ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a summary of the practices of Democracy Promotion in Pakistan and then explains why they matter. It shows, in common with other critics of Democracy Promotion, that these practices are not neutral, but rather deeply implicated in international flows of power, in particular by narrowing conceptions of democracy down to the liberal democracy familiar in the West. Democracy is not an alternative to the dangers of democratic theorising, but rather a consequence of them. The chapter further discusses Milja Kurki's suggestion that democracy should be promoted "as a contested concept". It suggests that we need to think carefully about why such a suggestion is unlikely to be taken up. The chapter also suggests that in the contemporary UK, the frontiers of national identity and the limits of what counts as democracy are intimately linked and mutually constituted.
