Why Is America So Bad at Promoting Democracy in Other Countries?

There's no quick, cheap, or military-based way to bring peace to places like Afghanistan, Yemen, and Iraq. It's time we changed our approach, and we can start at home.

If you're a dedicated Wilsonian, the past quarter-century must have been pretty discouraging. Convinced liberal democracy was the only viable political formula for a globalizing world, the last three U.S. administrations embraced Wilsonian ideals and made democracy promotion a key element of U.S. foreign policy. For Bill Clinton, it was the "National Security Strategy of Engagement and Enlargement." For George W. Bush, it was the "Freedom Agenda" set forth in his second inaugural address and echoed by top officials like Condoleezza Rice. Barack Obama has been a less fervent Wilsonian than his predecessors, but he appointed plenty of ardent liberal internationalists to his administration, declaring, "There is no right more fundamental than the ability to choose your leaders." And he has openly backed democratic transitions in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and several other countries.

Unfortunately, a soon-to-be-published collection edited by Larry Diamond and Mark Plattner suggests that these (and other) efforts at democracy promotion have not fared well. Success stories like the recent end to military rule in Myanmar are balanced by the more numerous and visible failures in Libya, Yemen, and Iraq, the obvious backsliding in Turkey, Hungary, Russia, Poland, and elsewhere, and the democratic dysfunctions in the European Union and in the United States itself. As Diamond points out in his own contribution to the book, nearly a quarter of the world's democracies have eroded or relapsed in the past 30 years....

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