Although "democracy promotion" has become a popular term for policy makers and scholars, democratization is rarely a smooth or linear transition. While some countries quickly democratize, others lag behind despite a long period of democracy promotion activities. Furthermore, while democracy promotion itself has been widely studied, there is a paucity of literature available assessing the outcome or the impact of democracy promotion. This book investigates democracy promotion by the European Union and the United States of America, and seeks to uncover why intensive democracy promotion has resulted in limited democratic progress. Exploring case studies of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, this book examines the conditions in which democracy promotion is more likely to result in democratic transformation. In addition, it introduces the concept of the "democracy blocker," a powerful authoritarian regional actor that is capable of blocking democratization in other countries. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of Political Science, Democracy, Democratization, EU Studies, US Politics, Comparative Politics, and Foreign Policy.

This book examines Western efforts at democracy promotion, reactions by illiberal challengers and regional powers, and political and societal conditions in target states. It is argued that Western powers are not unequivocally committed to the promotion of democracy and human rights, while non-democratic regional powers cannot simply be described as "autocracy supporters". This volume examines in detail the challenges by three illiberal regional powers - China, Russia and Saudi Arabia - to Western (US and EU) efforts at democracy promotion. The contributions specifically analyze their actions in Ethiopia and Angola in the case of China, Georgia and Ukraine in the case of Russia, and Tunisia in the case of Saudi Arabia. Democratic powers such as the US or the EU usually prefer stability over human rights and democracy. If democratic movements threaten stability in a region, neither the US nor the EU supports them. As to illiberal powers, they are generally not that different from their democratic counterparts. They also prefer stability over turmoil. Neither Russia nor China nor Saudi Arabia explicitly promote autocracy. Instead, they seek to suppress democratic movements in their periphery the minute these groups threaten their security interests or are perceived to endanger their regime survival. This was previously published as a special issue of Democratization.

The book investigates democracy promotion by the European Union and the United States of America, and seeks to uncover why extensive and intensive democracy promotion results in limited democratic progress. Targeting three sectors of democracy promotion-elections, parties, and the media- this book examines the conditions for which democracy promotion is more likely to result in democratic transformation. Though democracy promotion has been widely studied, there is a paucity of literature available assessing the outcome or the impact of democracy promotion. Including case studies on Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, this book assesses the success of democratic transformation on the macro level of a country and micro levels of specific sectors. The book introduces the concept of democracy blocker-a powerful authoritarian regional actor - who, even if not explicitly promoting autocracy, is willing and capable to block democratization in other countries. The author argues that the chances of democratic behaviour increase provided the domestic costs of adaptation to democracy are moderate and promoters are actively involved in resolution of pressing national issues.This book will be of interest to students and scholars of Policial Science, Democracy, Democratization, EU Studies, U.S. Politics, Comparative Politics and Foreign Policy.

This book examines Western efforts at democracy promotion, reactions by illiberal challengers and regional powers, and political and societal conditions in target states. It is argued that Western powers are not unequivocally committed to the promotion of democracy and human rights, while non-democratic regional powers cannot simply be described as "autocracy supporters". This volume examines in detail the challenges by three illiberal regional powers - China, Russia and Saudi Arabia - to Western (US and EU) efforts at democracy promotion. The contributions specifically analyze their actions in Ethiopia and Angola in the case of China, Georgia and Ukraine in the case of Russia, and Tunisia in the case of Saudi Arabia. Democratic powers such as the US or the EU usually prefer stability over human rights and democracy. If democratic movements threaten stability in a region, neither the US nor the EU supports them. As to illiberal powers, they are generally not that different from their democratic counterparts. They also prefer stability over turmoil. Neither Russia nor China nor Saudi Arabia explicitly promote autocracy. Instead, they seek to suppress democratic movements in their periphery the minute these groups threaten their security interests or are perceived to endanger their regime survival. This was previously published as a special issue of Democratization.

This book suggests studying democracy promotion within the framework of international socialization through the perspectives of the constructivist and rationalist approaches. It argues that for effective democracy promotion, the strategy of conditionality and incentives should be applied, especially in regard to countries with no prior democratic experience. This study analyzes democracy promotion programmes of the European Union, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and the Council of Europe in Armenia and Georgia and cases of norm transfer initiated by the European Union and North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Hungary, Lithuania and Poland.