Emerging donors: the promise and limits of bilateral and multilateral democracy promotion

Abstract

This paper examines the evolving pattern of democracy promotion by three emerging donors: India, Brazil and South Africa. It first asks how the emerging donors promote democracy through their development assistance. The paper argues that despite the risk of compromising security and trade interests, the emerging donors have adapted to a 2 £ 2 (two by two) model of democracy promotion by which they circumvent risk by promoting procedural democracy through bilateral means and non-procedural democracy through multilateral frameworks. Second, the paper asks why these three countries exhibit the same pattern of democracy promotion in spite of not having coordination among them. In response, the paper provides a structure-agent explanation. The paper contends that the structural constraints imposed on emerging donors are conducive to the operation of the 2 £ 2 model in promoting democracy. While the model safeguards the emerging donors from criticism of being undue interveners in other countries' domestic affairs, it also privileges them with international recognition for being responsible partners in democracy promotion.

Emerging Economies: Comparative Analysis of Mist and Ibsa Countries

“…With the growing preoccupation of emerging powers on the donor scene over the last years, both policymakers and scholars are interested in to understand how committed these nations are to the humanitarian agenda (White, 2011). The development assistance of emerging donors like Brazil, India and South Africa is cast as fundamentally different in its guiding principles and operational methods from that of traditional Development Assistance Committee (DAC) donors (Cooper and Farooq, 2015). Moreover, lack of transparency and institutional capacity, which makes it extremely challenging to develop a clear and accurate comparative analysis of the nature and extent of non-DAC development cooperation in terms of DAC principles.…”

“…Moreover, lack of transparency and institutional capacity, which makes it extremely challenging to develop a clear and accurate comparative analysis of the nature and extent of non-DAC development cooperation in terms of DAC principles. For example, Brazil"s various agencies involved in development assistance lack a coherent data collection system (Cooper and Farooq, 2015). This poses a limitation to accurately measuring the development efforts of emerging economies which in fact a very crucial factor in their growing presence in changing world economy.…”