States, International Organizations and NGOs in Democracy Support: Towards a Comprehensive Framework of Analysis

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Since the 1990s, a number of states, international organizations, and NGOs have been engaged in support programs for promoting and building democracy. Democracy promotion is today one of the major objectives of development cooperation. This research project attempted to analyze democracy support programs of donors, bilateral and multilateral, governmental and non-governmental. A summary of major findings of the research project is as follows. In the first place, the task of democracy promotion gives way to support for governance (especially such state institutions as central government, parliament, and court) as countries become democratic by holding free elections. In such instances of post-democratization, what counts from the perspective of supporting further democratization is how to make an input of such objectives into governance support programs. It is especially important to take into account the overall balance of each organ of the state within a political system when trying to support the strengthening of governance. Whether a political system is presidential or parliamentary makes a significant difference as to the way governance support programs are to be directed. Secondly, the view point of democracy building is considered important in peace-building activities, which aim to achieve prevention of and recovery from conflict situations. On the one hand, incorporation of conflict perspective in development programs including democracy support is being called for. On the other hand, it is believed necessary to take into account the necessity of democracy promotion in peace-building activities. The European Union (EU) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) are two multilateral organizations most involved with peace-building. Both organizations have institutional difficulty in adapting to this challenge of putting the view point of democracy promotion in their peace-building activities due to organizational structures.