ABSTRACT
After nearly two decades of democracy promotion, the results of those
efforts in Armenia have thus far been varied. In Armenia, democracy building did succeed in establishing the formal institutions and practices asso-
ciated with democracy. Elections, however flawed, continue to occur at the
appointed times, and the growth in the number of NGOs has been phe-
nomenal. From a global perspective, meanwhile, democracy has also been
(re)-established in many countries around the world. So, if we consider the
spread of formal or procedural democracies, then democracy promotion
programmes can be and are deemed a success.1 However, if we consider the
development and spread of substantive democracies, then it is clear that donor-supported democracy building and civil society strengthening pro-
grammes have not met with great success in Armenia or globally because,
although the mechanisms and institutions have been created, we are not
witnessing greater civic participation, engagement, inclusion and debate. In
many instances, donor civil society strengthening programmes, while leading
to the exponential growth of NGOs, have also thwarted natural political
processes and imposed a particular model of democracy and civil society.
This tendency has led to an ‘abortion of local processes of change’ (Hann 2004: 46) and tamed social movements (Kaldor 2003). Some even suggest
that donor civil society strengthening programmes risk ‘inhibiting and ulti-
mately destroying the most important purposes of civil society . . . the freedom to imagine that the world could be different’ (Howell and Pearce 2002:
237). It is not uncommon to hear about ‘virtual’ and ‘managed’ democracies,
particularly in the former Soviet countries as some of the top-down initia-
tives have engendered a backlash against civil society in recent years. In the
wake of the global war on terror, questions have also been raised about the state of democracy in the West. Do Western governments practise at home
the democracy they promote abroad?
