Culture and Democracy Building

In analysing why the transitions to democracy have not yielded the expected

results, a common claim is that a society’s propensity or ‘fitness’ for democ-

racy is predicated on its cultural and geographic proximity to the West

(Nodia 2002a, b; McFaul 2002). In this chapter, I begin by discussing the

culture concept and how culture has been used as an explanation to explain

the lack of democratization. I then ask, ‘What is considered to be Armenian

culture’? and, in doing so, I focus on those cultural narratives that are seen

as affecting democracy building. I then examine the attempts by Western donors and democracy promoters to ‘manage’ culture through capacity

building and training of trainer exercises in order to affect the cultural atti-

tudes and behaviours that they believe are obstacles to democratization.

While I would argue that cultural beliefs and ideologies are certainly

important and do affect individuals’ understanding, behaviours and accep-

tance or rejection of particular ideas and paradigms, I am sceptical of the

essentializing discourses which view culture as an essential, monolithic and

static entity. Furthermore, I find the tendency in some of the ‘transitological’1

works that describe culture as a mitigating factor to democratization to

speak of the ‘other’ as being affected by culture, while claiming to be objec-

tive or simply ignoring how one’s own behaviours and understanding are

also influenced by cultural beliefs, quite problematic. I suggest taking a more

flexible and dynamic view of culture which also considers the impact of the

culture of Western policy makers and foreign experts engaged in democracy

building. Otherwise, there is an implicit assumption that those transmitting

the ideas or conducting the trainings are objective and neutral, while the recipients of those ideas and training are beholden to and constrained by

their cultures.