ABSTRACT
When this book was first conceived, the world looked very different. Even though the invasion of Iraq caused grave anxieties, the general view was that good governance and democracy to ensure popular participation and legitimization was the solution to the problems facing the developing world, and that international actors could encourage such processes. As points of reference, there was the experience of Latin America’s emergence from dictatorship in the 1980s and 1990s and, of course, the European experience, be it that of Spain and Portugal in the 1970s or the more recent post-Cold War experiences of the Eastern European countries. It is now more than apparent that the issues involved are far more complex than was generally thought to be the case.
