Introduction

In the post-Cold War era, both Presidents Bush and Clinton elevated support for democracy abroad to one of three fundamental principles of U.S. foreign policy. The Clinton administration tested, with incomplete success, whether “democratic enlargement” might be the organizing framework for all of U.S. foreign policy. With the rapid embrace of democracy worldwide following the fall of the Berlin wall, democracy has come to characterize the post-Cold War era as the baseline political system. Not only national governments but also multilateral institutions have embraced active support for promoting democracy overseas as never before. The end of communism created new opportunities and freed policymakers from the traditional constraints of earlier years, according to Lars Schoultz, who called it the “end of the era of strategic denial.”4