ABSTRACT
Second, as noted in the introduction, the West’s agenda of democracy promotion does not correspond to actual policies toward individual countries. Nevertheless, even when democracy promotion is weak and/or ineffective, illiberal powers can blame Western democracy promotion for democratic changes in target countries. This means that democratic breakthroughs that occur in countries targeted by democracy promotion (even when they do not necessarily result from democracy promotion as such) can be interpreted by illiberal powers as “meddling” and “intervention” and trigger reaction from illiberal powers to counteract geopolitical implications of such “interventions”.
