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Party aid: democracy promotion's ‘new frontier’ or its final frontier?

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  • Joel Lazarus

Abstract

The failure to engineer democracy in postcolonial societies via ‘civil society’ had led democracy promoters increasingly to turn their attention to political parties by the late 1990s. ‘Party aid’—project-based interventions in targeted party systems—soon became democracy promotion's ‘new frontier’. Yet party aid itself has not delivered. In this article I summarise the current main criticisms of party aid. I then highlight the striking similarities between these criticisms and those made of other forms of aid: democracy promotion, development and humanitarian aid. I argue that these similarities are the outcomes of the three main institutional trends in post-cold war foreign aid: bilateralisation, bureaucratisation and commodification. Based on these insights, I question how realistic current prescriptions for reforming party aid are. I conclude that the current legitimacy crisis that party aid, and democracy promotion more broadly, face makes it hard to predict a bright future for democracy promotion.

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  • Joel Lazarus, 2012. "Party aid: democracy promotion's ‘new frontier’ or its final frontier?," Third World Quarterly, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 33(10), pages 1925-1943.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:ctwqxx:v:33:y:2012:i:10:p:1925-1943
    DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2012.729722
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