Introduction Good Governance and Democracy Promotion: Empirical Perspectives on Transnational Powers

Abstract

Democracy is the focus of a variety of discourses and serves as a reference for diverse political actors in a world that appears increasingly homogeneous at first glance. It inspired Ronald Reagan’s famous speech, delivered in the British House of Commons in 1982. The American president seized the opportunity to promote a new form of external inf luence on a global scale that would contribute to eliminating the existing threat of communism. Democracy was then presented as the universal norm toward which all societies must inevitably turn. At the end of the 1980s, the collapse of the “communist bloc” served to turn this conception into a goal for powers wishing to inf luence the evolution of a certain number of states.

We’re approaching the end of a bloody century plagued by a terrible political invention—totalitarianism. Optimism comes less easily today, not because democracy is less vigorous, but because democracy’s enemies have refined their instruments of repression.

Ronald Reagan (US President) British House of Commons speech (June 1982)

My democratic creed is based on the principle that there is not and cannot be a universal formula for democracy applicable to all countries and peoples. Democracy should ripen internally in the depth of society itself, and correspond to the historical practice and experience of a country. It should organically integrate into conscience of people and only in this way will it take firm root in the public conscience.

Askar Akayev (Kyrgyz President) Harvard University speech (September 2004)