful through the expansion of what by President Bill Clinton’s time was called “free-market democracies” meant that
liberal internationalism’s contribution to the outcome had shown itself to be fundamental. Yet during the first decade of the twenty-first
century, the very forces that had allowed America to win the cold war had created
the illusion that with relative ease
history could now be controlled and international affairs funda¬mentally restructured by the expansion of
the free-market democratic world into an international order of peace. Under neoconservative and neoliberal
auspices, democracy was believed to have a “universal appeal’’ with peace-giving qualities of benefit
to all peoples. A market economy both domestically and globally would compound the process of
political stabilization. Under the terms of the responsibility to protect,’1 progressive imperialism
became a form of “just war"’ and the American military that President George W. Bush announced
was "beyond challenge" was tasked with ushering in a new dawn of freedom worldwide. For a " unipolar
world’1 a global mission was conceived, as in neoliberal and neoconservative hands neo-Wilsonian ism evolved into a hard ideology, the
equivalent in conceptual terms to Marxism-Leninism, with a capacity to give leaders and people a sense of identity and worldwide purpose to a
degree that liberalism had never before possessed. In this march of folly, fueled not only by ideology but also by a will to power after
triumph in the cold war, all the earlier reservations about the difficulties of nation- and state-building
abroad that had been discussed over the preceding half century were disregarded, so that even after policymakers understood
that democracy did not grow spontaneously in many places, they were reassured by authoritative studies put out by
institutions like the RAND Corporation and the Army and Marine Corps that such missions could be accomplished. As
a consequence, although it was widely recognized that the failure to plan properly for Iraq after Baghdad had been captured was a
fundamental error, very few voices in positions of power were heard saying that the democratization of
Iraq and Afghanistan (or the thought of working with '"democratic” Pakistan) was likely a fool’s errand from the start.
Instead, efforts to rectify the failures at conceptualizing state- and nation-building turned out to be “how ton' or llcan do” publications that
only prolonged and deepened a misplaced American self-confidence that it was possible 10 use the window of
opportunity at the coun¬try s disposition as the world"s sole superpower to changc the logic of interna¬tional relations forever. Much the same
mixture of arrogance,
self-interest, and self-delusion characterized the arguments underlying the
“Washington Consensus” which boldly saw the key to world prosperity and peace in the interdependence generated by economic
globalization with its trinity of concepts—privatization, deregula¬tion, and openness. To be sure, economic interdependence was indeed
capable of delivering on its promise, as the integration of the European Union and the growth in world trade and investment centered on the
free-markct democracies so powerfully demonstrated for half a century after World War II. However, a serious problem lay in the inability of
political forces, either nationally or in¬ternationally, to control the capitalist genie once let out of its bottle. For in due course, deregulation
turned against the very system that had given birth to it, unleashing a flight of technology, capital, and jobs to countries in Asia espe¬cially and
permitting the irresponsible banking practices that engendered in the United States and the European Union (after having affected Mexico,
Russia, Southeast Asia, and Argentina more than a decade earlier) an economic crisis second in its devastation only to the Great Depression of
the 1930s. The result in the United States was not only the decimation first of the work¬ing and then of the middle classes as the top 10
percent of the nation (and es¬pecially the top 1 percent) monopolized virtually all the gains of economic openness for a period of more than
two decades but also a decline in national power as technology, capital, and jobs moved abroad and as China grew apaceJ For all the talk by
President Barack Obama about the example the United States should set for the sake of democracy promotion abroad, the first three years of
his administration did not meaningfully address the deep-seated underlying problems of economic growth and inequality in this country, nor
the control by corporations of the nation’s political life, nor concerns about national power based on an economy in decline. As a result, liberal
economic doctrine and practice were undermining democratic government as well as na¬tional power. Aspects of the liberal agenda once too
easily assumed to be au¬tomatically mutually reinforcing were coming to be increasingly at odds with one another. Woodrow Wilson had
recognized just such a possibility a century earlier when he chastised the greed and incompetence of the nation's monopoly capi¬talists and
asked for their regulation for the sake of the common good. Despite similar public utterances by President Obama a century later, there was no
follow-through with respect to asserting Washington’s power over corporate interests as had occurred when Wilson became president. For
Wilson and his fellow progressives, the question had been how “to recover representative gov¬ernment, not supersede it.” For his day,
Washington's main duty was 6tto pre¬vent the strong from crushing the weak,"' and he left no doubt but that it was the captains of industry
who were the greatest threat to the democratic life of early-twentieth-ccntury America. Wilson introduced antitrust laws, child labor laws, a
federal income tax, and the Federal Reserve System, among other re¬forms that made capitalism a more effective economic system as well as
one that reinforced democratic government.2 In 2011 the question was whether a similar resolve could be found in Washington to rejuvenate
the American economy in a way that rejuvenated its democracy. The
Wilsonian tradition thus found itself in crisis. Within
onlv two decades after the cold war, liberal internationalist overconfidence in the universal ap¬peal of
democratic government and in the blessing of free-market capitalism had combined to reduce the
effectiveness of mullilateral institutions and the capacity of the United States to provide leadership in
settling the problems of world order. A liberal order capable of withstanding the challenges of both fascism
and communism had come in a short time to be its own worst enemy. Communism was dead, but 4Lfree-market
democracy" was proving to be a much weaker blueprint for world order than had only recently been antici¬pated. As Machiavelli had
counseled in his Discourses, "Men always commit the error of not knowing where to limit their hopes, and by trusting to these rather than to a
just measure of their resources, they are generally ruined/’ One scenario for the future was bleak. It foresaw economic chaos as feeding on
itself; more self-defeating military interventions being undertaken; and all the while the banner of freedom and democracy being lifted at the
very mo¬ment that self-government was being undermined at home by vested interests and delusional thinking undcrgirding an imperial
presidency. So Michael Dcsch referred to l4the seeds of illiberal behavior” contained within liberalism itself, as it attributed a moral superiority
to its ways of being while seeing al-ternative systems both as morally inferior and as necessarily menacing. What¬ever the reversal suffered by
the implementation of the
Bush Doctrine, its essential message of the virtues of "‘benign hegemony"' or
“altruistic imperialism’’ continued to typify a liberalism that engaged in perpetual war for the sake of
perpetual peace.3 Liberalism may have been its own worst enemy, but there were other forces that challenged its future role as well. As
the fate of the Rose Revolution of 2003 in Georgia, of the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2(X)4-5, and of the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon in
2{K)5 all illustrated, transitions from authori¬tarian government were often quite difficult to accomplish. More critically, the model of state
capitalism in conjunction with authoritarian states was giving increasing evidence that it might prove more successful in creating national
power than the free-market democratic blueprint prevalent in the West. Not only China but also Russia had deep-set cultural and political
forces resisting the liberal appeal. More ominously, there w as increasing reason to think that in time authoritarian state capitalism might
consolidate itself in a way that could markedly increase the national power of China and Russia relative to the West and Japan, and this in a
fashion that diminished the international standing of the United States while breaking the hack of the unity that had held together the world of
free-market democracies.4 Perhaps this pessimism characteristic of 201 1 was exaggerated. The June Democracy Movement of 1987 had led to
the establishment of what subse¬quently appeared to be a solid democracy in South Korea, as did a plebiscite in Chile in 1988 and one in
Slovenia in 1990, Poland and the Czech Republic were among the countries that moved with relative ease to democracy once the Soviet empire
collapsed. In
the case of Brazil, the most important of Latin American countries, the presidency of
Fernando Alfonso Coll or de Mello be¬ginning in 1990 (the first directly elected chief executive since
the period of military government that began in J964), followed by Fernando Henriquc Car¬doso
(1995- ?001), Luiz lnacio Lula da Silva (2003-10), and then Dilma Rousseff (2011) demonstrated the
ability of a country outside the perimeter of American hegemony to combine responsible government
with strong eco¬nomic growth and successful projects of social justice. The Brazilian model had
obvious relevance for all of Latin America, with the potential to displace the appeal of the “illiberal"
variant of democracy, such as was evident in the Venezuela of Hugo Chavez and its imitators in parts of Latin America/ So, too, the
Arab world was finally in movement in the aftermath of the Tunisian uprising that began late in 2010.
giving birth to “the Arab Spring.’’ Stirred by the success of popular democracy movements in Tunisia
and Egypt that resulted in the fall of long-term dictators in January and February 2011, a popular revolt began in Libya, one
that Moammar Gadhafi moved savagely to repress. In March, the Arab League and the UN Security Council voted to sanction intervention to
stop the threat of mass murders by government forces in eastern Libya. On March 19 (the eighth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq), American
and British Tomahawk cruise missiles fell on Libyan government forces that Trench and British war planes were attacking simultaneously.
Non¬violent mass protests started by politicized youths explicitly demanding demo¬cratic
government (and to all appearances uninterested in the rhetoric of Is¬lamic fundamentalism) demonstrated the weakness of
brutal and ineffective authoritarian government and the appeal of constitutional order, with its em¬phasis on transparent
and accountable government capable of providing a tan¬gible margin of freedom,, prosperity, and national dignity. The Wilsonian promise
appeared to be bearing fruit where few had thought to see it appear so robust K\ There were
those who reacted to these
developments by claiming that the Bush Doctrine, with its call to end tyranny around the globe, was
finally being vindicated. Yet such assertions overlooked the objection that the invasion of Iraq had
made it more problematic than would otherw ise have been the case for the moderate forces in favor
of democratic government in the Arab world to survive a struggle between a military elite and a
religious fundamentalist movement. The Iraq and Afghan wars, as well as the blank check Washington
extended to Israel, had not so much promoted the movements demanding free¬dom in the Arab
world but instead rendered them less likely to succeed. More, claims that the Bush Doctrine was vindicated by the calls
for democ¬racy in the Arab world were also likely to have to face up to seeing many of these movements fail. If Tunisia had the good fortune to
possess most of the ingredients for success—no serious ethnoreligious cleavages; a well-organized, moderate trade union movement; a large,
educated middle class; a small mili¬tary; a moderate mainstream Islamist movement; and no oil or gas resources to fund a state independent of
popular will—nowhere else in the Arab world (al¬lowance perhaps made for the monarchies in Jordan and Morocco, while some held out hope
for Syria or Lebanon) was there the same likelihood of making a transition to democracy/' That said, the Turkish model—where responsible
government, economic growth, Islamic secularism, and social justice were emerging with a character that was indigenous—might have
influence in many countries where histori¬cally the Ottoman Empire has left its mark. Just as it was possible that liberal internationalism's
dedication to democ¬racy promotion might still have life whatever the reversals in Iraq and Af¬ghanistan, so too was economic reform possible
whatever the damage inflicted by the crisis that began in 2008. For it is in the interest of capitalism to be regu¬lated; effective markets cannot
exist without the same kind of accountability and transparency we expect from democratic governments. More, suprana¬tional institutions
may experience growth as they take on the task of supervis¬ing at regional or international levels reforms that will also involve increased
political harmonization, if not integration. While the hold of corporate influ¬ence on political elites in the United States and national differences
in the Eu¬ropean Union could block the very changes that it would be to their long-term benefit to have, perhaps dramatic innovations could
be adopted, should the Democrats insist on thoroughgoing reforms in the spirit oi the Progressive Era or the New Deal when this party gave
critical leadership, or should the Euro¬pean Union manage not only to survive the challenges to the unity of the Euro zone but actually to grow
politically in the process.
2NC
 Solvency Extension
The counterplan solves democracy promotion comparatively better than the plan
without linking to our US-specific turns
Stuenkel, PhD Political Science, ‘13 (Oliver Stuenkel holds a PhD in political science from the
University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany, and a Master in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of
Government at Harvard University, where he was a McCloy Scholar. He is an Assistant Professor of
International Relations at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV) in São Paulo, where he coordinates the
São Paulo branch of the School of History and Social Science (CPDOC) and the executive program in
International Relations. He is also a non-resident Fellow at the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi) in
Berlin and a member of the Carnegie Rising Democracies Network. His research focuses on rising
powers; specifically on Brazil’s, India’s and China's foreign policy and on their impact on global
governance, “Rising Powers and the Future of Democracy Promotion: the case of Brazil and India,” Third
World Quarterly 34:2 p. 339-355, 2013)
Yet when speaking about US foreign policy, democracy promotion is generally regarded as more than a fig leaf that merely exists to disguise
true US national interests. Rather, democracy promotion is part of a greater American narrative, an important element of the USA’s ‘mission’ in
the world.25 US culture is thus an important factor in explaining democracy promotion.26 Thomas Carothers
confirms this by referring to the
‘inherent assumption that the United States is especially qualified to promote
democracy’, 27 recommending that US foreign policy makers ‘get over the tendency to see democracy…promotion…as the special province
of the United States’. 28 In addition, Rick Travis argues that promoting democracy strengthens democracy’s identity and, in the case of the USA,
helps it ‘reconnect with its core historical traditions’. 29 There seems to be a strong collective conviction that US democracy remains one of the
most advanced in the world.30 Similar observations can be made about European democracy promotion. This may explain why one of the
main problems of both US and European democracy programmes is that they seek to recreate the world in
their own image, rather than accepting that democracy may look different in different places.31
Practical experience also has a strong influence on the debate, and evidence suggests that efforts to
strengthen democracies often have limited success.32 Those engaged in democracy promotion on the ground often
complain that, while costs are immediate, effects are uncertain and often take decades to appear—if they appear at all.33 For example,
the objective of establishing a liberal democracy in Afghanistan has been quietly substituted with
simply leaving behind a stable central government that can defend itself against the Islamic
insurgency, after even the keenest optimists can see very little progress. Ten years after the fall of the Taliban,
Afghanistan can hardly be considered a stable democracy.34 As scholars warn, competitive elections may lead to
sectarian violence and deepen animosities in ethnically divided societies.35 Kenya, Rwanda and Burundi are examples where elections have
indeed unleashed inter-ethnic violence.36 For decades the USA has worked to strengthen civil society capacity building and political party
development in the Arab World, but little suggests that the uprisings that have shaken the latter over the past months are in any way the result
of Western democracy promotion.37 The opposite is at times true: being associated with Western organisations is often a burden for
opposition groups; in June 2009, for example, the Iranian opposition explicitly distanced itself from the West to prevent a loss of credibility and
legitimacy.38 An additional critique of democracy promotion used frequently is that democracy is a ‘contested concept’, 39 and difficult to
measure, making it at times hard to decide whether certain countries (such as Venezuela, Iran or Russia) are democratic or not.40 US or
European democracy promotion is often based on an idealised Western liberal democratic model, which
is difficult to apply anywhere in the world, including in the West itself.41 People who work in democracy
promotion usually know what it means to live in a democracy, but they have rarely experienced democratisation in their home countries, thus
often having little practical understanding of the process. In addition, seeking to emulate specific characteristics of US or European democracy
may have negative consequences as it
does not allow for local peculiarities: ‘Many Americans confuse’, one specialist
writes, ‘the forms of American democracy with the concept of democracy itself’. 42 In order to emulate Western-
style voting cycles, democracy promoters are often in favour of rushing to an election, even in post-conflict societies. Yet elections can have an
inherently disruptive effect, in particular in winner-takeall scenarios.43 As Carothers points out, being impatient to organise elections ‘reflects
the tendency of the international actors engaged in aiding the conflict resolution to view elections as a strategy for an early exit. Yet at least
sometimes, early elections can be a recipe for failure.’ 44 The next section analyses which of the arguments laid out here are used by rising
democracies, and how this informs their foreign policy. Do rising democracies promote democracy? The case of Brazil and India Western
democratic governments and organisations spend billions of dollars every year on democracy-related
projects,45 turning them into the dominant actors in the field of democracy promotion. Yet a notable shift of power is taking
place towards countries that are more hesitant when it comes to systematic democracy promotion.
Have Brazil and India promoted democracy in the past? How do analysts and policy makers in emerging democracies—using Brazil and India as
an example in this analysis—think about democracy promotion? How can we characterise their arguments in relation to the critiques cited
above? Brazil and democracy promotion Brazil
accounts for over half of South America’s wealth, population,
territory and military budget, which suggests that it is relatively more powerful in its region than
China, India and Germany are in their respective neighbourhoods.46 Yet, despite this dominant position, it shied away from
intervening in its neighbours’ internal affairs before the 1990s. The preservation of national sovereignty and non-intervention have always been
and remain key pillars of Brazil’s foreign policy,47 so any attempt to promote or defend self-determination and human rights abroad—a
commitment enshrined in Brazil’s 1989 constitution48—stands in conflict with the principle of non-intervention.49 The tension arising from
these two opposing visions—respecting sovereignty and adopting a more assertive pro-democracy stance, particularly in the region—is one of
the important dilemmas in Brazilian foreign policy of the past two decades. In fact, particularly during the 1990s, Brazil abstained several times
from promoting or defending democracy. In 1990, under President Fernando Collor de Mello (1990–92) and largely because of economic
interests, Brazil blocked calls for a military intervention in Suriname after a military coup there. A year later it opposed military intervention to
reinstall President Aristide in Haiti. In 1992 it remained silent over a political crisis in Ecuador. In 1994—when a member of the UN Security
Council—it abstained from Security Council Resolution 940, which authorised the use of force in Haiti with the goal of reinstating President
Aristide, who had been removed from power in 1991 through a coup.50 However, contrary to what is often believed, Brazil
has defended democracy abroad in many more instances, and over the past two decades its views on intervention have
become decidedly more flexible.51 Even under indirectlyelected President José Sarney (1985–89), the first president after democratisation,
Brazil supported the inclusion of a reference to democracy in a new preamble to the Organization of American States (OAS) Charter.52 Under
President Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995–2002), Brazil intervened in neighbouring Paraguay in 1996 to avoid a
military coup there—working through Mercosur and the OAS to obtain higher leverage, and ultimately convincing
General Lino Oviedo not to stage a coup d´état against then President Juan Carlos Wasmosy.53 The Brazilian president again
played an important mediating role during political crises in Paraguay in 1999 and 2000.54 When then
Peruvian President Fujimori falsified the election results in 2000, Brazil’s President Cardoso refused to criticise him and Brazil was the major
obstacle to US and Canadian efforts to condemn Peru at the OAS General Assembly.55 Yet, in an important gesture, President Cardoso stayed
away from President Fujimori’s inaugural ceremony, and a year later Brazil supported the Inter-American Democratic Charter, largely aimed at
Fujimori, which includes the norm of democratic solidarity.56 Following
the coup in Venezuela Brazil has assumed a
more assertive prodemocracy stance in the region. In 2002 it actively engaged in Venezuela when a
group sought to illegally oust Hugo Chavez, who was reinstated 48 hours later.57 Looking back over
the past decade, Santosi argues that Brazil has played an exemplary and fundamental role in strengthening
democratic norms and clauses across the region.58 In his memoirs Cardoso reflected on the issue by saying that ‘Brazil
always defends democratic order’. 59 Burges and Daudelin argue that ‘one can say that Brazil has been quite supportive of efforts to protect
democracy in the Americas since 1990’. 60 This tendency has been further strengthened in the 21st century. In 2003 President Lula (2003–
2010) swiftly engaged to resolve a constitutional crisis in Bolivia and, in 2005, he sent his foreign minister to Quito to deal with a crisis in
Ecuador. In the same year Brazil supported the OAS in assuming a mediating role during a political crisis in Nicaragua, including financial
support for the electoral monitoring of a municipal election there. In 2009 the international debate about how to deal with the coup in
Honduras was very much a result of Brazil and the USA clashing over the terms of how best to defend democracy, rather than whether to
defend it.61 Over the past two decades Brazil has systematically built democratic references and clauses into the charters, protocols and
declarations of the subregional institutions of which it is a member. The importance of democracy in the constitution and activities of the Rio
Group, Mercosur and the more recent South American Community of Nations (Unasul) can to a large extent be traced back to Brazil’s
activism.62 At the same time Brazil has sought to ensure that the protection of democratic rule be
calibrated with interventionism, combining the principle of non-intervention with that of ‘non-
indifference’. 63 This term’s policy relevance remains contested, yet it symbolises how much Brazil’s thinking about sovereignty has
evolved. For example, when explaining why Brazil opposed a US proposal to craft a mechanism within the OAS’S Democratic Charter, which
permits the group to intervene in nations to foster or strengthen democracy, Celso Amorim argued that ‘there needs to be a
dialogue rather than an intervention’, adding that ‘democracy cannot be imposed. It is born from
dialogue.’ 64 It thus positions itself as an alternative and more moderate democracy defender in the
hemisphere than the USA, and one that continuously calibrates its interest in defending democracy with its tradition of non-
intervention. Brazil’s decision to lead the UN peacekeeping mission, Minustah, in Haiti, starting in 2004, cannot be categorised as democracy
promotion per se, yet the mission’s larger goal did consist in bringing both economic and political stability to the Caribbean Island, which has
been the target of US American democracy promotion for years.65 In the same way Brazil’s
ongoing involvement in Guinea
Bissau, a member of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP) proved to be a yet another important
moment for Brazil’s role as a promoter of peace and democracy.66 Brazil had provided some electoral assistance to
Guinea-Bissau from 2004 to 2005 and it continued to support efforts to stabilise the country by operating through the UN peacekeeping
mission there.67 During a CPLP meeting in 2011 Brazil signed a memorandum of understanding to implement a Project in Support of the
Electoral Cycles of the Portuguese-speaking African Countries and Timor-Leste.68 In addition, in the lead-up to the anticipated elections in April
2012, Brazil made further financial contributions to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) basket fund in support of the National
Electoral Commission for assistance in the execution of the election.69 Brazil’s pro-democracy stance became most obvious in 2012, when
President Dilma Rousseff—together with the leaders of Uruguay and Argentina—suspended Paraguay from Mercosur after the impeachment of
Paraguay’s President Fernando Lugo, which most governments in the region regarded as the equivalent of a coup d’état or a ‘parliamentary
coup’. 70 The Brazilian government thus set a clear precedent that anti-democratic tendencies in the region would cause a rapid and clear
reaction from leaders in Brasília. President Rousseff’s decision to work through Mercosur—rather than the OAS— is consistent with a growing
preference to use local regional bodies, possibly in an effort to strengthen projection as a regional leader. Yet there are also critical voices.
Summarising Brazilian foreign policy over the past two decades, Sean Burges argues that ‘Brazil has not behaved consistently in support of
democratic norm enforcement’, 71 and that decisive action to preserve democracy has been ‘tepid’. 72 Ted Piccone reasons that ‘when it
comes to wielding…influence in support of democracy in other countries…Brazil has been ambivalent and often unpredictable’. 73 Both these
evaluations were made before Brazil’s assertive stance in Paraguay in 2012. Nevertheless, despite this strategy, the term ‘democracy
promotion’ is not used either by Brazilian policy makers or by academics when referring to Brazil’s Paraguay policy. In the same way Brazil does
not promote any activities comparable to those of large US or European nongovernmental organisations, whose activities range from political
party development, electoral monitoring, supporting independent media and journalists, capacity building for state institutions, and training for
judges, civic group leaders and legislators. This brief analysis shows that Brazil is increasingly assertive in its region, and
willing to intervene if political crises threaten democracy. Brazil is most likely to intervene during constitutional crises
and political ruptures, and less so when procedural issues during elections may affect the outcome—as was the case during Hugo Chavez’ re-
election in 2012, when several commentators criticised Brazil’s decision not to pressure the Venezuelan government to ensure fair elections.74
Yet, despite this distinction, it seems clear that the
consolidation of democracy in the region has turned into one of
Brazil’s fundamental foreign policy goals.
 Transition Wars Scenario
Even if they win that the aff spreads democracy, U.S. policies are disproportionate –
guarantees transition wars
Goldsmith, Harvard Senior Fellow, ‘8 (Arthur A. Goldsmith was (when he wrote this) a Senior
Research Fellow at the Intrastate Conflict Program/International Security Program of the Belfer Center
for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. He now serves as
a Professor of Management at the University of Massachusetts Boston, “Making the World Safe for
Partial Democracy?: Questioning the Premises of Democracy Promotion”, International Security, Volume
33, Number 2, Fall 2008, pp. 120-147)

Conclusion Neoconservativestout the transformative power of democratization to protect U.S. interests

by establishing zones of peace around the world. To anyone who suspects that the global democracy promotion project is
overreaching or utopian, Robert Kagan and William Kristol posed the following question in 2000: “How utopian is it to imagine a change of
regime in a place like Iraq?” Based on the growth in the ranks of democratic countries in the 1980s and 1990s, they went on to say, “We ought
to be fairly optimistic that such change can be hastened by the right blend of American policies.”59 Many liberal internationalists have been in
basic agreement with these hopeful premises of neoconservatism, much as they may try to distance themselves from the particular blend of
policies represented by President George W. Bush’s freedom agenda.60 Whether the generic optimistic case for democracy promotion seemed
plausible in 2000, as Kagan and Kristol asserted, the contemporary quantitative research cited in this article suggests
a more skeptical assessment for the future. The rationale for blanket democratization is mistaken on two counts: it fails to
differentiate sufficiently between partial and full democracy, and it glosses over the challenge of helping authoritarian countries avoid the first
and obtain the latter. At issue is not the goal of expanding the number of constitutional representative political systems in the world. Such
systems are fine in concept, but the preponderance of empirical evidence shows that means do not exist to
produce more of this type of government consistently from outside. Awareness about the alternative
likelihood of harmful consequences, especially in the short and medium term, is critical. Democracy
promotion will probably always remain an element of U.S. foreign policy for the historical and political reasons stated at the beginning
of this article. But in the future, policymakers should focus less on democratic peace theory to design their pro-democracy
strategy, and pay greater attention to the literature on democratic transitions, which clearly underscores the difficulty of
democratic regime change and the risks of halfway democratization, such as sectarian conflict, local human
rights abuse, dislocated populations, territorial disputes, and transnational terrorism. In particular, more
thought needs to be given to how to deal with the prevalence of mixed regimes in the Greater Middle East and to the security problems that
this creates, with less reliance on a universal remedy of more democracy to treat these ills. The quantitative studies reviewed here suggest
three broad lessons for policymakers. First, only under the rarest of circumstances should military pressure be employed preemptively to
advance democracy. In some situations military intervention may be unavoidable, leaving the United States and its allies little choice except to
try to help another country construct or reconstruct its public institutions. But it would be a fallacy to assume that the result will usually be a
moderate pluralistic political system. Second, U.S. foreign policy needs to be adapted better to particular countries’
individual circumstances. This is already being done in the Middle East, according to a recent Congressional Research Service study.61
But rather than an ad hoc approach, which is at odds with leaders’ rhetoric about democracy and exposes the United States to charges of
hypocrisy and doubledealing, it would be best to confront the issue of mixed regimes openly. Organizational support and electoral assistance
could help to consolidate a new democracy, for instance, but be wasted effort or counterproductive in a semidemocracy, where a more
effective approach could be to stress the establishment of stronger international linkages that could serve as the base for democratization over
the long term. Putting the emphasis on cultural and economic ties is also a more promising way to engage authoritarian regimes compared to
menacing them with regime change. Again, this sort of constructive engagement does happen on an improvised basis, but it could be done
better with coordination and an acknowledgment of the theoretical foundation for doing so. In general, this approach will not produce quick
payoffs, but because potentially productive regime transitions can occur suddenly and unpredictably, the United States still must be prepared
to adjust its bilateral strategies as circumstances dictate. Third, the
United States should adopt a lower profile. This
means limiting the self-righteous oratory about freedom, because it triggers a defensive response in
many corners of the globe that damages U.S. standing and influence. There should be a subtle shift in orientation,
from campaigning for democracy to supporting it, taking cues from local democratic forces and avoiding one sided efforts to push
democratization in directions a foreign country is unprepared to go. A lower profile also means reducing
expectations for U.S. citizens so they do not turn against democracy promotion programs that may work at the margins, such as technical
assistance for governance reform in certain countries. In
the end, rule-bound democracy is largely produced from
within, not spread from the outside in a standardized manner. Blustering, all-embracing democracy
promotion is not a way to enhance national security because it wastes U.S. resources and can prove
counterproductive in furthering the ultimate goal, which is to add to the world population of pluralistic majoritarian states.
The empirical research on this issue demonstrates that textured support for government reform has a much better chance of serving U.S.
national interests than does an all-inclusive freedom agenda.
 China War Scenario

Doesn’t link to the counterplan – Brazil has strong BRICS and trade ties with China
Choi ’14 (Kelwin Choi is an editorial assistant at The Diplomat, “China and Brazil Seek to Boost Ties”,
http://thediplomat.com/2014/07/china-and-brazil-seek-to-boost-ties/, July 17, 2014)

Xi Jinping is seeking to boost ties with Brazil with a state visit to the country this week. While in the
country for the BRICS summit, Xi is making a state visit to Brazil where he will meet with Brazilian
President Dilma Rousseff. This is Xi’s first visit to Brazil since becoming president (he visited the country
as vice president in 2009), and comes as China and Brazil celebrate their 40th anniversary of bilateral
ties. Before leaving for Brazil, Xi stated in a written interview that he attaches “great importance to
growing the global strategic partnership with Brazil” and believes “China is ready to work with Brazil
under the principle of mutual benefit to promote sustained two-way trade.” He explained that during
his trip, he and Brazilian leaders will be discussing to further strengthen exchanges and cooperation in
all aspects of Sino-Brazilian relations. Xi reiterated his goal of improving China-Brazil relations shortly
after landing in the country, when he told reporters that he is “looking forward to conducting wide
exchanges with Brazilian leaders and people from all walks of life, focusing on common development,
boosting practical cooperation and accelerating the development of China-Brazil comprehensive
strategic partnership.” One of Xi’s goals this week will be to find new opportunities to boost China’s
investment in Brazil’s infrastructure. Modernizing Brazil’s transportation and energy infrastructure
presents a win-win scenario for Brazil and China. Indeed, modernizing infrastructure will substantially
reduce the transportation costs, which will benefit Brazil’s entire economy even as it makes it a more
profitable trade partner for China. Beijing also has deep expertise in this area owing to its own
development as well as its efforts in other parts of the world like Africa. On other hand, Brazil will use
Xi’s state visit to try and reduce its trade imbalance with China. In 2012, Brazil imported almost $19
billion more from China then Beijing imported from Brasilia. Brazil will also use Xi’s trip this week to try
and rebalance its exports to China away from raw materials, like soybeans and iron ores, and towards
more manufactured goods. Brazil is trying to move its economy up the value chain and breaking into the
Chinese market will be essential for achieving this goal. Bilateral ties between China and Brazil have
increased substantially in recent years, going above and beyond their joint membership in the BRICS
bloc. In 2012, China and Brazil agreed to establish a comprehensive strategic partnership, and bilateral
trade topped $80 billion last year. As a result, China surpassed the United States as Brazil’s top trading
partner back in 2009, and Brazil is currently China’s 9th largest trading partner. In another sign of their
intentions to boost bilateral trade, Brazil and China signed a $30 billion currency swap last year.
US Promotion CPs
Advantage CP
 1NC
Text: the United States Federal Government should focus democracy promotion
efforts on countries which are sufficiently stable and feature pro-democratic reform
coalitions that can be empowered by democratic conditionality and assistance and
assist target states in reducing their asymmetric interdependence on illiberal regional
powers.
CP resolves problems with democratization – builds credibility
Börzel ’15 [2015. Tanja A. Börzel holds the chair for European Integration at the Freie Universität
Berlin. She received her PhD from the European University Institute in Florence, Italy in 1999. From 1999
to 2004, she conducted her research and taught at the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective
Goods in Bonn, the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the University Heidelberg. “The noble west and
the dirty rest? Western democracy promoters and illiberal regional powers” Democratization, 22:3, 519-
535]
Exploring and comparing the interactions between Western democracy promoters, illiberal regional regimes, and target countries provides a
fruitful approach to studying international democracy promotion and challenges some conventional wisdoms in the state of the art. First,
rather than intentionally promoting autocracy or blocking democracy,
illiberal powers seek to countervail Western
democracy promotion in order to protect their economic, geostrategic, or political interests, which are
not so different from those of Western democracy promoters. Where the two differ is that illiberal regional
powers do not have to balance security and stability against democracy and human rights. Second, this
democratization-stability dilemma undermines the effectiveness of Western democracy promotion
more than the countervailing strategies of nondemocratic regional powers. True, if democracy promotion threatens their geopolitical and
economic interests or regime survival, Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia seek to undermine democratic processes to
the extent that they unfold. They offer non-democratic regimes economic, political, and military assistance and threaten democracy-minded
ruling elites to withdraw it. Moreover, they may undermine the capacity of government to introduce democratic changes by
destabilizing
the country. Yet, with the exception of Ukraine and Georgia, democratic processes are not promoted by Western
powers but mostly endogenously driven. More often than not, the EU and US share the interest of illiberal
regional powers in the stability and security of a region. Not only did they fail to develop a coherent
approach on how to support the Arab Spring, they were also silent on the military coup against a
democratically elected government in Egypt, tolerated the Saudi-led military intervention of the Gulf Cooperation Council
that assisted Bahraini security forces in detaining thousands of protesters, and stood by the massive human rights violations
committed by the Assad regime in Syria. These two findings do not only challenge the admittedly stylized
juxtaposition of the “noble West” promoting democracy, and the “dirty rest” promoting autocracy. They
also yield some important policy implications, particularly for the EU and the US. For actors whose foreign policy is not only oriented towards
geostrategic interests but which also seek to promote moral goals, all good things seldom go together.81 The
more unstable a target
state is and the less democratic, the more dif- ficult it will be to reconcile the protection and
promotion of human rights and democracy with ensuring security and stability. The democratization-
stability dilemma seems to be somewhat unavoidable and undermines the capacity of Western
democracy promoters to design credible democracy promotion policies based on consistent criteria
and reliable rewards. However, democratic external actors should at least acknowledge the dilemma and
develop strategies on how to balance the different goals. Otherwise reproaches of double standards
and hypocrisy will continue to undermine their credibility and legitimacy. Moreover, democracy
promotion should focus on countries like Tunisia, which are sufficiently stable and feature pro-
democratic reform coalitions that can be empowered by democratic conditionality and assistance.
Where such conditions are absent, democracy promotion usually fails. Besides empowering liberal forces, Western democracy
promoters should assist target states in reducing their asymmetric interdependence on illiberal
regional powers.82 Georgia used its approximation with EU energy policies to diversify its energy
supply.83 Likewise, the EU has been trying to compensate for the energy cuts imposed by Russia on Ukraine. Finally, stabilizing
autocratic regimes by providing aid and trade should find its limits where dictators engage in massive
human rights violations. For all the criticism of the EU and the US for supporting Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Ben Ali of Tunisia, both
treated Muammar al-Gaddafi of Libya and Bashar al-Assad of Syria as pariahs. Only in the case of Libya did they intervene militarily, while they
did little to remedy the massive human rights violations by the Assad regime. Overall, the findings of this special issue confirm the limits of what
Western democracy promoters are willing and able to do, particularly if their geostrategic interests are at stake. Rather than blaming
their failure to support democracy on illiberal powers, they should develop strategies to balance their
different foreign policy goals.
Democracy Promotion Bad – Generic
Terror
 Generic
Emerging democracies breed terrorism
Piazza 8 (James Piazza, Department of Political Science, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, “Do
Democracy and Free Markets Protect Us From Terrorism?,” International Politics, 2008, 45, (72–91),
http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ip/journal/v45/n1/full/8800220a.html, mm)

Non-partisan, academic studies of the relationship between politically and economically closed
societies and terrorism generally do not support the model Muravchik outlines. In fact, most empirical
studies of terrorism tend to demonstrate a positive relationship between political democracy and
terrorism. The relationship between terrorism and macroeconomic policies of states — whether they are liberal or state-dominated — has
not been empirically analyzed and so much less is known about how promotion of economic freedom might affect terrorism. Eubank and
Weinberg (I994, 200i) and Schmid (1992) argue that rather than serving as a bulwark against terrorism, democratic
governance
exacerbates terrorist activity by providing a wide range of avenues through which radicals can
advance their political agendas through, ‘propaganda by deed‘. Schmid (I992) explains that an open and free
media — a central quality of democratic governance — facilitates the communication objective that all terrorist
groups have while the system of legal rights institutionalized in most democracies more effectively
shield terrorist suspects and perpetrators from detection, apprehension and prosecution.
Democracies also facilitate the unrestricted and unmonitored movement of people, creation of free
associations and acquisition of weapons; all of which assist terrorist groups. More- over, the legitimacy of
democratic government rests ultimately on the public’s perception of how well it can protect its citizens, and in a democracy citizens can punish
elected officials at the ballot box for failure to protect the public. This quality of public responsiveness makes democracies
more willing to negotiate with terrorists. In two statistical studies of the presence of terrorist groups in countries, Eubank and
Weinberg (1994, 200i) validated these propositions in observing that from World War II to I987, more
terrorist groups were found
in democracies than in non-democracies. The researchers also found that no matter how durable or
stable the democracy in question is, it is more likely to have terrorist activity in it than a non-
democracy. Compatible results were produced by Piazza (2007) in a time-series analysis of Middle Eastern states and to an extent by Li
(2004), although his study did find that while specific components of democracy, such as government executive constraints, increased the
probability of terrorism, democratic participation reduced it. Eyerman (1998) adds complexity to the question in his empirical study of terrorist
acts from 1968 to 1986. Using a series of statistical analyses, he found that two types of states were most impervious to terrorist attacks, well-
established democracies and entrenched dictatorships. However, new non-consolidated democracies were actually more
likely to experience terrorism in Eyerman’s study, producing a nonlinear relationship between terrorism and degree of democracy
and dictatorship.

Promoting democracy increases terrorsim

Piazza 8 (James Piazza, Department of Political Science, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, “Do
Democracy and Free Markets Protect Us From Terrorism?,” International Politics, 2008, 45, (72–91),
http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ip/journal/v45/n1/full/8800220a.html, mm)

These results yield five interesting conclusions: First, the analysis fails to provide clear evidence that the promotion of
democracy and free market economics is a potential panacea for terrorism. In fact, in validating previous
empirical analysis on the subject it provides evidence that promoting democracy might even increase the incidence of
terrorist attacks in some countries. The study also unearths no evidence that promotion of free market economic reform will
have any substantial effect on terrorism. Second, countries with a majority or plurality of Muslims are more likely to be plagued by terrorist
attacks. This is a result that requires further study — possibly a fuller consideration of the role that region and ‘Huntingtonian civilizations‘ play
as predictors of terrorism — before any concrete conclusions can be reached about it. Third, while it makes theoretical sense that a country’s
ability to project internal repression plays an important role in determining the degree to which it experiences terrorism — that is to say
countries with small populations and small geographic areas that are governed by states with larger military assets should be best endowed to
resist terrorist attacks — the results fail to provide support for this supposition. The Repression Capacity Index is not significant in any of the
models and while population is a significant predictor across all of the models, geographic area is not. Fourth, level
of economic
development appears to be unrelated to terrorism. This is a reproduction of findings by several previous studies and
underscores the idea that poorer and lesser developed countries are no more likely to experience terrorism than developed countries.
Economic development is a worthy goal that undoubtedly yields many, many positive results. There is no evidence that reduction of terrorism is
one of them.
Credibility
 Middle East
Lack of US credibility deters democratization – only focused on US interests
Hinnebusch ’15 [March 24, 2015. Raymond Hinnebusch is a Professor at the School of International
Relations at the University of St. Andrews. “Globalization, democratization, and the Arab uprising: the
international factor in MENA's failed democratization” Democratization, 22:2, 335-357]

The Bush administration announced an end to tolerance of authoritarianism after 9/11 on the grounds
that it was the root cause of terrorism, hence that Western security required democratization.
Washington launched new democracy promotion campaigns without consulting pro-US regimes , as if,
declared Egypt’s Mubarak, MENA states had no sovereignty .52 Coming in parallel with the war on Iraq and a
sharp US tilt toward Israel, the initiative triggered a strong negative reaction by Arab commentators and
journalists, congruent with public opinion, among whom it was seen as serving Israel’s interests by debilitating Iraq
and a means of pressuring regimes to be more cooperative on Palestine and Iraq’s occupation. The US calls for
human rights while ignoring Palestinian rights had no credibility; also the Gulf oil regimes were always
exempted. Many intellectuals and civil society groups were pulled between their nationalist rejection of Western
interference and fear that democracy would not come without some outside pressure; in Egypt, Western
pressures opened limited space that allowed the strongly antiMubarak Kefiya movement to emerge. The technical approach of the
West, notably the stress on elections and on fostering civil society was widely criticized; and, despite the
emphasis on elections, when Hamas won a free election in Palestine, the West refused to recognize or deal with it and the fear of Islamist
victories eased the pressure on regimes for elections.53 Lynch54 argued that US
support for Israel and antagonism to Iran so
alienated regional publics that US regional influence depended on marginalization of publics by
authoritarian regimes; it was no surprise that Bush soon abandoned democracy promotion. The Western export of
democracy to the region was widely seen to fail, indeed, to deter democratization in spite of considerable leverage and
a reasonable level of linkage. It was seen as an instrument of US hegemony; as Teti 55 argued, it put the West in a privileged
position to judge governance in MENA states and the West’s insistence on secular liberal versions of
democracy combined with neo-liberal economics, while marginalizing Islamic versions of democracy and
discouraging redistributive measures, had limited appeal in MENA. The democratization promoted by the West
was of the “thin” variety compatible with neo-liberal globalization. While as an ideology democracy made gains in the region, it
faced too much competition from counter ideologies to be hegemonic, and the balance of social forces produced by the articulation
of global neo-liberalism with MENA crony capitalism was most compatible with hybrid regimes and at best with “low

intensity” democracy (Tunisia, Lebanon).

Democracy promotion in the Middle East fails – the war on terror has destroyed US
credibility in the region
Durac and Cavatorta ’09 [Dr Vincent Durac lectures in Middle East Politics and Development in the
University College Dublin School of Politics and International Relations. Dr Francesco Cavatorta, School
of Law and Government, Dublin City University. “Strengthening Authoritarian Rule through Democracy
Promotion? Examining the Paradox of the US and EU Security Strategies: The Case of Bin Ali’s Tunisia”
British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, April 2009 36(1), 3–19. Note – Middle East Partnership
Initiative (MEPI) Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiative (BMENA)]
There is then considerable consensus that the events of September 11, 2001, have led to new thinking on political reform in the Middle East
and ‘an entirely new set of political and policy dynamics’.20 However, not everybody shares such benign view of the new initiatives and a range
of criticisms has been directed at them. Neep’s study of the workings of the MEPI has characterized it as
‘incoherent’ in approach; supportive of ‘regime-led economic development’.21 Secondly, despite the stated
intention of the framers of the MEPI, the vast majority of grants (over 70%) were directed towards programs that
either directly benefited Arab government agencies or provided training and seminars for government
officials. Only 18% of funds went to Arab or Arab nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The authors of the study suggest
that, as a result, the MEPI is effectively choosing to support the existing Arab regimes’ chosen strategy of

‘controlled liberalization’ . However, the greatest obstacle to effective promotion of democratic reform
identified in the report is the ‘continued lack of high-level policy support from senior officials across the
Administration’.22 The Broader Middle East and North Africa initiative, although less clearly focused than the MEPI, has also come in for
stringent criticism. The ‘initiative’ like the MEPI, was trumpeted as giving substance to the Bush administration’s
call for a democratic transformation of the Middle East. While the MEPI related specifically to US activities in the region, the
BMENA sought to bring together the US, Europe and the ‘broader’ Middle East, including Afghanistan, Iran,
Israel, Pakistan and Turkey, as well as the Arab world. But, like the MEPI, the BMENA initiative is deeply flawed, so much so
that it has been characterized as ‘hollow at the core’ .23 The key difficulty with the initiative is that
security issues have been kept of the table . The background document of the Sea Island Summit, at which the
BMENA was launched, acknowledges that the resolution of the ‘Israel–Palestine conflict’ is an important element of progress in the
region. But, ‘regional conflicts must not be an obstacle for reforms’.24 However, as Ottaway and Carothers note , the

decision to keep the Arab–Israeli issue out of the initiative does not make it go away and the attempt
to launch a major political initiative about Middle Eastern political transformation, without discussing
the ‘peace process’ is fundamentally flawed.25 However, the incoherence of the MEPI and BMENA are no more
than symptomatic of much deeper and more significant contradictions in US policy on democracy
promotion which are not, and perhaps cannot be, addressed in official pronouncements. Some of these contradictions are
expressed in the implicit belief that the US can somehow engage as a neutral actor in relation to
political change in the region.26 This is related to the official refusal to recognize the extent to which
American policies are themselves part of the problem in the Middle East. But refusal to recognize the relevance
of US policies in relation to the Israel–Palestine question, the war on Iraq, and the ‘war on terror’ has the
consequence that US policy-makers fail, or refuse, to see the extent to which the credibility of the US as an agent of
democracy promotion in the Middle East is called into question , both within the region and without. Yet, as Neep observes, the
US has lost all ‘moral standing in the eyes of most Arabs following its uncritical support for Israeli
repression of the Palestinians, its invasion of Iraq, and the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib’.27 However, the greatest
difficulty US policy on democracy promotion faces in the post-September 11, 2001, era stems from the logic of the ‘war on
terrorism’ . The National Security Strategy of the US from the outset identifies the need to ‘strengthen alliances to defeat global
terrorism’.28 However, herein lies the problem. Most commentators are agreed that the most obvious beneficiaries of
political liberalization in the Middle East would be Islamist, and to a lesser extent, nationalist opposition forces. For
example, Gause argues that further democratization in the Middle East would most likely generate Islamist governments less inclined to
cooperate with the United States on important policy goals ... 29 However, these are precisely the forces that would
oppose not only the US war on terrorism but also many other aspects of US foreign policy in the
region, not least the American position on Palestine. This means that there is a gaping contradiction at the heart of US
democracy promotion in the Middle East. Successful promotion of democratic political reform clearly will
benefit the enemies of the war on terror and the war on terror is a non-negotiable element of the
foreign policy of this US administration. The necessary tension between maintaining the ‘global coalition’ against terrorism and
the democracy imperative was recognized early by some. In a reflection on the implications of the events of September 11, 2001, for the future
direction of US foreign policy, Stephen Walt argued that
because the United States needs help from a number of
states and groups with poor human rights records ... the war on terrorism will require it to downgrade
its concern for human rights temporarily.30 One of the results of this is what has been characterized as the ‘instrumentalization’ of
democracy in US foreign policy. Rather than being interested in democratic reform for its own sake, the US
propounds democracy in the hope and expectation that it will deliver outcomes which the US desires.
Dennis Ross, former Special Middle East Coordinator under Bill Clinton, advocates the promotion of democratization in the Middle East because
‘only the proponents of moderate Islam can discredit the radical Islamists’.31 This inevitably raises
the suspicion that
democracy will be acceptable only if it delivers the right kind of Islamists to power.32 The US reaction
to the victory of Hamas in the Palestinian elections makes this point only too obviously.
Russia Backlash
 Threat
Russia uses military, economic, and energy threats to counter US democracy
promotion efforts – leads to conflicts like Ukraine
Babayan ’15 [Nelli Babayan is a senior researcher at the Center for Transnational Relations, Foreign
and Security Policy at the Otto Suhr Institute of Political Science, Freie Universita¨t Berlin. “The return of
the empire? Russia's counteraction to transatlantic democracy promotion in its near abroad”
Democratization, 2015 Vol. 22, No. 3, 438 – 45]
How did Russia counteract EaP in Armenia? Since its independence from the Soviet Union, Armenia has welcomed democracy promotion
efforts and committed to the regional policies of the EU and the US, including democracy promotion. The expulsion of Russian military bases
from Georgia after the 2008 conflict and their move to Armenia made the latter last remaining stronghold of Russian military power in the
region. The entire spectrum of Russia's instruments in counteracting democracy promotion or for that matter any EU/US policy deemed as
challenging were particularly evident in the case of Armenia's 2013 “U-turn”59 from the EU AA to Russia's Customs Union. The case of Armenia
demonstrates that Russia is most prone to counteract the EU and the US when faced with imminent
effectiveness of democracy promotion supported by local actors or when faced with challenges to its
geostrategic interests. As Delcour and Wolczuk show in this special issue, this logic also applies to Russia's actions in
Georgia and Ukraine . By the employment of economic and military instruments and through the
promotion of alternative regional institutions, Russia counteracted EU policy, which has also been
supported by the US. Thus, Russian efforts for counteracting the initiatives within the EaP peaked with success in September 2013:
Armenia turned to the Eurasian Customs Union and in November 2013 Ukraine withdrew from initialling the AA despite a wave of domestic
protests in both countries.60 Energy, more specifically gas, and the protracted conflicts are the main pressure
points used by Russia in Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus. Devoid of natural energy resources and with a
protracted conflict at hand, Armenia makes a compliant target for Russia's energy and military pressures. In the mid-2000s Russia successfully
blocked the diversification of Armenia's gas sources by imposing restrictions on the pipeline from Iran.61 Regular Armenian concessions in
terms of infrastructure and cooperation with other neighbours secured comparatively lower gas prices. However, after Armenia concluded the
sixth round of DCFTA negotiations leading to the initialling of the AA, in July 2013 Russia threatened to increase gas prices by
60%, while suggesting that the costs may be subsidized and not increase in the next five years should Armenia join the Customs Union.62
Consequently, Armenia entered negotiations for an 18% rise. It allowed Russian gas-monopoly Gazprom to acquire the remaining 20% of shares
of the gas procuring company ArmRusGazprom, which had previously belonged to the Armenian government. Russian media, which is also
widely viewed in Armenia, publicized a number of preferential agreements and possible subsidies promised by Putin to Armenia's President
Serzh Sargsyan in return for joining the Customs Union. In addition, Russia
promised larger investments into prolonging
the exploitation of the Armenian nuclear power plant and other factories, regarded as obsolete or
environmentally hazardous by the EU and the US.63 Besides economic threats, Russia has also been taking advantage of the
protracted conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno Karabakh region. While Azerbaijan's energy industry has
allowed it to exponentially multiply its military budget, Armenia has been largely reliant on Russia for
its security against possible military actions by Azerbaijan. While Armenia showed growing interest in
its partnership with the EU and did not attend a June 2013 meeting of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization,
Russia subsequently increased its arms export to Azerbaijan by US$1 billion.64 This move served as a clear
warning to Armenia that Russia may no longer support it in the framework of the conflict. Regularly
playing two sides of the conflict against each other using the promise or threat of arms sales, Russia
has managed to keep the South Caucasus divided and hindered regional projects of the EU and the US.
Armenia backpedalled on AA after two years of preparations and previously expressed confidence by the Armenian authorities that “the AAs
with some partner countries, including Armenia, will be initialled” in November 2013.65 The EU delegation in Armenia confirmed that the latter
was on track for signing the AA. Former Prime Minister Tigran Sarkisian also repeatedly argued against Armenian entry into the Customs Union,
due to the lack of common borders with Russia, Belarus, or Kazakhstan.66 Thus, the decision to reject initialling the AA bewildered both the EU
and the Armenian public, which took to the streets in protest (even if with limited coverage by Western media). Given the pressures coming
from the Kremlin, Armenian officials attempted to frame the decision in pragmatic terms, calling Russia the “military security choice” and the
DCFTA the “economic choice”, since “in terms of security, Armenia is tied to Russia”.67 However, while the Armenian government and the
Kremlin have attempted to present the Customs Union as a better economic and trade choice for Armenia,68 the benefits of joining it are
hardly identifiable. Due to its closed borders with Azerbaijan and Turkey, and lack of a border with Russia, Armenia conducts most of its trade
through Georgia. Since Georgia signed the DCFTA in summer 2014, these two neighbouring countries will now have to abide by different tariffs
and agreements, further straining Armenia's already weak economy. The stagnation of democracy in post-Soviet countries
has been the result of a set of factors, such as low resonance of democracy, high adaptation costs to democracy, protracted
conflicts, weak institutions, or illiberal elites. Yet, through economic sanctions, military threats, and even
through such formal institutions as the Eurasian Union, Russia has contributed to the stagnation of
democratization in its near abroad. It counteracted democracy promotion or, for that matter, any other Western
policies, which it considered a threat to its geostrategic interests and ambitions for restoring its great

power status. At the same time, even if the level of democracy in its near abroad has gradually deteriorated, there is no evidence of Russia promoting
autocracy or any other regime alternative to democracy. Russia's actions are hardly surprising. For centuries under the direct influence of
Russia, the regions of Eastern Europe, the South Caucasus, and Central Asia did not only constitute parts of the Russia-led Soviet Union but also of the earlier
Russian Empire. The exposure to Western principles (along with material incentives) and democratization under the
guidance of the EU or the US may potentially steer the allegiance of its near abroad away from Russia.
Moreover, just as the EU and the US have continuously preferred stability over democracy,69 Russia has also strived to maintain the

status quo and safeguard its interests in its own neighbourhood . At the same time, the EU and the US currently do
not match either the level of political prowess – borderline blackmail – or the type of economic or security pressures
employed by Russia in its near abroad.
 Trade Conflict
Russia feels threatened by democracy promotion – leads to intervention, military
threats, and trade wars
Babayan ’15 [Nelli Babayan is a senior researcher at the Center for Transnational Relations, Foreign
and Security Policy at the Otto Suhr Institute of Political Science, Freie Universita¨t Berlin. “The return of
the empire? Russia's counteraction to transatlantic democracy promotion in its near abroad”
Democratization, 2015 Vol. 22, No. 3, 438 – 45]

This special issue has suggested that from the perspective of target countries, the
resonance of promoted democratic rules
among domestic elites and the population, the economic and military importance, and to some extent cultural/historical
proximity to an illiberal power are likely drivers for counteraction of democracy promotion. This section considers
these assumptions by overviewing Russia's actions in EaP countries and proceeds to more detailed discussion of Russia's strategies in
counteracting democracy promotion using the example of Armenia's withdrawal from initialling the EU's AA. While
not a frontrunner
in democratization, Armenia has endeavoured to develop closer relations with both Russia and the
EU, being particularly enthusiastic about new targeted policies. Precisely this endeavour to integrate
into European structures rather than to democratize induces Russia to counteract Western policies . To
reinforce the argument that counteraction to democracy promotion is a byproduct of Russia protecting its strategic interests, the article briefly
refers to Russia's relations with Azerbaijan and Belarus. Due to their already consolidated authoritarian regimes and disregard of European
“shared values”, Azerbaijan and Belarus are least likely to be pressured by Russia because of their possible democratic aspirations. However,
their interactions with Russia show that the latter used the same instruments toward these countries whenever the latter ignored its interests.
Realizing that the previously forced allegiance of Eastern Europe had moved to the EU, president Putin prioritized the post-Soviet countries in
Russia's foreign policy.45 Along with its historical ties, Russia has vested economic and security interests in all EaP
countries. Thus in terms of the drivers for possible counteraction to democracy promotion (see the introduction to this issue by Risse and
Babayan) all three apply to Russia's near abroad, though to different extents depending on the country. While geographic proximity and shared
history apply to all six EaP partners, resonance of democracy among local political actors is most pronounced in the cases of Georgia and
Ukraine (see Delcour and Wolczuk in this special issue). Economic and military interests and leverage are emphasized
in the cases of Armenia – a host to the only Russian military base in an EaP country – and Azerbaijan – a potential though smaller rival in energy
exports to Europe. While both Armenia and Azerbaijan are democratic laggards, the rhetorical resonance of democracy and the willingness to
participate in EU policies is more pronounced among Armenian political elites and the population.46 Apart from democracy indices such as
Freedom House, frequent and tolerated criticism of the authorities in the media, and the visibility of opposition parties'47 support this
observation. These
factors and the argued attractiveness of the EU's incentives have induced Russia to
realize that democratization of these countries may result in their closer partnership with the EU and
the US at the expense of Russia's own regional interests. Thus, democracy promotion policies have
been viewed by Russia as contradicting its own interests in the region. By pressuring its neighbouring
countries through military power and economic investments or sanctions, Russia has, perhaps,
inadvertently countered democracy promotion and stabilized authoritarian regimes in the post-Soviet
space. To extend its influence and to counter the policies of the EU and the US even before the launch of the EaP
in 2009, Russia had forgiven debts in exchange for military-industrial enterprises and purchased large
shares in telecommunications, energy, electricity networks, and banking industries.48 Thus, it inter alia
engaged in specific business development based on its own strategic interests, however, framing
those as serving the development of its neighbours. This strategy has underlined the employment of
non-military instruments in reinforcing Russia's policies and obtaining a dominant status in the economies of
its former satellites. It has also presented the post-Soviet countries with potentially less cumbersome
opportunities for economic gains: unlike EU and US policies, Russia's cooperation has not been tied to
domestically costly political reforms or lengthy harmonization processes. Russia considered its growing regional
dominance to be challenged when in 2010 the European Commission started negotiations on Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreements
(DCFTA) with EaP countries. Despite the reassurances from the former EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana that the EaP had not been designed
against Russia, foreign minister Sergey Lavrov interpreted the choice given to EaP partners as either being with Russia, or with the European
Union. Russia inter alia reacted by urging EaP countries to join its Customs Union with Belarus and Kazakhstan – a precursor to Putin's
envisaged Eurasian Union. The EU has repeatedly stated that signing any customs agreements with Russia would endanger the AA, since the
prerequisites of Russia's aspiring Eurasian Union contradicted the EU-offered DCFTA. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev also underlined
the incompatibility of the two structures.49 However, the Customs Union has been viewed not only as another alternative agreement but also
as possible leverage over the EU's neighbours, since, as expected, Russia
did apply pressure, including: misuse of energy
pricing; artificial trade obstacles such as import bans of dubious World Trade Organization (WTO)
compatibility and cumbersome customs procedures; military cooperation and security guarantees;
and the instrumentalization of protracted conflicts.50 To “minimize the impact of … new ties with the EU”,51 Russia
took more substantial measures when it engaged in trade wars with the countries which were most
enthusiastic about their European aspirations. While Moldova repeatedly stated that signing of the AA would not damage its
export prospects and economic relations with Russia, the latter banned the import of Moldovan wine.52 Largely viewed as retaliation against a
pro-EU Ukrainian businessman – later Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko – Russia banned imports of a Ukrainian chocolate brand in July
2013 and dairy products in April 2014.53 The coordinated
action by the EU and the US guided Georgia and
Ukraine to the signing of the AA in June 2014; however, the determination of Russia to prevent shifts
in its regional dominance persisted. Under admitted Russian pressure and threats of “asymmetric
measures” in response to Western sanctions, in September 2014 the EU suspended the enforcement
of DCFTA with Ukraine and postponed it from November 2014 to December 2015.54 In this special issue
Delcour and Wolczuk discuss interactions between Russia, Georgia, Ukraine, and democracy promoters in more detail. Yet, not only EU-
enthusiasts may be targeted by trade sanctions, showing that these
instruments do not aim to restrict democratization
per se but to punish incompliance with the Kremlin's interests. Russia has employed similar strategies
against long-time partners, who do not even welcome democracy promotion. Trade wars between
Belarus and Russia and Russia's mass purchase of Azerbaijani energy are cases in point. Given the resistance of the Belarusian
regime to democratization and the string of EU and US sanctions,55 trade and cooperation with Russia are vital for
Belarus. Nevertheless, on several occasions President Alexander Lukashenko denounced Russia's dominance in their relations. In response,
Russia imposed various sanctions at the end of the 2000s and early 2010s, including banning import of Belarusian food products
and flights of the Belarusian national carrier. Similarly, Azerbaijani authorities display no willingness to democratize or to integrate into
European structures but they welcome business opportunities. Thus, Russia
is interested in curtailing the supply of
Caspian gas to the EU, since that would hinder Russia's economic interests56 and to some extent
compete with Russia's gas exports. Russia promised Azerbaijan “serious consequences” for its
participation in the EaP and the Nabucco pipeline project and by buying the gas intended for Nabucco basically left the pipeline without
supply.57 While seemingly a more profitable deal for Azerbaijan, selling
large amounts of gas to Russia has the potential
of endangering the former's export diversification plans and decreasing its bargaining power against
Russia.58
China Backlash
 CCP Collapse
CCP backlashes against democratization efforts- belligerent nationalism
Chen and Kinzelbach 15 [Dingding Chen- assistant professor of Government and Public
Administration at the University of Macau, Katrin Kinzelbach- associate director of the Global Public
Policy Institute (GPPi) in Berlin, March 2015, “Democracy promotion and China: blocker or bystander?”
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13510347.2014.999322, mm]

In the period covered by this special issue (2011–2014),

pro-democracy activism in China has been small in scale overall
and only loosely organized. At the same time, the resilience of authoritarian rule in China has been tested by
economic development trends, changes in Chinese political culture, competition among Chinese leaders, and the effects of globalization.4 Andrew Nathan observed
in 2013 that consensus was “stronger than at any time since the 1989 Tiananmen crisis that the resilience of the authoritarian regime in the People's Republic of
China (PRC) is approaching its limits”.5 Minxin Pei postulated in the same year that “a transition to democracy in China in the next 10 to 15 years is a high
probability event”.6 It is striking that Document No. 9, the CCP's
April 2013 communiqué on the state of the ideological
sphere, essentially provides the same analysis, but with a view to stalling democratization pressures. It warns that
democracy promotion is an “attempt to undermine the current leadership and the socialism with
Chinese characteristics system of governance ”.7 In addition to ideological challenges, the CCP also
grapples with an increase in larger-scale protests around bread and butter issues, such as grievances about working
conditions and salary levels, but also land grabbing and environmental degradation. Demonstrations, some of which turn violent, are said to continue to grow in
frequency, and while there is a lack of clarity on the exact figures, public security spending has been rising as a result.8 A sophisticated system of so-
called social stability management (weiwen) was set up to deal with these pressures and to
undermine organizations that could compete with the authority of the party-state.9 According to Xie Yue, a
political science professor at Tongji University in Shanghai, weiwen seeks to reduce social and political instability by

enhancing coercive capacity rather than by moving forward to the rule of law and democracy.10 In the
CCP's orthodoxy, domestic challengers of one-party rule are not only “anti-Chinese”, they also play
into the hands of China's international rivals that seek to undermine China's rise, notably the US. That is,
the CCP employs a nationalist counter-discourse and it suggests that external actors (or rather: global rivals) try
to politically destabilize the People's Republic for strategic reasons. According to Document No. 9, “Western anti-China
forces” and “all kinds of so-called citizens movements” echo each other and rely on each other's support “to squeeze the Party out of leadership”.11 Finally, it

concludes: “ In the face of these threats, we must not let down our guard or decrease our vigilance .”12
Document No. 9 most likely spurred a number of recent arrests, notably of individuals belonging to the “New Citizen Movement”. For example, Xu Zhiyong, who
gave the movement its name,13 received a four-year prison term in early 2014. Three years earlier, in March 2010, China's State Administration of Foreign Exchange
had already issued stricter rules on the receipt of foreign donations by Chinese organizations, thereby increasing
the party-state's control
over the flow of foreign resources to Chinese non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Chinese organizations
can now only receive foreign funds if they have a special foreign exchange account and after getting their grant agreements notarized. Due to this procedure, it has
become very difficult if not impossible for the US and the EU to make financial transfers to organizations that engage in democracy promotion in China. Therefore,
foreign support for domestic civil society actors is, more often than not, designed so as to dispel possible concerns, thereby restricting the flow of foreign resources
to activities that are palatable to the Chinese authorities. The US and the EU continue to support Chinese human rights activists through financial grants, quiet
diplomacy, and public statements, but both actors have scaled down their ambitions in recent years. This is not only because financial regulations have changed.

China's rapidly increasing international weight, which was further accelerated by the subprime mortgage crisis in the US and the
sovereign debt crisis in Europe, changed the dynamics of international politics, and significantly decreased the

party-state's vulnerability to international pressure. Accordingly, high-ranking leaders in Beijing now

dismiss Western criticism of China's governance model rather confidently. For example, according to confidential
accounts of EU officials, Wu Hailong (since 2014 China's Representative at the UN in Geneva) noted repeatedly in closed-door meetings that China was no

longer willing to be lectured on human rights and democracy because “times have changed”.14 As this brief
summary shows, the Chinese
party-state has sought to countervail external and domestic democracy
promotion by using a wide range of tactics, ranging from domestic repression, counter-discourse at
home and abroad, to sticks and carrots at the international level. To what extent this policy extends beyond the borders of
mainland China will be discussed in the following two sections on Myanmar and Hong Kong.

CCP will block democratization- risks war/internal instability

Chen and Kinzelbach 15 [Dingding Chen- assistant professor of Government and Public
Administration at the University of Macau, Katrin Kinzelbach- associate director of the Global Public
Policy Institute (GPPi) in Berlin, March 2015, “Democracy promotion and China: blocker or bystander?”
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13510347.2014.999322, mm]

The People's Republic of China is both a decisive blocker as well as an indifferent bystander of
democratization. In this article, we looked at whether and how China countervails EU and US democracy promotion at home and in its immediate
neighbourhood. In terms of domestic politics, the CCP is clearly determined to withstand, repress, outperform, and

outsmart home-grown as well as external pressures for democratization . It is impossible to predict how long this
approach will be sustainable. With regard to China's foreign policy, we tested the hypothesis that geostrategic interests or a perceived risk of regime survival at

home will lead the People's Republic to countervail democracy promotion outside its own borders as well. The case of Hong Kong confirms that a perceived
risk of regime survival leads Beijing to countervail US and EU democracy support outside the Chinese
mainland. Although the scope of this article did not allow for additional case studies, we consider it likely that the CCP's focus on regime-
survival at home does not only trump the “one country, two systems” doctrine, but ultimately also
Beijing's declared non-interference principle in foreign policy. Yet, the fact that Beijing does not seem to use its significant
leverage over Myanmar to hinder democracy support is an empirical challenge to the common proposition that authoritarian China is likely to export

or protect autocracy, especially in its near-abroad. Given that we view Myanmar as the most likely case with respect to strategic interests, we suggest
with considerable certainty that Beijing will only counteract democratization, including US and EU democracy support, where it perceives a challenge to the CCP's
survival. Where this is not the case, Beijing is likely to focus on protecting its economic and strategic interests abroad, regardless of regime type. While this finding
might be taken to suggest that a focus on China's international influence should not be a priority for democracy supporters, we remain more cautious. China's

economic performance has not only granted the CCP legitimacy domestically, it has also made China's
development path – economic liberalization without political reform – appear desirable further afield. And the recent
economic troubles in Europe and the US, in turn, have challenged the thus far common perception
that democracy was required for prosperity. As democracy promoters, both the US and the EU should therefore ensure that the very real
governance shortcomings in China, beyond as well as within the economic sphere, are publicly identified for what they are. Without such concerted efforts, it is
likely that authoritarian China will continue to be looked at as an alternative development model, thereby challenging democracy's power
of attraction.
Maintains Authoritarianism
 Tunisia
US maintains authoritarian regimes in power regardless of their ability to be
democratized – Tunisia proves
Durac and Cavatorta ’09 [Dr Vincent Durac lectures in Middle East Politics and Development in the
University College Dublin School of Politics and International Relations. Dr Francesco Cavatorta, School
of Law and Government, Dublin City University. “Strengthening Authoritarian Rule through Democracy
Promotion? Examining the Paradox of the US and EU Security Strategies: The Case of Bin Ali’s Tunisia”
British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, April 2009 36(1), 3–19.]

The contradictions and the complementary strategies of both the EU and US foreign policies towards
democracy promotion are in evidence when it comes to the case of Tunisia. At first glance, the country
seems to offer the best potential for democratization in the entire Middle East and North Africa, which
would lead one to assume that external forces might make a considerable difference in pressuring the leadership to end authoritarianism while,
at the same time, promoting potential opposition actors. Tunisia
has a number of advantages over other countries in
the region. Lebanon and Yemen might also be considered ‘good’ candidates, but Lebanon is still plagued by sectarianism and foreign
destabilizing interventions (both Israel and Syria directly interfere in Lebanese politics), while Yemen suffers from poorer socio-economic
indicators than Tunisia. Such advantages consist of the following: (a) its limited size and population mean that
the country per se is not a key strategic asset for Western powers (unlike Morocco); (b) the absence
of significant natural
resources further decreases its strategic value and therefore meddling from external actors with a high degree of dependence on current
ruling elites (unlike the Gulf States or Algeria); (c) the relative lack of regional standing and cultural influence do not
make Tunisian politics as internationally relevant as Egyptian politics; (d) the absence of a credible Islamist threat would seem
ideal for the opening up of the political system given that the Tunisian Islamists had been interlocutors of Bin Ali’s during his first year as
President56; and (e) recent
solid economic growth has contributed to the rise of a moderately wealthy
middle class and created a potentially vibrant civil society. All this should represent a clear advantage on all the
other countries in the region and it would therefore seem that if both the EU and the US were
seriously promoting democracy, Tunisia would be the perfect ‘target country’ on which to apply
pressure for change. However, not only this does not happen, but over the course of the last decade the
rule of Bin Ali has been strengthened and, paradoxically, his police state has come to represent the
paradigm of what other countries in the region should aspire to in order to satisfy the governance
requirements of the US and the EU.

Short term goals override long term beliefs making democracy promotion impossible –
Tunisia
Durac and Cavatorta ’09 [Dr Vincent Durac lectures in Middle East Politics and Development in the
University College Dublin School of Politics and International Relations. Dr Francesco Cavatorta, School
of Law and Government, Dublin City University. “Strengthening Authoritarian Rule through Democracy
Promotion? Examining the Paradox of the US and EU Security Strategies: The Case of Bin Ali’s Tunisia”
British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, April 2009 36(1), 3–19]

Security First The

EU has been traditionally more reluctant to co-operate openly and directly when it
comes to hard security issues, but ‘the terrorist attacks of 11 September, the Djerba tragedy, and the numerous arrests all over
Europe have triggered an intense debate in Europe about internal and external security measures in the fight against terrorism’. In this context,
Tunisia is a primary ally because of the expertise of its secret police and its ability in dismantling its own domestic Islamist network. It is
therefore no surprise that the EU Counter-Terrorism Coordinator announced much tighter co-operation with
all the North African governments.68 While this might make sense from a strictly security-related point
of view in the short-term, it should not be forgotten that it is precisely the Tunisian security and intelligence services that
are to blame for their hold on the political system and their repression of all domestic opposition,
thereby undermining the long-term democratization requirements the EU purports to promote. On its part, the US
has been much more active in deepening the links with the Tunisian regime with a view to strengthening its coalition against terror. The threat
of Islamism in Tunisia does indeed exist, but not in the extremist and violent forms that make the headlines these days. In spite of this, the
US supports the heavyhanded practices of Bin Ali and Tunisia has become an important ally in the
war on terror . Since 11 September 2001, contacts between the two countries have reached unprecedented
depth, with Former Secretary of State Powell visiting Tunisia in 2003 and Tunisian Foreign Minister visiting Washington in 2004. During that
visit the US State Department declared that ‘Tunisia has been a voice for moderation. Tunisia has been
a voice for regional harmony. Tunisia has been a voice for putting efforts and resources into
development’.69 On its part, the Tunisian government asserts that ‘Tunisia and the US have been strengthened
within the framework of common adherence to the values of liberty, democracy and free
enterprise’.70 The strength of these days was confirmed when Bin Ali visited Washington in February 2004 and President Bush lauded him
for his efforts in the fight against terrorism.71 As we can see, democratization of the country should be at the heart of
US-Tunisian relations because, according to the Bush doctrine, it is only through democracy that
terrorism will be ultimately defeated. In fact, co-operation occurs in the military and intelligence domains,72 while MEPI
funding does not appear to make any impact on the Tunisian political system . Again, short-term goals
override such long-term beliefs. The EU and the US share the same objective and therefore their
democracy promotion strategies are bound to fail. The maintenance of the international status quo,
the enforcement of neo-liberal economic arrangements and the absolute control over the definition
of what constitutes security make it impossible for these two actors to credibly promote democracy
as the probable outcome is likely to throw up parties and movements that would contest precisely such objectives. Previous experiences are
not encouraging in this sense. The FIS victory in the Algerian election in December 1991 were greeted with stunned preoccupation in Western
capitals and the subsequent military coup depriving the FIS of power was hailed in the West as the means to save democracy.73 The more
recent case of the shunning of Hamas obeys to the same logic of ‘boycotting’ what democracy in the
region produces because it does not conform to the EU and US vision of international peace and
security. Thus, in terms of obtaining both security and material gains, Tunisia provides the perfect paradigmatic partner: economically
integrated, but non-threatening (unlike the Asian tigers), co-operative on security matters, but not ‘devious’ (unlike Saudi Arabia or Pakistan),
militarily weak and accommodating, but sufficiently strong to withstand potential Islamist pressure, and finally, docile when it comes to the
Arab–Israeli conflict. If only the whole of the Arab world could be just like Tunisia
Backsliding
 Generic
Backsliding will produce electoral authoritarianism, not dictatorship—it’s the new
norm.
Shirah 12 [Ryan Shirah, Fellow @ Center for the Study of Democracy @ UC Irvine, “Institutional Legacy
and the Survival of New Democracies: The Lasting Effects of Competitive Authoritarianism,”
http://www.socsci.uci.edu/files/democracy/docs/conferences/grad/shirah.pdf, mm]

Contemporary authoritarian regimes sport an impressively diverse array of political institutions. Nominally
democratic institutions like elected legislatures and political parties are now a common feature of nondemocratic politics (Schedler 2002). While a significant
amount of work has been put into understanding the causes and consequences of this institutional variation, many questions have not yet been adequately
addressed. In particular, as Brownlee (2009a) points out, “comparativists have delved less deeply into the long–term and post– regime effects of electoral
competition” (132). Building upon previous work on unfree elections and democratization (Brownlee 2009b, Schedler 2009, Lindberg 2006a, Lindberg 2006b,
Lindberg 2009a, Howard & Roessler 2002, Hadenius & Teorell 2007), this
study examines how the adoption of competitive
elections prior to a democratic transition affects prospects for long–term democratic stability and
consolidation. 1 I engage the literature on hybrid regimes and political institutions under dictatorship in order to draw out implications for how the
institutionalization of competitive elections prior to democratization might impact the stability of a democratic successor regime. Previously unaddressed
implications of two competing arguments are presented. An event history analysis of 74 new democracies that transitioned
from authoritarian rule between 1975 and 2003 shows that institutional legacies significantly affect
prospects for democratic consolidation. Specifically, competitive authoritarian regimes tend to make
for longer–lived democracies following a democratic transition than regimes without minimally
competitive elections. 2 The idea that political institutions have significant and independent effects is
hardly controversial in comparative politics. What has been less broadly accepted is the notion that
nominally democratic institutions are anything but window dressing in regimes that do not allow for
meaningful challenges to authority. By the late 1980s, a series of observed transitions led to the conclusion that there was no
sustainable form of electoral authoritarianism. Huntington (1991) famously declared that “liberalized authoritarianism is not a stable
equilibrium; the halfway house does not stand” (174–5). Others had already begun drawing the same conclusion; regimes that adopted

nominally democratic institutions did not represent a new variety or subtype of authoritarian regime,
they were instead considered transitory states (O’Donnell & Schmitter 1986, DiPalma 1990, Przeworski 1991). For a decade, the
literature on democratization treated dictatorships with electoral institutions as semi–democracies or states in the process of full liberalization. But by the turn of
the century the observed facts made this a diffcult position to maintain. Dictators
remained in power alongside legislatures,
political parties, and electoral systems that they had created or inherited. It became clear that
electoral authoritarianism was not an ephemeral and unstable state; it was a new kind of
nondemocracy, and it was quickly becoming the norm (Schedler 2002)

Democratization fuels elites and creates conflict

Börzel ’15 [2015. Tanja A. Börzel holds the chair for European Integration at the Freie Universität
Berlin. She received her PhD from the European University Institute in Florence, Italy in 1999. From 1999
to 2004, she conducted her research and taught at the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective
Goods in Bonn, the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the University Heidelberg. “The noble west and
the dirty rest? Western democracy promoters and illiberal regional powers” Democratization, 22:3, 519-
535]

The EU and US failed at promoting democracy when they supported authoritarian elites in Tunisia and
Egypt before they were swept away by the Arab Spring, remained silent when a democratically
elected government was overthrown by the military in Egypt, and stood by when authoritarian
regimes violently suppressed political opposition in Bahrain and Syria . This failure cannot be attributed to Russia,
Saudi Arabia, and China promoting autocracy or blocking democracy. It results from the democratization-stability
dilemma, where democracy promotion requires a transition of power that entails political uncertainty
about the outcomes and often involves conflict. This dilemma is the more pronounced, the more
fragile the target state is. Where the democratization-stability dilemma is less pronounced, the effectiveness of Western
democracy promotion hinges on other domestic factors.64 Differential empowerment requires the existence of reform
coalitions that have internalized liberal norms and values and are strong enough to use Western trade, aid, and political support to push for
democratic change.65 Moreover, empowering domestic reformists is not enough if actors lack the necessary
resources to introduce domestic change. Statehood is not only a question of administrative capacity but is often further
undermined by the contestedness of borders and political authority.66 Finally, Western actors require legitimacy to promote
democratic change.67 EU and US democratic demands meet with public resentment whenever they
clash with nationalist or religious beliefs, for example regarding the role of minorities, or are
perceived as attempting to control the country. Domestic conditions severely limit the effectiveness of
Western democracy promotion. This special issue shows how countervailing strategies of illiberal powers can further undermine
the chances of Western democracy promotion by subverting the statehood of target states or undermining the legitimacy of Western
democracy promoters. The various contributions also show that Western
democracy promotion, rather than being futile,
can have the opposite effect enhancing or stabilizing autocracy. The causal mechanism is domestic empowerment,
however, Western aid, trade, and security cooperation may empower both liberal and illiberal forces. What has been largely overlooked by the
democratization literature is that non-democratic regimes also use Western democracy promotion to advance their power and interest.68 The
European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) is a case in point. From its very inception, the ENP has focused on building and strengthening state
institutions which are capable of fostering legal approximation with EU rules on trade, migration, or energy.69 By promoting effective
government rather than democratic governance, the EU helped stabilize non-democratic and corrupt regimes in its Southern and Eastern
neighbourhood rather than transforming them.70 Incumbent elites have aligned their political survival strategies with the EU’s demand for
domestic change. They fought corruption, for instance, where it helped to oust political opponents, reward political allies, deflect international
criticism, and attract foreign assistance and investments.71 The
US has been less state-centred, supporting free and fair
elections, an independent media, and a stronger civil society.72 But like the EU, the US has only
reluctantly backed democratic protest movements if its geostrategic interests have been at stake and
refrained from putting pressure on incumbent regimes for human rights violations or democratic
back-sliding.73 Moreover, US democracy assistance is security driven prioritizing fragile states.74 In short,
Western democracy promotion can have unintended and negative effects on democratic change in
target states . It does not only empower liberal reform coalitions, to the extent that they exist in the first place, but
can also boost or stabilize the power of incumbent autocratic elites. Likewise, illiberal powers may not
only fail in pulling transition or democratizing countries away from Western democracy, they may
end up pushing them in this very direction . Russia’s countervailing strategies have empowered pro-Western democratic
forces in Ukraine and Georgia and facilitated compliance with EU demands for economic and political reforms. Putin’s attempts to destabilize
the two countries through economic sanctions and military support for secessionist regions made the US and the EU step up their economic
and political support for democratization leading to more rather than less engagement in Russia’s near abroad.75
Autocracy Good
 Prevents Conflict
Party-based autocracy best prevents civil conflict through a balance of coercion and
co-optation
Fjelde 2010 [Hanne Fjelde, Senior Researcher, PRIO; Assistant Professor, Department of Peace and
Conflict Research, Uppsala University, “Generals, Dictators, and Kings: Author- itarian Regimes and Civil
Conflict, 1973–2004,” Conflict Management and Peace Science 27.3, mm]

The last decade has seen an increase in literature that examines how political institutions influence the risk of civil conflict. Existing
literature has
centered on the finding that inconsistent regimes, that is, autocratic regimes that also display some
seemingly democratic institutions, run a higher risk of civil war than either consistent autocracies or
democracies. Recent research has questioned this finding on empirical grounds by showing that the
Polity dataset , on which most of the evidence is based, partly defines inconsistent regimes by the presence of
political violence (Strand, 2007; Vreeland, 2008). Once the endogenous aspects of the Polity data are removed, the evidence of a higher
risk of conflict associated with inconsistent regimes is no longer robust, nor does there seem to be any
other clear association between political institutions and civil war. These findings suggest that the
frequently used Polity index is unsuitable for studies of civil conflict, because the Polity score is not
independent from the observation of conflict. Moreover, they illustrate that current knowledge of the political determinants of conflict
to a large extent builds on aggregate data sources that mask substantial information about actual regime characteristics in the polities we study. Over a decade ago,
Gleditsch and Ward (1997) noted that since a country’s value on the Polity scale is an aggregation of the value on individual indicators, vastly different institutional
configurations can underlie the same Polity score. They warned that users of this dataset thus risk conflating very different
types of polities over time and across space. Since then, however, the effort to further unfold the authority patterns of the aggregate
regime categories in studies of civil conflict has, with the exception mentioned above, exclusively dealt with institutional differences among democracies (c.f.
Reynal-Querol, 2002, 2005). Authoritarian regime type remains a residual category. This article theoretically and empirically unpacks the authoritarian regime
category. 1 It suggests that to
stay in power and avoid rebellion aimed at overthrowing the regime, dictators
have two principal instruments: coercion , that is, to forcefully marginalize or eliminate political
opponents, or co-optation , that is, to transform opponents into supporters through offers of spoils
such as power positions or rents. The capacity for both efficient coercion and co-optation is conditioned by the regime’s institutional
infrastructure. I argue that dictators who govern through political parties are more able to forcefully control and

buy off opposition than dictators who either rely on the military to stay in power, or who coordinate their rule through the royal family.
Authoritarian regimes thus exhibit predictable differences in their ability to avoid organized violent
challenges to their authority. To examine this argument, the articles uses a new dataset by Hadenius and Teorell (2007b) to study the risk of civil
conflict in four types of authoritarian regimes—military regimes, monarchies, single-party regimes, and multi-party electoral autocracies—from 1973 to the present,
and in doing so, contributes to the literature on political institutions and conflict. The
study shows that the emerging view, that
political institutions are not a significant determinant of civil conflict, results from treating a
heterogeneous set of authoritarian regimes as homogenous. When differentiating between them, I find that both
military regimes and multi-party electoral autocracies have a higher risk of conflict than single-party
regimes, which on the other hand seem to possess institutions that make them particularly resilient to
armed challenges to their authority. Exploring these results further, however, I find that multi-party electoral
autocracies have minor conflicts but tend to avoid large-scale civil wars. One explanation is that the need for electoral
support in these regimes restrains the dictator’s use of force. Lastly, I find that the effect of political transitions in authoritarian

regimes is more complex than assumed by previous research, and conditioned by the type of regime taking power. For
military regimes, the risk is lowest immediately after a regime change and then increases over time.
The opposite seems to be the case for multi-party electoral autocracies.
Party autocracy utilizes the best balance of coercion and co-optation—they can
channel dissent while also monitoring opposition and cracking down when necessary.
Fjelde 2010 [Hanne Fjelde, Senior Researcher, PRIO; Assistant Professor, Department of Peace and
Conflict Research, Uppsala University, “Generals, Dictators, and Kings: Author- itarian Regimes and Civil
Conflict, 1973–2004,” Conflict Management and Peace Science 27.3, mm]
The literature on political institutions and civil conflict portrays coercion as the key instrument by which authoritarian
governments avoid rebellion (Hegre et al., 2001; Henderson and Singer, 2000; Muller and Weede, 1990). When contrasted with
democracies, this assumption is not unreasonable. All autocratic leaders use some coercion to stay in power.
Policies that ban political associations opposed to the government and intimidate, arrest, torture, or
kill opponents who violate these restrictions are micro-foundations of authoritarian rule (Wintrobe,
1998). Still, an overwhelming use of coercive force is a costly strategy with a high risk of backfiring. It
depletes bases of support and strengthens the cause of potential conspirators to depose the dictator. It also creates incentives
to hide such conspiracies and feign loyalty in order to avoid retaliation. Dictators that purge indiscriminately heighten
everyone’s sense of uncertainty, including their own (Haber, 2006; Tullock, 1987; Wintrobe, 1998). This observation
points to the relevance of the dictator’s institutional infrastructure. An intrusive societal organization
reduces the cost of repression by providing dictators with information that allows them to identify
conspirators and selectively target collusion. Moreover, it channels political mobilization into pro-
regime organizations. It is the politically insulated regimes that will be forced into relying on overt brutality. This
argument identifies single-party regimes as having the most powerful instrument to systematically
marginalize opposition and eliminate rivals. The party organization constitutes a potent institutional
infrastructure to monitor societal groups. A decentralized party organization can absorb and thus
control the political energies of the population, channeling them into pro-regime activities (Linz, 2000).
With regard to already mobilized groups, the party provides the dictator with a venue to control the challenges: access is
restricted, and political aspirations and demands from competing factions can be discussed without challenging the foundations
of the regime (Gandhi and Przeworski, 2006). This institutional apparatus also increases the regime’s ability to
detect and selectively target subversive elements that could become viable rebel groups . Single-party
regimes have been very successful in subordinating the military to political control (Peceny et al., 2002).
Equally important, they also tend to have large non-military intelligence organizations with far-
reaching tentacles into society (Brooker, 2000; Lai and Slater, 2006). The intrusiveness of the party institution
into all aspects of civil, military, and political life makes it extremely difficult to mobilize an efficient
rebel force able to overthrow the government. It provides single-party regimes with a forceful
infrastructure to suppress opposition within the wider society, and within the state apparatus itself
(Slater, 2003).
 Prevents Terror
Autocracies key to combat terrorism- democracies not effective
Wilson and Piazza 13 [Matthew C. Wilson, James A. Piazza, Pennsylvania State University,
“Autocracies and Terrorism: Conditioning Effects of Authoritarian Regime Type on Terrorist Attacks,”
American Journal of Political Science 57.4. , mm]

Terrorism poses a unique challenge to state security that is quite unlike those posed by armed civil conflicts or in- terstate wars.2 It
refers to the strategic use of violence by clandestine and relatively few nonstate actors to attract at- tention, convey a political message, or influence (Lacquer 1977;
Ross 1993; Schmid and Jongman 1988). Terror- ists are difficult to identify, do not have a fixed location, and are more indiscriminate in the application of violence
(Jackson 2007; Lacquer 1977; Ross 1993; Sanchez-Cuenca and de la Calle 2009). Unlike rebel groups in a civil war or countries prosecuting interstate wars,
terrorist movements are not focused on gaining and controlling territory or achieving a conventional
battlefield victory, as they have relatively weak capacity to project force (Sanchez- Cuenca and de la Calle 2009).
Because of this weakness, terrorism is a strategy employed by dissidents that makes use of asymmetrical threat advantages vis-a`-vis the gov- ernments they
oppose. The determinants of terrorism are thus likely to be different from the determinants of civil wars or interstate wars.3 Terrorism’s distinctive
features—the strategic use of violence as a political message, civilian targeting, clandes- tine perpetrators, the inability to control territory, and asymmetrical
threats—make it particularly sensitive to regime type. While a state’s ability to respond to security threats posed by civil or interstate war

is primarily de- termined by its capacity to mobilize and project physical force to defend its institutions, territory, and people, successful management

of the threat of terrorism requires a mix of physical force and political and economic tools to monitor
and channel dissent into behaviors that reinforce state control. Terrorism is a “faceless” form of po- litical violence that
requires disproportionate intelligence and some level of community sympathy or support— fueled by underlying grievances—in order to be effective (Crenshaw
1981; Ross 1993). State
response to terrorism must therefore be a careful balance of coercive and non-
coercive strategies aimed at gathering intelligence about the terrorists, securing the cooperation of
citizens in areas where terrorists operate, and, where possible, channeling dissidence into behaviors
and structures that can be con- trolled by the state. There is some indirect empirical evidence for these as- sertions. Walsh and Piazza
(2010) determined that states employing strategies that abuse physical integrity rights of citizens are more likely to be attacked by terrorists, suggesting the
limitations of a coercion-only counter- terrorism strategy. In their landmark empirical study of over 700 terrorist movements, Jones and Libicki (2008) determined
that nearly half of all terminations of terrorist campaigns globally have involved bringing terrorists into a political process to air their grievances and to negotiate a
settlement with the state; the remainder of termina- tions has involved either military defeat or factionaliza- tion. Empirical
research by Li (2005)
supports a more nuanced relationship between democracy and terrorism. He finds that constraints on
executive power in democracies, which hampers the ability of officials to repress terrorist activity,
boosts terrorism; political participation, which aids government ability to co-opt and manage
extremism and dissent, reduces terrorism. These findings suggest that the capacity for a state to
deploy multiple types of responses is important for explaining why some states are better at avoiding
terrorism. If the range of state response to terrorism—the “flexibility” to use both coercive state power to crush or
disrupt terrorist movements and the capacity to co-opt would-be terrorists—is salient to explaining
terrorism, it is crucial to understand the regime types that have a wider range of counterterrorism
strategies. We theorize that there are three categories of responses a state can pursue in the face of terrorism: (1) mobilize coercion or repression against
terrorists and their supporters or sympathizers; (2) co- opt terrorists and their supporters or sympathizers; and (3) pursue a mix of both coercion and co-optation.
Coercion, or repression, involves the use of sanctions to impose a cost on an individual or a group to deter specific activities and beliefs (Davenport 2007; Goldstein
1978). Specific examples might include arrest and im- prisonment, physical abuse, assassinations, curtailment of political participation or personal autonomy,
surveil- lance, harassment, and threats. A consistent finding is that authorities generally employ some form of repression to counter or eliminate threats (Davenport
2007). Re- ported findings on the effects of repression on dissent are highly inconsistent, however (Choi 2008; Francisco 1996; Gupta and Venieris 1981; Gurr and
Moore 1997; Hibbs 1973; Lichbach and Gurr 1981; Moore 1998; Muller 1985; Piazza and Walsh 2010; Rasler 1996; Walsh and Piazza 2010; Ziegenhagen 1986). On
the one hand, repression
can raise the costs of collective action by threatening livelihood or life itself,
thereby preventing potential recruits from becoming terrorists. On the other hand, repression increases the ideological
benefit of fighting against the state (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2005). It also has a nega- tive impact on the economy, making the opportunity cost of becoming a
terrorist lower (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2005; Siqueira and Sandler 2006). Leaders can also use positive reinforcements to buy off
or “co-opt” potential opposition. An extreme example of the former type is President Joseph Mobutu in the now Democratic Republic of Congo,
who handed out cash in exchange for political support (Le Billon 2003). Lead- ers who need cooperation can simply purchase it with rewards, perks, and privileges
(Gandhi and Przeworski 2006). Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003) demonstrate that the size of the winning coalition relative to the selec- torate must be sufficiently
large for the leader to choose to distribute goods publicly rather than privately. Below a certain threshold, it is more expedient to distribute rents to a select few to
maintain office. On their own, however, rent-sharing systems are long-run inefficient and can re- tard economic growth (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2006; Haber
2006). Thus, in addition to sharing material spoils, a leader can induce cooperation by providing policy con- cessions, which involves the creation of forums for nego-
tiating oppositional demands (Acemoglu and Robinson 2005; Gandhi and Przeworski 2006). Offering a space for limited deliberation and rep- resentation
encourages potential oppositional groups to negotiate their interests within the legal boundaries of the state. The
creation of institutions such
as a legislature, political parties, and bureaucratic offices generates positions that elites and
opposition members can be used to fill, which is another form of co-optation (Brownlee 2007; Gandhi 2008).4
Political office provides direct and indirect benefits to working with the regime for potential opposition members. In turn, their involvement helps to preserve the
regime by forcing them to invest in it, so long as they value their positions and their “stake” in the game (Aksoy, Carter, and Wright 2012; Gandhi 2008).
Deliberative organizations also neutralize potential opposition by affecting the costs of coordination.
For example, a strong party can be used to co-opt by distributing benefits and offices to elites and

regularizing uncertainty regarding their positions, keeping them in the fold (Cox 2009; Gandhi 2008; Haber 2006).
Transition War
 Generic
Transition to democracy is worse than transition to autocracy- democratization results
in war
Mansfield and Snyder 2 [Edward Mansfield- Hum Rosen Professor of Political Science and Co-
Director of the Christopher H. Browne Center for International Politics @ Upenn, Jack Snyder- Robert
and Renee Belfer Professor of International Relations @ Columbia University, “Democratic Transitions,
Institutional Strength, and War,” International Organization Journal, vol 56, issue 2, mm]

we aim here to identify more precisely the conditions under which

Employing a more refined research design than in our prior work,

democratization stimulates hostilities. We find that the heightened danger of war grows primarily out
of the transition from an autocratic regime to one that is partly democratic . The specter of war during
this phase of democratization looms especially large when governmental institutions, including those
regulating political participation, are especially weak. Under these conditions, elites commonly employ
nationalist rhetoric to mobilize mass support but then become drawn into the belligerent foreign
policies unleashed by this process. We find, in contrast, that transitions that quickly culminate in a fully coherent democracy are much less perilous. 8 Further,
our results refute the view that transitional democracies are simply inviting targets of attack because of their temporary weakness. In fact, they tend to be

the initiators of war. We also refute the view that any regime change is likely to precipitate the
outbreak of war. We find that transitions toward democracy are significantly more likely to generate
hostilities than transitions toward autocracy . [End Page 298] The early stages of democratization unleash
intense competition among myriad social groups and interests. Many transitional democracies lack state
institutions that are sufficiently strong and coherent to effectively regulate this mass political
competition. To use Samuel Huntington's terminology, such countries frequently suffer from a gap between high levels of political participation and weak political institutions. 9
The weaker these institutions, the greater the likelihood that war-provoking nationalism will emerge
in democratizing countries. 10 Belligerent nationalism is likely to arise in this setting for two related reasons.
The first and more general reason is that political leaders try to use nationalism as an ideological motivator of
national collective action in the absence of effective political institutions. Leaders of various stripes find that appeals to national
sentiment are essential for mobilizing popular support when more routine instruments of legitimacy and governance—parties, legislatures, courts, and independent news media—are in their

infancy. Both old and new elites share this incentive to play the nationalist card. Often such appeals depend for their success on exaggerating
foreign threats. Allegations that internal foes have treasonous ties to these external enemies of the nation help the regime hold on to power despite the weakness of
governmental institutions. At the outset of the French Revolution, for example, mass nationalism was weak, but soon the

leaders of various republican factions found that the rhetoric of war and treason was indispensable to
their political survival in the revolutionary institutional wasteland. 11 Newspapers tied to political factions inflamed public opinion with the paired themes of war and
treason. A second reason democratization often fosters belligerent nationalism is that the breakup of authoritarian regimes threatens

powerful interests, including military bureaucracies and economic actors that derive a parochial benefit from war and empire. To salvage their position,
threatened interests frequently try to recruit mass support, typically by resorting to nationalist
appeals that allow them to claim to rule in the name of the people, but without instituting full democratic accountability to the average voter. Exploiting what remains of their
governmental, economic, and media power, these elites may succeed in establishing terms of inclusion in politics that

force opposition groups to accept nationalism as the common currency of public discourse. For example,
Bismarck and his successors in Prussia and Germany used nationalist, military, and colonial issues to
rally middle class and rural voters against the working classes while perpetuating a system of rule that kept the power to name [End Page
299] government ministers in the hands of the hereditary Kaiser rather than the elected legislature. 12 Moreover, while federalism may generate certain benefits for mature

democracies, the decentralization and fragmentation of power in newly democratizing regimes is likely to exacerbate the problems

attendant to democratic transitions. As the bloody breakups of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union show,
divisive nationalism is especially likely when the state's power is dispersed among ethnically defined
federal regions. Hence, none of the mechanisms that produce the democratic peace among mature democracies operate in the same fashion in newly democratizing states.
Indeed, in their imperfect condition, these mechanisms have the opposite effect. In short, newly democratizing countries often experience a

weakening of central state institutions because their old institutions have eroded and their new ones are only partially developed. Autocratic
power is in decline vis-à-vis both elite interest groups and mass groups, and democratic institutions lack the strength to integrate
these contending interests and views. Not all newly democratizing states suffer from institutional weakness, but for those that do the resulting political
dynamic creates conditions that encourage hostilities. In the face of this institutional deficit, political leaders rely on expedient strategies to cope with the political impasse of democratization.

Such tactics, which often include the appeasement of nationalist veto groups or competition among factions in nationalist bidding wars (or both), can breed reckless
foreign policies and the resort to war .

Democratic Transitions escalate to transition wars

Mansfield 9 [Edward D, Christopher H. Browne Center for International Politics, University of
Pennsylvania, Jack Snyder, Department of Political Science, Columbia University, “Pathways to War in
Democratic Transitions,” International Organization, Volume 63 , Issue 02, April 2009, pp 381-390,
Cambridge Journals, mm]

We have argued in Electing to Fight and other writings that an incomplete democratic
transition increases the risk of
international and civil war in countries that lack the institutional capacity to sustain democratic
politics. The combination of increasing mass political participation and weak political institutions
creates the motive and the opportunity for both rising and declining elites to play the nationalist card
in an attempt to rally popular support against domestic and foreign rivals.¶ Vipin Narang and Rebecca Nelson, in their
critique of Electing to Fight, agree that incompletely democratizing countries with weak institutions may be at greater risk of civil war, but they
are skeptical that this extends to international war except when opportunistic neighbors invade failing states.1 Whereas we argue that
nationalism is a key causal mechanism linking incomplete democratization to both civil and
international war, they conjecture that weak institutions and state failure are probably sufficient to explain why such countries may be
at greater risk of armed conflict. In contrast, we have found that weak political institutions generally have little effect on
a state's risk of involvement in external war when considered separately from incomplete
democratization.2 We welcome the opportunity to advance this important debate by highlighting relevant portions of our previous
research and summarizing some new findings on international and civil wars.¶ Support for our argument rests on statistical tests
and extensive case studies that trace causal processes in detail. We have presented statistical results
showing the greater likelihood of war involvement for incompletely democratizing states with weak political
institutions between 1816 and 1992, the greater propensity of democratizing states to engage in militarized
interstate disputes, and the increased risk of civil war in incompletely democratizing states . We have also
published case studies of all of the democratizing great powers since the French Revolution, all the democratizing initiators of interstate war in
our statistical study, all the post-Communist states, paired comparisons of postcolonial states, and several wars involving democratizing states
in the 1990s.3 Since we published Electing to Fight in 2005, elections
have heightened identity politics and fueled cross-
border violence in weakly institutionalized regimes in Georgia, Iraq, Lebanon, and the Palestinian
territories.
 Russia
Democratizers participate in intense nationalism – sparks international wars and
adventurism – specifically Russia
Mansfield 9 (Edward D, Christopher H. Browne Center for International Politics, University of
Pennsylvania, Jack Snyder, Department of Political Science, Columbia University, “Pathways to War in
Democratic Transitions,” International Organization, Volume 63, Issue 02 , April 2009, pp 381-390,
Cambridge Journals, mm)
Our theory distinguishes between two kinds of incompletely democratizing states: (1) those that have generally weak political institutions and
democratizers
(2) those that have strong administrative institutions but weak institutions for representative government.10 Incomplete
with weak institutions are prone to belligerent ethnic nationalism or sectarianism that induces
neighboring states to attack. In such settings, moves to expand popular political participation often spur
the nationalism of ethnic minorities, which see a chance to escape domination by culturally alien
groups that control the state. At the same time, ethnic or statist nationalism of dominant groups is also
likely to intensify in an effort to regain control.11 International violence may arise because politically
mobilized ethnic populations straddle international borders and because nationalism makes the
diplomacy of the democratizing state rigid or belligerent. Recent cases showing this pattern include
the triggering of Russian attack by democratizing Georgia's rival nationalisms and Hezbollah's provocation of
Israel's attack on democratizing Lebanon.¶ A different pathway to war is more common among incomplete
democratizers with strong administrative institutions but weak or biased representative ones, such as Germany under
Chancellor Otto von Bismarck and Kaiser Wilhelm. Such states are more likely to have fairly advanced economies, differentiated social class
structures, and strong militaries. They are also more likely to develop what we called counterrevolutionary
nationalism. In this pattern, ruling elites are struggling to retain power in the face of rapid social change.
Nationalist ideology offers them an attractive alternative to class-based appeals, and the exaggeration
of foreign threats and rivalries can help them rally popular support. Strong military institutions
provide a tempting tool to reinforce this strategy of rule. This kind of democratizer is less likely to be the
target of attacks than those with generally weak domestic institutions and more likely to initiate wars, in the narrow sense of crossing
the border first with their regular army.12 Examples discussed in detail in Electing to Fight include nineteenth-century France as well as
Prussia/Germany. More recent examples include states that alternate between military and civilian regimes such as post–World War II Turkey
and Argentina.
 Middle East
Empirics Prove Democratic Transitions lead to transition wars, Mid-east war, and
proliferation
Mansfield 9 (Edward D, Christopher H. Browne Center for International Politics, University of
Pennsylvania, Jack Snyder, Department of Political Science, Columbia University, “Pathways to War in
Democratic Transitions,” International Organization / Volume 63 / Issue 02 / April 2009, pp 381-390,
Cambridge Journals, mm)

Narang and Nelson argue that recent history offers few, if any, examples that support our theory. To address this issue, we
consider the
set of wars that have broken out since 1992, the last year of our statistical analysis in Electing to Fight. This analysis
indicates that a sizable portion of these conflicts has involved a democratizing country .¶ In Electing to Fight,
we analyzed data on war onset compiled by the Correlates of War (COW) Project. These data extend only until 1997. However, the UCDP/PRIO
Armed Conflict Dataset covers the period through 2007 and lists three interstate wars since 1992: (1) the 1998 war between
Ethiopia and Eritrea, (2) the 1996 conflict between India and Pakistan that culminated in the 1999 Kargil War, and
(3) the 2003 Iraq War.4¶ The first two episodes were wars of democratization. Based on the Polity IV data, Ethiopia experienced an
incomplete democratic transition in the decade prior to war.5 Eritrea might also be considered incompletely democratizing, having just ratified
but not implemented a democratic constitution on the eve of war. As we argued in Electing to Fight,6 this
case exemplifies our
theory's causal mechanisms of nationalism, factionalism, and foreign scapegoating.7 Pakistan's attack
on Indian Kashmir in the 1999 Kargil War followed constitutional changes strengthening the elected
civilian leader's authority over the military, coded by Polity as a democratic transition. The military schemed to attack Kashmir in
an attempt to recapture its nationalist luster. While Polity data on institutional strength and coherence are not available after 1994,
contemporary observers agree that Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Pakistan suffered significant institutional deficits in the period leading up to the
outbreak of these wars.8¶In addition to these purely interstate wars, the period since 1992 has witnessed thirteen
internationalized civil wars; that is, wars between a country's government and a group or set of groups within the same country, with other
countries assisting either or both combatants. Of these internationalized civil wars, Polity IV provides the data needed to code the regime type
of the country where the conflict occurred in eight cases. Of
these eight cases, six took place in a country that
experienced an incomplete democratic transition over the five- to ten-year period leading up to
conflict. In three of these eight cases, both the country where the war was waged and the intervening country had recently experienced
such a transition.¶ In Electing to Fight, we presented brief case studies of a number of these episodes, including Bosnia in 1993 and Kosovo in
1999. We also examined the 1993 war between Armenia and Azerbaijan, an event listed by UCDP/PRIO for which Polity does not provide data
on the combatants' regime types. Our argument helps to explain each of these cases.¶ In
our writing on current affairs, we
have noted that incompletely democratizing Middle Eastern countries that lack strong liberal
institutions have recently elected ethnic militants, sectarian extremists, terrorists, Holocaust-deniers,
and nuclear proliferation advocates, which has contributed to both civil and international conflict.9 Of
course, numerous countries have democratized peacefully over the past two decades in Eastern Europe, Latin America, East Asia, and South
Africa. Consistent with our theory, these countries have generally enjoyed favorable domestic conditions, including a reasonably advanced
economy or relatively strong institutions at the transition's outset. Taken together, the cases discussed in this section provide substantial
evidence that democratization occurring
in the face of weak institutions continues to be a potent source
of foreign policy belligerence and war.

Democracy in the middle east is ineffective for checking conflict

Hirsh 1/15 (Michael Hirsh, chief correspondent for National Journal with expertise on the war on
terror, including on-the-ground reporting, “When Democracy Doesn't Work”, 1/15/14,
http://www.nationaljournal.com/defense/when-democracy-doesn-t-work-20140115, mm)

But the ball of liberty is looking pretty deflated these days, especially in the Mideast . Despite much
editorializing that holds a neo-isolationist Obama responsible for this, the trend has little to do with U.S. policy. It has far more to do with the
emerging reality that not only isn't democracy a panacea, it sometimes—apostasy alert!—doesn't work well at all. Indeed, in
some unready parts of the globe like the Arab world, democracy may not be the best way forward, at least right now.¶
That is especially true in countries where tribal and sectarian politics still rule the national sensibility,
and the groups that win elections are mainly interested in stifling, disenfranchising, or even killing
their out-balloted rivals, as in Egypt, Iraq, and very likely Syria. Plainly, the Obama administration has adapted its policy accordingly.
We are thus at a high tide of realpolitik.¶
 AT: Studies Flawed
Ottoman Empire proves transition wars – doesn’t make studies flawed
Mansfield 9 (Edward D, Christopher H. Browne Center for International Politics, University of
Pennsylvania, Jack Snyder, Department of Political Science, Columbia University, “Pathways to War in
Democratic Transitions,” International Organization, Volume 63, Issue 02 , April 2009, pp 381-390,
Cambridge Journals, mm)

Narang and Nelson's principal critique of our statistical analysis is that four cases of incomplete democratization
and war involvement by the Ottoman Empire in 1877, 1911, 1912, and 1913 are statistical outliers that exert
disproportionate leverage on our results. They assert that “these observations are inconsistent with the Mansfield and Snyder
theory, since in each case the Ottoman Empire … was being repeatedly attacked and amputated by other powers.”13¶ In fact, as we show
below, the Ottoman cases conform extremely well to the causal pathways to war that we expect for
incomplete democratizers with weak institutions. As such, there is no reason to discard these cases.
Statisticians have distinguished between two types of outliers: (1) discordant observations, which are discrepant or surprising, and (2)
contaminant observations, which are products of a different data-generating process than the remaining observations in a sample.
Statisticians and methodologists are virtually unanimous in recommending against discarding an
observation unless a researcher is absolutely sure that the observation is a contaminant. Moreover, they
agree that this evaluation can only be conducted with considerable substantive knowledge about the
matter at hand.14 The historical record reveals that these cases are not contaminant observations. ¶
The Ottoman cases exemplify the dangers of incomplete democratization when institutional
weaknesses create the motive and the opportunity for ethnic minorities and state elites to mobilize
popular support through nationalist appeals. The Ottomans' democratizing reforms gave minorities a chance to organize
around ethnic identities and to link up with culturally similar groups abroad. At the same time, the reforms were designed to rationalize,
strengthen, and centralize state power in the hands of Turkish nationalists, which threatened the minorities' autonomy and motivated them to
rebel. Repeatedly, the Turkish nationalists responded by repressing the minorities and fought wars with their foreign supporters. In
addition to four international wars, the Armenian genocide and the expulsion of the Greeks after
World War I were part of this overall process.¶ Because this history has an eerily contemporary resonance, we will recount the highlights. The Ottoman
Empire, competing with modernizing great powers, was compelled by its British ally to undertake state-rationalizing reforms on the Western model in 1839. These Tanzimat reforms, which
yielded a state structure that was an awkward hybrid of proto-liberal and traditional forms, failed to revitalize the state and the economy, and had the unintended effect of unleashing a
struggle among religious and ethnic minorities for privileges, tax relief, and autonomy.15 Facing a debt crisis in 1876, the Ottomans gambled on additional reforms, including the introduction
of a parliamentary system with press freedoms and civil rights.16 The short-lived constitutional reform produced exactly the pattern of politics that our theory expects when institutions are
weak: self-assertion by ethnic and religious groups, factionalism in the state and its representative institutions, inability to compromise or formulate a coherent policy, brutal state actions to
subjugate restive minorities, and external military intervention on the pretext of restoring human rights.¶ The Ottomans enjoyed a thirty-year period of relative stability with the
reestablishment of autocracy between 1878 and the Young Turk “revolution from above” of 1908. The Young Turk reformers reintroduced the 1876 constitution, held multiparty parliamentary
elections, increased press freedom, and replaced the millet system of self-governing religious groups with uniform Ottoman citizenship. This reform created both threats and opportunities for
neighboring states and internal nationalities. In the short run, the revolution weakened the Ottoman state, allowing the Austrians, the small Balkan states, and Italy to act forcefully to achieve
their aims in Bosnia, Macedonia, and Tripoli. Likewise, religious and ethnic minorities inside the Ottoman Empire took advantage of the newly granted latitude to carve out spheres of
autonomy or pursue their narrow interests.¶ But weakness was not the only goad to violent action. Also important was the potential threat posed by the Young Turks' state-building project.
The democratic, centralizing revolution, if successful, could strengthen the empire vis-à-vis external foes and internal minorities. Shaw, a leading historian of this period, claims that “the
Ottoman empire was attacked, not really because of its weakness, but rather in spite of its increased strength and perhaps in fear of it.”17 Hall explains that “the celebration of Ottoman
nationhood raised concerns in Balkan capitals that the Balkan populations in a reformed Turkey would be less susceptible to their nationalistic blandishments.”18 For example, the Albanians
were initially pleased by the Young Turk revolution, which they saw as giving them a license to run their own affairs. By 1910, however, the Albanians were in revolt against the centralizing
efforts of the Young Turk government to collect taxes and disarm local fighters.19 The combination of the Young Turks' short-run weakness and their long-term ambition for centralized control
created the motive and the opportunity for internal minorities, including Macedonians and Montenegrins, to join forces with external foes in the Balkan League.20¶ Rising Turkish nationalism
and factionalism hamstrung Ottoman diplomatic efforts to head off wars with Italy and with the Balkan League. Helmreich, the authority on this topic, writes that “bitter political dissention in
Turkey … checkmated any real policy, and many officials were foolish enough to believe that the problem might be solved by undertaking a war.” He quotes the German ambassador's report
that a war party in the army “charged the government with cowardliness and treason. Cowed by street demonstrations, the grand vizier promised that he would not draw back from war with
the Balkan states. The first consequence of the victory of the nationalistic movement was the fear of the cabinet that the conditions of peace with Italy, which they had agreed to, might be
turned into a noose for themselves. While the excited mob in the streets called for war, the ministerial council revised the peace formula.”21¶ Narang and Nelson suggest that the 1911, 1912,
and 1913 wars should be collapsed into a single case. However, standard historical studies and databases all list them as distinct wars. The three wars had different initiators, alliances, and
outcomes. In the First Balkan War, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece attacked and defeated the Ottomans. After a ten-week gap filled with unsuccessful negotiations over the spoils of victory,
Bulgaria attacked Serbia to initiate the Second Balkan War. The Ottomans then attacked Bulgaria, expelled non-Muslim populations from various towns and cities, retook the city of

the Young Turk period, as with

Adrianople, even invaded the territory of Bulgaria proper, and retained many of these gains in the postwar settlement.22¶ In short,

its precursor in 1876, illustrates many of the causal mechanisms of our theory. Incomplete
democratization occurring in the face of weak institutions deepened political factionalism, pushed
state elites to use nationalist appeals to legitimate and strengthen their rule, touched off a
competition between nationalisms propounded by new and old elites, created incentives for internal
groups to link up with external foes, and triggered ethnic violence, genocide, and war. Since these are
precisely the causal mechanisms that link incomplete democratization and cross-border violence in
various contemporary cases—including Georgia, Pakistan, and the Middle East—the Ottoman cases
are exemplary, not outliers to be discarded.¶

Prefer our ev – their studies ignore democratic war

Geis 13 (Anna, professor of political science at Otto-von-Guericke University, and Harald Muller,
Executive Director and Head of Research Department at Peace Research Institute Frankfurt, Oct 10,
2013, The Militant Face of Democracy: Liberal Forces for Good, mm)

The relationship between democracy and war is thus delicate: Western democracies possess overwhelming material
capabilities to fight wars, but the use of force is restrained by numerous legal provisos and by norms and values deeply rooted in their societies.
The preference for peaceful conflict resolution, respect for human rights, fear of casualties and high material costs are among the norms
inherent in political liberalism. According to normative variants of DP theory, such features help to explain the peace-proneness of liberal
democracies. However, increasing liberal interventionism following the end of the Cold War has thrown the
militant side of democracies - acknowledged but neglected by mainstream DP research - into sharp
relief. Although dyadic DP research is well aware of this Janus face of democracies (Risse-Kappen 1995: 492),
its work has been mainly dedicated to explaining the peaceful relations among democracies rather
than to investigating the militant side. As a consequence, studies on the separate democratic peace abound and have been
celebrated as a rare example of a progressive research programme in International Relations (Chernoff 2004), whereas complementary
research on the external use of force by democracies has remained comparatively scarce. ‘[T]he
democratic peace proposition by itself does not deal with the issue of how democra- cies get into war
with nondemocracies’ (Moore 2004: 13). Addressing this lacuna, we pursue a research agenda on ‘democratic wars’ that is designed
to complement DP research, not to dismiss it. Such an approach is overdue. Indeed, liberal interventionism and recent ‘liberal wars’ have
attracted enhanced attention from scholars outside the DP community (e.g. Freedman 2005, 2006; Shaw 2005; Vasquez 2005; Chandler 2006,
2010). The
debate on ‘liberal wars’ should thus be integrated into a contextualised DP theory as it illuminates neglected
aspects of democratic violence. Developing the con- cept of ‘democratic war‘ as the flipside of
democratic peace also ties in with accounts of the ambivalence of liberalism throughout its
philosophical and political history (e.g. Doyle 1983a, 1983b; Owen 1997; Peceny 1999; Barkawi and Laffey 2001; MacMillan 2004,
2005; Jahn 2005; Desch 2007/8).

Wars are even more likely in the future – fourth wave will involve ideological
challenges
Mansfield 5 (Edward D, Christopher H. Browne Center for International Politics, University of
Pennsylvania, Jack Snyder, Department of Political Science, Columbia University, Electing to Fight: Why
Emerging Democracies Go to War, 2005, p.10, mm)

There is little reason to believe that the longstanding link between de- mocratization and nationalist
war is becoming obsolete. On the contrary, future transitions may be even more difficult and dangerous.
The "third wave” of democratization in the 1980s and 1990s consolidated demo- cratic regimes mainly in the richer countries of Eastern
Europe, Latin America, Southern Africa, and East Asia.” A fourth wave would involve more challenging cases: countries
that are poorer, more ethnically di- vided, ideologically more resistant to democracy, with more
entrenched authoritarian elites, and with a much frailer base of governmental institu- tions and
citizen-skills.” Botched democratizations in such settings could give rise to grave threats to
international peace and security . Wars of de- rnocratization are therefore likely to remain a central
problem of interna- tional relations in the coming years.
Emerging Democracy Wars
 Israel

Regional democracy draws Israel into war – destroys peace talks

Fawcett 13 (Louise, Associate Professor of Politics, Wilfrid Knapp Fellow, St Catherine's College, March
21, 2013, International Relations of the Middle East, Google Books, mm)

As a result of the Arab Spring, the

Palestinian question may become central to the continued normalization of
relations between Israel and those Arab states with which it has peace treaties, rather than the potential for
peace treaties. The Western media may focus on Israel and Iran, but the Arab public has now found a voice in several
states via the recent upheavals and elections, as have occurred in Tunisia and Egypt. The spread of democracy to
Arab states will likely push new governments to demand greater Israeli concessions, rather than to
acquiesce to US-led peace efforts that have failed. Such a change in relationships has al- ready occurred between Israel and
Turkey, which has cut military ties to Israel over an Israel commando assault on relief ships heading to Gaza from Turkish ports in 2009. Arab
media already compare Israel's repression of Palestinian protests to the Assad regimes crushing of demonstrations in Syria. The situation is far
more fluid than the apparent standoff between Israel and the Palestinians would suggest, primarily owing to major changes in Arab state
systems, as witnessed by Egypt's Muslim Brothers calling for IIamas moderation. As
this situation develops, its outcome admittedly
uncertain, the
US—Israeli links regarding the peace process, bound in part by their democratic political
systems, may find themselves challenged by the rise of democracy elsewhere in the region. The age of
compliant Arab dictators bowing to Washington’s will on the Arab—Israeli peace process, as well as
other issues. ,may be on the verge of disappearing.
 Generic
Emerging democracies go to war- assumes their warrants
Manan 2015 [Munafrizal- Professor of IR @ University of Al Azhar Indonesia, Hubungan International
Journal, cites a bunch of profs and scholars of DPT, “The Democratic Peace Theory and Its Problems,”
http://journal.unpar.ac.id/index.php/JurnalIlmiahHubunganInternasiona/article/view/1315, mm]

A third problem with the democratic peace is it is not supported by the case of states in the early
phases of transitions to democracy . As Mansfield and Snyder argue, these states are more likely become involved
in war than other states due to weak political institutions (such as an effective state, the rule of law, organized parties that
compete in fair election, and professional news media) which are needed to make democracy work. 199 The advocates of the

democratic peace theory are inclined to deny the importance of political institutions because they are
likely to believe that the best way to build democracy is just start. For Mansfield and Snyder, ‘this argument is
incorrect and dangerously so’ because ‘ill-prepared attempts to democratize weak states—such as the
cases of Yugoslavia, Pakistan, Rwanda, and Burundi—may lead to costly warfare in the shot run, and
may delay or prevent real progress toward democracy over the long term’. 200 They conclude that ‘in the short run,
however, the beginning stages of transition to democracy often give rise to war rather than peace’. 201 The path of democracy is not an easy way, indeed. The
failure of new emerging democratic countries to achieve a consolidated democracy has a historical root and hence it is not new phenomena. As Mansfield and

Snyder explains: Since the French Revolution, the earliest phases of democratization have triggered some of
the world's bloodiest nationalist struggles . Similarly, during the 1990s, intense armed violence broke
out in a number of regions that had just begun to experiment with electoral democracy and more
pluralistic public discourse. In some cases, such as the former Yugoslavia, the Caucasus, and Indonesia
, transition from dictatorship to more pluralistic political systems coincide with the rise of national
independence movements, spurring separatist warfare that often spilled across international borders.
In other cases, transitional regime clashed in interstate warfare. Ethiopia and Eritrea, both moving
toward more pluralistic forms of government in the 1990s, fought a bloody border war from 1998 to
2000. The elected regimes of India and Pakistan battled during 1999 in the mountainous borderlands
of Kashmir. Peru and Ecuador, democratizing in fits and starts during 1980s and 1990s, culminated a
series of armed clashes with a small war in the upper Amazon in 1995.202 Mansfield and Snyder observe that the ‘elite
in newly democratizing states often use nationalist appeals to attract mass support without
submitting to full democratic accountability and that the institutional weakness of transitional states
creates the opportunity for such war causing strategies to succeed’.203 For this reason, the establishment of political
institutions is needed before promoting democracy in autocratic countries. In the words of Mansfield and Snyder, ‘before pressuring autocrats to hold fully
competitive elections, the international community should first promote the rule of law, the formation of impartial courts and election commissiion, the
professionalization of independent journalist, and the training of competent bureucrats’. Beside, economic and social modernization is also important in order to

build democracy. As Gat shows, democracy in itself is not able to lead to a democratic peace unless such factors
have fulfilled in advance. In this regard, ‘it has been found that economically developed democracies have been far more likely than poor
democracies to be peaceful toward one another’.205 Similar to Mansfield and Snyder, Meierhenrich also has the same conclusion. He argues that ‘ the new

millennium saw further evidence of the dangers of democratization. The pro-democratic intervention
in Afghanistan, following the attacks of 11 September 2001, has spurred insurgent warfare not only in
that country, but in neighbouring Pakistan as well’. 206 Therefore, ‘democracy, if not handled with care,
can underwrite democratic war rather than democratic peace’ and ‘democratic rights become
democratic wrongs, and policies of perpetual peace become prescriptions for perpetual war’. 207 In
short, some cases have shown that the logic of democratic peace does not work appropriately. In the words of Snyder, ‘none of
the mechanisms that produce the democratic peace among mature democracies operate in the same fashion in newly democratizing states’. 208
Democratization produces belligerent nationalism- risks war
Mansfield and Snyder 2 [Edward Mansfield- Hum Rosen Professor of Political Science and Co-
Director of the Christopher H. Browne Center for International Politics @ Upenn, Jack Snyder- Robert
and Renee Belfer Professor of International Relations @ Columbia University, “Democratic Transitions,
Institutional Strength, and War,” International Organization Journal, vol 56, issue 2, mm]
Even if elite coalitions worry that the costs and risks of their belligerent foreign policies are beginning to get out of hand, they can find themselves locked into these
policies by the tactics they have used to recruit mass support. To
survive in an era of democratization, these elite interests
must attract a degree of popular support, often through the use of nationalist rhetoric . Elite control over a
dependent, unprofessional news media may provide a ready vehicle for this campaign of persuasion. However, rising alternative elites may

seize on this rhetoric and try to turn it against the old elites, triggering a nationalist bidding war . Prior to
World War i, for instance, German middle-class nationalist groups such as the Navy League argued that if Germany was really encircled by national enemies, as the
ruling elites claimed, then the government's ineffectual policies were endangering the nation. The old elite should step aside, they argued, and let the more
vigorous middle classes reform Germany's army, toughen its foreign policy, and use coercion to break up the encircling alliance of France, Russia, and England. The
"iron and rye" government felt compelled to outbid these nationalist critics. In an attempt to gain nationalist prestige in the eyes of the domestic audience, the
German government trumped up a series of international crises, such as the showdowns with France over control of Morocco in 1905 and 1911. This reckless and
counterproductive strategy served only to tighten the noose around the neck of the German elites and pushed them toward a decision to launch a preventive war in

1914. 28 This
argument has some points in common with so-called diversionary theories of war, which
contend that regimes sometimes attempt to use rivalry abroad to strengthen their shaky position at
home. Such theories invoke two rather different causal mechanisms. The first asserts a psychological
propensity for out-group conflict to increase in-group cohesion. If such a mechanism exists, however, research shows that it is
likely to come into play only if the group demonstrates considerable cohesion before the conflict breaks out, the external threat is seen as endangering the in-group

as a whole, and the instigators of the conflict are seen to be the outsiders rather than the leadership of the in-group. 29 Our argument suggests how these
conditions might be created in newly democratizing states through the development of a nationalist
ideology , which constitutes a set of ideas for interpreting conflict with out-groups. [End Page 303] A second set of causal mechanisms is
rationalistic. Alastair Smith speculates that international assertiveness helps domestically hard-pressed regimes to demonstrate their competence by
achieving foreign policy successes. 30 Unlike mature democracies, however, newly democratizing states are not particularly good

at choosing wars that are easy to win and cheap to fight. A more plausible rationalistic argument for their wars is that elites in
transitional states are "gambling for resurrection," that is, taking a risk at long odds that foreign policy
confrontations will help them avoid losing power. Deductive arguments of this type propose that elites' informational advantages
relative to their mass audience help them carry out such gambles. 31 Empirical research suggests that the strength of the incentive for downwardly mobile elites to
gamble depends on the regime type and on the elites' ability to use their influence over the media to make the reckless strategy seem plausible to their
constituents. 32 Our argument explains why the
motive and opportunity to use this strategy are especially likely to be
present when incomplete transitions to democracy occur in states with weak institutions . In short, elites
in newly democratizing states typically face the difficult political task of cobbling together a heterogeneous coalition of elite and popular
supporters in a context of weakly developed democratic institutions. Many of the expedients that they adopt, such as logrolled overcommitments and nationalist

outbidding strategies, heighten the risk of external conflict. These outcomes are most likely when threatened elites' interests cannot be
easily adapted to a fully democratic setting and when mass political participation increases before the basic foundation for democratic institutions is firmly in place.
Under such conditions, political entrepreneurs have both the incentive and the opportunity to promote conflict-causing nationalist myths. We focus on two distinct
phases in the process of democratization: the transition from autocracy to a partially democratic regime and the shift to a fully institutionalized democracy. As we
explain further below, these phases are measured using several indicators of regime type derived from the Polity III database developed by Keith Jaggers and Ted
Robert Gurr. 33 We
expect the likelihood of war to be particularly pronounced in the first phase of
democratization, during which old elites threatened by the transition still tend to be [End Page 304]
powerful and the institutions needed to regulate mass political participation are often very weak. As in
prior research on the initial stages of democratic transitions, we include in this category cases in which elites conclude bargains involving limited political
liberalization and cases in which most elites consider voting to be only a temporary expedient. 34 In many of these cases, the rhetoric of popular sovereignty is
examples of war-prone countries making a
grandiloquent, but the power of voters to control government policy is weak. Some

transition from autocracy to a mixed (or "anocratic") regime are Prussia/Germany under Bismarck, France
under Napoleon III, Chile shortly before the War of the Pacific in 1879, Serbia's multiparty
constitutional monarchy before the Balkan Wars, Pakistan's military-guided pseudo-democracy before
its 1965 war with India, and the regime that assumed power in Islamabad before the 1971 Indo-
Pakistani war. 35 In certain instances (for example, Argentina just before the Falklands War), Jaggers and Gurr's Polity data indicate that a transition to a
mixed regime occurred before elections were held, based on such developments as increased press freedom and the legalization of political parties in the
expectation of impending elections. 36 While some of these regime changes may not correspond to how other studies have defined democratization, all of them
are valid for our purposes insofar as they reflect the causal mechanisms highlighted in our theory, such as the use of nationalist rhetoric to cement a heterogeneous
domestic coalition or elite gambling for resurrection in the face of popular demands. Further, in those types of cases where shifts from autocracy to a mixed regime
based on the Polity codings may not reflect the mechanisms of our theory—especially instances involving communist countries and those associated with
involvement in world wars—we check to ensure that the statistical findings presented below are robust with respect to the inclusion of such cases. 37 We

offer a brief sketch of the War of the Pacific to illustrate how incomplete democratization increases
the risk of war, especially when governmental institutions are very weak.

Democracy in the middle east escalates to conflict

Mansfield 5 (Edward D, Christopher H. Browne Center for International Politics, University of
Pennsylvania, Jack Snyder, Department of Political Science, Columbia University, Electing to Fight: Why
Emerging Democracies Go to War, 2005, Google Books, p.10, mm)

Although democratization in the Islamic world might contribute to peace in the very long run, Islamic
public opinion in the short
run is, in most places, hostile to the United States, reluctant to condemn terrorism, and supportive of
forceful measures to achieve favorable results in Pales- tine, Kashmir, and other disputed areas.
Although much of the belliger- ence of the Islamic public is fueled by resentment of the U.S.-backed au- thoritarian regimes under which many
of them live, simply renouncing these authoritarians and pressing for a quick democratic opening is un-
likely to lead to peaceful democratic consolidations. On the contrary, un- leashing Islamic mass opinion
through a sudden democratization could only raise the likelihood of war.“ All of the risk factors are
there: the me- dia and civil society groups are inflammatory, as old elites and rising oppositions try to
claim the mantle of Islamic or nationalist militancy.” The rule of law is weak, and existing corrupt
bureaucracies cannot serve a democratic administration properly. The boundaries of states are mis- matched with
those of nations, making any push for national self- determination fraught with peril.

Democratic transitions in the Middle East escalate to war

Fawcett 13 (Louise, Associate Professor of Politics, Wilfrid Knapp Fellow, St Catherine's College, March
21, 2013, International Relations of the Middle East, Google Books, mm)

Optimism that the establishment of liberal democracy would bring peace to the Middle East might
well be tempered by quantitative studies that investigate the likelihood of war during the initial
stages of democratization. Edward Mansfield and Jack Snyder (1995) show that, even though mature
democracies seem to have no chance of going to war with one another, states that are just starting to
democratize face intense pressure to act belligerently. And if things were not already murky enough,
the quantitative literature also demonstrates that dictatorships are just as likely to keep the peace
among themselves as are democratic regimes (Peceny and Beer 2002).
Market Reform – Middle East
 Networks of Privilege
Forced democratization re-entrenches networks of privilege, combining with lack of
US credibility to undermine democratization
Hinnebusch ’15 [March 24, 2015. Raymond Hinnebusch is a Professor at the School of International
Relations at the University of St. Andrews. “Globalization, democratization, and the Arab uprising: the
international factor in MENA's failed democratization” Democratization, 22:2, 335-357]

Globalization in MENA was not, therefore, associated with democratization. Rather , authoritarian power
persisted but was now used, not to attack inequalities, as in the populist period, but to reconstruct and
protect the new inequalities unleashed by the region’s opening (infitah) to the global economy. Under this
new “post-populist” authoritarianism, regimes restructured their social bases. Thus, privatization provided regime elites with
new patronage resources to foster and co-opt a supportive crony capitalist class.41 This new class base
was, contrary to globalization discourse, incompatible with democratization : crony capitalists would be
threatened by democratic transparency but also even productive capitalists wanted rule of law for
themselves but not rights for workers. Rather than a hegemonic bourgeoisie capturing the state and instituting limited
democracy for itself, much of the bourgeoisie became dependent on the state for contracts, business opportunities,
rent and the disciplining of labour, allowing rulers to play off rival business cliques. While capitalism is said to empower
bourgeoisies and working classes who combine to force democratization, in MENA economic
liberalization and privatization obstructed such a democratic coalition and was used to build anti-
democratic coalitions – “networks of privilege ”42 – re-empowering authoritarianism . At the same time,
reviving capitalism meant investors had to be favoured over the mass public through reduction of labour rights
and wages while IMF structural adjustments contracted populist welfare, producing “food riots” across the region (while
leaving intact military purchases from Western arms dealers). Enforcing this required the old popular constituencies be
demobilized; hence democratization, which could empower them to resist neo-liberalism, could not be promoted .
Moreover, rollbacks of the populist social contract on which regimes had initially built their legitimacy and abdication of their
developmental and welfare roles to the private sector and religious charity networks made regimes vulnerable to the rise of
Islamic opposition, that powerfully attracted the marginalized strata victimized by neo-liberal policies and were well poised to win
elections, should regimes democratize. Rulers, on the other hand, could hardly expect to win a democratic election when they were
forcing austerity unequally on the majority and violating people’s sense of moral economy, excluding, not including them, as the populist
regimes had initially done. Contrary to mainstream globalization discourse, neo-liberalism, reinforcing rather than diluting
regional neo-patrimonialism, posed a major obstacle to democratization . As such, globalization was
paralleled by a move toward hybrid regimes via “lopsided political liberalization ”, in which greater access
was accorded the beneficiaries of post-populism: the interest groups of the bourgeoisie were given
greater corporatist and parliamentary access to power and more rule of law. Elections were manipulated to empower
bourgeois parties supportive of neo-liberalism and marginalize populist ones, with safety valve opposition parties for the middle class
tolerated only within strict limits; and corporatist arrangements, which in the populist era had allowed mass organizations access to
decisionmakers, becoming instruments for disciplining and demobilizing mass strata.43 It was against this “post-populist
authoritarianism” that the Arab intifada of 2011 mobilized. Authoritarian persistence was reinforced by the role of the
region in the world system. Democracy develops when governments need their citizenry to pay taxes or to
fight in wars but in the Middle East many states depended on the outside: on rents (oil revenues or foreign
aid) in lieu of taxes and on foreign bases and security treaties instead of citizen armies. Democracy achieves

hegemony when associated with nationalism , as in the French and American revolutions; but MENA regimes
forfeited nationalist legitimacy through their alignment with the US , which was, with Israel, the most unpopular
state in Middle East public opinion.44 Thus, where democratization even partly proceeded in MENA, it unleashed
antiWestern or anti-Israeli sentiments that challenged regimes’ Western-aligned foreign policies and
which Islamic movements exploited, prompting a halt or reversal of these experiments. The case of
Jordan shows most dramatically how a regime’s responsiveness to Western demands – for peace with an Israel
unwilling to concede Palestinian rights – was necessarily paralleled by a contraction of domestic
democratization. Conversely, the “war on terror” cemented new political alliances between the US, Britain
and France and MENA authoritarian regimes against the common threat from radical Islam. In some cases (Syria), authoritarian
upgrading took advantage of a certain authoritarian solidarity (Russian or Chinese support) and in some cases also the use of anti-Western
nationalism to discredit democracy discourses. Both threats from the West and from Islamists were used to securitize politics.

US democratization locks in neoliberalism and causes limited political pluralism with

doses of authoritarian power
Hinnebusch ’15 [March 24, 2015. Raymond Hinnebusch is a Professor at the School of International
Relations at the University of St. Andrews. “Globalization, democratization, and the Arab uprising: the
international factor in MENA's failed democratization” Democratization, 22:2, 335-357]

Democratic uprisings do not guarantee democratic consolidation: the two regional states with the
least fragmented societies and most developed institutions, hence the best prospects for
democratization, faced a political economy stacked against consolidation. The revolutions in Egypt and
Tunisia were a reaction against the acute social inequalities resulting from neo-liberalism, but the revolutions
remained purely political , with no attempts to attack unjust economic inequalities. This was because
enduring dependencies on the Western-centred international financial system locked them into neo-
liberal practices. Indeed, because the uprisings has actually worsened economic growth, hence prospects for
addressing unemployment, by deterring investors and tourism, they were more dependent on Western IFIs. Particularly in
Egypt IFIs tried to exploit the post-uprisings economic crises by making loans conditional on further
opening to international finance capital, notably privatizations that would allow Western and Gulf investors to buy up
prime parts of Egypt’s infrastructure and public services.65 In this context, the least bad outcome was the “low

intensity democracy ” that appeared possible in Tunisia where long-term Western cultural penetration may indeed have
assisted democratic consolidation – ironically, even when the West supports the authoritarian leader, as was the case
with Ben Ali. If democracy is consolidated in Tunisia, it will be because moderates were able to reach a pact to marginalize the radicals on both
sides, despite the French supporting anti-clericalists and the Gulf supporting Salafists. But even
in Tunisia, nostalgia set in for
the stability and relative prosperity of the Ben Ali period; all that had changed for the unemployed
was increased political freedom to express their frustrations. In Egypt, where political competition
was diverted from economic injustice to identity issues framed in destabilizing zero-sum terms and backed by
competitive interference from the US, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the result was a hybrid regime: mixing limited
political pluralism with doses of authoritarian power needed to manage identity conflicts and turn
back demands for social justice that could not be accommodated in a global neo-liberal economic
order.
 Neo-Authoritarianism/Neoliberalism
Forced democratization by the US leads to neo-authoritarianism and a de-politicized
society
(note – this card says neoliberalism is bad)

Hinnebusch ’15 [March 24, 2015. Raymond Hinnebusch is a Professor at the School of International
Relations at the University of St. Andrews. “Globalization, democratization, and the Arab uprising: the
international factor in MENA's failed democratization” Democratization, 22:2, 335-357]

Democratization, in the neo-Gramscian view, must be understood within the framework of economic
globalization, a process constituted by the internationalization of production and the dominance of Western finance capital and a
Westcentric transnational corporate class. The globalization of capitalism requires the sustained agency of the global hegemon of the age, now
the US, empowered by the dominance of its finance capital2 and working through international financial institutions, to
promote “disciplinary neo-liberalism”3 manifest in international contractual arrangements such as the World Trade Organization. Especially in
the world periphery, the hegemon plays a key role in forcing open markets to Western penetration, using economic crises and
debt relief to enforce neo-liberal measures such as Anglo-American legal practices, tariff removal, privatization and structural adjustment.4 The
hegemon seeks thereby to transform states into transmission belts of global neo-liberalism.5 With
the demise of Soviet
countervailing power, this US project acquired enhanced leverage; for example, war could again be used
to force open the most recalcitrant and lucrative periphery markets, notably oil-rich Iraq.6 At the levels of
institutions and ideology, sociological institutionalists (world polity theory) see a parallel process in which a world culture of capitalist
democracy is diffused outward from core to periphery.7 Buzan and Little noted that the expansion of European international society through
imperialism globalized a formally Westphalian states system and stimulated an internalization of Western norms of sovereignty and
nationalism, that made denial of the independence of the periphery too costly.8 In a geopolitical dynamic recognizable to realists whereby the
international system shapes the states, via socialization and emulation, a convergence in governance took place: since the capitalist national
state is best able to mobilize power in international competition, all states emulated this model through defensive modernization.9 In the era
of de-colonization, these twin dynamics propelled a real diffusion of power to the periphery; however, Clark showed that, to compensate, the
core engineered the globalization of neo-liberal practices, creating an international society of only semi-sovereign states in the periphery.10
What is the link between neo-liberal globalization and democratization? While globalization created a
capitalist global political economy that ostensibly facilitated democratization, Western states also
actively manipulated it to export democracy. As theorized notably by Levitsky and Way,11 globalization gave
Western states leverage over weaker less developed countries (LDCs) via sanctions, diplomatic
pressures, conditionality and intervention. However, their pressures were most effective where
paralleled by linkage: socio-economic penetration and interdependencies resulting from economic integration. Linkage, via
diasporas, media penetration and the internet could tilt the internal power balance toward democratization, by
creating and empowering constituencies pressing for it: Western- financed transnational non-governmental organization (NGO) networks built
up civil society, and emergent regional elites were socialized through educational exchanges. Solingen12 saw responsiveness to Western
democracy promotion as advanced by the rise inside non-democratic regimes of business-dominated “internationalist coalitions” at the
expense of statist-nationalist ones, a function of the move from bi-polarity, when authoritarian national security states had been fostered by
super-power patrons, to a US-centric neo-liberal world empowering Western-linked bankers, finance ministers, and trading bourgeoisies.
Finnemore and Sikkink13 showed that states were socialized into standards of “civilized” international society
notably by international organizations and NGOs that linked external and internal liberal norm
entrepreneurs, such as democratization activists, to spread norms domestically. Huntington14 identified a
“snowballing” effect in which the de-legitimation of authoritarian governance made democracy appear to be
the only legitimate form of rule and Rosenau15 stressed how transnational linkages encouraged anti-authoritarian movements to
spill across borders, as was famously the case in the Arab spring. The dominant ideology was that economic success required democratization,
which alone had the legitimacy, predictability and informational advantages needed to encourage investors and innovation – while
authoritarian regimes fostered economically counterproductive rent seeking. In parallel, as reflected in “World Society”16 approaches, there
was a normative shift from an international society based on sovereign equal states to one wherein sovereignty was made conditional on “good
governance” and states’ fulfilment of their “responsibility to protect”, with human rights violations justifying intervention – all as judged and
implemented by the great powers, above all the US hegemon. The export of the non-violent resistance paradigm, popularized by Gene Sharp
and theorized by Stephan and Chenoweth17 publicized the techniques by which activists could use non-violent protest to provoke the collapse
of authoritarian regimes; this is said to have played some role in inspiring the techniques of the Arab uprising. Less often observed was, as
Ayoob and Lustick18 suggested, how human rights and democratization campaigns aimed to deprive late developing states, for better or
worse, of the tools of violence earlier used in the consolidation of core states, hence perpetuating state weakness in the periphery that
sustained core dominance over it. These one-way diffusionist models capture important tendencies, but greatly oversimplify reality, in
neglecting three important counter-realities. Firstly, there is arguably a contradiction within the norm package exported by globalization that
works against smooth norm diffusion. Thus, paradoxically, even
as globalization appears to be an engine in the
horizontal spread of democratization, it paradoxically also dilutes it: in locking states into trade pacts
that remove much economic policy , particularly economic rights, from political contestation,
democracy is hollowed out as the economic policies of all political parties converge on the neo-liberal
consensus, big money and big corporate media manipulate elections and electorates are de-
politicized or set against each other over race and immigration issues. The function of states changes
from the provision of social needs to disciplining their societies as needed to attract global finance
capital via a “race to the bottom”; the state becomes more accountable to transnational capital and
less to its citizenry . In the periphery, the consequences have been particularly damaging. While in the core,
Sorensen observed,19 democratic consolidation was normally accompanied by periods of growing affluence and equality, globalization
produces inequality on a world scale20 and, as Boix21 found, this high inequality undermined
democratization in the periphery. What the West exported to the periphery was democratic procedure
without the substance of political equalization or, in Robinson’s words, “low intensity democracy”.22 For Huntington, unless
economic development consolidated new democracies, a reverse authoritarian wave was likely ;23 and, as Petras and

Veltmeyer24 argued, globalization often generated some hybrid form of “electoral” or “ neo-

authoritarianism”.

Democracy doesn’t solve radical Middle Eastern Governments

Greenfield 13 (Daniel, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, March 15, 2013,
“Democracy Is Not the Answer,” Front Page Magazine,
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/democracy-is-not-the-answer/ mm)

The Arab Spring has taught us to question the idea that democracy is an absolute good. Initially the outcome
of the Palestinian Arab elections that rewarded Hamas was thought not to apply to the wider region. That assumption proved to be wrong. We
now know that Hamas’ victory foreshadowed the Muslim Brotherhood's victory. And we know that Islamists
have the inside track in elections because they represent a familiar ideology that has not been
discredited in the minds of a majority of Muslims. We can no longer afford to be bound by a Cold War
argument against Communism that has outlived its usefulness, especially once liberals turned left and defected from a national
security consensus. Universal democracy has proven to be about as universal a panacea as international law
or the United Nations.

Middle Eastern democratic transition leads to regional instability

Peter 12 (Rada, PhD in International Relations, and an MA in diplomacy and security policy from the
Corvinus University Budapest. He is associate professor at the Budapest College of Communication and
Business and the ELTE University, “Rethinking the “democratic peace theory”: turbulent democratization
in North Africa and the Middle East and the external dimension,” 2012,
http://cenaa.org/analysis/rethinking-the-democratic-peace-theory-turbulent-democratization-in-north-
africa-and-the-middle-east-and-the-external-dimension/, mm)
It is not surprising that the choice from the different options is not easy for the Transatlantic community. In this sense, the immediate outcome
of the “Arab spring’ is definitely dangerous.The Transatlantic community needs to measure the pros and cons
whether the security of stability or the insecurity of democracy is better. Even though democracy is in line
with our values and with our long term interests, the “Arab spring’ created a highly versatile geopolitical situation. The
democratic peace theory may be non falsifiable here but it is clear that the transitions are a turbulent
and messy interplay of external and domestic factors. As Michael Totten argued recently on the pages of the World
Affairs, the likelihood of genuine liberal democracies as a consequence of the “Arab spring‘ is close to zero, and the
only common feature of the processes is that all the countries are in turmoil. (Totten, 2012, p. 23) The problem
is that the Transatlantic community cannot step back to the old policies of supporting “liberal” dictators, that is those authoritarian regimes
which definitely did not serve the fulfillment of the Western values but at least did not threaten the Western interests directly in the short
term. The lslamist takeover was feared before the fall of the old regimes, and after the elections lslamists gain in power was not a surprise as
they were the most (if not the only) organized political forces in the region. The
political turmoil decreases the ability of the
new regimes to maintain security domestically and consequently the stability of the region. The new
and week regimes may divert public attention by initiate unpredictable foreign policy steps . (lnbar, 2012)
Furthermore, even without direct decisions the events have negative consequences. For instance, Libya and Yemen are on the edge of collapse
and the weapons, especially from Libya, have dispersed in the region.[3] The turbulent events of the “Arab spring‘ definitely threaten the
interests and indirectly the security of the Transatlantic community. Stability
has been our goal in the region which in
many times collided with the values of a liberal Western democracy: freedom, rule of law and respect for human
rights. Now, democratic opening may bring new scenarios in which the new democracies are not in line
with the Western values, consequently it is difficult to judge whether the democratic peace theory is
still applicable.
Conflict of Interests
 Generic
Democratization fails – illiberal regional powers and security dilemma
Börzel ’15 [2015. Tanja A. Börzel holds the chair for European Integration at the Freie Universität
Berlin. She received her PhD from the European University Institute in Florence, Italy in 1999. From 1999
to 2004, she conducted her research and taught at the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective
Goods in Bonn, the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the University Heidelberg. “The noble west and
the dirty rest? Western democracy promoters and illiberal regional powers” Democratization, 22:3, 519-
535]
Exploring and comparing the interactions between Western democracy promoters, illiberal regional regimes, and target countries provides a
fruitful approach to studying international democracy promotion and challenges some conventional wisdoms in the state of the art. First,
rather than intentionally promoting autocracy or blocking democracy,
illiberal powers seek to countervail Western
democracy promotion in order to protect their economic, geostrategic, or political interests, which are
not so different from those of Western democracy promoters. Where the two differ is that illiberal regional
powers do not have to balance security and stability against democracy and human rights. Second, this
democratization-stability dilemma undermines the effectiveness of Western democracy promotion
more than the countervailing strategies of nondemocratic regional powers. True, if democracy promotion threatens their geopolitical and
economic interests or regime survival, Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia seek to undermine democratic processes to
the extent that they unfold. They offer non-democratic regimes economic, political, and military assistance and threaten democracy-minded
ruling elites to withdraw it. Moreover, they may undermine the capacity of government to introduce democratic changes by
destabilizing
the country. Yet, with the exception of Ukraine and Georgia, democratic processes are not promoted by Western
powers but mostly endogenously driven. More often than not, the EU and US share the interest of illiberal
regional powers in the stability and security of a region. Not only did they fail to develop a coherent
approach on how to support the Arab Spring, they were also silent on the military coup against a
democratically elected government in Egypt, tolerated the Saudi-led military intervention of the Gulf Cooperation Council
that assisted Bahraini security forces in detaining thousands of protesters, and stood by the massive human rights violations
committed by the Assad regime in Syria. These two findings do not only challenge the admittedly stylized
juxtaposition of the “noble West” promoting democracy, and the “dirty rest” promoting autocracy. They
also yield some important policy implications, particularly for the EU and the US. For actors whose foreign policy is not only oriented towards
geostrategic interests but which also seek to promote moral goals, all good things seldom go together.81 The
more unstable a target
state is and the less democratic, the more dif- ficult it will be to reconcile the protection and
promotion of human rights and democracy with ensuring security and stability. The democratization-
stability dilemma seems to be somewhat unavoidable and undermines the capacity of Western
democracy promoters to design credible democracy promotion policies based on consistent criteria
and reliable rewards.

Democratic and non-democratic regimes will come in conflict with their interests
Börzel ’15 [2015. Tanja A. Börzel holds the chair for European Integration at the Freie Universität
Berlin. She received her PhD from the European University Institute in Florence, Italy in 1999. From 1999
to 2004, she conducted her research and taught at the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective
Goods in Bonn, the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the University Heidelberg. “The noble west and
the dirty rest? Western democracy promoters and illiberal regional powers” Democratization, 22:3, 519-
535]
After the “big bang” enlargement of the EU, which marked the end point of the successful democratization of post-communist countries in
Central and Eastern Europe, optimism about Western democracy promotion quickly started to fade. The post-Soviet area, which became the
target of EU and US efforts at democracy promotion, has not made any significant progress towards democracy. The so called newly
independent states seem to have developed rather stable hybrid regimes “in the gray zone between democracy and autocracy”,10 which have
been referred to as “semi-authoritarianism”,11 “electoral authoritarianism”,12 or “competitive authoritarianism”.13 The “Arab Spring”
challenged the long-time persistence of authoritarianism in the Middle East and North Africa. Yet,
the EU and the US were clearly
taken by surprise by the recent developments and have only reluctantly endorsed democratic change.
Their support for the new regimes has done little to foster democracy ; Tunisia is the only country which has seen
some significant improvements in the democratic quality of its regime.14 US and EU attempts at promoting democracy and
good governance in Sub-Sahara Africa have proven equally futile.15 While the democratization literature has always
been sceptical about the role of external actors in promoting democratic transition and consolidation, the ineffectiveness of their attempts is
often blamed on the presence of powerful spoilers in the region that oppose democracy.16 However, this special issue convincingly
demonstrates that illiberal
states do not make autocracy promotion an integral part of their foreign policies
in the same way as the US and EU have done it with democracy promotion. Nor do they see Western
democracy promotion in third countries necessarily as a threat they have to counter. While Russia, China,
and Saudi Arabia quell external and domestic attempts at democracy promotion at home, the contributors to this special issue find little
evidence that they seek to promote their own or any other non-democratic regime type beyond their own borders. They do not use their
economic and military capabilities to induce autocratic reforms in other countries. Interestingly, illiberal states do engage in governance export
at the regional level. Regional organizations can promote autocracy by boosting the legitimacy and sovereignty of their autocratic members.17
Moreover, the Council of Independent States, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the League of Arab States, and the Gulf Cooperation
Council explicitly prescribe and actively promote and protect the building, modification, and respect of governance institutions in their member
states. In addition, they do so by referring to democracy, human rights, or rule of law. The regional commitment of illiberal powers to liberal
norms and values serves to prevent political instability in the region, attract foreign aid and trade, or deflect attempts at governance transfer by
Western actors.18 Such signalling is strategic and aims at stabilizing rather than transforming autocracy at home. However, such regional
commitments would lose their credibility if illiberal powers promoted autocracy abroad.19 Furthermore, regional organizations can also restrict
illiberal powers in promoting autocracy and resisting Western democracy promotion. Russia’s threat to punish Ukraine for entering a Deep and
Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement with the EU by economic retaliation runs against the decision-making rules of the Eurasian Economic
Union (EEU) according to which Russia cannot impose any trade restrictions against Ukraine unilaterally. The two other members of the EEU,
Belarus and Kazakhstan, have already refused to support Russia in a trade war against Ukraine.20 Like their commitment to liberal norms and
values in regional organization, responses of illiberal regional powers to Western democracy promotion are motivated by regime survival, rent-
seeking, and the protection of economic and security interests.21 The findings of this special issue largely confirm this argument. Saudi Arabia
supported the violent suppression of political protest in Bahrain for fear of democratic spill-over.22 The 2011 and 2012 elections in Russia,
which were widely perceived as fraudulent, heightened Putin’s concerns about the survival of his regime due to possible contagion effects
emanating from public uprisings in Ukraine.23 He has been even more concerned about the Westernization of Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, and
Armenia pulling out of Russia’s traditional sphere of influence.24 Democratization
is a precondition for closer economic
and security relations with the West, of which membership in the EU and NATO is the biggest
incentive the EU and US have on offer for promoting democracy. Countervailing EU and US democracy promotion in
its near abroad is, hence, Putin’s strategy to defend Russia’s sphere of influence against what he perceives as an expansion of the Western
sphere of influence into the post-Soviet area.25 Defending Russia’s power over the region also helps to ensure the survival of Putin’s regime by
boosting his approval rates through a foreign policy that claims to restore Russia as a great power and containing the risk of democratic spill-
over. China’s
indifference towards EU and US democracy promotion in Sub-Sahara Africa and Myanmar
confirms the finding that illiberal regional powers do not take issue with Western democracy
promotion as long as their strategic interests are not at stake. Angola and Ethiopia are too far away, while Myanmar is
too small and too poor to have a negative effect on Beijing’s geostrategic interest or regime survival. Hong Kong, by contrast, may turn into an
attractive alternative model to the autocratic rule of the Chinese Communist Party threatening its exclusive grip on power at home. While it
is unclear to what extent and how actively the US and EU seek to promote democracy in Hong Kong,
Beijing argues that the West supports democratic protesters to reaffirm its influence in the region
against China’s rising power.26 Saudi Arabia saw the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt as a potential
threat, whose model of a democratically elected Islamist regime could have challenged the legitimacy
of the Saudi kingdom as the protector of Islam.27 How far Saudi support for the Egyptian military has undermined US and EU
democratization and liberalization strategies is not clear given the latter’s uneasiness over the Muslim Brotherhood and their tacit approval of
the military assisted coup d’e´tat. Likewise, the EU and the US have shared Saudi Arabia’s preference for stability
and security in the Gulf region. Their response to Saudi financial and military assistance to the Bahraini al-Khalifa regime in
suppressing Shia protests was at best “timid”.28 Since more than 70% of Bahrainis are Shia, the overthrow of the Sunni monarchy fuelled fears
of Iran escalating violence to enhance its influence in the Gulf region and undermining its stability. In sum, democratic
and non-
democratic actors equally pursue geostrategic interests. These interests often conflict with
international democracy promotion making Western actors compromise their efforts and illiberal
powers resist them. Yet, rent-seeking and securing spheres of influence may also concur with democratic change promoted by the
West. Russia, for instance, welcomed the “Tulip Revolution” in Kyrgyzstan as a chance to expand its influence in Central Asia.29 In the end,
countervailing strategies appear to depend on whether democratic and non-democratic powers pursue competing interests in a region.
EU Model Fails – Middle East
 Economic Focus
Economic interests perpetuate authoritarianism without leading to reform
Durac and Cavatorta ’09 [Dr Vincent Durac lectures in Middle East Politics and Development in the
University College Dublin School of Politics and International Relations. Dr Francesco Cavatorta, School
of Law and Government, Dublin City University. “Strengthening Authoritarian Rule through Democracy
Promotion? Examining the Paradox of the US and EU Security Strategies: The Case of Bin Ali’s Tunisia”
British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, April 2009 36(1), 3–19]

As mentioned earlier, one

of the pillars of European democracy promotion in the region has been economic
integration. While not offering the prospect of membership, the EU believes that pro-market economic reforms will
have beneficial repercussions in terms of democratization on authoritarian regimes. The logic therefore of
partnership prevails among EU policy-makers who claim that it is through economic engagement that political developments will occur. In this
context, grants
and aid are offered to the target country to make the reforms necessary to be able to
‘integrate’ the regional economic exchanges. Such logic is based on the theory that economic
advantages, which will inevitably occur in the target country after a period of ‘adaptation’, will create new centres of
independent power that will make demands on the political system to reform and accommodate
through democratic procedures the ‘demands’ of new sectors of society. The EU links with Tunisia, which have seen the two actors
sign an Association Agreement, have partially reflected the validity of such a theoretical construct. In the decade from 1995, Tunisia has made
considerable economic progress and most economic indicators are better than for most of its regional neighbours. Valentin Mbougueng, who
argued in 1999 that we were witnessing the arrival on the world scene of the ‘desert tiger’, has examined Tunisian economic success in some
detail.63 With respect to the support and crucial role of the EU in terms of fostering Tunisian economic success, Testas argues that EU
investment has led to higher level of total investment in the country and a development of greater
economic activity .64 This economic development has however not generated significant repercussions
at the political level in terms of credible democratization or even liberalization . The recent creation of a
second chamber devoid of any power seems to have been executed simply to satisfy the need for the
EU to ‘tick a box’ when it comes to highlighting democratic improvements in a partner country. If anything, the
newfound economic success has led Bin Ali to further restrict political access to different groups in
society in order to negate the possibility of debating the important social and economic issues that the
boom has created. For instance, much of the improved economic indicators fail to highlight the unfair
distribution of wealth, which sees those close to the regime benefiting from rents to the detriment of large sectors of the work force.
In addition, access to consumer goods has certainly led to a higher standard of living, but with very heavy personal levels of debt. This risks
becoming a problem in case of economic downturn, something that is already occurring in light of higher energy prices and de-localization away
from Tunisia to other more profitable parts of the world. All
these issues have therefore become a potential bone of
contention for the regime and the political opposition in all its guises, which leads the regime to crack
down harshly and impedes any movement away from authoritarian rule as the theory predicted. The
EU however is not disturbed and continues to praise Bin Ali and his efforts to modernize the country.
The very logic of a neo-liberal economic integration that strongly favours European businesses over Tunisian ones (agriculture is excluded from
the Association Agreement) and the enforcement of rules/regulations that are perceived to be unfair by sectors of Tunisian society make an
alliance with Bin Ali necessary. There is very little incentive for the EU to use the human rights clauses that are present in the agreement to
punish Tunisia because the economic benefits that the EU now derives from the relationship might be jeopardized with a change at the top.
Some data will suffice to highlight the positive outcomes that exist for the EU when it comes to economic exchanges with Tunisia. The EU
represents by far the largest market for Tunisian goods (78.6% in 2002 rising to 84% in 2005) and the EU is also the primary exporter to Tunisia
with 70.3% of goods in 2002, rising to 72% in 2005, coming from EU countries. The balance of payments heavily favours the EU, which had a
surplus of almost 4 million Tunisian dinars in 2002. In addition, it should be highlighted that the EU also donates 78.4% (2002) of all foreign aid
to the country.65 The EU itself states that ‘Tunisia is one of the key beneficiaries of financial co-operation in the Mediterranean, because,
thanks to its absorption capacity, it has received around 13% of the MEDA budget while having only 4% of the population of the Mediterranean
region’.66 Finally, it should be noted that while Tunisia is highly dependent on the EU, Tunisian goods represent a risible percentage of EU
imports. All this shows how strong the hand of the EU is vis-a`-vis Tunisia. It
is therefore all the more surprising, if we are to take
the EU rhetoric at face value regarding democratization and human rights, that the EU is incapable of pressurizing Bin Ali’s
regime into promoting serious liberalizing and democratizing reforms. A more convincing explanation
for the absence of pressure rests on the EU’s interest to fully integrate Tunisia in the economic ‘region’ the EU is
building in the Mediterranean. This region sees the EU itself as the central actor and main beneficiary of the liberal reforms occurring in third
countries. It is again no surprise that in the National Indicative Programme for Tunisia published by the EU in 2005, the
vast bulk of the
money the EU provides (48.6%) is destined to strengthen economic reforms and market economy
institutions, with the rest going to human resources development (such as vocational training) and to economic infrastructure. There is
almost nothing in the Indicative Programme about human rights and democratization aside from a brief statement
about the EU’s belief in the promotion of democracy and respect for human rights as core objectives. In its 2006 report on Tunisia, Amnesty
International for example indicates the following: (a) ‘Freedom of expression remained severely curtailed’; (b)
‘Human rights defenders continued to face harassment and sometimes physical violence’ , and (c) ‘judges’
activities and right to freedom of expression were further restricted’.67 At the more general political level, Bin Ali’s control over the political
system has allowed him to modify the constitution to enable him being re-elected to the post of President despite an original ban on more than
two mandates. Opposition parties are not permitted and the popular Islamist party is still outlawed. All this
occurs despite the legal obligations in the Association Agreement with the EU to respect human rights and promote democratization. The

EU has never punished Tunisia by enforcing the human rights clauses present in the Agreement. EU policy-making
towards Tunisia indicates quite clearly that material interests are more important than
democratization and human rights despite the rhetorical commitment to it in both the European
Security Strategy and the region-specific initiatives such as the recently launched European
Neighbourhood Policy.
 Bottom-Up Approach

EU democracy promotion relies on the US but is substantially weaker

Durac and Cavatorta ’09 [Dr Vincent Durac lectures in Middle East Politics and Development in the
University College Dublin School of Politics and International Relations. Dr Francesco Cavatorta, School
of Law and Government, Dublin City University. “Strengthening Authoritarian Rule through Democracy
Promotion? Examining the Paradox of the US and EU Security Strategies: The Case of Bin Ali’s Tunisia”
British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, April 2009 36(1), 3–19]

But, as with American policies on democracy promotion, the rhetoric of the EU in this area is belied by practice and the
EMP also has been the object of very significant criticisms. Its development into the European Neighbourhood
Policy seems equally unable to deliver on its promises. In the first place, a number of writers have observed on
the lack of coherence that characterizes European interventions in this area. Despite attempts since the 1990s to
forge a common European foreign and security policy, the reality is that ‘Europe is still far from being a unitary actor’.40
Policy-making in these areas remains, for the most part, the preserve of the national governments of EU member states, which opens the way
for separate actions by individual members parallel to common policies. The complex decision-making structures and processes
of the EU further complicate efforts to achieve coherence and consistency in foreign policy matters. Gorm Rye Olsen
points out that, at various levels, the Council, the Commission and to some extent the Council of the EU each have a remit in the area of foreign
policy.41 On a deeper level, EU policy in this area is confronted by a dilemma similar to that faced by the US in the form of the tension between
the objectives of promoting democracy and ensuring security. If there is a conflict between the promotion of democracy
and security, the EU will give the highest priority to security. The clearest example of this came at a time when common
EU policies in this area were just beginning to be formulated. The military coup in Algeria in 1992, which ended the
process of democratization there, came just two months after the EU set respect for democracy and
human rights as conditions for the receipt of aid. Despite this, EU member states remained silent as to
the rights and wrongs of the military intervention. Moreover, at the behest of France, the EU actually increased its aid to
Algeria.42 Gillespie and Whitehead have observed that EU policy towards the Mediterranean is primarily driven by
security objectives, which tends to lead to accommodation of authoritarian regimes rather than
efforts to undermine them. Thus far, European policy-makers have acted as if, whenever the spectre of
radical Islam could be invoked, that justified back-pedalling on political reform.43 A critical difficulty for the EU
is that it has limited resources at its disposal to compel compliance with its requirements in relation to
political reform. In Southern and Eastern Europe the inducement of eventual membership of the EU could be held out. However, when
Morocco applied for EU membership in 1987, the response was that this was impossible on geographical grounds. It seems that ‘Europe’ could
extend eastwards to the former Soviet Union and beyond, and south-west to the Turkish frontier with Iraq, but it cannot incorporate
Casablanca or Tangier.44 Nor, unlike, the US, does the EU possess a significant common European and defence competence. Even if non-
military instruments are held to be more relevant to the nature of the challenges at issue, the possibility of the US in extremis backing up its
objectives with effective force account for its being a far more potent influence in world affairs than the EU.45 A number of significant
consequences flow from this. In the first place, the EMP places great emphasis on building partnerships with governments in the region.
Because, the EMP extends to so many areas where enhanced cooperation is sought it becomes very
difficult to develop a democracy promotion strategy that does not conflict with efforts that require
consent and collaboration in other areas.46 This, in turn, leads to a preference for a cautious bottom-
up approach to political change which is expressed in support for civil society organizations. However, the limitations of a
bottom up, gradualist approach have been made clear. EU strategy in this regard has been criticized for its
flawed conception of civil society in the Middle East which is usually limited to secular, liberal groups,
excluding those inspired by religious faith and the willingness to limit civil support to partners that are
known to and approved of by ‘partner’ governments.47 One of the primary consequences of this approach is that the
EU, like the US, is exposed to the charge of double standards . Chourou argues that after sifting through all the
rhetoric, one can identify Europe’s three real concerns in the Mediterranean: oil, markets and immigration.48 However, even if the EU
it is doubtful that EU
managed to overcome problems of coherence and consistency in its promotion of democracy in the Middle East,

policy has the potential to offer any significant alternative to that of the US in the short to medium
term. Despite some points of difference, usually expressed through rhetoric rather than actions, between the EU and the US on
aspects of foreign policy in the region, there is little evidence of either the desire or the capacity on
the part of the EU to do more than assert its ‘right’ to a greater role in the region, in partnership with,
rather than in opposition to the US. As a result, ‘the major powers [including European ones] and their policies are perceived by
most Muslims as being primarily responsible for keeping Muslim societies in the sad plight they are in today’.49 Writing in 1998, Perthes noted
that, in the past, Europe critiqued US policy on the Middle East on a number of points, including the American tendency to ‘demonize’ certain
actors in the region, its failure to act in an even-handed fashion in relation to Israel and Palestine, and its assumption that only one external
player, namely the US itself, could play a political role in the region. Nonetheless, he argued that, contrary to some Arab hopes, ‘ the
EU and
the majority of European policy makers have no intention of counterbalancing US policies in the
Middle East’.50 This is confirmed in policy documents and official statements. The European Security Strategy commits the EU to an
international order based on effective multilateralism, but multilateralism in this context places a particularly high value on the EU’s good
relations with the United States. As the ESS notes: One of the core elements of the international system is the transatlantic relationship.51 The
strategy document implicitly recognizes some of the relative weaknesses of the EU in foreign policy matters in asserting that a ‘more capable
Europe is within our grasp, though it will take time to realize our full potential’, and in acknowledging the challenge ‘to bring together the
different instruments and capabilities’ of the EU and its members in order to promote security and development.52 The important, if
unintended effect of this, as Toje points out, is that ‘the ESS illustrates that the EU will continue to rely on US
agenda setting’ .53 More recently, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the EU Commissioner for External Relations and European Neighbourhood
Policy, has reiterated the commonality of American and European policies on the Middle East. ... the truth is EU–US differences are

routinely exaggerated and our common objectives stay on the plate.54 At the same press conference, President of EU Commission,
Jose Barroso, emphasized the complementarity of EU and US approaches: ‘Does anyone really think that the United States alone or Europe
alone can meet the global challenge? It’s impossible ... So let’s work together because the basic values are the same ... ’ 55
Democracy Promotion Bad – US
Transition Fails
 Destabilization – Middle East
Forced democratization leads to backlash and drawing in of outside powers, further
destabilizing the region
Hinnebusch ’15 [March 24, 2015. Raymond Hinnebusch is a Professor at the School of International
Relations at the University of St. Andrews. “Globalization, democratization, and the Arab uprising: the
international factor in MENA's failed democratization” Democratization, 22:2, 335-357]
In short, while the global hegemony of Westcentric international financial capital has reconstituted massive economic inequality on a global scale, the core
simultaneously exports the formal procedures of democracy (elections, independent judiciaries) but emptied of its substance – political equality. Second, the
diffusionist narrative obscures the fact that democratization is a power struggle, and hence depends on the power of
the global hegemon, backed by a Westcentric “collective hegemon”, that promotes it. The legitimacy of the US hegemon is,
however, strongest in the core and weakest in the periphery and the less legitimacy it enjoys, the more it must rely on more costly hard power to

enforce democratic capitalism. As Hegemonic Stability Theory acknowledges, such “liberal imperialism” makes the hegemon very

vulnerable to imperial overreach which damages its economy and encourages rising alternative
powers to contest its hegemony;25 while the US was, in the 1990 – 2002 period, largely unconstrained by such countervailing power, beginning with
the highly contested Iraq war, other powers began to soft-balance against Washington and after the failure of the Iraq
intervention and the global financial crisis, the US retreated to “offshore balancing” in the Middle East. After Iraq, authoritarian regimes

were able to undermine the legitimacy of democracy-promotion by depicting it as American

interventionism. Also, as Levitsy and Way26 acknowledged, Western leverage was diluted when applied to larger
states that the West could not afford to destabilize (Saudi Arabia) or ones with alternative global
patrons (Iran); indeed, Brazil, Russia, India and China (the BRICS) had coalesced to soft balance against the US. They aimed to promote a
global power balance supportive of a renewed plurality of global norms and a return to the primacy of state
sovereignty in international society. Democracy promotion had provoked a backlash by the second half of the 2000, with a
growing number of governments expelling Western NGOs and prohibiting local groups from taking
foreign funds.27 In these new conditions, when democratic revolts took place, rather than provoking a
global consensus against authoritarian regimes, they were more likely to become a matter of
international power contestation , with pro-democracy intervention countered by non-democratic or
neighbouring states fearful of the demonstration effect or the threat to the regional power balance.28 Contesting sides

inside states undergoing revolt sought to draw in outside powers on their side, further destabilizing rather than

democratizing them.

US intervention is inversely correlated with effective democratization – the result is

intensified destabilization and failed states
Hinnebusch ’15 [March 24, 2015. Raymond Hinnebusch is a Professor at the School of International
Relations at the University of St. Andrews. “Globalization, democratization, and the Arab uprising: the
international factor in MENA's failed democratization” Democratization, 22:2, 335-357]

The West has certainly left a profound impact on MENA but it has not been benign and has therefore inevitably generated
resistance. In a first wave of globalization the West imposed an arbitrary and flawed states system made up of
fragile regimes wherein early liberal experiments rapidly failed and more indigenous hybrids of neo-patrimonialism and
populism became the main state building formulas. The second wave of globalization at the end of the Cold War exposed these
regimes to the powerful homogenizing material forces (finance capital, markets), triumphant liberal
ideology (via transnational linkages and the new globalized communications technology) and the dominance of a liberal
global hegemon, the US, which increasingly penetrated the region. However, rather than these reinforcing each other, the

incongruence in the Western project prevented achievement of hegemony over the region. The core’s
export of democracy suffered, first of all, from a built-in contradiction between the global inequality
generated by neo-liberalism and the democratic norm of equality. The US hegemon cannot bridge this
contradiction because it lacks both the hard and soft power to control the region and provokes anti-
hegemonic balancing by global and regional powers. The incoherence of global liberalism inevitably generates
regional backlashes, with counter-ideologies, nationalist populism and Islamism, retaining remarkable power in
MENA; the latter remains the only credible counter-hegemonic ideology opposing triumphant world liberalism. Moreover, pre-Arab uprising
regimes proved extremely resilient in the face of globalization, and indeed adept in using global resources – investment, arms, technology – to
adapt. In the oil-poor republics, regimes, such as the Tunisian and Egyptian ones, selectively exploited global neo-
liberal pressures to reconstitute statist authoritarian
regimes in inegalitarian crony capitalist forms
quite resistant to democratization . In parallel, the Arab regimes most incorporated into Westcentric global
financial networks, the Arab Gulf state were the least democratic , not only internally, but also in their use of finance capital
to promote anti-democratic forces. To be sure, the vulnerabilities of the authoritarian republics were exposed in
the Arab uprising, when communications globalization, enabling the export of democratization
discourses – pushing for the empowerment of populations even as regional incarnations of neo-liberalism generated grievances among
them – precipitated the Arab revolt, profoundly destabilizing the region. The Arab uprisings were both a
symptom of globalization and a backlash against it, a continuation and intensification of struggle
between those seeking to make regional states transmission belts of neo-liberalism and those wanting to protect
the indigenous moral economy. In spite of the opportunity presented by the uprisings to tilt internal power balances, Western
and regional intervention in the Arab uprisings states promoted not democratization but intensified

destabilization. Neither leverage or linkage gave the West the influence to peacefully promote
democratization while militarized intervention proved disastrous in Libya, as it had earlier been in Iraq, with the state
demolished, empowering militias and trans-state jihadists rather than democrats; even when intervention was expected
but not delivered, as in Syria, it encouraged rebellion and with similar results. Further diluting any democratizing normative impetus was the
global norm fragmentation deepened by the Arab uprising, pitting the West’s “liberal imperialist” “humanitarian” interventionism against
Russian and Chinese defence of sovereignty in which each checkmated the other rather than cooperating to facilitate a stable regional
transition. Similarly, at the regional level, uprising states became targets of competitive interference by rival powers backing opposing forces
and also largely checkmating each other. Even the presence of an aspirant liberal Islamic hegemon, Turkey, was unable make democracy
normatively hegemonic. Rather, external intervention (sanctions, arms supplies) in internal power struggles (Syria, Libya) magnified and
prolonged a deepening destabilization of states that was profoundly inhospitable to democratization. As
regional states fractured
under the effect of internal revolt, contrary norms were wielded in domestic power struggles between
middle class liberal activists, “deep” state establishments and rival versions of Islamism that either
rejected or selectively embraced aspects of Western defined democratic norms. Democrats proved inferior
to statist authoritarians and Islamist radicals who had either more guns, money or ideological
motivation – and much of it came from external sources. Indicative of the negative impact of external – global and
regional – interference in the Arab uprising states was the inverse relation between the likelihood of
democratization and the intensity of external competitive interference: where it was most intense, the result
was failed states (Libya, Syria); where it was significant, Bonapartist restoration (Egypt); and only where it was most muted did “low
intensity democracy” result (Tunisia).
The expectation of US intervention on behalf of democratization shapes strategies and
eventually leads to stalemates and overly violent conflicts – Syria proves
Hinnebusch ’15 [March 24, 2015. Raymond Hinnebusch is a Professor at the School of International
Relations at the University of St. Andrews. “Globalization, democratization, and the Arab uprising: the
international factor in MENA's failed democratization” Democratization, 22:2, 335-357]

In Syria, the uprising began as a mobilization of protestors demanding democratization against a

repressive authoritarian regime, arguably a test of the non-violent resistance model which anticipates
the use of violence against mass non-violent protest will precipitate either defections in the security forces or
external sanctions and intervention. Indeed, the possibility of external military intervention shaped both

opposition and regime strategies. Western funded Syrian expatriates, young cosmopolitans that were
instrumental in initiating and internationalizing the uprising, understood that they could not succeed without external
intervention to restrain the regime’s repressive options. External activists told those on the ground,
pointing to the Libya no-fly zone, that “the international community won’t sit and watch you be killed”. They
claimed that another Hama was not possible because “ Everything is being filmed on YouTube, and
there’s a lot of international attention on the Middle East”.63 This encouraged Syrian activists to risk their
lives and to eschew the compromise with the regime needed for a pacted transition. The Libyan intervention
gave decisive momentum to the uprising.64 The regime, for its part, having survived several decades of Western isolation, had
always seen itself as besieged by foreign enemies; the role played by external exiles and internet activists abroad in
provoking or escalating the uprising was congruent with its perceptions of conspiracy and tarnished the
indigenous opposition with the suspicion of treasonous dealings with foreign enemies, justifying the resort to repressive
violence. The regime tried to calibrate its violence within limits that would not trigger an international
bandwagon toward intervention, although over time this bar was steadily raised . Later yet, it felt the need
to quickly smash resistance so as not to lose control of territory that could be used to stage intervention as had
happened in Libya, thus precipitating a transition from the “security solution” to the “military solution ”.
This did not precipitate Western intervention for, in contrast to Libya, the consensus behind humanitarian
intervention had been destroyed by Western-led regime change in Libya. Repression did precipitate some defections from the
Syrian military, not enough to precipitate regime collapse but enough that the regime lost control of wide swathes of the
northeast of the country to armed insurgents. The struggle for Syria became a regional and
international proxy war; regionally, with Turkish, Saudi and Qatari support for the opposition being offset
by Iranian, Hizbollah and Iraqi support for the regime; and internationally, through American and European
support for the uprising offset by Russian and Chinese support for the regime. Iran proved a tenacious power
balancer: on the defensive, Tehran sought to create a protective land belt from Iraq (where post-US occupation, the move of the Maliki regime
against Sunni rivals made it more dependent on Iran) to Syria, and Hizbollah. These external involvements, each blocking the
other, contributed to the stalemating of the Syrian conflict , especially as the insurgents began to fight among
themselves, pitting more moderate Syrian rebels against transnational Al-Qaeda avatars, Jabhat al-Nursa and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria
(ISIS). With rising
levels of jihadist involvement, the West became more concerned with the
“international war on terror” than with the “Responsibility to Protect”.
 War – Generic
US democracy promotion incites violence and backlash, entrenches bad regimes
Smith, Econ Professor at Yale, ’12 (Tony Smith is Professor of Economics and Director of
Undergraduate Studies for the Department of Economics at Yale, “America's Mission: The United States
and the Worldwide Struggle for Democracy (Expanded Edition)”,
http://site.ebrary.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/lib/umich/detail.action?docID=10594477, Princeton
University Press, February 2012)

The irony of American liberal internationalism by late 2011 was that a framework for policy that had
done so much to established America’s preeminence in world affairs between 1945 and 2001 should
have contributed so significantly to its decline thereafter. Following 1945, American control over West Germany and
Japan had allowed it to transform these two lands politically and economically, integrating them into Washington’s orbit in a manner that gave
the free world a decisive advantage over its Soviet and communist rivals. If containment had been the primary track for U.S. foreign policy
during the cold war, a secondary track, consolidating the political and economic unity of the liberal democratic countries through multilateral
organizations under American leadership, had had decisive influence over the course of the global contest. The power advantage the United
States enjoyed was basic, to be sure, as were the personalities of Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, who brought the contest to a
successful conclusion that very few anticipated. But Woodrow
Wilson’s hope to make America secure by making the world
peaceful through the expansion of what by President Bill Clinton’s time was called “free-market democracies” meant that
liberal internationalism’s contribution to the outcome had shown itself to be fundamental. Yet during the first decade of the twenty-first
century, the very forces that had allowed America to win the cold war had created
the illusion that with relative ease
history could now be controlled and international affairs funda¬mentally restructured by the expansion of
the free-market democratic world into an international order of peace. Under neoconservative and neoliberal
auspices, democracy was believed to have a “universal appeal’’ with peace-giving qualities of benefit
to all peoples. A market economy both domestically and globally would compound the process of
political stabilization. Under the terms of the responsibility to protect,’1 progressive imperialism
became a form of “just war"’ and the American military that President George W. Bush announced
was "beyond challenge" was tasked with ushering in a new dawn of freedom worldwide. For a " unipolar
world’1 a global mission was conceived, as in neoliberal and neoconservative hands neo-Wilsonian ism evolved into a hard ideology, the
equivalent in conceptual terms to Marxism-Leninism, with a capacity to give leaders and people a sense of identity and worldwide purpose to a
degree that liberalism had never before possessed. In this march of folly, fueled not only by ideology but also by a will to power after
triumph in the cold war, all the earlier reservations about the difficulties of nation- and state-building
abroad that had been discussed over the preceding half century were disregarded, so that even after policymakers understood
that democracy did not grow spontaneously in many places, they were reassured by authoritative studies put out by
institutions like the RAND Corporation and the Army and Marine Corps that such missions could be accomplished. As
a consequence, although it was widely recognized that the failure to plan properly for Iraq after Baghdad had been captured was a
fundamental error, very few voices in positions of power were heard saying that the democratization of
Iraq and Afghanistan (or the thought of working with '"democratic” Pakistan) was likely a fool’s errand from the start.
Instead, efforts to rectify the failures at conceptualizing state- and nation-building turned out to be “how ton' or llcan do” publications that
only prolonged and deepened a misplaced American self-confidence that it was possible 10 use the window of
opportunity at the coun¬try s disposition as the world"s sole superpower to changc the logic of interna¬tional relations forever. Much the same
mixture of arrogance,
self-interest, and self-delusion characterized the arguments underlying the
“Washington Consensus” which boldly saw the key to world prosperity and peace in the interdependence generated by economic
globalization with its trinity of concepts—privatization, deregula¬tion, and openness. To be sure, economic interdependence was indeed
capable of delivering on its promise, as the integration of the European Union and the growth in world trade and investment centered on the
free-markct democracies so powerfully demonstrated for half a century after World War II. However, a serious problem lay in the inability of
political forces, either nationally or in¬ternationally, to control the capitalist genie once let out of its bottle. For in due course, deregulation
turned against the very system that had given birth to it, unleashing a flight of technology, capital, and jobs to countries in Asia espe¬cially and
permitting the irresponsible banking practices that engendered in the United States and the European Union (after having affected Mexico,
Russia, Southeast Asia, and Argentina more than a decade earlier) an economic crisis second in its devastation only to the Great Depression of
the 1930s. The result in the United States was not only the decimation first of the work¬ing and then of the middle classes as the top 10
percent of the nation (and es¬pecially the top 1 percent) monopolized virtually all the gains of economic openness for a period of more than
two decades but also a decline in national power as technology, capital, and jobs moved abroad and as China grew apaceJ Forall the talk
by President Barack Obama about the example the United States should set for the sake of democracy
promotion abroad, the first three years of his administration did not meaningfully address the deep-
seated underlying problems of economic growth and inequality in this country, nor the control by
corporations of the nation’s political life, nor concerns about national power based on an economy in
decline. As a result, liberal economic doctrine and practice were undermining democratic government as well as na¬tional power. Aspects of
the liberal agenda once too easily assumed to be au¬tomatically mutually reinforcing were coming to be increasingly at odds with one another.
Woodrow Wilson had recognized just such a possibility a century earlier when he chastised the greed and incompetence of the nation's
monopoly capi¬talists and asked for their regulation for the sake of the common good. Despite similar public utterances by President Obama a
century later, there was no follow-through with respect to asserting Washington’s power over corporate interests as had occurred when Wilson
became president. For Wilson and his fellow progressives, the question had been how “to recover representative gov¬ernment, not supersede
it.” For his day, Washington's main duty was 6tto pre¬vent the strong from crushing the weak,"' and he left no doubt but that it was the
captains of industry who were the greatest threat to the democratic life of early-twentieth-ccntury America. Wilson introduced antitrust laws,
child labor laws, a federal income tax, and the Federal Reserve System, among other re¬forms that made capitalism a more effective economic
system as well as one that reinforced democratic government.2 In 2011 the question was whether a similar resolve could be found in
Washington to rejuvenate the American economy in a way that rejuvenated its democracy. The
Wilsonian tradition thus found
itself in crisis. Within onlv two decades after the cold war, liberal internationalist overconfidence in the universal
ap¬peal of democratic government and in the blessing of free-market capitalism had combined to reduce the
effectiveness of mullilateral institutions and the capacity of the United States to provide leadership in
settling the problems of world order. A liberal order capable of withstanding the challenges of both fascism
and communism had come in a short time to be its own worst enemy. Communism was dead, but 4Lfree-market
democracy" was proving to be a much weaker blueprint for world order than had only recently been antici¬pated. As Machiavelli had
counseled in his Discourses, "Men always commit the error of not knowing where to limit their hopes, and by trusting to these rather than to a
just measure of their resources, they are generally ruined/’ One scenario for the future was bleak. It foresaw economic chaos as feeding on
itself; more self-defeating military interventions being undertaken; and all the while the banner of freedom and democracy being lifted at the
very mo¬ment that self-government was being undermined at home by vested interests and delusional thinking undcrgirding an imperial
presidency. So Michael Dcsch referred to l4the seeds of illiberal behavior” contained within liberalism itself, as it attributed a moral superiority
to its ways of being while seeing al-ternative systems both as morally inferior and as necessarily menacing. What¬ever the reversal suffered by
the implementation of the
Bush Doctrine, its essential message of the virtues of "‘benign hegemony"' or
“altruistic imperialism’’ continued to typify a liberalism that engaged in perpetual war for the sake of
perpetual peace.3 Liberalism may have been its own worst enemy, but there were other forces that challenged its future role as well. As
the fate of the Rose Revolution of 2003 in Georgia, of the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2(X)4-5, and of the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon in
2{K)5 all illustrated, transitions from authori¬tarian government were often quite difficult to accomplish. More critically, the model of state
capitalism in conjunction with authoritarian states was giving increasing evidence that it might prove more successful in creating national
power than the free-market democratic blueprint prevalent in the West. Not only China but also Russia had deep-set cultural and political
forces resisting the liberal appeal. More ominously, there w as increasing reason to think that in time authoritarian state capitalism might
consolidate itself in a way that could markedly increase the national power of China and Russia relative to the West and Japan, and this in a
fashion that diminished the international standing of the United States while breaking the hack of the unity that had held together the world of
free-market democracies.4 Perhaps this pessimism characteristic of 201 1 was exaggerated. The June Democracy Movement of 1987 had led to
the establishment of what subse¬quently appeared to be a solid democracy in South Korea, as did a plebiscite in Chile in 1988 and one in
Slovenia in 1990, Poland and the Czech Republic were among the countries that moved with relative ease to democracy once the Soviet empire
collapsed. In the case of Brazil, the most important of Latin American countries, the presidency of Fernando Alfonso
Coll or de Mello be¬ginning in 1990 (the first directly elected chief executive since the period of military government that began in J964),
followed by Fernando Henriquc Car¬doso (1995- ?001), Luiz lnacio Lula da Silva (2003-10), and then Dilma Rousseff (2011)
demonstrated the ability of a country outside the perimeter of American hegemony to combine
responsible government with strong eco¬nomic growth and successful projects of social justice. The
Brazilian model had obvious relevance for all of Latin America, with the potential to displace the appeal of
the “illiberal" variant of democracy, such as was evident in the Venezuela of Hugo Chavez and its imitators in parts of Latin
America/ So, too, the Arab world was finally in movement in the aftermath of the Tunisian uprising that
began late in 2010. giving birth to “the Arab Spring.’’ Stirred by the success of popular democracy
movements in Tunisia and Egypt that resulted in the fall of long-term dictators in January and February 2011, a popular
revolt began in Libya, one that Moammar Gadhafi moved savagely to repress. In March, the Arab League and the UN Security Council
voted to sanction intervention to stop the threat of mass murders by government forces in eastern Libya. On March 19 (the eighth anniversary
of the invasion of Iraq), American and British Tomahawk cruise missiles fell on Libyan government forces that Trench and British war planes
were attacking simultaneously. Non¬violent
mass protests started by politicized youths explicitly demanding
demo¬cratic government (and to all appearances uninterested in the rhetoric of Is¬lamic fundamentalism) demonstrated the
weakness of brutal and ineffective authoritarian government and the appeal of constitutional order, with its
em¬phasis on transparent and accountable government capable of providing a tan¬gible margin of freedom,, prosperity, and national dignity.
The Wilsonian promise appeared to be bearing fruit where few had thought to see it appear so robust K\ There
were those who
reacted to these developments by claiming that the Bush Doctrine, with its call to end tyranny around
the globe, was finally being vindicated. Yet such assertions overlooked the objection that the invasion
of Iraq had made it more problematic than would otherw ise have been the case for the moderate
forces in favor of democratic government in the Arab world to survive a struggle between a military
elite and a religious fundamentalist movement. The Iraq and Afghan wars, as well as the blank check
Washington extended to Israel, had not so much promoted the movements demanding free¬dom in
the Arab world but instead rendered them less likely to succeed. More, claims that the Bush Doctrine was vindicated
by the calls for democ¬racy in the Arab world were also likely to have to face up to seeing many of these movements fail. If Tunisia had the
good fortune to possess most of the ingredients for success—no serious ethnoreligious cleavages; a well-organized, moderate trade union
movement; a large, educated middle class; a small mili¬tary; a moderate mainstream Islamist movement; and no oil or gas resources to fund a
state independent of popular will—nowhere else in the Arab world (al¬lowance perhaps made for the monarchies in Jordan and Morocco,
while some held out hope for Syria or Lebanon) was there the same likelihood of making a transition to democracy/' That
said, the
Turkish model—where responsible government, economic growth, Islamic secularism, and social
justice were emerging with a character that was indigenous—might have influence in many countries
where histori¬cally the Ottoman Empire has left its mark. Just as it was possible that liberal internationalism's
dedication to democ¬racy promotion might still have life whatever the reversals in Iraq and Af¬ghanistan, so too was economic reform possible
whatever the damage inflicted by the crisis that began in 2008. For it is in the interest of capitalism to be regu¬lated; effective markets cannot
exist without the same kind of accountability and transparency we expect from democratic governments. More, suprana¬tional institutions
may experience growth as they take on the task of supervis¬ing at regional or international levels reforms that will also involve increased
political harmonization, if not integration. While the
hold of corporate influ¬ence on political elites in the United
States and national differences in the Eu¬ropean Union could block the very changes that it would be to their long-
term benefit to have, perhaps dramatic innovations could be adopted, should the Democrats insist on thoroughgoing reforms in the
spirit oi the Progressive Era or the New Deal when this party gave critical leadership, or should the Euro¬pean Union manage not only to survive
the challenges to the unity of the Euro zone but actually to grow politically in the process.

Transition wars – US democracy promotion fuels violence and instability

Goldsmith, Harvard Senior Fellow, ‘8 (Arthur A. Goldsmith was (when he wrote this) a Senior
Research Fellow at the Intrastate Conflict Program/International Security Program of the Belfer Center
for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. He now serves as
a Professor of Management at the University of Massachusetts Boston, “Making the World Safe for
Partial Democracy?: Questioning the Premises of Democracy Promotion”, International Security, Volume
33, Number 2, Fall 2008, pp. 120-147)

Conclusion Neoconservativestout the transformative power of democratization to protect U.S. interests

by establishing zones of peace around the world. To anyone who suspects that the global democracy promotion project is
overreaching or utopian, Robert Kagan and William Kristol posed the following question in 2000: “How utopian is it to imagine a change of
regime in a place like Iraq?” Based on the growth in the ranks of democratic countries in the 1980s and 1990s, they went on to say, “We ought
to be fairly optimistic that such change can be hastened by the right blend of American policies.”59 Many liberal internationalists have been in
basic agreement with these hopeful premises of neoconservatism, much as they may try to distance themselves from the particular blend of
policies represented by President George W. Bush’s freedom agenda.60 Whether the generic optimistic case for democracy promotion seemed
plausible in 2000, as Kagan and Kristol asserted, the contemporary
quantitative research cited in this article suggests
a more skeptical assessment for the future. The rationale for blanket democratization is mistaken on two counts: it fails to
differentiate sufficiently between partial and full democracy, and it glosses over the challenge of helping authoritarian countries avoid the first
and obtain the latter. At issue is not the goal of expanding the number of constitutional representative political systems in the world. Such
systems are fine in concept, but the preponderance of empirical evidence shows that means do not exist to
produce more of this type of government consistently from outside. Awareness about the alternative
likelihood of harmful consequences, especially in the short and medium term, is critical. Democracy
promotion will probably always remain an element of U.S. foreign policy for the historical and political reasons stated at the beginning
of this article. But in the future, policymakers should focus less on democratic peace theory to design their pro-democracy
strategy, and pay greater attention to the literature on democratic transitions, which clearly underscores the difficulty of
democratic regime change and the risks of halfway democratization, such as sectarian conflict, local human
rights abuse, dislocated populations, territorial disputes, and transnational terrorism. In particular, more
thought needs to be given to how to deal with the prevalence of mixed regimes in the Greater Middle East and to the security problems that
this creates, with less reliance on a universal remedy of more democracy to treat these ills. The quantitative studies reviewed here suggest
three broad lessons for policymakers. First, only under the rarest of circumstances should military pressure be employed preemptively to
advance democracy. In some situations military intervention may be unavoidable, leaving the United States and its allies little choice except to
try to help another country construct or reconstruct its public institutions. But it would be a fallacy to assume that the result will usually be a
moderate pluralistic political system. Second, U.S. foreign policy needs to be adapted better to particular countries’
individual circumstances. This is already being done in the Middle East, according to a recent Congressional Research Service study.61
But rather than an ad hoc approach, which is at odds with leaders’ rhetoric about democracy and exposes the United States to charges of
hypocrisy and doubledealing, it would be best to confront the issue of mixed regimes openly. Organizational support and electoral assistance
could help to consolidate a new democracy, for instance, but be wasted effort or counterproductive in a semidemocracy, where a more
effective approach could be to stress the establishment of stronger international linkages that could serve as the base for democratization over
the long term. Putting the emphasis on cultural and economic ties is also a more promising way to engage authoritarian regimes compared to
menacing them with regime change. Again, this sort of constructive engagement does happen on an improvised basis, but it could be done
better with coordination and an acknowledgment of the theoretical foundation for doing so. In general, this approach will not produce quick
payoffs, but because potentially productive regime transitions can occur suddenly and unpredictably, the United States still must be prepared
to adjust its bilateral strategies as circumstances dictate. Third, the
United States should adopt a lower profile. This
means limiting the self-righteous oratory about freedom, because it triggers a defensive response in
many corners of the globe that damages U.S. standing and influence. There should be a subtle shift in orientation,
from campaigning for democracy to supporting it, taking cues from local democratic forces and avoiding one sided efforts to push
democratization in directions a foreign country is unprepared to go. A lower profile also means reducing
expectations for U.S. citizens so they do not turn against democracy promotion programs that may work at the margins, such as technical
assistance for governance reform in certain countries. In
the end, rule-bound democracy is largely produced from
within, not spread from the outside in a standardized manner. Blustering, all-embracing democracy
promotion is not a way to enhance national security because it wastes U.S. resources and can prove
counterproductive in furthering the ultimate goal, which is to add to the world population of pluralistic majoritarian states.
The empirical research on this issue demonstrates that textured support for government reform has a much better chance of serving U.S.
national interests than does an all-inclusive freedom agenda.
Terror
 Middle East

Terror turn – America’s democracy promotion in the Middle East fuels terrorism
Piazza, PhD Politics and IR, ‘7 (James A. Piazza holds a PhD in Politics from NYU and an M.A. in
Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Michigan. He was, when this study was published, an
Assistant Professor on the tenure track at the University of North Carolina Charlotte and he is now an
Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies at Penn State University, “Draining the Swamp:
Democracy Promotion, State Failure, and Terrorism in 19 Middle Eastern Countries”, Studies in Conflict
& Terrorism, 30:6, 521-539, April 27, 2007)

Will promoting democracy in the Middle East reduce terrorism, both within Middle-Eastern countries and among countries
that are potential targets of Middle Eastern–based terrorist groups? The 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks in New York,

Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania have led to a dramatic re-orientation of United States foreign
policy toward the Middle East. Predicated on the hypothesis—now the dominant foreign policy paradigm within the Bush
administration—that terrorism is a product of nondemocratic governance, a new idealistic interventionism

has replaced the legacy of Cold War realism, culminating in the 2003 invasion of Iraq for the purposes
of “draining the swamp”; that is to say removing the conditions that foster terrorism, namely
dictatorship. How might promotion of democracy and civil freedoms in the Middle East reduce terrorism? Proponents of democracy promotion view the
climate of “unfreedom” that pervades most Middle-Eastern countries as a dangerous precipitant to extremist thought and behavior that results in terrorist activity.1
The repression, violence, and systematic humiliation used by Middle Eastern regimes like Iraq or Syria as tools of popular control foster public rage and increase the
appeal of fanaticism. In the absence of a free press or freedom of public expression, proponents of democracy promotion argued, an “epistemological retardation”
pervades political discourse fostering a mood of paranoia and giving credence to conspiracy stories in which the United States and its allies, namely Israel, are
perpetual villains. Also, in these nondemocracies, public grievances are not addressed and are allowed to fester, providing extremist groups with material for
propaganda, facilitating their recruiting efforts and legitimizing their acts of political violence. Finally, the nature of nondemocratic regimes retards the public virtues
of political moderation and compromise, which are necessary ingredients of nonviolent political expression (Muravchik 2001). Jennifer L. Windsor, executive
director of the Washington, D.C.–based nonprofit Freedom House, articulates a similar vision of the relationship between democratic governance and the reduction
of terrorism in the Middle East: The underlying logic is that democratic institutions and procedures, by enabling the peaceful reconciliation of grievances and
providing channels of participation in policymaking, can help to address those underlying conditions that have fueled the rise of Islamist Extremism. ... More
specifically, promoting democratization in the closed societies of the Middle East can provide a set of values and ideas that offer a powerful alternative to the kind
of extremism that today has found expression in terrorist activity, often against U.S. interests. (Windsor 2003, 43) Democracy, Civil Liberties, and Terrorism: Political
Access versus Strategic Targeting By and large, scholarly research on the relationship between terrorism, dictatorship, and democracy does not lend empirical
support to the argument that there is a linear relationship between democratic governance or protection of civil liberties and the incidence of terrorism.
Traditionally, scholars
have proposed the opposite: that democracies are more conducive to terrorist
activity than are dictatorships (Schmid 1992; Charters 1994; Eubank and Weinerg 1994, 1998 and 2001). Other research indicates that the
relationship between democracy and terrorism is either mixed and qualified (Li 2005) or nonlinear (Eyerman 1998). Recent research by Li (2005) finds that although
“democratic participation” is a negative predictor of the incidence of international terrorism within a country, “government constraints” in the form of institutional
limitations to executive power found in most democracies increases terrorism in countries. Li further illustrates that various electoral institutions within
democracies—for example, proportional verses “first-past-the-post” systems—are also positive and negative predictors of the incidence of terrorism. In his seminal
study Eyerman (1998), using the assumption that terrorist groups, like all political groups, seek to maximize their rational utility and weigh the costs against the
benefits associated with each terrorist act, observes that there are two theoretical schools of thought regarding the relationship between democracy and terrorism.
The first, termed the “political access” school, holds that by providing multiple avenues by which actors can advance their political agendas, democracies increase
the utility of legal political activity for all political actors, including terrorists. Within democracies there is more political space available than in dictatorships, so
there is room “within the system” for actors who subscribe to anti-status quo or non-mainstream opinions. It is important to note that the access school is a
“political actor-focused” conceptual framework, meaning that it argues that democracy provides greater opportunities for
terrorists to join mainstream politics. This is in contrast to “consumer-focused” conceptions that argue that democracy makes extremists who
may engage in terrorism less appealing to the public. One would therefore expect democracies to have fewer terrorist attacks, as would-be terrorists merely pursue
democracies
legitimate political activities to achieve their goals (Crenshaw 1990; Denardo 1985). The second, termed the “strategic school,” maintains that

are more tempting targets for terrorism than are dictatorships because their respect for civil liberties
constrain them from more effective antiterrorism efforts such as surveillance, control over movement
and personal ownership of weapons, associational life, and media. These same restrictions of executive and police power
that are features of democracy also make democratic countries good hosts for terrorist groups. Moreover, the legitimacy of democratic

government rests ultimately on the public’s perception of how well it can protect it citizens, and in a
democracy citizens can punish elected officials at the ballot box for failure to protect the public. This
quality of public responsiveness makes democracies more willing to negotiate with terrorists, thus
increasing the potential benefits reaped for extremist groups by terrorist action (Charters 1994; Schmid 1993;
Eubank and Weinberg 1992). Eyerman (1998) and a new generation of scholars find empirical support for both the access and strategic schools. In his own study,
Eyerman found that although democracies overall did exhibit fewer terrorist acts, “new” democracies were more prone to terrorism. New
democracies
possess all of the liabilities inherent in democracies in general, making them tempting targets for
terrorists as expected by the strategic school, but they are not as able as established democracies to provide to
terrorists benefits that consistently outweigh the costs of engaging in political violence as opposed to
legal political action because they lack strong and durable political institutions. Similar results are found by Abadie
(2004) and Iqbal and Zorn (2003), that nonconsolidated democracies are more likely to exhibit terrorism and political violence, and are consistent with earlier
empirical work by Gurr (2000, 1993), which finds that democratization itself can promote political violence because powerful actors may seek to preserve their
authority in the midst of uncertainty fostered by the democratic process. The findings produced in these studies linking new democracies to terrorism, however, are
limited by several design and theoretical qualities. First, with the exception of Li (2005), they employ rather limited time-frames—most are confined to one or two
decades of events or less—and therefore might be distorted by medium-term episodic rises or falls in general levels of political violence. This is a limitation given
that some scholarship has indicated terrorism occurs in waves that coincide with longer-term changes in global political and economic trends (Bergensen and
Lizardo 2004). The exception is Iqbal and Zorn (2003), but their study is limited only to examination of predictors of assassinations of heads of state from 1946 to
2000 rather than general incidents of terrorism. Second, all but one of the studies (Abadie 2004) considers only international terrorist acts, where the perpetrators
and the victims or targets are of different nationalities, rather than both domestic and international incidents, and all of the studies code their dependent variable
(terrorism) based on the country where the incident took place. These design features not only eliminate a rather large number of events from the studies, but also
severely impair any examination of both the access school and the neoconservative hypothesis on the causes of terrorism. In the post-911 context, in which
policymakers speculate that political conditions, namely the lack of democracy, in the “home” countries of the terrorist perpetrators themselves (Saudi Arabia,
Egypt, Lebanon, and the United Arab Emirates) are important causes for attacks, it seems particularly important to be able to consider the regime typology of the
country from which the perpetrators are based and to consider all manifestations of terrorism, including the most common manifestation: domestic terrorism.
Finally, with the exception of Iqbal and Zorn (2003) who include a variable for civil wars, none of the studies control for domestic political instability. Theshift
in Washington toward democratic state-building as a means to reduce terrorism has been
accompanied by a much less pronounced discussion among foreign policymakers about the
appropriate timeframe for the withdrawal of United States troops from Iraq. Within this discussion
lies the question of whether or not Iraq is becoming a “failed state:” a society experiencing severe
political instability in which the state is unable to provide basic “political goods” to its citizens such as
personal security. This raises a second foreign policy conventional wisdom, though one that is much less vociferously articulated by the Bush
administration, that failed states like Colombia, Somalia, or Indonesia (or potentially Iraq) are incubators for terrorist groups and

terrorist activity (Campbell and Flourney 2001). U.S. Republican U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel explains that these types of states pose the most
severe threat to U.S. security at home and abroad because, “Terrorism finds sanctuary in failed or failing states...” (Hagel 2004, 65), Terrorism and State Failure There is
a small body of literature on the relationship between failed states and terrorism, but it is theoretical or qualitative case study–oriented rather than empirical (Rotberg 2002, 2003; Kahler 2002; Takeyh and Gvosdev 2002). The
relationship has two mutually reinforcing features: (1) state failure helps to create the conditions that create terrorists and (2) failed states provide crucial opportunities for already existing terrorist groups. First, by failing to
provide for basic human needs and lacking functioning governing institutions, failed states cannot adequately manage conflicts in society or provide citizens with essential public goods such as security, education, or economic
opportunity. This damages the legitimacy of the state and of mainstream, legal political behavior, thus propelling individuals into extralegal action such as terrorism. Failed states are also characterized by predatory political elites
that prey on citizens and damage the government’s ability to manage social strife. The result is that significant proportions of the population reject the authority of the central government, providing a wider recruiting pool for
terrorist groups and a citizenry that will tolerate, if not aid, them. Second, state failure erodes the ability of national governments to project power internally, creating a political space for non-state actors like terrorist groups, and
creates the conditions under which state agents may provide organizational and financial assets to terrorists. Terrorists can rely on large amounts of territory to base operations such as training, communications, arms storage, and
revenue generating activities that go beyond the much more limited network of safe houses they are limited to constructing in countries with stronger states. Frequently, political elites within failed states are willing to tolerate the
presence of large-scale terrorist operations within national borders in exchange for material compensation, political support or terrorist services during times of political turmoil. Failed states lack adequate or consistent law-
enforcement capabilities, thus permitting terrorist organizations to develop extra-legal fundraising activities such as smuggling or drug trafficking. However, failed states are recognized nation-states within the world community
and therefore retain “the outward signs of sovereignty” (Tadekh and Gvosdev 2002, 100), thus providing terrorist groups with the necessary legal documentation, such as passports or end user certificates for arms acquisition, and
protection from external policing efforts. The Middle East Although the Middle East is the primary laboratory for testing the utility of democracy promotion as anti-terrorism policy—exemplified by the 2003 war and occupation in
Iraq and ruminations of the use of military force against Syria and Iran—the states of the Middle East provide a useful universe to empirically test the relationship between (lack of) democracy, civil liberties, state failure, and
terrorism. Table 1 illustrates that the states of the Middle East afford researchers with a large number of illiberal political regimes as well as significant numbers of states that have experienced state failures, making the region
central to the discussion of regime type and political stability as determinants of terrorism. The Middle East is arguably the least democratic region of the world. Freedom House notes that in 2003, only 5.6 percent of Middle
Eastern and North African states could be considered “free” in terms of political rights or civil liberties, placing it behind every other developing world area including Sub-Saharan Africa. Moreover, the Middle East is “bucking the
trend” of democratization in the world. The “Freedom in the World 2004” report issued by Freedom House notes that while every other region has increased the number of states considered to be free—the so-called Third Wave of
democratization—the Middle East has actually seen a reduction in the number of free states since the mid-1990s. Only two democracies exist in the Middle East: Israel and Turkey. While the former, Israel, guarantees democratic
freedoms only for Israeli citizens, who are roughly 65 percent of the population of the total territory Israel administers, the latter, Turkey, is an incomplete and unconsolidated democracy where elected civilian government is
regularly punctuated by military rule. A second strata of states—Algeria, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, and Kuwait—are all nondemocracies, but have at times experimented with limited political and civil liberalization. The remaining
states are solid dictatorships, one group of which—Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Tunisia, Syria, and Yemen—are bureaucratic-authoritarian regimes characterized by one-party rule and personalistic dictators and another group—Bahrain,
Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates—are autocratic monarchies. Next to Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East is the region exhibiting the largest percentage of states that suffer from state failures
from 1998 to 2003, although all of the regions of the world dominated by developing or transitional states besides Latin America have relatively high levels of state failure. What makes the Middle East unique, and what is not
captured by the figures in Table 1, is the intense and chronic nature of state failure exhibited in some states in the region. Several states—Lebanon from 1975 to 1991; Israel from 1987 to 2004; Iraq from 1980 to 1998; and Turkey
from 1984 to 2000—have experienced prolonged periods of armed ethnic conflict, civil war, and widespread political insurgency. Others suffer from prolonged but low-grade insurgencies such as the Saharawi insurrection in
Morocco 1975 to 1989 or the Dhofar tribal insurgency in Oman from 1970 to 1976, or from short but intense bouts of large-scale conflict such as the Syrian confrontation with Islamist guerrillas in 1982 or the suppression of a
separatist insurgency by Yemen in 1993. Like many African states, Middle Eastern states suffer from what Kahler (2002) refers to as “stateless areas,” a condition linked to the incubation of terrorism where the central government
is unable to project its power in substantial regions of the country controlled by insurgents or regional actors. A report on terrorism in Yemen by the International Crisis Group faults the weakness of Yemeni political institutions,
poverty and the inability of the state to extend its authority to more remote tribal regions as precipitants of domestic terrorism (International Crisis Group 2003). Kahler does allow for a non-spatial variant of the stateless area
condition in the case of Saudi Arabia, arguing that the Saudi government was not able to penetrate powerful civil society and parastatal institutions, namely Muslim charities, that provide material sustenance to groups like Al
Qaeda. Lebanon from 1975 to 1982 (and possibly later) also fits the bill as failed state suffering from stateless areas, which permitted the Palestine Liberation Organization to base its operations in Beirut and Southern Lebanon.
Analysis This study seeks to add to the discussion of dictatorship and state failures as root causes of terrorism by conducting a cross-national, pooled, time-series statistical regression analysis on the incidence of terrorism in 19

Middle Eastern states from 1972 to 2003. The analysis is limited to the Middle East, specifically the cases of Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq,
Israel–Palestine, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen, in order test the
contention that democracy is a panacea for terrorism in the
region of the world that U.S. foreign policymakers have chosen
as their laboratory for their counterterrorism policy model and to also provide an empirical base to the largely descriptive and theoretical body of scholarship on terrorism produced
by Middle Easternists2 (see, for example, Zunes 2003; Khashan 1997; Lewis 1987; Martin 1987; Amos 1985). There are three hypotheses tested in the analysis, using 16 negative binomial regression models on a total of 493 observations: Hypothesis 1: D emocratic governance and state
protection of civil liberties in the Middle East are negatively related to the incidence of terrorism. Hypothesis 2: Democratic governance and state protection of civil liberties in the Middle East are positively related to the incidence of terrorism. Hypothesis 1 captures the expectations of
the political access school of thought regarding terrorism where one would expect more politically liberal states to be equipped to integrate the political expectations of would -be terrorists into a legal rather than extra-legal framework. The result would be fewer terrorist attacks both at
home and abroad. Hypothesis 2 captures the expectations of the strategic school of thought, which argues that democracies are both particularly vulnerable to attack from domestic and or international terrorists and may find themselves hosts to terrorist groups because their
antiterrorism policies are constricted by the rights protections inherent in all democratic societies. The states of the Middle East also provide a wide range of state failures to examine as predictors of terrorist activity. Controlling for democratic governance and other socioeconomic
variables, a third hypothesis is also studied: Hypothesis 3: State failures, measured in the aggregate, are positively related to the incidence of domestic and international terrorism in the cases examined. Because of the nature of the dependent variable in the study, a Poisson distribution is
more appropriate that an ordinary least squares (OLS) statistical regression model to analyze the data. The study seeks to explain change or variation in the incidence (frequency) of terrorist incidents, sorted by country targeted by the attacks and the country that is the “host” of the
group launching the attacks. Terrorist attacks are sporadic and concentrated in certain countries or at certain time periods, and therefore from a quantitative perspective cannot be expected to be conform to a normal distribution. Also, an event count of terrorist incidents cannot produce
negative count data for any given observation; the lowest value of any observation is a zero, indicating that no terrorist attacks have occurred in that country in that year. Both of these qualities violate basic assumptions of OLS regression analysis and recommend a Poisson distribution
instead. Furthermore, given that the individual event counts used in the study are not theoretically independent of each other—a country may very well experience a rash of attacks spread out across multiple years by the same terrorist group—a negative binomial Poisson distribution is
most appropriate. It produces the same mean as a basic Poisson distribution, but is better suited to data exhibiting a wider variance, thus reducing standard errors and netting less biased estimators (Brandt et al. 2000; Cameron and Trivedi 1998; King 1989). In the study the state of Israel
and the occupied Palestinian territories are operationalized as one aggregated case, though this may be a controversial methodological decision. There are two justifications for aggregating these two entities into one case: First and foremost, the two entities are highly interconnected in
terms of political, economic, and social life. The political conflict that produces terrorism within both of the entities was produced by the political conflict originating in the 1967 occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and Jerusalem by Israeli forces that continues to this day.
Moreover, nationals of both political entities reside throughout Israel proper and the occupied territories, and until recently, Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank regularly commuted into Israel for employment. Second, the state of Israel has effectively controlled public policy within
the occupied territories since 1967, and this has meant that the Israeli government has helped to determine the shape of political and economic development both for Jewish residents of Israeli proper and Palestinians living in the territories. This poses a simple methodological problem:
there is no independent government, or economy, on which to base measurements of variables for the Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank. Although a semi-independent Palestinian National Authority was created in 1994, it still lacks sovereignty, the quintessential quality of all
nation-states. To remedy this, all variables for the case Israel–Palestine are operationalized as indexes of population-weighted averages that include the State of Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, producing aggregate measures of the regime type, economy, and demographic
structure of the populations of both entities. However, this methodological decision could potentially bias the study and is vulnerable to charges of subjectivity on the part of the researcher. Therefore, a separate set of statistical models are run that exclude Israel–Palestine as a case to
determine the dependence of models on the total 19 cases on inclusion of Israel–Palestine. The source for yearly terrorist incidents by case—the unit of analysis for the study—is the data collected by the Rand Corporation and collated by the National Memorial Institute for the
Prevention of Terrorism, which operationally defines terrorism as: ...violence, or the threat of violence, calculated to create an atmosphere of fear and alarm. These acts are designed to coerce others into actions they would not otherwise undertake, or refrain from actions they desired to
take. All terrorist acts are crimes. Many would also be violation of the rules of war if a state of war existed. This violence or threat of violence is generally directed against civilian targets. The motives of all terrorists are political, and terrorist actions are generally carried out in a way that
will achieve maximum publicity. Unlike other criminal acts, terrorists often claim credit for their acts. Finally, terrorist acts are intended to produce effects beyond the immediate physical damage of the cause, having long-term psychological repercussions on a particular target audience.
The fear created by terrorists may be intended to cause people to exaggerate the strengths of the terrorist and the importance of the cause, to provoke governmental overreaction, to discourage dissent, or simply to intimidate and thereby enforce compliance with their demands.3 To
fully test the two hypotheses, especially in order to examine both the access and strategic schools, and to make appropriate use of the MIPT data, terrorism is operationalized as four dependent variables which are run in separate models: (1) international terrorist incidents sorted by the
country targeted from 1972 to 1997; (2) international and domestic terrorist incidents sorted by the country targeted from 1998 to 2003; (3) terrorist incidents sorted by country or countries that serve as the base for terrorist attacks abroad from 1972 to 1997; (4) terrorist incidents
sorted by country or countries that serve as the base for terrorist attacks both domestically and abroad from 1998 to 2003. The first distinction, between international and international and domestic incidents, is one driven by the data available from MIPT. Although it is methodological
desirable to consider both domestic and international attacks combined—incidents committed where the perpetrator and the target or victim may or may not be nationals of the same country—for the entire time-series, aggregation of incidents in this way is only available post 1998.4
Prior to 1998, data is only available for international incidents. Terrorists incidents are also sorted both by “target,” the country and year within the time-series in which the terrorist act occurred, and by “source,” the country or countries per year that serve as bases of operation for
terrorist groups that engage in operations, as defined by the MIPT database of terrorist organizations. Targeted countries and source countries are analyzed in separate dependent variables. Examining both states targeted by terrorism and states that are sources for terrorist groups
facilitates a more confident evaluation of both the access and strategic schools as well as the role played by state failures because it paints a complete picture of the domestic vulnerability of the state to terrorist attacks and the domestic political conditions that may breed terrorists. The
analysis contains no incidents that occurred across two different countries, thereby yielding two target countries. However, as is often the case, terrorist groups base their operations in more than one state. For the analysis, each state that is the host of the terrorist group perpetrating the
act in question is allocated an equal count of the event. As an example, because the Black September Organization, a Palestinian militant group active in the 1970s and 1980s, is listed by MIPT as having bases of operation in Jordan, Lebanon, and in the Palestinian Occupied Territories
during its active period, a terrorist act committed by Black September in a given year will be recorded as one incident for Jordan, Lebanon, and Israel–Palestine. This is an imperfect methodology because it equally weights three states as sources for terrorism though in reality the
“stateless area” afforded Black September by civil-war wracked Lebanon in the 1980s or the lack of political freedom that plagues Palestinians living in Jordan or the limitations to counterterrorism efforts placed on the Israeli state by its democratic process and legal institutions might play
a disproportionate role in fueling terrorist incidents. However, data do not permit fine-tuning of this nature and this is the least-subjective method of distribution of acts by source country. Table 2 lists all variables used in the models as well as their operationalization. To test the
hypotheses, three independent variables are used: one that measures the degree of democratic governance in each case per year, “Democracy (Polity IV)”; another that measures the degree of civil liberties protections in each case per year, “FH Civil Liberties”; and the other measures the
presence and intensity of state failures in each case per year, “State Failures.” The first independent variable is operationalized as the yearly “POLITY” measurement from the Polity IV database. This measurement is an index ranging from -10, signifying a complete autocracy, to 10,
signifying a complete democracy. The expectation, given the two-tailed nature of the first hypothesis, is that Democracy (Polity IV) will either be a positive or negative predictor of the i ncidents in terrorism, measured all four ways in the statistical models. The second independent variable
is operationalized as annual index of civil liberties protections coded by the independent nongovernmental agency Freedom House in its annual publication “Freedom in the World.” The Freedom House civil liberties index is an ordinal measure between “1,” which would indicate a status
of the highest protection of civil liberties such as freedom of speech, conscience or association, and “7,” which would indicate a status of the lowest protection of aforementioned rights. As with Democracy (Polity IV), the expectation given the two-tailed nature of the first hypothesis is
that FH Civil Liberties will either be a positive or negative predictor of the incidents in terrorism, measured all four ways in the statistical models. The third independent variable is operationalized as a measure of aggregate state failures suffered by a given case in a given year. All data for
state failures is taken from the State Failure Task Force database, collected by researchers associated with the Center for International Development and Conflict Management (CIDCM) at the University of Maryland. The CIDCM State Failure Task Force defines state failures as episodes of
extreme political instability that test the ability of the state to preserve order and identifies four major types of state failure: ethnic wars, revolutionary wars, genocides and politicides, and adverse regime changes. The variable “State Failures” in this analysis is an additive index ranging
from 0 to 16 of the intensity levels of all four types of state failure, which themselves are coded by the State Failure Task Force as measures of intensity where 0 indicates no state failures and 4 indicates highly intense manifestations of state failures. The expectation is that State Failures
will be a positive predictor of the incidence of terrorism across all of the models. The models control for several socioeconomic features. The first is “Area,” or the total surface area contained within the recognized boundaries of each state, and the second is “Population,” or the yearly
total population count in millions. Eyerman (1998) notes that geographically large countries have higher policing costs and are therefore more susceptible to terrorist attacks. Likewise, populous countries also raise the costs associated with counterterrorism efforts as terrorist groups can
more easily obscure their activities and escape detection. Gross domestic product (“GDP”), measured yearly in millions of $U.S., is a control used by Abadie (2004) and Eyerman (1998) in their respective studies and measures the total resources available to enhance state policing and or
repressive measures. It is something of a conventional wisdom that poverty and poor economic development are root causes of terrorism, although this has not been validated by a slate of recent empirical studies (Piazza 2006; Abadie 2004; Krueger and Maleckova 2003), though Li and
Schaub (2004) in their statistical study of 112 countries from 1975 to 1997 did find that a country’s GDP was a negative predictor of terrorism, positioning level of economic development as an interaction variable linking international economic openness to lower levels of terrorism. It is
nonetheless considered as a control and is expected to be a negative predictor of terrorism across the models, if significant at all. Finally, a variable measuring the total years that the current political regime has been in place in each observation, labeled “Regime Durability,” is also
included in the analysis. Regime Durability is operationalized by inserting the value for “Durable” coded in the Polity IV dataset. It is expected that more durable regimes are less likely to experience terrorism. (Li 2005) Sixteen statistical models are ru n in all. The nucleus of the analysis is
contained in models 1 through 8 to accommodate four dependent variables—the two measures of terrorist incidents, international and international and domestic attacks, each of which is sorted into attacks by target and attacks by source—and to accommodate two independent
variables—both Democracy (Polity IV) and FH Civil Liberties—which are run in separate models. Furthermore, models 1 through 8 are run yet again omitting Israel–Palestine as a case as models 9 through 16 to control for the outlier effect that those observations may contain. Finally, two
features are added to the models to correct for autocorrelation and multicollinearity errors. A 1-year lagged dependent variable [B1Incidents(t-1)j] is inserted after the intercept, as is appropriate in time-series multiple regression analysis, and a collinearity test is run on all of the
independent variables. Results Table 3 presents the results of the first four models, which examine the effects of the independent variables on the incidence of terrorism by target country in the Middle East The results of models 1 through 4 lend partial support to the strategic school,
rather than the political access school, as it applies to Middle Eastern states. In Models 1 and 3, which examine international terrorist attacks only, specifically where the perpetrator and the target or victim are of different nati onal origins, Democracy (Polity IV) is a positive predictor of
terrorism whereas FH Civil Liberties is a negative predictor. This suggests that terrorism is more likely to occur in Middle-Eastern states that are political democracies and that protect civil liberties. (Note that the operationalization of FH Civil Liberties is inverted—regimes that protect civil
liberties are scored low on the scale—so results are interpreted using the opposite sign of results for Democracy [Polity IV]). However, when terrorism is measured as both domestic and international attacks by target, neither Democracy (Polity IV) nor FH Civil Liberties are signfiicant. This
is an interesting result because the two measurements of terrorism are logically and quantitatively—there are more total attacks coded per year when using the international and domestic aggregation—different. However, it is also possible that the different results found in models 1 and
3 and models 2 and 4 are due to the very different time-series used: the 26-year series (1972 to 1997) for international only verses the six year series (1998 to 2003) for the international combined with domestic. A more comparable span of data would be desirable, although presently
unobtainable. However, across three of the first four models, State Failures is a strong, significant, and positive predictor of terrorism, regardless of how terrorism is measured. This suggests that Middle-Eastern states that suffer from state failures are more likely to both host groups that
will commit terrorist acts at home and abroad and are also more likely to be the target of terrorist groups from other states. Moreover, in three of the four models, the coefficient for State Failures is the largest in the model, and the coefficients are significant at t he highest (.000) level.
Few of the control variables are significant across models 1–4, and there are two surprising results. Population is a significant predictor in models 1 and 3, as expected, but GDP is a significant positive predictor of terrorism in models 2 and 4 whereas Regime Durability is a significant
negative predictor in model 2. The results for GDP and Regime Durability run counter to expectations, but it is telling that these counterintuitive results occur in the models with the shorter time series, as previously found. Table 4 presents the results of models 5 through 8, in which the
dependent variable, terrorism, is sorted by source country among Middle-Eastern states. As in models 1 through 4, models 5 through 8 provide partial vindication for the strategic school at the expense of the political access school but leave some nagging questions. In Table 4, Democracy
(Polity IV) is a consistent, significant positive predictor of terrorist attacks; however, FH Civil Liberties is not. That is to say that more politically liberal regimes in the Middle East, as measured by Polity IV, are more prone to harbor terrorist groups that commit terrorist acts either at home
or abroad than are politically illiberal regimes. However, Middle-Eastern states that respect civil liberties—the very same freedoms that pose barriers to state actors who may seek to apprehend terrorists or quash terrorist networks—are no more likely than Middle-Eastern states with
poor civil liberties protections to host terrorist groups. This is difficult to reconcile within the confines of the strategic school and either prompts a consideration of Middle-Eastern exceptionalism or a re-conceptualization of the relationship between the self-imposed limitations within
democracies fighting terrorism. It may be possible that within the Middle East, mass political participation serves to inhibit governmental efforts to arrest terrorists and disrupt terrorist networks because the significant segments of the public regards them as having a legitimate political
agenda. A cases in point would be Yemen, where Al Qaeda militants might enjoy some sympathy from a public that is permitted to participate in albeit incomplete elections. Or, a second possibility is that in countries where public outrage against terrorists has prompted an over-zealous
antiterrorism policy from the government that itself fuels terrorist activity and recruitment. The case here would be Turkey, where public outrage against Kurdish Worker Party (PKK) attacks in the 1980s and 1990s facilitated a harsh antiterrorism policy that included torture, arbitrary
arrest, detention, and sentencing, and direct military reprisal against Kurdish civilians. These measures on the part of Turkish government security forces enhanced Kurdish support for the PKK’s objectives, thus assisting PKK recruitment, organization of safe houses, and procurement of
supplies. Again, in models 5 through 8 state failures is a significant, at times highly significant, positive predictor of the incidence of terrorism. This illustrates that regardless of whether or not the Middle-Eastern state in question is considered to be a target of terrorist attacks or a source
of terrorist attacks, terrorists thrive in countries beset with state failures. A few control variables are significant, and again yield results that counter expectations. GDP is a negative predictor of international terrorism in model 5, but is a positive predictor of terrorism in model 8, as is
regime durability. Again, it is possible that sample size is responsible for these differences. Finally, all models are re-run omitting the potentially problematic case of Israel–Palestine, producing the results shown in Table 5: Roughly the same results are obtained in the modified data set
analyzed in models 9 through 16. Democratic governance seems to be a somewhat consistent positive predictor of terrorism, while in at least one model (model 11), civil liberties protections are a positive predictor of international terrorism by source—given the negative relationship
between FH Civil Liberties, an indicator where states exhibiting poor protections of civil rights are scored higher. Some support for the strategic school is found, although no support is evident for the political access school. And State Failures is a nearly perfectly consistent positive
predictor of terrorism, regardless of how terrorism is measured or how terrorist attacks are sorted. Population, as a control variable, is significant in two of the models (9 and 11) and is a positive predictor, as expected. However, GDP and Regime Durability continue to exhibit inconsistent
and counterintuitive results. Overall, models 9 through 16 dispel the possibility that the results found in Tables 1 and 2—that state failure is the most significant predictor of the incidence of terrorism, while democracy and civil liberties are more weakly associated with terrorist

Conclusion The results of this study are preliminary, but they do

incidents—are a mere product of the inclusion of a set of observations from an outlier case: a combined Israel and Palestine.

not lend support to the hypothesis that fostering democracy in the Middle East will provide a bulwark
against terrorism. Rather, the results suggest the opposite: that more liberal Middle-Eastern political
systems are actually more susceptible to the threat of terrorism than are the more dictatorial regimes,
as predicted by the strategic school approach to the relationship between democracy and terrorism. Furthermore, the result of the study do lend empirical support
to the descriptive literature linking failed states to terrorism: those Middle-Eastern states with significant episodes of state failures are more likely to be the target
of and the host for terrorists. Because the study examines multiple measurements of terrorism, by target and by source, multiple measures of political liberalization,
democratic processes and civil liberties, and includes what is strangely overlooked by other studies of democracy and terrorism, the role played by state failures, it
contributes to scholarly understanding of the relationship between terrorism, democracy, and political stability while assessing the potential effectiveness of
current antiterrorism policy. These findings have significant policy implications. The
results suggests that a foreign policy toward the
Middle East constructed around democracy promotion, or around widening of civil liberties, will not
reap a significant security dividend in terms of terrorism. Rather, it may exacerbate the problems of
terrorism, both within Middle-Eastern states and for other countries targeted by terrorist groups
based in Middle-East states. These findings potentially dampen the enthusiasm of some scholars of
the Middle East who have hoped that stalled (or nonexistent) efforts at democratization or the widening of rights through the
creation of “civil society” in
the Middle East would be revived as the beneficiaries of a new U.S. foreign policy
imperative toward the region. For much of the past ten years, the Middle East has lagged far behind every other world region in terms of
democratization, as noted previously, and the field of Middle East Studies has vainly searched for signs of nascent democratization among civil society actors in
Middle-Eastern countries. This study is the first to lend empirical support to a criticism of democracy-promotion already present within the field of foreign policy
research. In his December 2003 article in Foreign Affairs (2003), director of the Democracy and Rule of Law Project for the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace Thomas Carothers critiques the Bush administration emphasis on democracy-building in the Middle East as a
means to preventing terrorism. Although lionizing the principle of promoting democracy in a region so characterized by dictatorial rule—but seriously questioning
whether or not the new policy really will really prove to be a departure from the Cold War policy of supporting pro-U.S. dictatorships in the region out of self-
interest in the final analysis—Carothers warns that democracy might not prove to be the solid bulwark against terrorism that it is fashioned to be. He notes that
democracy-promotion policy in the Middle East relies
too heavily on what is essentially a fairly simplistic modernization
theory conception of Islamic radicalism, that it is a manifestation of traditional society that can be
eradicated through more modern and Western political and social engineering. The roots of radical
Islamist movements, on the contrary, are complex, varied and “multifaceted” Carothers argues, and
democracy is not likely to be the cure-all. Moreover, borrowing a page from the strategic school, Carothers warns that
democratization might widen the political space for radicals in the Middle East and he regards the histories of newly
democratized states as a cautionary tale to those who see rapid democratization as a stabilizing force in Islamic societies. Finally, Carothers observes that
democracy, itself is not always a simple panacea for terrorism outside of the Middle East. He specifically notes Spain as a case study: it is a consolidated, though
newer, Western democracy that is the target of regular and violent terrorist attacks from the Basque separatist movement, ETA. One could add a host of other
established democracies to the list of countries that are either sources for or targets of terrorism: Great Britain, India, Italy, Greece, and the United States.
Election Focus
 Generic
Democratization fails – focuses only on elections
Levitsky and Way ’05 [Steven Levitsky is assistant professor of government at Harvard University.
Lucan Way, assistant professor of political science at Temple University, is a visiting scholar at the
Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. “International Linkage and Democratization”
Journal of Democracy, Volume 16, Number 3, July 2005, pp. 20-34]

Western leverage may be defined as authoritarian governments’ vulnerability to external

democratizing pressure. International actors may exert leverage in a variety of ways, including political
conditionality and punitive sanctions, diplomatic pressure, and military intervention. The impact of such measures
(or even the threat of them) on authoritarian governments is greatest in regimes over which Western leverage is high. The level of Western
leverage is determined by at least three factors. The first and most important is states’ raw size and military and economic strength. Weak
states with small, underdeveloped economies— including much of sub-Saharan Africa—are far more vulnerable to external pressure than those
with substantial military or economic power. In larger, more powerful countries—like China, India, and Russia— sanctions, threats, military
force, or other instruments of external pressure are less likely to be employed, and when they are employed, they are less likely to be effective.
The second factor is the existence of competing issues on Western foreign policy agendas. Leverage
may be limited, and regimes
less vulnerable to external democratizing pressure, in countries where Western governments have
important economic or security interests at stake, as in much of the Middle East and East Asia. In these
regions, Western powers are less likely to maintain a consensus behind demands for political reform,

thereby limiting the effectiveness of those demands. Finally, Western leverage is reduced in cases where governments
have access to political, economic, or military support from an alternative regional power. Russia, for example, has provided critical support to
autocrats in Armenia and Belarus, and South African assistance to Zimbabwe enabled the government of President Robert Mugabe to weather
intense international democratizing pressure between 2000 and 2005. In Central
Europe and the Americas, by contrast, no
alternative regional power exists, leaving the EU and the United States as “the only game in town.”
Leverage raises the cost of repression, electoral fraud, and other government abuses. Where Western
powers exert substantial leverage, as in much of sub-Saharan Africa, Central Europe, and Latin America and the Caribbean, international
pressure has played an important role in deterring or ending full-scale authoritarian rule. During the 1990s, for example, Western intervention
helped thwart or roll back military coups in Ecuador, Haiti, Guatemala, and Paraguay, and external pressure was critical in forcing autocrats to
cede power or hold multiparty elections in such countries as Benin, Georgia, Kenya, Malawi, and Zambia. Nevertheless , Western
leverage over electoral authoritarian regimes is rarely sufficient to convince them to democratize. Even
during its heyday during the 1990s, Western pressure for democratization was inconsistent and often
ineffective.4 With the exception of the EU enlargement process, the instrument of political conditionality generally
proved too blunt to achieve complete democratization. International actors focused mainly on
elections, often neglecting such essential components of democracy as civil liberties and a level political playing
field. Countries often slipped out of the Western spotlight once elections had been held, even when
elections failed to bring democracy (as in Zambia, Kenya, and Peru during the 1990s). As a consequence, although
blatantly authoritarian acts such as military coups or the cancellation of elections often triggered strong international reactions during the
post–Cold War period, Western
pressure routinely failed to deter more subtle abuses of power, including
government control and manipulation of the media, harassment of the opposition, and significant levels of electoral fraud.
Credibility
 Generic
US democracy promotion incites opposition – past actions and perception as “regime
change”
Carothers ’06 [March/April 2006. Thomas Carothers is the vice president for studies at the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace, where he founded and currently directs the Democracy and Rule of
Law Program. “The Backlash Against Democracy Promotion” Foreign Affairs.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2006-03-01/backlash-against-democracy-promotion]

The backlash against democracy aid can be understood as a reaction by nondemocratic governments
to the increasingly assertive provision of such aid. But it is also linked to and gains force from another source: the
broader public unease with the very idea of democracy promotion, a feeling that has spread widely in the
past several years throughout the former Soviet Union, western Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and
elsewhere. President Bush, by embracing democracy promotion in the way he has, is largely responsible for this discomfort. Washington's
use of the term "democracy promotion" has come to be seen overseas not as the expression of a principled
American aspiration but as a code word for "regime change" -- namely, the replacement of bothersome
governments by military force or other means. Moreover, the Bush administration has also caused the term to be closely
associated with U.S. military intervention and occupation by adopting democracy promotion as the principal rationale for the invasion of Iraq.
The fact that the administration has also given the impression that it is interested in toppling other
governments hostile to U.S. security interests, such as in Iran and Syria, has made the president's "freedom agenda"
seem even more menacing and hostile. This is especially so since when Bush and his top advisers single out
"outposts of tyranny," the governments they invariably list are those that also happen to be unfriendly
to the United States. Meanwhile, friendly but equally repressive regimes, such as that in Saudi Arabia,
escape mention. This behavior has made many states, nondemocratic and democratic alike, uneasy with the
whole body of U.S. democracy-building programs, no matter how routine or uncontroversial the
programs once were . It also makes it easier for those governments eager to push back against
democracy aid for their own reasons to portray their actions as noble resistance to aggressive U.S.
interventionism. And the more President Bush talks of democracy promotion as his personal cause, the easier he makes it for tyrannical
leaders to play on his extraordinarily high level of unpopularity abroad to disparage the idea. The Bush administration has further damaged the
credibility of U.S. democracy advocates by generally undermining the United States' status as a symbol of democracy and human rights. Even
as the president has repeatedly asserted his commitment to a "freedom agenda," he has struck blow
after self-inflicted blow against America's democratic principles and standards: through the torture of
prisoners and detainees at U.S.-run facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan; the holding of hundreds of persons in legal limbo at Guantánamo
Bay, Cuba; the rendition of foreign detainees (sometimes secretly abducted abroad) to foreign countries known to practice torture; the
establishment of a network of covert U.S.-run prisons overseas; eavesdropping without court warrants within the United States;
and the astonishing resistance by the White House last year to a legislative ban on cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment of any person in
U.S. custody anywhere. Taken together, these actions have inflicted incalculable harm to the United States'
image in the world. This fact is plainly and painfully evident to anyone who spends even modest amounts of time abroad. Yet it is one
about which President Bush and his team, with the possible exception of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, appear unaware or unconcerned.
Yet thedamage has made it all too easy for foreign autocrats to resist U.S. democracy promotion by
providing them with an easy riposte: "How can a country that tortures people abroad and abuses
rights at home tell other countries how to behave?
Democratization won’t be effective – US is unwilling to use the full range of options
Börzel ’15 [2015. Tanja A. Börzel holds the chair for European Integration at the Freie Universität
Berlin. She received her PhD from the European University Institute in Florence, Italy in 1999. From 1999
to 2004, she conducted her research and taught at the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective
Goods in Bonn, the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the University Heidelberg. “The noble west and
the dirty rest? Western democracy promoters and illiberal regional powers” Democratization, 22:3, 519-
535]

The EU and the US made democracy promotion an explicit goal of their foreign policy. Yet, they also
pursue other goals, such as political stability, economic growth, energy supply, or security. While in
principle these goals are seen as complementary, the democratization of (semi-)authoritarian
countries entails the risk of their destabilization at least in the short run. The more unstable and the less
democratic the target state is, the more difficult it is to reconcile democracy promotion with ensuring
security and stability.30 This democratization-stability dilemma largely confirms the second hypothesis of the editors that Western
democracy promoters only react to countervailing policies by non-democratic regional power if they
prioritize democracy and human rights goals over stability and security goals. 31 The prioritizing
explains why the US and the EU ignored attempts of Saudi Arabia to undermine democratization
processes in Arab Spring countries and the Gulf region.32 Liberal and illiberal regional powers equally prioritize stability
and security.33 Ukraine is one of the few cases in which the EU and US have sought to counter the countervailing strategies of the illiberal
regional power, arguably because of Russia’s attempts to destabilize the country. Thus, rather than prioritizing democracy over stability, Putin’s
strategy of “managed instability”34 has driven the EU and the US to step up their efforts at democracy promotion supporting democratic
political forces that have the greatest potential to politically and economically stabilize Ukraine.35 In accordance with the second hypothesis of
the editors, interdependent
relationships with illiberal regional powers, particularly with regard to energy
and security, also make Western democracy promoters more likely to compromise their efforts at
democracy promotion and tolerate countervailing strategies of illiberal regional powers. 36 The EU and
US have not been prepared to make full use of sanctions in order to counter Russia’s violations of
Georgia’s and Ukraine’s territorial integrity in 2008 and 2014, respectively.37 While Ukraine and the EU signed
the Association Agreement in August 2014, the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement (DCFTA) has been suspended for a year amid
Russia’s threats of retaliatory measures against both Ukraine and the EU. The EU also signalled that is was prepared to revise parts of the
DCFTA to accommodate Russia’s concerns.38 In a similar vein , the US has been unwilling to risk its alliance with its
most important allies in the region over Saudi Arabia’s assistance in suppressing the Shia uprising in
Bahrain. 39 Finally, China is too important for both the EU and the US to openly support Hong Kong’s
“umbrella revolution” in its protests against Beijing’s efforts to compromise the “one country two systems” doctrine by curbing
political freedoms.40 In sum, if illiberal powers only counteract Western democracy promotion if their
economic or security interests are at stake, Western democracy promoters only respond to such
countervailing strategies if they see their geopolitical interests challenged.

Middle Eastern democracies would only be more anti-american – wouldn’t support

Western democratic ideals
Jones 13 (Seth, associate director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the RAND
Corporation, as well as an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University's School for Advanced
International Studies, Jan/Feb2013, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 92 Issue 1, p55-63., “The Mirage of the Arab
Spring,” , mm)
In fact, the cold reality is that some democratic governments in the Arab world would almost certainly
be more hostile to the United States than their authoritarian predecessors, because they would be
more responsive to the populations of their countries, which are largely anti- American. According to a 2012
Pew Research poll, the United States’ image in several countries in the Muslim world has deteriorated
sharply over the past several years. Before the Arab uprisings, for example, 27 percent of Egyptians and 25 percent of Jordanians
polled had favorable attitudes toward the United States. By 2012, those numbers had dropped to 19 percent and 12 percent, respectively. The
September 2012 anti-American demonstrations in the region, which spread from Egypt and Libya throughout the Middle
East, provided yet another reminder that anti-American and anti-Western sentiments still exist in the
Muslim world.
Market Reform
 Generic
Modernisation is the dominant strategy the US uses to democratize nations – this
leads to market oriented reforms which fail to produce democracy
Berger ’11 [Lars Berger obtained his PhD from the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena (Germany) in
2006 and is currently a Lecturer in Politics and Contemporary History of the Middle East in the School of
English, Sociology, Politics and Contemporary History at Salford University. “The Missing Link? US Policy
and the International Dimensions of Failed Democratic Transitions in the Arab World” POLITICAL
STUDIES: 2011 VOL 59, 38–55]
After the events of 11 September 2001, leading US diplomats admitted that decades-old policies which had subordinated the goal of expanding
the ‘ThirdWave’ of democratisation to the Middle East to safeguarding other perceived national interests (Anderson, 2001; Berger, 2009) were
partly to blame for sustaining the region’s ‘democratic exception’ (Haass, 2002). When Secretary of State Colin Powell unveiled the
so-called Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) at the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington DC as the main vehicle to address
these shortcomings, he bemoaned the ‘condescending notion’ that ‘freedom could not grow’ in the Middle
East. Declaring that ‘Any approach to the Middle East that ignores its political, economic, and educational underdevelopment will be built on
sand’(Powell,2002), he made clear that the state department-led efforts on political reform in the Arab world
would be informed by the analysis of the modernisation school. First propagated by Seymour Martin Lipset, this approach
emphasises the structural preconditions for democracy and quantifiable indices, such as wealth
measured in per capita income, industrialisation, urbanisation and education (Lipset, 1993). In his classic assessment of the
preconditions for Middle Eastern democracy Charles Issawi therefore deemed nothing less than ‘a great economic and social
transformation which will strengthen society and make it capable of bearing the weight of the modern
State’ to be ‘a necessary, if not a sufficient, condition for the establishment of genuine democracy’ (Issawi, 1956,
p. 41). Obviously such grandiose prescriptions can easily justify external support for authoritarian regimes
on the grounds that the relevant country has demonstrated ‘insufficient’ socioeconomic development
(Grugel, 1999). At least they explain why those interested in whether or not the United States can actually promote democracy deemed the
modernisation literature ‘curiously unsatisfying’ (Allison and Beschel, 1992, p. 85).3 The decision to put MEPI’s management under the
leadership of Deputy-Assistant Secretary of State Liz Cheney, daughter of then Vice-President Dick Cheney, and into the hands of the state
department’s Near East bureau meant that, initially, 70 per cent of all grants went directly to Arab governments and
only 17.5 per cent to representatives of Arab civil society (Carothers, 2005; Wittes, 2004b).4 The tendency of MEPI officers
to seek approval for their projects from respective Arab governments further limited the programme’s
effectiveness in promoting genuine political reform (Wittes and Yerkes, 2006): ‘In the words of one friend in the White
House, the typical aid recipient in the Middle East is the son of an ambassador, with a German mother,
who happens to run an ngo’(Alterman, 2004). With MEPI quickly becoming a vehicle for the ‘authoritarian upgrading’ of Arab
regimes (Heydemann, 2007), the promise of a free trade zone with the region (Wayne, 2003) and privileged bilateral trade
agreements or World Trade Organisation (WTO) membership for ‘peaceful’ countries (Zoellick, 2003) constituted another pillar of the Bush
administration’s attempts to apply the modernisation school’s concepts. It followed the hypothesis – attractive to policy makers
looking for a loftier framing of the parochial interest in the spread of free market economies – that capitalism contributes to
democratisation by requiring the rule of law to function properly (Deudney and Ikenberry, 2009) as well as by
creating demands for political participation from a skilled workforce used to independent thinking and articulation
(Inglehart and Welzel, 2009). As a comparatively rich country with a per capita GDP of roughly US$20,000 in 2008 Saudi Arabia
challenges the conventional wisdom that posits a direct link between economic wealth and
democracy. In fact, if one accepts that ‘post-materialist liberty aspirations’ increase the likelihood of
authoritarian failure (Welzel and Inglehart,2005), then the largest of the oil-rich countries of the Arab peninsula
would be a prime candidate.5 Yet in Saudi Arabia supposedly reform-conducive social orientations contrast with a political
reality where resource-based external rents and the associated ‘segmented clientelism’ (Hertog, 2005) have prevented the
emergence of a politically engaged bourgeoisie. Apart from Vietnam, Saudi Arabia was the only country out of 72 covered in
the 2000 wave of the WorldValues Survey that had achieved a score indicating slight emphasis on ‘self-expression values’ vis-à-vis ‘survival
values’ without achieving at least partly free status in the 2009 Freedom House Index (Freedom House, 2009a; World Values Survey, 2009).6
Saudi Arabia’s rankings are not surprising to those who see economic growth as a precondition, not for the establishment, but for the political
stability of a democracy (Dorenspleet, 2004; Pevehouse, 2002; Przeworski and Limongi, 1997).7 In light of
the postulate that
integration into the global economy increases potentially reform-inducing linkages and decreases an
authoritarian regime’s ability to curtail them (Levitsky and Way, 2005; Way and Levitsky, 2006), a free trade
approach might expand the still limited Western leverage over Saudi Arabia. In fact, reflecting a broader change in business
culture in the Arab Gulf region which some regard as a possible step towards greater political transparency (Ehteshami and Wright, 2007),
representatives of the country’s business elite have already moved closer into the current centre of decision making and even felt emboldened
to push for a modernisation of the curriculum (Glosemeyer, 2004, pp. 143–6). Yet sceptics warned that while the promise of WTO membership
provided King Abdullah with political cover for his cautious attempts to tackle the widespread corruption within the extended royal family,8
such developments might only lead to a ‘highly truncated version of the rule of law’ aimed at enhancing a regime’s domestic position
(Carothers, 2007, pp. 15–6).9 The observation that the link between economic growth and democratic transitions is stronger in poorer
countries (Brinks and Coppedge, 2006; Przeworski and Limongi, 1997) would appear to make Egypt an easier candidate to apply the insights of
the modernisation school. In reality, however, US–Egyptian
relations constitute in many ways a particularly striking
example of how the modernisation school can provide a rationale for government friendly
mechanisms that end up supporting an (increasingly) authoritarian status quo. In a pre-9/11 example typical of
the Clinton administration’s approach, both governments set up a bilateral private-sector ‘Presidents’ Council’ which was charged with
supporting the implementation of market reforms in Egypt. Led by Hosni Mubarak’s son Gamal on the Egyptian side, it served as an important
additional stabiliser of the regime by increasing the number of contacts for Egyptian businessmen among the Egyptian and, equally important,
US political elite (Alterman, 2000; Momani, 2003). It thus further cemented a situation where political change threatens the interests of those
capitalists who owe their economic status to the regime (Richter, 2007; Sfakianakis, 2004).10 When the Egyptian Centre for Economic Studies,
which many of Gamal Mubarak’s closest associates continue to dominate (King, 2007), became a recipient of National Endowment for
Democracy funds from 1993 to 2002,11 US
democracy assistance even ended up supporting the domestic and
international networking of the heir apparent of Egypt’s authoritarian ruler. US policies thus played a significant
role in facilitating Cairo’s shift from the allocation of rent income to broad segments of society to co-opting business interests – a policy
necessitated by the structural readjustment programmes demanded by international donors in the 1980s and 1990s (Albrecht and
Schlumberger, 2004; King, 2007). By helping pre-empt the emergence of alternative power centres among the Arab world’s business
elites,Washington strengthened what comparative studies have described as an important contributor to the stability of authoritarianism in the
region (Bellin, 2004; Kamrava and O’Mora, 1998; Langohr, 2004). In addition, the long-standing US approach to free trade
might even intensify the region’s social problems as long as transnational investors can easily exploit
existing social structures (Moore and Schrank, 2003). The associated increase of inequalities in income
distribution further exacerbates what, as the modernisation approach admits, constitutes a serious obstacle to
democracy (Issawi, 1956; Lipset, 1993) and explains Egypt’s return to an era of political de-liberalisation as
the direct outcome of the regime’s attempts to exclude the losers of economic liberalisation from the
political process (Kienle, 2001).12
NED
 NED Bad
US democracy promotion occurs through NED – funded by Congress
Scott and Steele ’05 [December 2005. James M. Scott is Professor and Chair of the Department of
Political Science, Indiana State University, USA. Carie A. Steele is a Ph.D. student at the University of
Illinois. “Assisting democrats or resisting dictators? The nature and impact of democracy support by the
United States National Endowment for Democracy, 1990–99” Democratization. Volume 12, Issue 4,
2005.]

Consistent with these conclusions, the

United States expanded its efforts in a number of areas in order better to
promote democracy through a range of bilateral and multilateral efforts, political, economic and military elements,
and public, quasi-public and private approaches.12 One approach has been through the National
Endowment for Democracy (NED), a political foundation similar to organizations in such countries as Germany, Canada, and the
United Kingdom.13 The NED was established in 1983 and, during the 1990s, was funded by the US Congress to the tune of
around $30–35 million per year.14 In its efforts, the NED works to promote democracy primarily through four ‘core
institutes’: (a) the International Republican Institute (IRI), loosely affiliated with the Republican Party;15 (b) the National
Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), the Democratic Party's counterpart to IRI;16 (c) the American
Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS), which consists of the international institutes of the American Federation of
Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL–CIO) who support foreign labour unions through finance, training and services;17 and (d)
the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), a US Chamber of Commerce institute that promotes the development
of market-oriented economies and free enterprise-friendly legal and institutional structures.18 About 60 per cent of NED's grants
are channeled through these four institutes. As detailed elsewhere,19 the NED engages in several major
activities to promote and assist democracy. The most important of these activities are the NED's grants to democratizers
around the world. Overall, foundation grants support such purposes as elections, institution-building, civil
society, and market reforms. Additionally, the NED houses a research arm − the International Forum for Democratic Studies,
established in April 1994 − to fund and engage in research and analysis of democratization. This publishes the highly regarded quarterly Journal
of Democracy. The NED also builds networks among democracy-oriented groups, for example through a ‘World Movement for Democracy’.

NED fails to increase democratization – worsens situations

Scott and Steele ’05 [December 2005. James M. Scott is Professor and Chair of the Department of
Political Science, Indiana State University, USA. Carie A. Steele is a Ph.D. student at the University of
Illinois. “Assisting democrats or resisting dictators? The nature and impact of democracy support by the
United States National Endowment for Democracy, 1990–99” Democratization. Volume 12, Issue 4,
2005.]

Perhaps the most critical characteristic regarding the democracy-promotion efforts of the NED concerns
the activities that are funded by the grants or, put simply, the elements of democratization supported by the NED. As
indicated by the data in Table 3, these grants are directed toward (a) promoting and supporting worker rights and
political participation (26.3 per cent); (b) building and supporting civic participation and education (25.3 per cent); (c)
promoting human rights (10.9 per cent) and market reforms (10.8 per cent); (d) developing building political
institutions such as parliaments and political parties (9.9 per cent); (e) developing the institutions and activities of a
free press (8.9 per cent); (f ) elections (6.0 per cent); and (g) basic conflict resolution in societies suffering from such
instability (2.0 per cent). This distribution represents a broad range of purposes generally consistent with what Carothers has
characterized as ‘ the
democracy template’ embraced by US democracy promoters .54 However, it is noteworthy that
more than half of the NED's assistance is directed toward civic and labour organizations to assist such
groups to organize and participate in the political process. Overall, then, NED assistance in the 1990s was broadly
distributed to countries in every region of the world, in the form of grants channeled through a variety of recipient organizations to support a
range of purposes consistent with a typical model of democratization and democracy promotion. But what impact has NED had? Our two
hypotheses posit alternative models of the impact of democracy support, which we now examine. The first survey of the data conducted simple
bivariate correlations to explore the relationship between NED grants and democracy (as measured by Freedom House). Table 4 presents the
results of this first cut. As the table indicates, for the overall relationship, although the sign of the Pearson's R (0.014) is positive and thus
consistent with our hypothesized relationship, it is extremely small and not statistically significant. Hence, for the entire dataset, there is
no statistically significant relationship between aid and democracy . However, as the remainder of the table
indicates, these results vary by region. In Latin America and East Asia, there is a modest, positive, statistically significant relationship between
aid and democracy (Pearson's R at 0.195 and 0.198 respectively): more aid is associated with better democracy scores. In Central and Eastern
Europe, the sign of the Pearson's R is positive, but the significance level fails to meet the standard 0.05 cut-off (it meets the marginal 0.10 level).
In all other regions, the relationship between the two variables is negative and statistically
insignificant, contrary to our hypotheses (the Middle East and North Africa also meet the marginal 0.10 level). Consequently,
our first cut using simple correlations provides mixed results, with only limited evidence in support of the hypothesized relationships. The next
step, then, is to move on to multiple regression analyses testing each of our hypotheses. Table 4 THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN DEMOCRACY
AND NED GRANT SUPPORT BY REGION, 1990–2000 CSVPDFDisplay full size Our
democracy promotion hypothesis suggested
that NED grants should result in progress toward democracy in recipient countries. The first regression
equation tests this hypothesis, controlling for culture and socio-economic factors. Table 5 presents the results,
with our dependent variable (democracy, as measured by Freedom House) leading our independent variables by two years. As in the simple
correlations of our first cut, our results here do not support the democracy promotion hypothesis. Table 5 OLS
ESTIMATES, DEMOCRACY PROMOTION, 1990–99 CSVPDFDisplay full size As Table 5 indicates, the overall model is significant at the 0.000 level.
Additionally, the adjusted R2 of 0.273 indicates that our model displays a moderate fit; we can explain about 27 per cent of the variance in
democracy scores. With respect to the democracy promotion hypothesis, the results shown for our central variable − NED grants − are
surprising. NED
grants are not statistically significant, and the sign of the coefficient is not in the expected
direction. Clearly, this evidence discredits the democracy promotion hypothesis. As we expected, countries in the
Islamic and Confucian civilizations tend to have lower democracy scores. Both of these civilization variables display a statistically significant but
negative relationship to the democracy measure: Islamic and Confucian countries score about 2.25 and 2.8 points
lower on the 14-point democracy scale respectively than other countries. A country's trade liberalization is not a
statistically significant factor, although the sign of the coefficient is in the expected direction. US military intervention within the
previous five years has a statistically significant but negative effect on democratization : countries experiencing US
military intervention score about 1.4 points lower on the democracy scale two years after the intervention than other countries. Interestingly,
the only statistically significant positive factor in democratization is also the most powerful explanatory variable − the HDI scores. While being
part of the Confucian or Islamic civilizations and experiencing a US military intervention decrease progress toward democracy (as measured by
Freedom House scores), and NED grants and trade liberalization are statistically insignificant factors, progress in human development (defined
as education, health and wealth) is associated with progress toward democracy two years later. As the coefficient indicates, moving 0.5 up the
HDI scale (0–1) is associated with about a 3 point increase in democracy score. Hence, these results tend to reject our first hypothesis.
Rather than promoting democracy, NED grants seem to be associated with worsening situations (in
terms of democracy ); certainly assistance in the form of NED grants is not a good predictor of democratization. Instead, the most
significant finding of the model concerns the impact of socio-economic factors, as measured by HDI, on democratization. Thus far, of all the
explanations, improvements in human development are the most promising contributor to progress toward democracy.

NED programs do not aid democratization

Scott and Steele ’05 [December 2005. James M. Scott is Professor and Chair of the Department of
Political Science, Indiana State University, USA. Carie A. Steele is a Ph.D. student at the University of
Illinois. “Assisting democrats or resisting dictators? The nature and impact of democracy support by the
United States National Endowment for Democracy, 1990–99” Democratization. Volume 12, Issue 4,
2005.]
The findings lead to three primary conclusions about the role of NED grants in democratization, and they suggest paths of future research
regarding aid and democratization. First, the preceding analysis casts doubt on the effectiveness of NED grants as
an instrument of democracy promotion per se. As the data show, the democracy promotion hypothesis that
suggests that allocation of NED funding results in greater democratization is firmly rejected. Likewise, the
data display equally negative results for the democracy consolidation hypothesis. NED aid neither produces democracy nor

follows democratization . The rejection of these hypotheses, made even more emphatic by the
negative relationship between grants and democracy scores shown in the data, serves as an important
counter to the optimistic assessments of the NED's impact that were noted earlier in the article. When
combined with the negative relationship between NED grants and democracy, our rejection of both the democracy promotion and the
democracy consolidation hypotheses suggests a new hypothesis concerning the relationship between NED assistance and democracy: a
‘Dictatorship Resistance’ hypothesis. Whereas the democracy consolidation hypothesis suggests that democratization
movements attract NED funding, the dictatorship resistance hypothesis suggests that NED funding will be attracted by poor democracy ratings
or by reversals of progress toward democracy, in an effort to mobilize resistance against anti-democratic regimes and to sustain threatened or
faltering democracies.
 Defense of Model

Logic regressions are used to come to effective conclusions regarding democracy

promotion
Scott and Steele ’05 [December 2005. James M. Scott is Professor and Chair of the Department of
Political Science, Indiana State University, USA. Carie A. Steele is a Ph.D. student at the University of
Illinois. “Assisting democrats or resisting dictators? The nature and impact of democracy support by the
United States National Endowment for Democracy, 1990–99” Democratization. Volume 12, Issue 4,
2005.]

The analysis first presents key descriptive data on NED assistance, and then examines the relationship
of that aid to democratization in developing countries from 1990 to 1999. For our descriptive summary of NED aid, we
utilize a data-set of the grants awarded by the NED from 1990 to 1997. The key variables into which we code
this sample, which includes 1,754 grants collected from the NED's annual reports and ‘Democracy Grants Database’, include region;
type of recipient (government, political party, labour organization, business organization, think-tank or educational institution,
civic/citizen organization, media organization); and purpose (elections/constitution-building; institution-building; human-rights
development; media/press freedom and development; promotion of labour development, rights and participation; promotion of civic action,
participation and education; promotion of market economics and reform; and conflict resolution). In order to test the central hypotheses
concerning the relationship between NED aid and democratization, the
investigation uses both OLS and logistic regression
on a dataset composed of state years from 1990 to 1999. This data includes NED grants and democracy
scores as well as several control variables including culture, military deployment, bilateral trade and
alliance similarity. Our analysis first examines the Democracy Promotion Hypothesis using an OLS
regression to examine the impact of NED grants on democratization in developing states, relying on the
following equation: where DEMOCRACY is a country's democracy score in a given year, AID is NED assistance, HDI is a country's Human
Development Score in a given year, ISLAM is a measure identifying those countries in Huntington's Islamic civilization, SINIC is a measure
identifying those countries in Huntington's Sinic/Confucian civilization, TRADE is a measure of a country's integration in the world economy, and
MILINT is a measure identifying those countries experiencing a US military intervention. We go on to examine the Democracy Consolidation
Hypothesis in two stages, following the characterization of a two-stage decision process for aid allocation offered by Cingranelli and
Pasquarello. Logistic
regression is used to examine the relationship between a state's behaviour and the
likelihood of it being a recipient of grant aid (‘gatekeeping’ decision), in the following equation using a dichotomous variable
(aid, no aid) as the measure for NED aid: where AID is NED assistance, DEMOCRACY is a country's democracy score in a given year, HDI is a
country's Human Development Score in a given year, ISLAM is a measure identifying those countries in Huntington's Islamic civilization, SINIC is
a measure identifying those countries in Huntington's Sinic/Confucian civilization, USEXP is a measure of US exports to a given country, MILPRES
is a measure of the US military presence in a country, and INTERESTS is a measure of US foreign-policy interests in a given country. Then, OLS
regression is used to examine the impact of progress toward democracy on the total amount of NED
aid received among recipient states (‘level’ decision). To do so, we use the previous equation, substituting NED aid amounts for
the dichotomous NED aid variable.
DPT Wrong
Bad Models
 Epistemologically Flawed
Their studies are epistemologically flawed- undermine the robustness of DPT
Manan 2015 [Munafrizal- Professor of IR @ University of Al Azhar Indonesia, Hubungan International
Journal, cites a bunch of profs and scholars of DPT, “The Democratic Peace Theory and Its Problems,”
http://journal.unpar.ac.id/index.php/JurnalIlmiahHubunganInternasiona/article/view/1315, mm]

In the literature of democracy, there

has been a debate among social scientist, especially political scientists, about
what democracy really is as well as which countries should be called democratic and which types of
democracies are more peaceful. Speaking generally, the experts agree that the democratic theories can be
grouped into two broad paradigms. The first is elitist, structural, formal, and procedural. It tends to understand
democracy in a relatively minimalist way. A regime is a democracy when it passes some structural threshold of free and open elections,
autonomous branches of government, division of power, and checks and balances. This state of affairs precludes a tyrannical concentration of power in the hands of
the elites. Once this structure is in place, a regime is a democracy. The
second paradigm, which is called 'normative', 'cultural',
'deliberative democracy', and 'participatory democracy', tends to focus on other issues and to
demand much more of democracy. First, the emphasis is on the society and the individual citizens, not the political system and the regime.
Second, there is also a demand for the existence of democratic norms and democratic culture. This implies, among other things, political rights, tolerance,
openness, participation, and a sense of civic responsibility. Nevertheless, there is no a consensus among the democratic peace
theoreticians about the nature of democracy in relation to the democratic peace theory. If the democratic
peace theory is based on the first paradigm, then there are many countries should be called democratic. Democracy in such a paradigm ‘is

relatively easy to build, but also relatively easy to dismantle it’. 167 It seems that the democratic peace
theory is not strongly supported by the structural paradigm of democratic theory because interstate
wars or at least armed conflicts remain taking place in countries that committed to this structural
paradigm. The armed conflicts between Russia and Georgia as well as Thailand and Cambodia in 2008,
for example, which were triggered by border disputes, strengthen such a view. Within this context, Chan argues that
‘although a large number of countries have recently adopted democratic structures of governance (for

instance, universal suffrage, multiparty competition, contested elections, legislative oversight), it is not evident that their leaders and

people have internalized such democratic norms as those regarding tolerance, compromise, and
sharing power’.168 Conversely, if it is based on the second paradigm, then there are only a few
countries should be classified democratic. It is likely to focus merely on mature democratic countries
especially in the regions of North America and West Europe. A s a consequence, numerous cases of warring democracies will

be excluded. 169 It means that the democratic peace theory is only relevant to countries in this region and hence it cannot be applied to other countries. In

other words, the proponents of the democratic peace theory do not have a justifiable reason to spread
democracy around the world in order to enforce international peace. Like democracy, the definition
of war is also contested by scholars. The proponents of the democratic peace theory who argue that democratic countries have not involved
in wars against each other ‘have tended to rely on the definition most widely used in academic research on the causes of war in the last two or three decades’. 170
War is defined as, according to that definition, ‘no hostility…qualified as an interstate war unless it led
to a minimum of 1,000 battle fatalities among all the system members involved’. 171 Such a definition
excludes the wars that do not fulfil the 1,000 battle-death threshold and hence minimizes the number
of cases that can be categorized war. As Ray observes, ‘in any case, there are not numerous incidents having just below 1,000 battle deaths
that would otherwise qualify as wars between democratic states’.172 Moreover, it ‘allows democratic peace proponents to exclude

some troublesome cases’.173 The case of Finland is one of examples for this. The case suggests that
‘although democratic peace proponents code Finland as a democracy, Finland’s alliance with
Germany in World War II is summarily dismissed because fewer than 1,000 Finns were killed in armed
combat’. 174 Another example is the 1967 Six Day War between Israel and Lebanon in which Lebanon
‘only sent a few aircraft into Israel air space and sustained no casualties’. 175Obviously, such an old
definition is not adequate to explain the changing character of war in the contemporary era. 176 In addition,
by using historical analysis Ravlo, Gleditsch and Dorussen show that the claim of the democratic peace theory that democratic

states never get involved in a war against each other is undermined by historical evidence . Their finding
demonstrates that ‘most of extrasystematic wars have been fought by democracies’ 177 and ‘only in the postcolonial period are democracies less involved in

extrasystemic war’.178 But in

the colonial and imperial periods, wars occurred among democracies . Similar to
democracy and war, the definition of peace is also debated by scholars. Put it simply, according to the realists, peace
can be defined as the absence of war. As Waltz argues, ‘the chances of peace rise if states can achieve
their most important ends without actively using force’.179However, ‘the absence of war is something temporary’ and therefore
‘peace is no more than a transient lack of war’.180 For realists, the absence of war does not simply mean that there will be no war in the
future and they ridicule people who are happy with such a peace. Realists believe that ‘war is the common and unavoidable feature of international relations’ and it
means that peace as dangerous as war. 181 In the view of Waltz, ‘in an anarchic realm, peace is fragile’. 182 Thus, for realists, peace is a period to prepare war.
Other definitions of peace highlight different aspects. Brown defines international war as ‘violence between organized political entities claiming to be sovereign
nation’.183 Boulding who rebuts the realist definition of peace defines peace as ‘a situation in which the probability of war is so small that it does not really enter
into the calculations of any of the people involved’.184According to Boulding, peace should be a real peace which means a ‘stable peace’. Boulding rejects the
realist definition of peace since it is an ‘unstable peace’.185

Their models and studies have incredible amounts of bias

Gibler 12 (Douglas M, Professor in the Department of Political Science and Leadership Board Fellow in
the Arts and Sciences at the University of Alabama, and Alex Braithwaite, Senior Lecturer in
International Relations at University College London, “Dangerous Neighbours, Regional Territorial
Conflict and the Democratic Peace,” British Journal of Political Science, Volume 43, Issue 04, pp 877-887,
October 2012, mm)

While many regions seem to have been pacified, the likelihood of conflict remains high in other areas.
Most dyadic studies of conflict suffer from omitted variable bias because they do not directly model
this spatial variation.2 We argue that this bias is especially severe for democratic peace studies , due to the
endogeneity between democracy and peace. In standard studies of the influence of joint democracy on conflict outcomes, the estimated
effects are likely to be overstated because models typically pay no regard to how peace and territorial
settlements (both at home and in the near neighbourhood) influence the prospects for democracy at home in the
first place. Territorial disputes tend to recur, and are more likely than other issues to cause regimes to
centralize, which is why unstable regions tend to be associated with border disputes and autocratic
states. Absent territorial issues, however, regimes are not prone to the centralizing forces of external threats, and those states that are able
to democratize do so. This pattern creates a correlation between peace and democracy, both of which are
symptoms of prior territorial settlements. Although there is growing support for this argument,3 no study has yet
examined the effects of joint democracy after controlling for regional stability. If our argument is correct, we
would expect to find that the relationship between joint democracy and peace is conditioned by the presence of regional territorial stability.
That is, dyadic
democracy reduces the likelihood of conflict only if the dyadic partners reside in peaceful
neighbourhoods.
 Economic Norms Theory
Democratic peace models are flawed- they don’t take into account economic norms
theory
Mousseau 13 [Michael Mousseau, political scientist and prof at Koc University and research fellow at
the Belfer Center International Security Program- Harvard, 2013, International Studies Quarterly vol 57
issue 1, “The Democratic Peace Unraveled: It’s the Economy,”
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/doi/10.1111/isqu.12003/pdf, MM]

The results of this study must be made very clear:

There is no justification for inferring or implying any evidence herein,
direct or indirect, as corroborating the causation from democracy to peace. Democracy is not merely insignificant:
Standard measures of democracy were shown to have positive impacts on the odds of fatal militarized conflict in every model of fatal conflict that controlled for

contract flows. In conjunction with prior related studies (Mousseau 2009; Mousseau et al. 2013), it is now clear that there is little
correlational evidence of democracy causing peace, whether we gauge peace with wars, fatal and
nonfatal militarized interstate conflicts, or interstate crises. I do not expect this to be the last word in the democratic peace
research program, but as this controversy unfolds, it would be useful for all of us to give careful consideration to

Lakatosian insights on how research programs progress and degenerate (Lakatos [1970]1978). Dafoe has expressed the
view that ‘‘as the number of studies supporting the descriptive inference of the democratic peace continues to grow, the probability of a future

study overturning this finding becomes increasingly less likely’’ (2011:14; see also Dafoe and Russett 2013). This statement is
not scientifically correct: As far as I know, Dafoe has no special powers in divining what future studies will show; and repeated studies with specification bias do not
render a finding any more accurate than a single one. If it did, then the progress of knowledge would collapse into a race of competing viewpoints over publication
numbers; editors, rather than evidence, would emerge as the arbiters of truth, and popular and academic culture and intuition would trump the progress of
knowledge.14 While
numerous studies have corroborated the democratic peace, most of these employed
‘‘almost similar statistical models, indicators, and data’’ (Reuveny et al. 2011:764), and not a single one
controlled for contract-intensive economy, a proven powerful variable predicted by a new and highly
corroborated theory. New ideas can always emerge, and there is no logic in resisting them simply because a prior view was widely accepted as fact:
The world is not flat. Lakatos ([1970]1978:72) also observed that ‘‘defenders of the defeated program’’ may offer ‘‘a shrewd ad hoc ‘reduction’ of the [new]
program to the defeated one.’’ In response to the economic challenge to the democratic peace research program, defenders have already expressed the view that
the world is one of ‘‘complex causal relationships with endogeneities where liberal influences interact and strengthen one another’’ (Russett 2010:203), and that ‘‘it
is naive to think that we can easily parse out and estimate the effects of these many potential causes of peace’’ (Dafoe and Russett 2013:121). No one ever said it
was easy, but it is not any harder to parse out democracy from economy now than it was a decade ago when democracy reigned unchallenged, and as discussed
above, half of all democratic nation-years lack contractintensive economies. More
importantly, the mere existence of multiple
uncorroborated theories offering multiple paths of causation among multiple liberal variables does
not mean that these proposed multiple paths are correct: The progress of knowledge is not reached
democratically, with every imagined theory automatically given a seat at the explanatory table. A seat at
the table has to be earned with substantial corroborated evidence, and the wider stream of evidence at this writing strongly

supports causation from market norms to both democracy and peace, and comparatively far less
support for most of the alternative potential causes of the peace. The invocation of Lakatos is not meant to imply that ergo
the economic norms challenge must be right—that too would be wrong. Rather, Lakatosian method is useful for directing us toward the next appropriate research
tasks. First and foremost, as with all strong claims, the results here must be given careful scrutiny. Any error found is trivial, however, unless it is shown that, when
corrected, democracy returns to significant and substantive, and this is achieved in a theoretically informed model (Ray 2003). More importantly, all research must
be assessed in the larger context with which it is embedded (Lakatos [1970]1978:87–88). Compared
with most theories of democratic
peace, economic norms theory has a much larger repertoire of explanatory value and predictive
successes, crossing multiple levels of analyses.15 Causation has also been traced in case studies, such as the Greek transition to
contract-intensive economy, and related changes in its domestic and foreign politics, in the 1990s (Mousseau 2009:76–81); and Argentine and British motives to
fight the Falklands⁄ Malvinas War in this mixed-economic dyad (Mousseau 2012b). Second,
it would be useful to pit specific measures
from the most promising democratic peace theories against contract-intensive economy. For instance,
selectorate theory (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 1999) may still be robust, when selectorates are measured directly, against contract-intensive economy. Also,
settled borders and an overall secure environment may promote both democracy and peace (Rasler and
Thompson 2005; Vasquez 2011), and these factors may yet be found robust after consideration of impersonal
economy. A territorial peace may even promote contract-intensive economy—and thus has the potential to render the economic peace spurious. Finally,
some other third variable could cause both impersonal contract flows and peace. All that can be said as of this writing is that the cumulative state of knowledge is
that the
primary evidence for causation from democracy to peace—the democratic peace correlation—
appears spurious; all things considered, contract-intensive economy is the more likely cause of both
democracy and the peace. If the democratic peace correlation is not revived in a theoretically justified
model, then the time-tested rules of scientific progress mandate that the democratic peace research
program undergo a substantial transformation. In Lakatosian terms, the economic norms peace can be viewed as an emendation to the
democratic peace research program, adding heuristic power through its explanation of the causes of both democracy and peace, while receiving both corroboration
of its novel content and excess corroboration over previous explanations. Lakatos ([1970]1978) explicitly identifies examples of inconsistent theories being grafted
onto existing research programs, eventually overtaking the original programs. This is constitutive of a progressive problem-shift, while in some interpretations it
could even be conceived of as an ideal form (Ungerer 2012:23). With such a shift, there is potential for a great deal of progress, with a wide open frontier of
promising research needed on the possible causes of both contract-intensive economy and its precise linkages with both peace and cooperation, within and among
nations; the field is also wide open for modeling strategic interactions in various economic kinds of dyads and, among nations with contract-intensive economies,
collective action problems in their management and preservation of the global market order. Finally, this study carries direct implications for public policy: If

democracy is not a cause of peace, then there is no point in promoting democracy with the goal of
achieving peace, as did both the Clinton and W. Bush US Administrations. Instead, peace follows from
contractintensive economy—the condition when most citizens in a nation regularly use the impersonal
marketplace, rather than personal ties, for obtaining incomes, goods, and services. This means the contract-
intensive democracies are best advised to go back to the policies the Truman Administration adopted intuitively for post-World War II Europe: helping most citizens
obtain a stake in the impersonal market by making opportunities in it widely available. In this way, economic
norms theory informs us that
it is politics that drives economics, and it is up to political leaders to make the decisions to do
whatever it takes to make sure most citizens can normally find jobs in the marketplace. Wherever this
is achieved, the evidence informs us, democracy and peace will follow.

Peace is a result of contract-intensive economies- the democratic peace correlation is

wrong
Mousseau 13 [Michael Mousseau, political scientist and prof at Koc University and research fellow at
the Belfer Center International Security Program- Harvard, 2013, International Studies Quarterly vol 57
issue 1, “The Democratic Peace Unraveled: It’s the Economy,”
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/doi/10.1111/isqu.12003/pdf, MM]
The democratic peace correlation—the observation that democratic nations rarely, if ever, fight each other, even though they often fight nondemocratic nations—is
at the core of what is probably the most important research program in the study of international politics, with over three hundred books and articles published on
the subject over the past two decades. For
all the multiplicity of studies reporting the democratic peace correlation,
however, we have precious little evidence that democracy is the cause of it. No theory to explain the
correlation has accrued substantial and thus widely convincing evidence, and there is no logical basis
for discounting the probability that some new factor may arrive at any time that accounts for both
democracy and the peace. In recent years, a new factor has surfaced in the democratic peace research
program: contract-intensive economy . About a decade after the democratic peace correlation emerged as a stylized fact, I offered an
explanation for it that pinpoints causation in impersonal contract flows within nations, and showed how these flows can cause both democracy within nations and
peace among them (Mousseau 2000). In time, direct data on impersonal contract flows became available, and the initial supposition was corroborated in analyses
of wars and fatal militarized interstate conflicts (Mousseau 2009), followed by interstate crises (Mousseau, Orsun, and Ungerer 2013; Mousseau, Orsun, Ungerer,

and Mousseau 2013). This new economic peace not only appears to account for the democratic peace
correlation, but is also far more substantial: While the democratic peace achieved fame with its claim
of an absence of wars among democratic nations—with ‘‘wars’’ defined as militarized conflicts with at
least one thousand battlefield-connected fatalities—the economic peace boasts an absence of wars
and even the absence of a single battlefield-connected fatality among nations with contract-intensive
economies. Importantly, the accumulated evidence for economic norms theory is now quite strong,
seeming to surpass other theories in the democratic peace research program.2 The implications of economic norms
theory for the democratic peace research program are far from trivial: It seems that the democratic peace may at last have a

credible explanation and that the source of the peace is not in governing but in economic institutions.
This is a strong claim, and it is therefore appropriate that it be treated skeptically and examined thoughtfully. All of the challenging issues that have been raised so
far in the literature have focused on the democratic peace correlation as the primary evidence for causation from democracy to peace, seeking to save this
correlation by altering third measures, adding third variables, trying more precise tests of insignificance, and adopting more stringent measures of democracy
(Russett 2010:201; Dafoe 2011:3; Dafoe and Russett 2013)

Democratic peace theory is flawed – transitions don’t ensure liberal norms and sample
size is insufficient to prove democratic peace
Banai 13 (Hussein, Assistant Professor of International Relations at Occidental College, “Democratic
solidarity: Rethinking democracy promotion in the New Middle East,” Security Dialogue, October-
December 2013 vol. 44 no. 5-6 411-429 , Sage Journals, mm)

However, this crucial aspect of Kant’s cosmopolitan scheme for perpetual peace is often overlooked in
the literature on democracy promotion. A republican form of government alone will not necessarily
help the cause of peace; governments can be representative of their citizens’ beliefs and interests but still lack
the liberal principles of respect and equality required to create lasting bonds based on friendship and trust with other liberal
nations in international society.¶ Indeed, the latter observation is borne out in the case of emerging or transitional
democracies, where the absence of widely shared liberal values among those coming to power
through hastily arranged elections or referenda increases the likelihood of war (Linz and Stepan, 1996;
Mansfield and Snyder, 2005). What this suggests, then, is that the focus on democracy promotion, absent a concurrent effort to promote liberal
values, will not necessarily produce a durable and stable peace.¶ Furthermore, the appeal of the democratic peace theory
rests entirely on a small universe of cases compared to the quite substantial range of international outcomes explained using
realist arguments (Layne, 1994). This is largely due to the historical fact that there simply are very few
examples of a cohort of countries satisfying Kant’s constitutional and cosmopolitan criteria for perpetual peace,
whereas there are countless examples of non-democratic countries waging wars as well as
maintaining long periods of peace (Spiro, 1994). Therefore, while there are stronger causal links between the breakdown of regional
alliances and the outbreak of war – as in the case of World War I – as per realist theory, the liberal take on democratic peace is
merely based on a correlation between cultural-normative factors and peace.¶ Where does this leave us with
respect to democracy promotion? At the very least, it ought to temper the certainty behind the instrumental
argument that democracy can be a means toward world peace. As the costly wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
demonstrate – both of which have at various times been justified through reference to the core tenets of the Bush-era ‘freedom agenda’ –
looking at democracy solely through the lens of international security can have dire consequences for
stability and peace. This is precisely the kind of faux idealism that is most disturbing to realists, and that over the past two decades has
degraded the otherwise worthy pursuit of affirming the near-universal appeal of democratic values by reducing it to a mere tool of statecraft.

Democratic Peace Research is flawed – it can’t explain variance in democratic

reactions
Geis 13 (Anna, professor of political science at Otto-von-Guericke University, and Harald Muller,
Executive Director and Head of Research Department at Peace Research Institute Frankfurt, Oct 10,
2013, The Militant Face of Democracy: Liberal Forces for Good, Google Books, mm)
Like mainstream DP research, ‘liberal war‘ studies neglect an import- ant fact that adds to the puzzle about the democratic ‘Janus face’:
democracies go to war with significantly different frequency. The formula ‘democracies never fight wars with each
other but conduct armed con- flicts with non-democracies as frequently as autocracies’ is thus not sufficiently precise: a small group of
democracies such as the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Australia, India and Israel have
been involved comparatively often in military conflicts, while some democracies take part rather rarely and others
abstain altogether (Miiller 2004a: 494-7; Chojnaclti 2006: 21). Neither liberal DP research nor the critics of liberalism can
consistently explain within their theoretical frameworks why all liberal democracies do not behave in
the same manner, if the assumption is valid that certain institutional and normative causal
mechanisms should take effect in an average democratic polity, or that liberalism should produce an
invariable dichotomy of friends (fellow liberals) and enemies (non-liberals) (Muller and Wolff 2006). In order to understand
‘democratic war’, we also have to understand this variance.
Diversionary War
 Generic
DPT justifies interventions and wars in the name of promoting peace
Manan 2015 [Munafrizal- Professor of IR @ University of Al Azhar Indonesia, Hubungan International
Journal, cites a bunch of profs and scholars of DPT, “The Democratic Peace Theory and Its Problems,”
http://journal.unpar.ac.id/index.php/JurnalIlmiahHubunganInternasiona/article/view/1315, mm]

The second problem with the democratic peace theory is it is inclined to justify pro-democratic
intervention . In this sense, ‘this thesis can fuel a spirit of democratic crusade and be used to justify covert
or overt interventions against each other’. 186 The U.S. foreign policy is the best example to see this
case. The faith of democratic peace theory has been expressed aggressively by the US foreign policy
which believes that the promotion of democracy around the world is not only useful to enforce
international peace, but also give a positive result on the US national security. This is a reason why ‘the promotion of
democracy, genuine and otherwise, has been a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy for much of the twentieth century’.187 In addition, ‘promoting democracy is a
vital interest of the United States that justifies that use of force’.188 The importance of the promotion of democracy has been supported strongly by political
leaders from both Republican Party and Democratic Party such as the US Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. As Chan
notes, ‘their statements often suggest that democracy is the best antidote to war’. 189 President Wilson who well known as the liberal internationalism believed
that ‘a steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained except by a partnership of democratic nations’ and ‘the world must be made safe for democracy’. 190
Similarly, President Clinton assured that ‘the best strategy to ensure our security and to build a durable peace is to support the advance of democracy elsewhere.
Democracies don’t attack each other’.191 Likewise, President
Bush who is often called the neoconservative internationalism stated firmly that
‘the reason why I’m so strong on democracy is democracies don’t go to war with each other…I’ve got
great faith in democracies to promote peace’. 192 Such statements has been used by President Wilson
to justify war against Imperial Germany in 1900s, by President Clinton to justify ‘aid to Russia and
intervention in Bosnia and Haiti’ in 1990s , 193 and by President Bush to justify war against terrorism
by invading Afghanistan and Iraq in the early 2000. Also, under the Administration of Obama the US democracy promotion tradition
in foreign policy remains pivotal, although its application using somewhat different approaches compared to his predecessors. As Bouchet says, ‘for the Obama
administration as for its predecessors, America’s security, prosperity and predominant international status are all viewed as going hand in hand with
democratization abroad’. 194 All this clearly show that, using the words of Doyle ‘liberal
peace is definitely part of the rhetoric of
foreign policy’. 195 In fact, the promotion of democracy by force has encouraged war rather than resulted
in peace . Some studies have succinctly shown that the attempts to create democracies by external force
have often failed. Based on their empirical analysis, Gleditsch, Christiansen and Hegre concludes that in the short term democratic intervention is indeed
able to promote democratization, but some cases showed clearly that it often created an unstable democratizing

country due to internal violence in the form of serious human rights violations or civil wars and
therefore in the long run it brought dangerous consequences. 196 According to Mierhenrich, ‘ the result of pro-
democratic intervention is democratic war, internal and otherwise’. 197 Mierhenrich identifies that ‘ pro-
democratic intervention causes war in two ways : (1 ) by waging war and (2) by provoking war’ . 198 Thus
democracy by external force is counterproductive for peace. Perhaps what has been occurring in Iraq today shows the truth of
such a conclusion.
Rising Power Promotion Good
Generic
 Credible Model
Only emerging democracies provide a credible model
Schönwälder, PhD Political Science, ‘14 (Gerd Schönwälder holds a Ph.D. in political science from
McGill University and until December 2012, he was Director of Policy and Planning at the International
Development Research Centre (IDRC). Dr. Schönwälder is a visiting fellow at the German Development
Institute (DIE/GDI) in Bonn, Germany, “Promoting Democracy What Role for the Democratic Emerging
Powers?”, German Development Institute Discussion Paper, February 2014)

In fact, the reluctance

on the part of the democratic emerging powers to become more deeply involved in
the affairs of neighbouring countries may have deprived them of what is perhaps their greatest asset,
namely, the ability to bring their own experience in building democratic political systems to bear on
ongoing democratisation processes there. For example, there have been few, if any, deliberate
attempts to make use of India’s or South Africa’s experience in building multi-ethnic and multi-racial
democracies, Brazil’s considerable track record in opening its political system to popular
participation,49 or Tur- key’s long-running experiment in marrying Islam with representative democracy.50 As to furthering alternative,
more context-sensitive forms of democracy that would go beyond the standard model of western-
style representative democracy, the cases studies yielded hardly any evidence at all.51 Changes to the present status quo, and a
shift to a more proactive stance on external democracy promotion, could come from a variety of
internal and external sources, which, taken together, could provoke a shift in “state preferences” as explained above. As to
domestic factors, greater pressure from domestic pro-democracy constituencies and more transparency in foreign policymaking, obliging
governments to lay open the calculations behind their foreign policy decisions, would militate in favour of a more proactive stance on external
There are promising signs pointing in this direction – witness the recent popular
democracy promotion.
protests against deficiencies in domestic political systems in Brazil or India.52 At the same time, there are
worrying trends pointing the other way: the clampdown by the Turkish government on the Gezi Park protests may indicate a hardening of the
regime, while growing governance deficits in South Africa could signal a weakening commitment of the regime to democratic rules and
principles. On the external front, changes in both regional and global contexts are presenting the democratic emerging powers with some
critical choices as to how to fill their new regional and global leadership roles. Within their own regions, they need to decide if they want to
pursue their own interests first and foremost, becoming new regional hegemons,53 or instead take on the role of regional representatives and
champions. Defining and defending regional interests, including those of smaller, less powerful states, and of disadvantaged populations within
them, has not been an overriding objective for the democratic emerging powers to date. Much the same can be said about the forging of
stronger links among the democratic emerging powers themselves, where few advances have been made (Alden / Vieira 2005; Graham 2011;
Stephen 2012). Globally, the
democratic emerging powers need to decide how they see their relationship
with the West, and how they want to relate to other emerging powers, especially authoritarian ones such as China.
Their reluctance to make common cause with the West is understandable, especially since promoting
democracy was used as a pretext to justify the illegal war in Iraq. But in their efforts to differentiate themselves, the
democratic emerging powers have also made some troubling choices, particularly regarding their voting behaviour on human rights issues in
the context of the UN or in turning a blind eye to human rights violations and anti-democratic actions in neighbouring states, in the name of
south- ern solidarity. These choices, which have sometimes blurred the line between emerging democracies and emerging autocracies, carry
significant risks as well, notably that of undermining the democratic emerging powers’ claim to democratic legitimacy.54 These issues are
critically important since they provide an important source of legitimacy for the democratic emerging powers. Arguably,
these
countries are too weak to impose their leadership in their respective regions – not to mention at the
global level – simply by projecting their economic or military might. As emerging economies, their
capacity to provide direct material benefits to others is likewise rather limited.55 In these
circumstances, they need to rely on other resources to ensure their legitimacy. One such resource is
precisely their standing as emerging democracies, resulting in a kind of legitimacy that is rooted not
just in the continuing appeal of the democratic idea as such, but also in a demonstrated capacity to
better address developmental challenges and resolve internal tensions and conflicts of interests by
way of democratic governance. A key difference to authoritarian development models, building and
nurturing this capacity is critical for the democratic emerging powers’ ability to lead by example, and
to offer assistance to others in building more democratic systems.
Brazil
 Better than US
Brazil and India are key to global demo promo – US and EU fail
Stuenkel, PhD Political Science, ‘13 (Oliver Stuenkel holds a PhD in political science from the
University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany, and a Master in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of
Government at Harvard University, where he was a McCloy Scholar. He is an Assistant Professor of
International Relations at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV) in São Paulo, where he coordinates the
São Paulo branch of the School of History and Social Science (CPDOC) and the executive program in
International Relations. He is also a non-resident Fellow at the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi) in
Berlin and a member of the Carnegie Rising Democracies Network. His research focuses on rising
powers; specifically on Brazil’s, India’s and China's foreign policy and on their impact on global
governance, “Rising Powers and the Future of Democracy Promotion: the case of Brazil and India,” Third
World Quarterly 34:2 p. 339-355, 2013)
Conclusion As the analysis makes clear, a realist approach is best at accounting for rising democracies’ behaviour. Brazil and India promote
democracy as long as doing so is aligned with their overall strategic and economic interests, and if they are willing to adopt democracy
promotion as means to legitimise their growing influence. In this respect their approach is similar to the Western practice. While promoting
democracy may endanger India’s foreign policy goal of maintaining regional stability, it is increasingly aligned with Brazil’s
national interests as a regional hegemon. Given that autocratic leaders are more likely to endanger
Brazilian investments in the region, for example by expropriating Brazilian investments, democracy promotion has
become a key tool with which to contain threats against the legitimacy of the established order and to defend Brazil’s
growing economic presence in South America. Yet rising democracies fundamentally differ from
established actors in that they rarely justify their democracy-related activities in the context of the larger liberal narrative often used by
European and US policy makers. Both Brazil and India remain suspicious of the at times sweeping Wilsonian liberal
rhetoric and concepts used by European and US democracy promoters, a rhetoric which policy makers
in Brasília and New Delhi consider to be both ineffective and smacking of cultural imperialism. It is worth
noting that, despite their democracy-related activities, no Indian and Brazilian policy maker or civil society representative describes these as
‘democracy promotion’—very much contrary to Europe and the USA, were the term is common. Therefore it is no surprise that neither Brazil
nor India has embraced US ideas such as the ‘League of Democracies’. As a consequence, observers in Europe and the USA have generally seen
the scope for cooperation with rising democracies on democracy-related activities as limited. Nevertheless comparisons between Western and
non-Western views about democracy promotion often overlook the fact that there is ample room for cooperation. Emphasising the more
technical terms—such as ‘good governance’—rather than the ideology-laden liberal ‘democracy promotion’ may be an important step to
facilitate cooperation, particularly on the multilateral level. In this context the ‘European approach’, which often seeks to avoid the term
‘democracy promotion’ in order not to estrange the host government105 (for example by promoting ‘good governance’ or by strengthening
‘civil society’ 106), may provide more room for collaboration between established democracy promoters and rising democracies. For example,
when US President Barack Obama visited India, the USA and India signed an Open Government Partnership to start a dialogue among senior
officials on open government issues and to disseminate innovations that enhance government accountability.107 These less visible approaches
are likely to be more acceptable to rising democracies than being asked to join established powers in condemning autocrats openly.
Emerging powers’ position matters greatly because they are located in regions of the world where
democracy’s footing is not yet firm. In addition, there are indications that Brazil’s and India’s credibility
among poor countries may exceed that of the rich world—perhaps precisely because they are rarely
perceived as overly paternalistic or arrogant. Perhaps most importantly Brazil’s and India’s societal
structures—high inequality, a high degree of illiteracy (in India’s case) and pockets of poverty—are similar to
those in many countries that are struggling to establish democracy. Seen from this perspective, Brazilian and
Indian policy makers have much more experience in making democracy work in adverse
environments. In Brazil’s case an additional asset is a very recent experience of successful transition to
democracy. Emerging power such as Brazil and India are therefore in a much better position to share
their experience of democracy than Europe or the USA, whose democratisation lies in the distant past,
and whose societies look very different from those in the rest of the world. Finally, in a world where
an increasing number of national leaders look to China as an economic and political model to copy,
India and Brazil provide powerful counter-examples that political freedom is no obstacle to economic
growth.108 In this sense, as Pratap Mehta points out, Brazil’s and India’s own success may do far
more for democracy promotion than any overtly ideological push in that direction could ever hope to
accomplish.109

Brazil is comparatively better at promoting democracy than the US

Stuenkel, PhD Political Science, ‘13 (Oliver Stuenkel holds a PhD in political science from the
University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany, and a Master in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of
Government at Harvard University, where he was a McCloy Scholar. He is an Assistant Professor of
International Relations at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV) in São Paulo, where he coordinates the
São Paulo branch of the School of History and Social Science (CPDOC) and the executive program in
International Relations. He is also a non-resident Fellow at the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi) in
Berlin and a member of the Carnegie Rising Democracies Network. His research focuses on rising
powers; specifically on Brazil’s, India’s and China's foreign policy and on their impact on global
governance, “Rising Powers and the Future of Democracy Promotion: the case of Brazil and India,” Third
World Quarterly 34:2 p. 339-355, 2013)
Yet when speaking about US foreign policy, democracy promotion is generally regarded as more than a fig leaf that merely exists to disguise
true US national interests. Rather, democracy
promotion is part of a greater American narrative, an important
element of the USA’s ‘mission’ in the world.25 US culture is thus an important factor in explaining
democracy promotion.26 Thomas Carothers confirms this by referring to the ‘inherent assumption that the United
States is especially qualified to promote democracy’, 27 recommending that US foreign policy makers ‘get over the
tendency to see democracy…promotion…as the special province of the United States’. 28 In addition, Rick Travis argues that promoting
democracy strengthens democracy’s identity and, in the case of the USA, helps it ‘reconnect with its core historical traditions’. 29 There seems
to be a strong collective conviction that US democracy remains one of the most advanced in the world.30 Similar observations can be made
about European democracy promotion. This may explain why one of the main problems of both US and European
democracy programmes is that they seek to recreate the world in their own image, rather than
accepting that democracy may look different in different places.31 Practical experience also has a
strong influence on the debate, and evidence suggests that efforts to strengthen democracies often
have limited success.32 Those engaged in democracy promotion on the ground often complain that, while costs are immediate, effects
are uncertain and often take decades to appear—if they appear at all.33 For example, the objective of establishing a liberal
democracy in Afghanistan has been quietly substituted with simply leaving behind a stable central
government that can defend itself against the Islamic insurgency, after even the keenest optimists can
see very little progress. Ten years after the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan can hardly be considered a
stable democracy.34 As scholars warn, competitive elections may lead to sectarian violence and
deepen animosities in ethnically divided societies.35 Kenya, Rwanda and Burundi are examples where elections have
indeed unleashed inter-ethnic violence.36 For decades the USA has worked to strengthen civil society capacity building and political party
development in the Arab World, but little suggests that the uprisings that have shaken the latter over the past months are in any way the result
of Western democracy promotion.37 The opposite is at times true: being associated with Western organisations is often a burden for
opposition groups; in June 2009, for example, the Iranian opposition explicitly distanced itself from the West to prevent a loss of credibility and
legitimacy.38 An additional critique of democracy promotion used frequently is that democracy
is a ‘contested concept’, 39
and difficult to measure, making it at times hard to decide whether certain countries (such as
Venezuela, Iran or Russia) are democratic or not.40 US or European democracy promotion is often based
on an idealised Western liberal democratic model, which is difficult to apply anywhere in the world,
including in the West itself.41 People who work in democracy promotion usually know what it means to live in a democracy, but
they have rarely experienced democratisation in their home countries, thus often having little practical understanding of the process. In
addition, seeking to emulate specific characteristics of US or European democracy may have negative
consequences as it does not allow for local peculiarities: ‘Many Americans confuse’, one specialist
writes, ‘the forms of American democracy with the concept of democracy itself’. 42 In order to emulate
Western-style voting cycles, democracy promoters are often in favour of rushing to an election, even in post-conflict societies. Yet elections can
have an inherently disruptive effect, in particular in winner-takeall scenarios.43 As Carothers points out, being impatient to organise elections
‘reflects the tendency of the international actors engaged in aiding the conflict resolution to view elections as a strategy for an early exit. Yet at
least sometimes, early elections can be a recipe for failure.’ 44 The next section analyses which of the arguments laid out here are used by
rising democracies, and how this informs their foreign policy. Do rising democracies promote democracy? The case of Brazil and India
Western democratic governments and organisations spend billions of dollars every year on
democracy-related projects,45 turning them into the dominant actors in the field of democracy promotion. Yet a notable
shift of power is taking place towards countries that are more hesitant when it comes to systematic
democracy promotion. Have Brazil and India promoted democracy in the past? How do analysts and policy makers in emerging
democracies—using Brazil and India as an example in this analysis—think about democracy promotion? How can we characterise their
arguments in relation to the critiques cited above? Brazil and democracy promotion Brazil
accounts for over half of South
America’s wealth, population, territory and military budget, which suggests that it is relatively more
powerful in its region than China, India and Germany are in their respective neighbourhoods.46 Yet,
despite this dominant position, it shied away from intervening in its neighbours’ internal affairs
before the 1990s. The preservation of national sovereignty and non-intervention have always been
and remain key pillars of Brazil’s foreign policy,47 so any attempt to promote or defend self-determination and human
rights abroad—a commitment enshrined in Brazil’s 1989 constitution48—stands in conflict with the principle of non-intervention.49 The
tension arising from these two opposing visions—respecting sovereignty and adopting a more assertive pro-democracy stance, particularly in
the region—is one of the important dilemmas in Brazilian foreign policy of the past two decades. In fact, particularly during the 1990s, Brazil
abstained several times from promoting or defending democracy. In 1990, under President Fernando Collor de Mello (1990–92) and largely
because of economic interests, Brazil blocked calls for a military intervention in Suriname after a military coup there. A year later it opposed
military intervention to reinstall President Aristide in Haiti. In 1992 it remained silent over a political crisis in Ecuador. In 1994—when a member
of the UN Security Council—it abstained from Security Council Resolution 940, which authorised the use of force in Haiti with the goal of
reinstating President Aristide, who had been removed from power in 1991 through a coup.50 However, contrary
to what is often
believed, Brazil has defended democracy abroad in many more instances, and over the past two
decades its views on intervention have become decidedly more flexible.51 Even under indirectlyelected President
José Sarney (1985–89), the first president after democratisation, Brazil supported the inclusion of a reference to democracy in a new preamble
to the Organization of American States (OAS) Charter.52 Under President Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995–2002), Brazil intervened in
neighbouring Paraguay in 1996 to avoid a military coup there—working through Mercosur and the
OAS to obtain higher leverage, and ultimately convincing General Lino Oviedo not to stage a coup d´état against then President Juan Carlos
Wasmosy.53 The Brazilian president again played an important mediating role during political crises in
Paraguay in 1999 and 2000.54 When then Peruvian President Fujimori falsified the election results in 2000, Brazil’s President
Cardoso refused to criticise him and Brazil was the major obstacle to US and Canadian efforts to condemn Peru at the OAS General Assembly.55
Yet, in an important gesture, President Cardoso stayed away from President Fujimori’s inaugural ceremony, and a year later Brazil supported
the Inter-American Democratic Charter, largely aimed at Fujimori, which includes the norm of democratic solidarity.56 Following
the
coup in Venezuela Brazil has assumed a more assertive prodemocracy stance in the region. In 2002 it
actively engaged in Venezuela when a group sought to illegally oust Hugo Chavez, who was reinstated
48 hours later.57 Looking back over the past decade, Santosi argues that Brazil has played an
exemplary and fundamental role in strengthening democratic norms and clauses across the region. 58 In
his memoirs Cardoso reflected on the issue by saying that ‘Brazil always defends democratic order’. 59 Burges and Daudelin argue that ‘one can
say that Brazil has been quite supportive of efforts to protect democracy in the Americas since 1990’. 60 This tendency has been further
strengthened in the 21st century. In 2003 President Lula (2003– 2010) swiftly engaged to resolve a constitutional crisis in Bolivia and, in 2005,
he sent his foreign minister to Quito to deal with a crisis in Ecuador. In the same year Brazil supported the OAS in assuming a mediating role
during a political crisis in Nicaragua, including financial support for the electoral monitoring of a municipal election there. In 2009 the
international debate about how to deal with the coup in Honduras was very much a result of Brazil and the USA clashing over the terms of how
best to defend democracy, rather than whether to defend it.61 Over the past two decades Brazil has systematically built democratic references
and clauses into the charters, protocols and declarations of the subregional institutions of which it is a member. The importance of democracy
in the constitution and activities of the Rio Group, Mercosur and the more recent South American Community of Nations (Unasul) can to a large
extent be traced back to Brazil’s activism.62 Atthe same time Brazil has sought to ensure that the protection of
democratic rule be calibrated with interventionism, combining the principle of non-intervention with
that of ‘non-indifference’. 63 This term’s policy relevance remains contested, yet it symbolises how much Brazil’s thinking about
sovereignty has evolved. For example, when explaining why Brazil opposed a US proposal to craft a mechanism within the OAS’S Democratic
Charter, which permits the group to intervene in nations to foster or strengthen democracy, Celso Amorim argued that ‘there needs
to be a dialogue rather than an intervention’, adding that ‘democracy cannot be imposed. It is born
from dialogue.’ 64 It thus positions itself as an alternative and more moderate democracy defender in the
hemisphere than the USA, and one that continuously calibrates its interest in defending democracy with its tradition of non-
intervention. Brazil’s decision to lead the UN peacekeeping mission, Minustah, in Haiti, starting in 2004, cannot be categorised as democracy
promotion per se, yet the mission’s larger goal did consist in bringing both economic and political stability to the Caribbean Island, which has
been the target of US American democracy promotion for years.65 In the same way Brazil’s
ongoing involvement in Guinea
Bissau, a member of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP) proved to be a yet another important
moment for Brazil’s role as a promoter of peace and democracy.66 Brazil had provided some electoral assistance to
Guinea-Bissau from 2004 to 2005 and it continued to support efforts to stabilise the country by operating through the UN peacekeeping
mission there.67 During a CPLP meeting in 2011 Brazil signed a memorandum of understanding to implement a Project in Support of the
Electoral Cycles of the Portuguese-speaking African Countries and Timor-Leste.68 In addition, in the lead-up to the anticipated elections in April
2012, Brazil made further financial contributions to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) basket fund in support of the National
Electoral Commission for assistance in the execution of the election.69 Brazil’s pro-democracy stance became most obvious in 2012, when
President Dilma Rousseff—together with the leaders of Uruguay and Argentina—suspended Paraguay from Mercosur after the impeachment of
Paraguay’s President Fernando Lugo, which most governments in the region regarded as the equivalent of a coup d’état or a ‘parliamentary
coup’. 70 The Brazilian government thus set a clear precedent that anti-democratic tendencies in the region would cause a rapid and clear
reaction from leaders in Brasília. President Rousseff’s decision to work through Mercosur—rather than the OAS— is consistent with a growing
preference to use local regional bodies, possibly in an effort to strengthen projection as a regional leader. Yet there are also critical voices.
Summarising Brazilian foreign policy over the past two decades, Sean Burges argues that ‘Brazil has not behaved consistently in support of
democratic norm enforcement’, 71 and that decisive action to preserve democracy has been ‘tepid’. 72 Ted Piccone reasons that ‘when it
comes to wielding…influence in support of democracy in other countries…Brazil has been ambivalent and often unpredictable’. 73 Both these
evaluations were made before Brazil’s assertive stance in Paraguay in 2012. Nevertheless, despite this strategy, the term ‘democracy
promotion’ is not used either by Brazilian policy makers or by academics when referring to Brazil’s Paraguay policy. In the same way Brazil does
not promote any activities comparable to those of large US or European nongovernmental organisations, whose activities range from political
party development, electoral monitoring, supporting independent media and journalists, capacity building for state institutions, and training for
judges, civic group leaders and legislators. This brief analysis shows that Brazil is increasingly assertive in its region, and
willing to intervene if political crises threaten democracy. Brazil is most likely to intervene during constitutional crises
and political ruptures, and less so when procedural issues during elections may affect the outcome—as was the case during Hugo Chavez’ re-
election in 2012, when several commentators criticised Brazil’s decision not to pressure the Venezuelan government to ensure fair elections.74
Yet, despite this distinction, it seems clear that the
consolidation of democracy in the region has turned into one of
Brazil’s fundamental foreign policy goals. This development must be seen in the context of Brazil’s attempt to consolidate its
regional leadership. In the 1980s Brazilian foreign policy makers perceived the need to engage with the country’s neighbours, principally its rival
Argentina, a trend that continued and strengthened throughout the 1990s. At the beginning of Cardoso’s first term, the president began to
articulate a vision that fundamentally diverged from Brazil’s traditional perspective—a vision that identified ‘South America’ as a top priority.75
This trend has continued ever since, and was intensified under Cardoso’s successor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Over the past few years, as Brazil’s
economic rise has caught the world’s attention, the region has firmly stood at the centre of Brazil’s foreign policy strategy.76 This trend
continues under Brazil’s current administration, with a focus on reducing a growing fear in the region that Brazil could turn into a regional bully;
over the past few years anti-Brazilian sentiment has been on the rise in South America.77 Yet, while Brazil may de facto defend democracy with
frequency in the region, it rarely engages in the liberal rhetoric so common in Europe and the USA. It may be precisely because of Brazil’s
traditional mistrust of the USA’s attempts to promote freedom that Brazilian policy makers refrain from using similar arguments. Rather, Brazil
can be said to be defending and promoting political stability above all else, a key ingredient of Brazil’s interest in expanding its economic
influence on the continent. Rather than the strength of its neighbours, it is their weakness that is now a threat, as weak nations may not be able
to provide basic levels of public order. For example, the violence and chaos that ensues in Bolivia could spill into Brazilian territory, and it may
scare away investors who are contemplating engaging in Brazil. Brazil
is strong and getting stronger—but its neighbours
are weak and some appear to be getting weaker. It is within this context that Brazil faces its biggest
security challenges.78 While Brazil usually acts swiftly in face of political instability, it is far more reluctant to intervene in places where
democracy suffers from procedural problems—such as in Venezuela, where President Chavez used the state apparatus to promote his
campaign, leading to an uneven playing field between him and his opponent, Henrique Capriles. One way to explain Brazil’s reluctance to
intervene in such cases is that they do not affect Brazil’s economic interests in the region. Democracy
promotion can thus be
seen not necessarily as an end in itself, but rather as an important element of Brazil’s strategy to strengthen its
growing economic presence in the region. Similarly to the USA, democracy promotion thus largely
aligns with Brazil’s national interests as an emerging power.
EU
 Political Conditionality

EU use of political conditionality aids democratization

Schimmelfennig and Scholtz ’08 [2008. Frank Schimmelfennig is Professor of European Politics at
the Center for Comparative and International Studies (CIS). Hanno Scholtz is a Senior Researcher at the
Sociological Institute, University of Zurich. “EU Democracy Promotion in the European Neighbourhood;
Political Conditionality, Economic Development and Transnational Exchange” European Union Politics.
Volume 9 (2): 187–215.]

In using political conditionality, the EU sets the adoption of democratic rules and practices as
conditions that the target countries have to fulfil in order to receive rewards such as financial
assistance, some kind of institutional association or – ultimately – membership. EU conditionality is mainly positive,
that is, the EU offers and withholds carrots but does not carry a big stick (Smith, 2001; Youngs, 2001: 192).
Countries that fail to meet the criteria are simply denied assistance, association or membership and left
behind in the competition for EU funds and the ‘regatta’ for accession. The EU generally does not inflict extra
punishment (in addition to withholding the conditional reward) on non-compliant governments. Nor does it give extra support to
those that fail to meet the conditions. Rather, it regularly exhorts the target governments that it is their own responsibility to
create the conditions to be rewarded. The most general political conditionality hypothesis can be stated as follows: The level of democracy in
the neighbouring countries of the EU increases with the size and the credibility of the EU’s conditional incentives. In general, adopting
liberal political norms (such as human rights, democratic elections, open contestation for office and the rule of law) constitutes a
loss in autonomy for the target governments. These political costs need to be balanced in kind by
tangible incentives such as military protection or economic assistance to improve the security and the welfare of
the state. In addition, effectiveness will increase with the size of the incentives. Accordingly, the promise of enlargement
should be more powerful than the promise of association or assistance, and the impact of the EU on candidates for membership should be
stronger than that on outside states, which are not considered potential EU members. Only the highest international rewards –
those associated with EU membership – can be expected to balance substantial domestic power costs.
Finally, conditionality needs to be credible, with regard to both the EU’s threat to withhold the rewards in case of non-compliance
and, conversely, the EU’s promise to deliver the reward in case of compliance. In general, the credibility of the threat has

always been present in the relations between the EU and its neighbourhood . Interdependence is
highly asymmetrical in favour of the EU. Whereas the neighbouring countries are of only marginal importance to
the EU economy, they are often heavily dependent on the EU market and will benefit much more strongly
from their association and accession than the EU member states (Moravcsik and Vachudova, 2005: 201). On the other hand,
however, the EU must be able and willing to pay the rewards. The higher the costs of the rewards to the EU are, the more doubtful their
eventual payment to the target countries will be. On the basis of this reasoning, assistance and association have generally been more credible
rewards than accession because the commitment on the part of the EU is low. By contrast, Eastern enlargement involves substantial costs to
the organization, which – although far from being prohibitive – are likely to exceed the marginal benefits to most member states
(Schimmelfennig, 2003: 52–66). Indeed, it took several years to overcome the reticence and opposition of a majority of member governments
and to commit the EU firmly to enlargement. It was not until 1993 that the EU made a general decision to accept new members from the
transition countries, and it was not until 1997 that the EU opened accession negotiations with the democratically most consolidated states
among them. These decisions greatly strengthened the credibility of both the promise to enlarge and the threat to exclude reform laggards –
and the impact of political conditionality on those countries that were not allowed to participate in the first round of negotiations. In sum, we
claim thatthe impact of the EU on democratization in the neighbouring countries will be a function of
the size and credibility of the rewards the EU offers in return for increased democratization.
EU conditional threats are credible and have a strong impact on democratic change
Schimmelfennig and Scholtz ’08 [2008. Frank Schimmelfennig is Professor of European Politics at
the Center for Comparative and International Studies (CIS). Hanno Scholtz is a Senior Researcher at the
Sociological Institute, University of Zurich. “EU Democracy Promotion in the European Neighbourhood;
Political Conditionality, Economic Development and Transnational Exchange” European Union Politics.
Volume 9 (2): 187–215.]
Is EU democracy promotion in its neighbourhood relevant and effective – and if so, under what conditions? This study started from core
findings established by recent comparative analyses of EU democracy promotion in the CEECs: that the
EU has successfully
promoted democracy in its neighbourhood; that it owes its success to the use of political conditionality;
and that the effectiveness of political conditionality depends on a credible membership perspective for
the target countries. It has been the main purpose of this study to put these findings to a demanding test, first by controlling for
economic development and transnational exchanges as alternative mechanisms of democratization and second by increasing the number of
observations to a large number (36) of target countries in the European neighbourhood and across a long time period (13 years). In addition,
the study was motivated by the question of how effective EU democracy promotion would remain after the completion of the Fifth
Enlargement. We conclude from our analysis that the political conditionality hypothesis has passed the test but
needs to be qualified. Only EU political accession conditionality has met the theoretical expectations. Across a variety of model
specifications and estimations, and with plausible alternative factors of democratization controlled for, it has proven to be a
robustly significant, strong and positive correlate of democratization in the European neighbourhood.
Even when the membership incentives lacked credibility , i.e. when the membership promise was
uncertain and accession was distant, the impact of EU political conditionality was statistically strong
and robust (albeit less so than in the case of a highly credible membership perspective). Not any kind of conditionality works, however.
Short of a membership perspective, association and partnership conditionality did not perform consistently better than no or weak
conditionality – credible association conditionality being a borderline case. In addition, we did not find the hypothesized linear relationship
between the size and credibility of incentives and democracy below the level of credible association conditionality. Finally, the impact of EU
political conditionality varies across levels of democratization. It is smallest in autocratic countries and, unsurprisingly, in countries that have
already achieved a high level of democracy. By contrast, it is most effective in promoting democractic consolidation in countries that have
already experienced some democratization. The alternative mechanisms of democratization were included in the analysis as controls rather
than as test variables in their own right. The results should therefore not be interpreted as substantive findings on the causal relevance of
economic development or transnational exchange. In view of the overwhelming empirical evidence in support of wealth (GDP per capita) as a
factor of democratization, however, its statistical performance in our analysis was less than impressive. By contrast, life expectancy proved
highly robust. This might indicate that, rather than pure income, quality of life more broadly defined may be more relevant in the region. The
geographical proxies for the intensity of transnational transactions performed reasonably well overall. The highly varied kinds and impacts of
transnational exchange that are covered by these proxies would need to be disentangled and analysed separately, however, in future research.
The same is true for trade, which failed completely as an explanatory variable when aggregated but showed interesting and strong effects when
imports and exports were distinguished. Our final conclusions pertain to policy and the prospects of EU political
conditionality. Although the European Neighbourhood Policy, which became operative only in 2005, and general developments since the
completion of the Fifth Enlargement have not been a subject of the analysis, the findings may be extrapolated with some caution. According to
our typology, the ENP would generally be classified as a low-credibility association policy because it explicitly excludes a membership
perspective for the ENP countries and does not set high political standards for participation. It would thus not differ qualitatively from the
European Mediterranean Policy (EMP). If the EMP experience and our analysis have any predictive value, the ENP will have at best uncertain
and inconsistent effects as a policy of democracy promotion (Kelley, 2006; Maier and Schimmelfennig, 2007; see also Tovias and Ugur, 2004, for
similar findings on economic policy reform in the Mediterranean countries). The counterfactual conclusions that could be drawn from this
analysis require even more caution. On the one hand, our findings seem to suggest that the EU could have a stronger
impact on democratic change in its neighbourhood if it offered more neighbouring countries a membership perspective
and if it made the political conditionality component of the ENP more credible (even without offering membership). On the other hand, the EU
might be well advised to give up any political conditionality below the level of credible association conditionality, because it does not seem to
have any systematic impact – other than undermining the credibility of the EU’s political conditionality and complicating negotiations and
cooperation with the neighbouring countries.
Impacts
Middle East
 War
Middle East war is probable and devastating — strong U.S. involvement is needed to
prevent nuclear escalation.
London 10 — Herbert I. London, President of the Hudson Institute—a non-profit think tank, Professor Emeritus and former John M. Olin
Professor of Humanities at New York University, holds a Ph.D. from New York University, 2010 (“The Coming Crisis In The Middle East,”
Gatestone Institute—a non-partisan, not-for-profit international policy council and think tank, June 28th, Available Online at
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/1387/coming-crisis-in-the-middle-east, Accessed 08-10-2013)

The coming storm in the Middle East is gaining momentum; like conditions prior to World War I, all it
takes for explosive action to commence is a trigger . Turkey's provocative flotilla, often described in Orwellian terms
as a humanitarian mission, has set in motion a gust of diplomatic activity: if the Iranians send escort vessels for the next round of Turkish

ships, which they have apparently decided not to do in favor of land operations, it could have presented a casus belli. [cause for war] Syria, too, has been

playing a dangerous game, with both missile deployment and rearming Hezbollah. According to most public accounts, Hezbollah is sitting on 40,000
long-, medium- and short-range missiles, and Syrian territory has been serving as a conduit for military materiel from Iran since the end of the 2006 Lebanon War.

Should Syria move its own scuds to Lebanon or deploy its troops as reinforcement for Hezbollah, a wider regional war with Israel could
not be contained . In the backdrop is an Iran, with sufficient fissionable material to produce a couple of nuclear
weapons. It will take some time to weaponize the missiles, but the road to that goal is synchronized in green lights since neither diplomacy nor diluted
sanctions can convince Iran to change course. From Qatar to Afghanistan all political eyes are on Iran, poised to be "the

hegemon" in the Middle East; it is increasingly considered the "strong horse" as American forces incrementally retreat from the region. Even Iraq,
ironically, may depend on Iranian ties in order to maintain internal stability. For Sunni nations like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, regional

strategic vision is a combination of deal-making to offset the Iranian Shia advantage, and attempting
to buy or develop nuclear weapons as a counterweight to Iranian ambition. However, both of these
governments are in a precarious state; should either fall, all bets are off in the Middle East
neighborhood. It has long been said that the Sunni "tent" must stand on two legs: if one, falls, the tent collapses. Should this tent collapse, and should
Iran take advantage of that calamity, it could incite a Sunni-Shia war. Or feeling empowered, and no longer
dissuaded by an escalation scenario, Iran, with nuclear weapons in tow, might decide that a war
against Israel is a distinct possibility. However implausible it may seem at the moment, the possible annihilation of Israel
and the prospect of a second holocaust could lead to a nuclear exchange . The only wild card that can
change this slide into warfare is an active United States' policy. Yet, curiously, the U.S. is engaged in both an emotional and physical
retreat from the region. Despite rhetoric which suggests an Iran with nuclear weapons is intolerable, the U.S. has done nothing to forestall this eventual outcome.
Despite the investment in blood and treasure to allow a stable government to emerge in Iraq, the anticipated withdrawal of U.S. forces has prompted President
Maliki to travel to Tehran on a regular basis. Further, despite historic links to Israel that gave the U.S. leverage in the region as well a democratic ally, the Obama
administration treats Israel as a national security albatross that must be disposed of as soon as possible. As a consequence, the U.S. is perceived in the region as the
"weak horse," the one dangerous to ride. In every Middle East capital the words "unreliable and United States" are linked. Those individuals seeking a moderate
course of action are now in a distinct minority. A political vacuum is emerging, one that is not sustainable and one the Iranian leadership looks to with imperial

exhilaration. It is no longer a question of whether war will occur, but rather when it will occur, and where
it will break out. There are many triggers to ignite the explosion, but not many scenarios for
containment. Could it be a regional war in which Egypt and Saudi Arabia watch from the sidelines, but secretly wish for Israeli victory? Or will this be a war in
which there aren't victors, only devastation? Moreover, should war break out, what does the U.S. do? This is a description far more dire

than any in the last century and, even if some believe that it is overly pessimistic, Arab and Jew, Persian and Egyptian, Muslim and Maronite tend
to believe in its veracity -- a truly bad sign.
Middle East war will escalate — strategic instability risks miscalculation and nuclear
war.
Russell 9 — James A. Russell, Senior Lecturer in the Department of National Security Affairs at the
Naval Postgraduate School, 2009 (“Strategic Stability Reconsidered: Prospects for Escalation and Nuclear
War in the Middle East,” Security Studies Center, Spring, Available Online at
http://www.ifri.org/downloads/PP26_Russell_2009.pdf, Accessed 08-10-2013, p. 41)

Strategic stability in the region is thus undermined by various factors: (1) asymmetric interests in the bargaining
framework that can introduce unpredictable behavior from actors; (2) the presence of non-state actors that
introduce unpredictability into relationships between the antagonists; (3) incompatible assumptions about the
structure of the deterrent relationship that makes the bargaining framework strategically unstable; (4) perceptions by Israel
and the United States that its window of opportunity for military action is closing, which could prompt a preventive
attack; (5) the prospect that Iran’s response to pre-emptive attacks could involve unconventional weapons, which could prompt escalation by Israel and/or the

United States; (6) the

lack of a communications framework to build trust and cooperation among framework
participants. These systemic weaknesses in the coercive bargaining framework all suggest that escalation by any the parties could

happen either on purpose or as a result of miscalculation or the pressures of wartime circumstance. Given these
factors, it is disturbingly easy to imagine scenarios under which a conflict could quickly escalate in
which the regional antagonists would consider the use of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons . It
would be a mistake to believe the nuclear taboo can somehow magically keep nuclear weapons from
being used in the context of an unstable strategic framework. Systemic asymmetries between actors in fact
suggest a certain increase in the probability of war – a war in which escalation could happen quickly and
from a variety of participants. Once such a war starts, events would likely develop a momentum all
their own and decision-making would consequently be shaped in unpredictable ways. The international
community must take this possibility seriously, and muster every tool at its disposal to prevent such
an outcome, which would be an unprecedented disaster for the peoples of the region, with
substantial risk for the entire world .