Debating the Transition Paradigm: Tilting at Straw Men

Although Thomas Carothers's critique of democracy promoters in the January 2002 Journal of Democracy was, in principle, directed at donors in general, all the examples and citations referred exclusively to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Carothers's critique would be trenchant, even devastating, if it accurately portrayed USAID's thinking on democracy. But it does not. ¹ The article characterizes USAID's democracy practitioners as uncritically adhering to an increasingly outmoded "transition paradigm" based on five naïve assumptions. That mischaracterization is a straw man, which is first created, then demolished. Undoubtedly, we at USAID are trying our best to promote transitions to democracy, but we do not adhere to any single transition paradigm and certainly not to the pastiche created by Carothers.

First, Carothers asserts that, notwithstanding the substantial and obvious evidence to the contrary, "democracy enthusiasts" continue to believe that "any country moving away from dictatorial rule is in transition toward democracy," and that the transition is inexorable. Furthermore, he argues that we have constructed a simplistic evolutionary scheme, and that our assistance programs are fashioned primarily to hasten the inevitable rather than to wrestle with a variety of possible outcomes, of which a successful democratic transition is only one, and indeed not a very likely one at that. No matter how optimistic we may be, no one who lives where we work could come to that conclusion. We are confronted day by day not only with successes but also with failures, setbacks, regressions, programmatic shortcomings, and "stagnant transitions." ²

Indeed, as early as 1991, USAID's democracy policy stated, in its second sentence, what many considered obvious even then—that "progress toward democracy should not be expected to be 'linear, easily accomplished or effortlessly maintained.'" ³ Since 1991, even that caution has been replaced by the sobering reality that countries can move away from greater democracy and that democracy promotion is almost never easy, let alone inevitable. Still, notwithstanding the obstacles, we are firmly committed to democracy promotion. There is no excuse for some of the inflated claims that have appeared in USAID documents (which Carothers rightly criticizes), but the supposed predominance of a "transition paradigm" does not explain them. ⁴

Second, since we are working to promote transitions to democracy and are charged by statute to "contribute to the development of democratic institutions and political pluralism," ⁵ it is not surprising to find us thinking of ways to do so. Yet we certainly do not assume the "set sequence"—opening, breakthrough, and consolidation—that Carothers attributes to us as a second assumption. ⁶ In particular, we see "openings" not as events but as long, difficult, hard-won, incremental processes. Our assistance programs are often designed precisely for crafting small "openings" rather than finding them full-blown. And when there are "breakthroughs," they do not always (or even often) occur as they did in Europe or Eurasia, or possibly Indonesia and Nigeria—with the sudden collapse of the old order. Rather, "breakthroughs" are more often gradual, piecemeal, and linked to particular sectors rather than systemic. Finally, consolidation is more often a goal than a state. Unfortunately, it is a goal achieved all too infrequently, and many of USAID's most important policy documents emphasize the fallacy of assuming "set sequences" of reform. ⁷

Nor do we subscribe to the third assumption, regarding "the determinative importance of elections." We make no apology for believing that there cannot be a true democracy without the general accountability of government to its citizens, and that elections are the only tested way to accomplish that. Simply put, there is no democracy without elections. Yet we do not believe that elections are determinative or that they are, by themselves, "a key generator of further democratic reforms." If anything, we have regularly urged in our documents and policy discussions against placing undue, unrealistic emphasis on (or faith in) elections. More than that, we have explicitly warned that, in certain contexts, elections can be premature...