ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the rise of democracy promotion and the various forms it can take. It analyses the lack of success and the factors that have contributed to it, including inherent limitations, donors' overall failure prioritizing it, and African governments' means of resisting the pressure. The chapter explains the decline of democracy promotion, before concluding with a discussion of the main factors that make advancing democracy abroad so difficult, the sincerity of the efforts of foreign actors, and the potential future impact of international assistance. Most Western aid donors issued statements in 1989–90 that future aid allocation levels would depend on the extent to which recipient countries had democratized. It is difficult to determine the exact impact of democracy promotion efforts because of the mix of complicated factors contributing to political change. Arguably, the most important donor characteristic that undermines their democracy promotion is the multitude of competing objectives that each donor government has.
