ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the policy of democracy promotion gained its purchase through the existence of a modern alternative, communist forms of governing, that was considered equally rational in its idea of political organisation. From these observations, it is able to shed a different light on the idea of fostering change through political liberalisation and the rise of civil society thinking in democracy promotion after the end of the cold war. The Democracy Program mentions having been greatly influenced by William Douglas's Developing Democracy, which is one of the first monographs explicitly devoted to democracy promotion. It investigates the shift from political society to civil society in democracy promotion with the end of the cold war. The analytical focus here has been on rationalities and possibilities of intervention and governing with their respective demands on knowledge. Which underpin democracy promotion in the context of the cold war and the reconfigurations that become manifest in its immediate aftermath.
