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Promoting Polyarchy in Pakistan by Moin Ansari

The media is full of rhetoric. The US is billing it as a triumph of “democracy” in the Greater Middle East. The corrupt politicians inebriated with victory and smelling power are touting the “mandate” of the people as proof of their legitimacy. Pakistani Civil society and intellectuals are numb as these discarded politicians are using race and ethnicity to become richer and more powerful. The obsequious media is regurgitating the old script to an illiterate, penury-stricken and emotional population. 

In Promoting Polyarchy, Robinson defines polyarchy as “a system in which a small group actually rules and mass participation in decision-making is confined to leadership choice in elections carefully managed by competing elites.” 

The Pakistani events have been described as “the pin-striped revolution.“

This February Pakistan witnessed “immaculate conception” a phenomenon not witnessed since the birth of Christ two thousand years ago. As the results emerged from the  “the perfect elections” one could simply take a check list of American concerns that had been met by the results. Amazingly the results of the elections fulfilled all American concerns on security, globalization, Central Asia and China.

1) The religious parties were eliminated and a pro-Karzai ANP won in the NWFP.

2) The “secular forces” emerged victorious.

3) Nawaz Sharif is the fifth wheel in parliament.

4) Mr. Musharraf was cut to size for his perceived “double game” in Afghanistan. 

One wonders how fair the elections were? 

Over the past two decades US foreign policy has radically changed. While the interests and objectives have remained more or less the same despite the fall of Communism, the mechanisms for obtaining them have continued to evolve. Beginning in the early 1980s, US policymakers began experimenting with a strategy of “promoting democracy.” That is merely a euphemism, however, equivalent to “national security” or the “war on terror.” “What the U.S. is promoting is not Democracy,” says William I. Robinson, Professor of Sociology at UC-Santa Barbara. Robinson has been studying US “democracy promotion” since its inception as a major US foreign policy in Sandinista Nicaragua during the 1980s. The Battle for Global Civil Society
[On the U.S. Govt. Policy of 'DEMOCRACY PROMOTION'], By Jonah Gindin-Venezuelanalysis.com

Global Democracy Manipulators? Some have suggested a huge psy-op in Pakistan. The same shortages of flour happened when Ayub Khan faced the wrath of the USA after he shut down the Badabare Airforce base…………..The CIA connection…

Neglected issues for the new Pakistani government. Eliminating food, fuel subsidies, keeping out the IMF, and stopping the US drones, and halting the Afghan mercenaries coming from across the border“Unlike earlier US interventionism,” notes Robinson in Promoting Polyarchy, “the new intervention focuses much more intensely on civil society itself, in contrast to formal government structures, in intervened countries.” This new political intervention “emphasizes building up the forces in civil society of intervened countries which are allied with dominant groups in the United States and the core regions of the world system.” Thus, civil society plays a key role in “democracy promotion” strategies as “an arena for exercising domination,” Robinson suggests.

The visits and statements of Condaleeza Rice, Dick Chaney, Mr. Boucher, the US Ambassador to Pakistan and others is proof of the high amount of interference in Pakistan by foreign forces. Why would the US Ambassador be allowed to meet the head of the Pakistani armed forces General Kiyani? Why would Mr. Zardari repeatedly visit the US Embassy before any major decision? Dr. Robinson argues that U.S. policy upholds the undemocratic status quo of Third World countries behind a facade of supporting “low-intensity democracy” or “Polyarchy“. 

“U.S. political intervention under the banner of “democracy promotion” is aimed at undermining authentic democracy, at undermining and gaining control over popular movements for democratization, at keeping a lid on popular democracy movements, at limiting any change that may be brought about by mass democratization movements so that the outcome to democracy struggles will not threaten the elite order and integration into global capitalism. If by democracy we mean the power of the people, we mean mass participation in the vital decisions of society, a democratic distribution of material and cultural resources, then democracy is a profound threat to global capitalist interests and must be mercilessly opposed and suppressed by U.S. and transnational elites. What is new about the strategy of “democracy promotion” is that this opposition, this suppression, is now conducted ironically under the very rhetorical banner of promoting democracy and through sophisticated new instruments and modalities of political intervention. Dr. William Robinson.The Battle for Global Civil Society. [On the U.S. Govt. Policy of 'DEMOCRACY PROMOTION'], By Jonah Gindin-Venezuelanalysis.com

There is a huge amount of literature on the West’s promotion of “democracy” in countries as diverse as Nicaragua and Poland. It is a matter or record that the creation of these subservient entities in the countries pave the way for the globalization efforts, be they strategic, military, energy related or other.

It is also worth noting that for Robinson, polyarchic elites are often inherently transnational in their outlook, where transnational means their ideological peers and class kin are elites in the West and other countries, not the masses of their own countries. This is as true for American elites as it is for Columbian, Mexican, South African, Haitian, or Nigerian elites in the neoliberal world order. lionsor @ wordpress

The Global War on Terror (GWOT) is simply a means to an end for non-compliant regimes to “do more”.

…the trappings of democratic procedure in a polyarchic system do not mean that the lives of ordinary people become filled with authentic or meaningful democratic content, much less that social justice or greater economic equality is achieved. This type of ‘low intensity democracy’ does not involve power (cratos) of the people (demos), much less an end to class domination or to substantive inequality that is growing exponentially under the global economy… In contrast to more popular conceptions of democracy, which see political power as a means for transforming unjust socioeconomic structures and democratizing social and cultural life, the polyarchic definition explicitly isolates the political from the socioeconomic sphere and restricts democracy to the political sphere. And even then, it limits democratic participation to voting in elections.”

Dr. William I. Robinson has written a marvelous book investigating the pursuit of American interests in a Global world. He calls it “low intensity democracy” and polyarchy.

Promoting Polyarchy is an exciting, detailed and controversial work on the apparent change in US foreign policy from supporting dictatorships to promoting “democratic” regimes. William I. Robinson argues that behind this facade, US policy upholds the undemocratic status quo of Third World countries. He addresses the theoretical and historical issues at stake, and uncovers a wealth of information from field work and hitherto unpublished government documents. Promoting Polyarchy is an essential book for anyone concerned with democracy, globalization and international affairs.

This book represents an original, compelling and critical rethinking of the nature and form of United States foreign policy in the Third World 1980s and 1990s. Robinson has developed his own theoretical framework and synthesis drawn from comparative political sociology, political economy and political theory, one that takes its global inspiration from both world-systems and neo-Gramscian approaches to international relations. Robinson’s theoretical strengths are combined with excellent empirical research.

In his meticulous and detailed exposition of the nature, limits and contradictions of these cases, Robinson makes a fundamental contribution to our possibilities of understanding the contours of crucial aspects of North-South relations in this and the next century.” Stephen Gill, York University, Toronto

“This book provides a sobering look at what it means to say the US is promoting democracy throughout the world. It is a good antidote to much academic pap.”Immanuel Wallerstein, State University of New York

“While economic and cultural globalization have attracted a good deal of popular and scholarly attention, globalization in the political sphere is a relatively under-researched area. In Promoting Polyarchy William Robinson, building on a formidable array of local knowledge and theoretical reflection, makes the bold argument that democracy promotion in US foreign policy is best explained in terms of the pluralist idea of polyarchy and that this restricted conception of democracy serves the interests of an increasingly transnational elite. Polyarchy, thus, `is a structural feature of the emergent global society.’ The logic of the analysis and the power of his case studies represent a challenge that complacent pluaralists and those sceptical of globalization should not ignore.” Leslie Sklair, London School of Economics

“…Robinson offers much more than a political manifesto-the core of the book is a well-considered analysis of the role of U.S. foreign policy in constructing and maintaing the contemporary global ideological hegemony, exemplified by four fascinating case studies. Promoting Polyarchy is a worthy contribution to political sociology.” Christopher Chase-Dunn, Contemporary Sociology

“This is a pathbreaking study of the changes in U.S. policy wrought by the `epochal shift’ of globalization. The ground-breaking ideas put forth in this book are a counterpoint to the world systems school of Immanuel Wallerstein and more classical Marxsits and neo-Marxists who argue for the continued primacy of the nation-state.”Roger Burbach, NACLA Report on the Americas

“William Robinson has written an extraordinarily important book. His work should be required reading for scholars and activists attempting to understand the contemporary direction of U.S. foreign policy….a rigorous, passionate, and historically informed critique of the barren and disempowering political structures that pass for democracy today.” Science & Society

Description of William I Robinson’s book on Amazon.com
Promoting Polyarchy is an exciting, detailed and controversial work on the apparent change in US foreign policy from supporting dictatorships to promoting “democratic” regimes. William I. Robinson argues that behind this facade, US policy upholds the undemocratic status quo of Third World countries. He addresses the theoretical and historical issues at stake, and uncovers a wealth of information from field work and hitherto unpublished government documents. Promoting Polyarchy is an essential book for anyone concerned with democracy, globalization and international affairs.

APPENDIX 

ZNet | Activism: Promoting polyarchy in Serbia: Taking the risk out of civil society – part 2 of 4, by Michael Barker; October 29, 2006

For the most part scholars and activists alike have tended to uncritically accept overt foreign interventions that profess to be promoting democracy at face value: as noble and humanitarian activities. However, contrary to this rosy view of the promotion of democracy, numerous authors have argued that what is really being promoted is “procedural” or “low-intensity democracy”, which serves to actually “suppress aspirations for substantive democratisation” by “focus[ing] on aspects of democracy which are congruent with capitalism (i.e. individual and contract rights) to the detriment of its participatory and social aspects.”

(1) Thus although it is correct to say that the US is “promoting democracy” of sorts, it would be more accurate to refer to these efforts as “promoting polyarchy.” The central role of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) in promoting these activities was discussed in Part 1 of this article. (For further details see www.sourcewatch.org).

“The promotion of “low-intensity democracy” is aimed not only at mitigating the social and political tensions produced by elite-based and undemocratic status quos, but also at suppressing popular and mass aspirations for more thoroughgoing democratisation of social life in the twenty-first century international order. Polyarchy is a structural feature of the emergent global society.” (William I. Robinson, 1996, Promoting Polyarchy, p. 6)

Robinson illustrated how US “democracy promoters” acting as “skillful political surgeons” have been able to successfully establish polyarchic systems all over the world (his landmark study Promoting Polyarchy furnishes in-depth analysis of examples in Chile, Nicaragua, the Philippines, and Haiti). More recently “democracy promoters” have been implicated in a series of “color revolutions”, which have swept across Eastern Europe, these being the “Rose revolution” in Georgia (2003), the “Orange revolution” in Ukraine (January 2005) and the “Tulip revolution” in Kyrgyzstan (April 2005). Chaulia points out that these “revolutions” might be more accurately described as “cases of ‘regime change’, not ‘regime type change’” and that even then, the change was so minimal “that it is a travesty to call them ‘revolutions.’”

(2) All of these “revolutions” also followed similar trajectories to the Serbian revolution in 2000, which has been referred to as the template for the post modern coup d’état.

(3) However, the template for these “democratic” interventions is rooted in history and has been evolving for years. This article will now examine the “Serbian Revolution” to illustrate the substantial role the US has played in promoting polyarchy their. (Part 3 will later critique the role of “democracy promoters” in each of the other regulated revolutions in Eastern European).

The Serbian revolution

In 2000, the people of Serbia were able to successfully unite against their repressive government, presided over by Slobodan Milosevic and enforce the election of an alternative government led by Vojislav Kostunica. This “people’s revolution”, led by the student activist group Otpor, is often held up by the Western media and activists alike as an example of the power of non-violent protest over dictators.

However, the real story is far more complicated and although there seems little reason to doubt that Otpor was an endogenous social movement (originally formed in 1998), their success may not have been entirely of their own doing. This is because they had a little help from their friend – the US government, who was intent on removing Milosevic from power – and this initially came in the form of NED aid.

In fact between 1997 and 2000 the NED and US government may have accomplished what NATO’s 37,000 bombing sorties had been unable to d oust Milosevic, replace him with their favoured candidate Vojislav Kostunica and promote a neoliberal vision for Serbia; in sum to promote polyarchy.

(4) In 2000, the US government provided approximately US$40 million to “promote democracy” in Serbia and “US-funded consultants played a crucial role behind the scenes in virtually every facet of the anti-Milosevic drive.”

(5) US$40 million is a significant amount of money, especially if you consider that the Serbian population is less than fifty million, which means it is equivalent to giving more than US$200 million in foreign aid to US social movements to “promote democracy” domestically. Such an amount of aid would no doubt have also enabled opposition groups in the United States to successfully challenge the results of an election (for example, the “stolen 2000 election”). This assumes equivalent buying power in both countries (clearly not the case) and if accounted for, equates to an injection of the equivalent of billions of dollars into the US.

Of course much of the Serbian funds were spent on expensive foreign consultants, but judging from past examples of similar interventions, considerable amounts would have been spent in the country as well. For example, Dobbs notes that the US funds paid election monitors at every polling station “about [US]$5 [each] in Western-provided money, a significant sum in a country where the average monthly wage is less than [US]$30.”

(6) Some argue, that the work of the NED has taught the US an important lesson, that it is cheaper to create regime change through the ballot box than through military intervention. However, this view decontextualises the cumulative effects of the events preceding the election, and belittles the devastating effects of the long economic and military war of attrition waged against Serbia, which paved the way for a successful electoral intervention.

(7) Ivan Marovic, a founding member of Otpor, acknowledges the receipt of US funds: “So we did get money, but we never got orders from anyone. That’s why we succeeded.”

(8) However, for any social movement to be a successful accomplice in any efforts to promote polyarchy, it is vital that they act autonomously. In much the same way as corporate front groups and astroturf groups recruit genuinely committed supporters, strategically useful social movements can potentially dominate civil society when provided with the right resources (massive financial and professional backing), even if prior to receiving aid they were not the most popular group. In this way, powerful external actors can “fake civil society” by providing support in multiple ways to groups and individuals, whose interests are already aligned with theirs. That said, professional organisers are also sometimes airlifted into countries to create new (politically expedient) social movements to satisfy “democracy promoters” particular political requirements. For example, in the Philippines “Washington… funded and promoted the creation of a new women’s organisation, the KABATID [when many were already in existence]. Funds went to pay for a headquarters in Manila, regional offices and equipment, the publication of a monthly magazine (KABATID Express), and salaries for paid staff, among other items.” US organisers also established “youth clubs” to mobilise Filipino youths in opposition to the Marcos dictatorship and allow them to guide their political development.

(9) Mass protests, mobilising hundreds of thousands of people, were nothing new in Serbia and neither was professional polling, but the crucial difference was the massive US support for select groups, which amplified their voices of protestation both domestically and internationally. Indeed, Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, a polling agency who worked for the opposition in 1999, had also worked in a similar campaign to oust Milosevic in 1992. However, the earlier campaign had no support from the US foreign policymaking community, so their identification of a fraudulent election was ignored by US media and political elites. The success of the NED’s “electoral intervention project” in Serbia was no fluke, but built upon all their experience developed over the previous two decades:

“To undertake this new form of electoral intervention, the United States has created an elaborate machinery for ‘electoral assistance’: ‘get out the vote’ drives, ballot box watching, poll taking, parallel vote counts, civic training, and so on. In this new elections industry, the United States dispatches specialised teams to carry out everything from “party-building seminars” to ‘civic training’ and ‘international monitoring,’ and employs the tools of mass psychological manipulation and the new means of communications developed over the past fifty years. In these undertakings, the US teams attempt to shape and manage (and, under certain circumstances, to hijack) indigenous political processes and to latch them on to transnational political processes.” (William I. Robinson, 1996, Promoting Polyarchy, p. 111)

Furthermore, as Robinson also illustrated in his analysis of the US “electoral intervention project” in Nicaragua, success can “be understood only when seen in its entirety – as a skilful combin[ation] of military aggression, economic blackmail, CIA propaganda, NED political interference, coercive diplomacy, and international pressures into a coherent and unitary strategy.”

(10) As in prior NED electoral interventions, opposition parties were led to see the importance of being united and professional polling techniques enabled the candidates to stay one step ahead of their competition. It is possible that the time would have been ripe for a revolution anyway and the people of Serbia would have been able to successfully overthrown Milosevic’s rule without external assistance. But by just focusing on the election issue, the long term polyarchic ambitions of the democracy architects can be easily overlooked. Equally, if not more important is that the “US intervention was decisive in shaping the contours of the [opposition] …movement and in establishing the terms and conditions under which… social and political struggles would unfold” after the intervention.

(11) Since the revolution, Otpor has broken down into one political group and two NGOs. The two NGOs have been widely credited with spreading Otpor’s tactics globally, especially in countries where Western governments are busy promoting polyarchy. One is the Centre for Non-violent Resistance, which offers training courses all over the world on how to create and run resistance movements. The second is the Center for Applied Non-Violent Action and Strategies (CANVAS), which among other things provided assistance to the Kmara movement in Georgia, and is involved with comparable movements in Belarus and Zimbabwe.

(12) Michael Barker is a doctoral candidate at Griffith University, Australia. He can be reached at Michael.J.Barker [at] griffith.edu.au

References:

(1) Barry K. Gills, ‘American Power, Neo-Liberal Economic Globalization, and Low-Intensity Democracy: An Unstable Trinity’, in Michael Cox, G. John Ikenberry & Takashi Inoguchi (eds), American Democracy Promotion: Impulses, Strategies and Impacts (Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 326-44; Thomas Oleson, ‘World Politics and Social Movements: The Janus Face of the Global Democratic Structure’, Global Society, Vol. 19, No. 2 (2005), p. 116; William I. Robinson, A Faustian Bargain: U.S. Intervention in the Nicaraguan Elections and American Foreign Policy in the Post-Cold War Era’ (Westview Press, 1992) http://www.soc.ucsb.edu/faculty/robinson/Assets/pdf/faustista.pdf; William I. Robinson, ‘Globalization, the World System, and “Democracy Promotion” in US Foreign Policy’ Theory and Society, Vol. 25 (1996), pp. 615-65; William I. Robinson, Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, US Intervention, and Hegemony (Cambridge University Press, 1996); Steven Smith, ‘US Democracy Promotion: Critical Questions’, in Michael Cox, G. John Ikenberry & Takashi Inoguchi (eds), American Democracy Promotion: Impulses, Strategies and Impacts (Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 63-82.
(2) Sreeram Chaulia, ‘Democratisation, Colour Revolutions and the Role of the NGOs: Catalysts or Saboteurs?’, Center for Research on Globalization, 25 December 2005, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20051225&articleId=1638
(3) Jonathan Mowat, ‘Coup d’État in Disguise: Washington’s New World Order “Democratization” Template’, Center for Research on Globalization, 9 February 2005, http://globalresearch.ca/articles/MOW502A.html
(4) Serbia’s president recently suggested that under Prime Minister Kostunica leadership, Serbia is returning to the ‘political violence’ and ‘persecution of opponents’ reminiscent of Milosevic’s autocratic rule. See Annon, ‘Tadic alleges revival of political violence’, The Guardian UK (Guardian International Pages), 6 October 2005, p. 16.
(5) Michael Dobbs, ‘US advice guided Milosevic opposition: political consultants helped Yugoslav opposition topple authoritarian leader’, The Washington Post, 11 December 2000, http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A18395-2000Dec3¬Found=true
(6) Dobbs, ‘US advice guided Milosevic opposition’.
(7) Diane Johnstone, Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO, and Western Delusions (Pluto Press, 2002).
(8) Andrew Mueller, ‘Guerrillas without guns’, The Hamilton Spectator, 13 August 2005.
(9) Robinson, Promoting Polyarchy, p. 131 & 126.
(10) Robinson, A Faustian Bargain, p. 146; some of these economic pressures were outlined by Nicholas Thompson, ‘This ain’t your momma’s CIA’, Washington Monthly, 1 March 2001, http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0103.thompson.html
(11) Robinson, Promoting Polyarchy, p. 129.
(12) KS, ‘Serbian

The first two parts of this four part series introduced the new head of the UN Democracy Fund, Roland Rich, and provided a critical examination of the ‘democratic’ background of key former UN staffer, Mark Malloch Brown. The penultimate part of this series investigated the history of the UN Democracy Fund itself, while this part examines the ‘democratic’ credentials of some of the recipients of the UN Democracy Fund’s first round of funding. It concludes by offering some strategies to help progressive activists address the worrying issues that have been raised about the UN’s global role as a key democracy manipulator.

In 2006, the UN Secretary General approved the funding of 125 projects distributed all over the world by the UN Democracy Fund. This section initially runs through some of the better known democracy manipulating organizations that received backing from the Fund’s first grant making round, and investigates the ‘democratic’ ties of lesser known UN-funded groups.

For ease of reference I have categorised the bodies receiving Democracy Fund grants into three groups: those tied directly to the UN, those that I have previously linked to global democracy manipulating institutions, and finally those organisations that I will link to democracy manipulators within this confines of this article. Thus to start with fifteen grants were given to the UN Development Programme, another four to the UN Development Fund for Women, and a further three to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. In addition, single grants were also given to the UN System in Guatemala, and to the UN Mission in Liberia. Other UN-linked bodies that received funding included the Inter Press Service (whose international trustees includes Boutros Boutros-Ghali), and the Arab NGO Network for Development – whose executive director, Ziad Abdel Samad, is a director of CIVICUS, and is a member of the UN Development Programme’s Civil Society Organizations Advisory Committee.

A further fourteen organizations that have already been linked to the work of global democracy manipulators obtained UN Democracy Fund grants, these included CARE International (one grant for Kosovo, and one for work in Sudan), the Club of Madrid, the Council for a Community of Democracies, the Eurasia Foundation, Global Rights, the Inter-American Dialogue, International Alert, the International Centre for Democratic Transition, the International Foundation for Election Systems, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, the International Research and Exchanges Board, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (which is included here because thesesuch German foundations provided an “important model for democracy assistance” which helped catalyse the creation of the NED),[1] the National Democratic Institute (a core NED grantee), People In Need, and finally Transparency International.

Preliminary, but by no means exhaustive research also indicates that a further fifteen groups that have received UN Democracy Fund monies can also be linked to the broader democracy manipulating community. Therefore, the following section of this article will briefly introduce these organizations (in alphabetical order) and outline some of their more visible ‘democratic’ ties.

Actionaid India Society – which is a part of Actionaid, an international development agency that was formed in 1972 and aims is “to fight poverty worldwide”. Actionaid receives strong support from the UK Department for International Development, and in 2005 alone, they obtained over $30 million from them. One of Actionaid’s international trustees, Candido Grzybowski, is also a member of the UN Development Programme’s Civil Society Organization Advisory Committee.

The Association of Election Officials in Bosnia and Herzegovina (AEOBiH) – was established in 1999 “under the auspices of OSCE” (becoming independent of OSCE in 2000). The US-based International Foundation of Election Systems (IFES) provided professional expertise to AEOBiH until March 2003.” According to their website they count among their international donors the following ‘democratic’ organizations, IFES, USAID, the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute, and World Learning – a group that worked closely with the NED throughout the 1980s to overthrow the Nicaraguan government. Honorary members of AEOBiH include Juliana Geran Pilon, Richard W. Soudriette (who has been the IFES president since 1988, and is a member of the Secretary of State’s Advisory Committee on Democracy Promotion), and Michael Yard (who has worked for IFES, and was worked for Democracy International between 2004 and 2006 in Guyana).

Caucasian Institute for Peace, Democracy and Development – was founded in Tbilisi, Georgia in 1992 and is a public policy think-tank that specializes “in a broad area of democracy development”. The Institute’s chair, Ghia Nodia, is a past NED Reagan-Fascell Democracy fellow (2000-01), and serves on the steering committee of the World Movement for Democracy. The Caucasian Institute has also received NED funding in the following years, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1999, and 2001.

The Center for Community Journalism and Development – was formed in the Philippines “by a group of journalists and development workers in July 2001″. In 2002, they received a $200,000 grant from the Ford Foundation.

Centro de Investigaciones Regionales de Mesoamerica (Center for Mesoamerican Research or CIRMA) – is located in Antigua Guatemala, CIRMA was founded in 1978 and “today is one of the region’s premier social science research centers”. Curiously, CIRMA are part the “largest single program ever supported by the Ford Foundation”, the Ford Foundation International Fellowships Program (IFP), which aims to provide “opportunities for advanced study to exceptional individuals who will use this education to become leaders in their respective fields”. As I have stated at the start of this essay, owing to the lack of critical commentary on the activities of many ‘democracy promoting’ organizations it is little surprise that sometimes even the most progressive of activists become entangled in their operations. Thus it is interesting to note that Greg Grandin, author of the excellent book Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism (2006) – which talks at length about the US-‘democracy promoting’ industry – sits on CIRMA’s study abroad advisory committee.

Committee to Promote Women’s Political Participation – was established Cambodia in August 2005, and the Committee is composed of seven local NGOs, many of which have ties to the international democracy manipulating community. ‘Democratically’ linked members of the Committee include the Cambodia Development Research Institute (which obtains financial support from a multitude of international development agencies, and groups like the Rockefeller Foundation and the Asia Foundation), Cambodian Women for Peace and Development (whose work is supported by USAID, CARE (Cambodia), and PACT (Cambodia), and the Rockefeller Foundation), the Committee for Free and Fair Elections in Cambodia (which has received support from the National Democratic Institute), and the Neutral and Impartial Committee for Free and Fair Elections in Cambodia (which has also received support from the National Democratic Institute).

Conectas Direitos Humanos (Conectas Human Rights) – is an international NGO that was “founded in Sao Paulo, Brazil in October 2001″ to promote “respect for human rights and contributing to the consolidation of the Rule of Law in the Global South (Africa, Asia, and Latin America)”. Their website notes that the “[i]nitial funds to launch the organization were provided by the Ford Foundation and the United Nations Foundation”, while their main donors today include amongst other the Open Society Institute, the Ford Foundation, and the Tinker Foundation. They also receive aid from Ashoka and the British Council.

Crime Prevention Fund – was founded in 1998, and is a NGO that is “engaged in lowering the crime rate and increasing social engagement rate” in Bulgaria. Crime Prevention Fund obtains some of its funding from the Open Society Institute, the British Council, and the Program of the Democracy Commission to the US Embassy in Bulgaria.

Femmes Africa Solidarite – was formed in late 1996 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo after the Geneva-based international NGO, “Synergies Africa held a brainstorming session with a group of women lawyers, judges, academics and entrepreneurs, along with representatives of other NGOs and international organizations”. It receives financial support from George Soros’ Open Initiative for West Africa, the Ford Foundation, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, a gamut of UN agencies, and a number of European governments. In 2004, Femmes executive director, Bineta Diop, also attended the Third Assembly of the World Movement for Democracy in Durban, South Africa. Furthermore, Esi Sutherland-Addy – a member of Femmes Africa Solidarite executive board – formerly served on the board of directors of the Open Initiative for West Africa.

Institute for a Democratic South Africa (IDASA) – was founded in 1987 and describes itself as “an independent public interest organization committed to promoting sustainable democracy based on active citizenship, democratic institutions, and social justice”. Julie Hearn (2000) notes that: “In 1996 it received $1.165 million from the Ford Foundation. This is an exceptionally large grant by the Foundation’s standards, which normally provides grants from $200 000 to $50 000 to CSOs in Africa, and is by far the largest grant to any grantee in South Africa. At the same time IDASA received a $1 million grant from USAID for a two-year period.”[2] The IDASA’s website also notes that they receive funding from the Westminster Foundation. Furthermore, in 1992 they also received a $300,000 grant (labeled as AID Funds) from the NED. Furthermore, in 1990, 1991 and 1993 the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies also received NED grants (worth between $230,000 and $330,000 each) which it passed on to IDASA. Former IDASA executive director, Wilmot G. James, currently serves as a trustee of the Ford Foundation, and is a member of the international working and advisory group of the Comparative Human Relations Initiative, where he rubs shoulders with the likes of Peter D. Bell, and Franklin A. Thomas (see earlier).

Journalists for Human Rights – is Canada’s largest international media development organization. Journalists for Human Rights co-founder and executive director, Ben Peterson, previously “worked for the Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Lloyd Axworthy”, and “also sits on the Canadian Commission for UNESCO’s youth advisory committee”. Journalists for Human Rights also note that amongst others they have worked in partnership with Rights and Democracy, the Ghana Journalists Association (which received Westminster Foundation funding in 1996), and Reporters Without Borders (an organisation that maintains tight links to numerous democracy manipulators).

Mossawa Center – based in Israel, the Center “seeks to improve the social, economic, legal and political status of the Palestinian Arab citizens in Israel”. The Mossawa Center receives funding from groups that include the Ford Israel Fund, the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, the Heinrich Boell Foundation, the Moriah Fund, the New Israel Fund, and the Open Society Institute.

Non c’e’ pace senza giustizia (No Peace Without Justice) – “is an international non-profit organisation, born in 1993 by a campaign of the Transnational Radical Party (PRT), working for the protection and promotion of human rights, democracy, the rule of law and international justice”. One of the leaders of the PRT, Emma Bonino, also serves on the international advisory board of the Democracy Coalition Project, and the PRT itself also helps coordinate the UN Democracy Caucus along with the Democracy Coalition Project and Freedom House. No Peace Without Justice works closely with the Istanbul-based think tank the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation, which received a $40,000 grant from the NED in 2004, and is a member of the World Movement for Democracy network.

Omar Dengo Foundation – is a private, non-profit organization that was formed in Costa Rica in 1987 that “develops and executes national and regional projects in the fields of human development, educational innovation and digital technologies”. The Foundation’s work is supported by USAID, the UN Development Programme, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Organization of American States, and the International Development Research Centre.

This is not a comprehensive analysis of all the groups funded by the UN Democracy Fund. It is a mere illustration of how the activities of the Fund are closely related to those of the wider democracy manipulating community – whose work is best typified by that of the NED. Considered in conjunction with the findings in the body of this preliminary exploration of the UN’s ‘new’ role in the polyarchy promoting industry, it is evident that, at the very least, concerned citizens should adopt a more critical approach to the role the UN plays in the world.

Ending Multi-Lateral Imperialism

Sadly the deep polyarchal relationship that exists between the UN Democracy Fund and the NED’s cadres does not bode well for progressive citizens’ hoping to reclaim/reform the United Nations as a tool by which to promote a more equitable global world order. Indeed, as this article has revealed, the UN is currently being used by cynical political elites to promote a regressive low-intensity democracy globally. Far from benefiting the majority of the world’s citizens, the promotion of such low-intensity, diminished forms of democracy ultimately only serve elite anti-democratic interests.

As Edward S. Herman (2007) recently pointed out, the “already weak (plutocratic) democracy is in deep trouble in the United States” and “good arguments can be made that it is likely to be stripped of its façade in the very near future.” This should worry everyone around the world, bearing in mind that the US is the world leading democracy exporter/manipulator.

Herman goes on to note that, “[P]ower sovereignty, not popular sovereignty” dominates US politics,

“The Bush-Cheney team has already done serious damage to the democratic structures of this country: the checks-and-balances system is badly impaired, executive power to ignore congressional legislation is now openly asserted and still in place, executive power to permit torture and ignore international law has been strengthened, the right to privacy and due process has been weakened and habeas corpus in jeopardy, and the executive’s power to go to war and carry out assassinations and other covert and military operations abroad has also been strengthened.”

Needless to say this democratic onslaught is not a new phenomenon. While, in the not so distant past, progressive citizens would have vigorously opposed these policies, the contemporary mainstream Left is lying in tatters and is evidently unwilling to raise a response. Few mainstream critics are willing to comprehend, let alone counter, the fact that presently one of the main global proponents of ‘peace’, ‘human rights’ and ‘democracy’ is the Bush administration itself. Of course the definition of these terms given by Bush and his cronies leaves a lot to be desired, especially by those citizens who prefer tax payer monies be spent on strengthening participatory processes rather than polyarchal/plutocratic ones. So, while progressives correctly campaign on issues relating to the world’s Global Warming Catastrophe, and other ‘progressives’ undermine democracy by working to promote imperial interventions (usually referred to in peacespeak as ‘humanitarian interventions’); collectively speaking many of the Left seem to be united in forgetting that the Bush administration is on the brink of launching the next World War. (That is, an escalation of the Long War they are already fighting).

Vibrant ongoing campaigns to oppose such rampant warmongering must be a priority for all concerned citizens; This does not mean, however, that such activism should neglect other key global issues. Indeed climate change is already intimately linked to US ‘national security’ concerns. Furthermore, progressive campaigners must not delimit their critiques of the current world order to analyzing the actions of the ‘crazy’ neocons, but must also extend their investigations to (seemingly) progressive organizations like the UN Democracy Fund, and the many other liberal philanthopists who are working hand-in-hand with numerous democracy manipulators to promote ‘humanitarian interventions’ and low-intensity democracy worldwide. Taking on such a colossal task will not be easy, especially given that major parts of the US anti-war movement are embedded with the Democrats. Nonetheless, it is a task that needs to be undertaken immediately. Of course, the fight for life will always be long and difficult, but if these issues are not addressed now the number of weak crushed under our imperial footprint will continue to spiral upwards.

Michael Barker is a doctoral candidate at Griffith University, Australia. He can be reached at Michael. J. Barker [at] griffith.edu.au. All four parts of this United Nation’s essay and some of his other articles can be found here.

Endnotes

[1] By the 1990s Germany’s Stiftungen or party foundations, “had resident representatives in more than 100 countries and field offices in some of them for well over 30 years. Between 1962 and 1997 they handled in total over DM4.5 billion reaching around DM290 million annually by the 1990s. Although in the period before 1990 it is debatable how much can be called democracy support rather than activities primarily intended to meet other purposes In Pinto-Duschinsky’s words they were ‘powerful instruments not only for promoting democracy, but also for furthering German interests and contacts’.”

Stefan Mair, Germany’s Stiftungen and Democracy Assistance: Comparative Advantages, New Challenges, In: Peter J. Burnell (ed.) Democracy Assistance: International Co-operation for Democratization (London, Frank Cass: 2000), pp.128-149.

Heinrich Boll representative, Sascha Müller-Kraenner, was also a signatory to a recent letter (dated November 11, 2004) which was sent by the NED to Venezuela’s president Hugo Chavez to urge him “to reconsider the prosecution of the leadership of Sumate, as well as the proposal to criminalize democracy assistance from abroad”. Sumate is the Venezuelan group that received assistance from the NED to facilitate the unsuccessful ouster of Chavez in 2002.

[2] Julie Hearn, Aiding Democracy? Donors and Civil Society in South Africa, Third World Quarterly, 21 ( 5), 2000, pp.827-8.

Jonah Gindin: Is the promotion of democracy inherently imperialist?

William I. Robinson: The promotion of democracy is inherently not imperialist. On the contrary, it is inherently revolutionary and progressive. But I think you’re phrasing the question in the wrong way because what the U.S. is promoting is not Democracy. What they are doing is inherently imperialist, promoting democracy is not inherently imperialist, promoting democracy is wonderful, it’s great! Social movements are promoting democracy, social movements in both the North and the South, solidarity movements in the North, mass movements in the South are promoting democracy. U.S. foreign policy has absolutely nothing to do with promoting democracy……………You asked if all these different groups are stooges of U.S. foreign policy. Not at all; those that are struggling for a completely different vision, one contrary to U.S. interests and global capital’s interests are going to be marginalized if they can’t be bought. There are going to be alternative or parallel organizations set up by U.S. operatives (and their local allies and agents) and funding that are more powerful, more moderate, more centrist, more elite-oriented. These organizations and NGOs are going to receive international media attention, they’re going to receive funding, they’re going to liaise with other forces abroad. So we could summarize by saying that there are three different categories of groups. There are those that are clearly instruments of U.S. foreign policy objectives, and these are not groups that are promoting democratization but are trying to limit democratization and control change. There are those that are marginalized and pushed aside, and then there are those that the U.S. cannot or it is not in the interest of U.S. foreign policy to marginalize or challenge, and then they attempt to co-opt these organizations and to moderate them. Very often you get well intentioned people and you get people who have a legitimate political agenda: democratization, regime change from an authoritarian regime, and so forth, that because structural or on-the-ground circumstances don’t allow anything else, become sucked up in U.S. and transnational elite foreign policy operations or interventions.

Where does the US seek to “promote democracy”?

There are two different categories of “democracy promotion” programs: The first are programs in those countries that are already ruled by elites and in the camp of global capitalism. In these countries, political intervention programs seek to bolster neo-liberal elites, to achieve this elite’s control over the state and to cultivate its hegemony in civil society. Cultivating this neo-liberal elite and its domination and hegemony is the political dimension that complements the economic dimension, which is neo-liberal structural adjustment and integration into the emerging global capitalist economy. The flip side of this effort is to isolate, marginalize, and discredit popular, nationalist, revolutionary and other progressive forces that may pose a challenge to the stable domination of local pro-US elites or neo-liberal regimes. These types of programs have been conducted in dozens of countries around the world. To mention just one example, in el salvador, “democracy promotion” programs that had been conducted throughout the 1990s and early 21st century were expanded in 2003 as presidential elections approached. These programs provided diverse forms of support for civic and political groups aligned with the ruling ARENA party and marginalized the FMLN.

The other is to use “democracy promotion” to overthrow regimes that the U.S. is not favorable towards or to bring about a “transition to democracy” in cases where so-called “regime change” is seen by Washington as necessary for the country’s stability and continued integration into global capitalism. Countries that Washington wishes to destabilize in recent years through “democracy promotion” (along with other forms of intervention) include Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua in the 1980s, and so on. The groups and individuals that participated in the destabilization of the government of Jean Bertrand Aristide and that are now in power in Haiti were precisely those groomed and cultivated by U.S. “democracy promotion” programs dating back to the late 1980s and undertaken continuously right up to the march 2004 U.S. coup d’état. In Venezuela, the opposition to the government of Hugo Chávez has been working since the late 1990s closely with the U.S. “democracy promotion” network.

Then there are those countries targeted for a “transition to democracy,” that is, a U.S.-supported and often orchestrated changeover in government and state structures. South Africa and Eastern European countries fell into this category in the 1990s, as does the current situation in Iraq.

What is the connection between the NED and the U.S. government?

The fact that the NED receives its funding from Congress is hardly its most direct link to the government. NED operations are designed in the State Department and the White House, often in coordination with [CIA headquarters at] Langley, and everything is undertaken in liaison with the Embassy on the ground in a particular intervened country. The officials put in charge of these operations are typically engaged in a revolving door relationship with the U.S. state. They move in and out of other government positions at the White House, the State Department, and so on. What we’re seeing is the battle over global civil society, and it’s heating up, because there’s no place left in the world that has not been integrating very rapidly into the global system. Venezuela is one of those places at the front-line of this battle.

The overt funding channels established through NED operations, which even then are not entirely above ground, generate an infrastructure of contacts, networks, channels of influence, and so forth, that are then available for covert funding and operations. That’s the pattern that we see everywhere. In Nicaragua around the 1990 elections, for every dollar of NED or AID funding there were several dollars of CIA funding. We know that much from the tip of the iceberg we were able to uncover.

The NED-though maybe it has gotten the most attention-is hardly the only organization involved in this kind of intervention conducted under the umbrella of the U.S. State Department and the Executive. There are many other branches of the U.S. State dedicated to promoting “democracy,” and other countries are setting up similar branches as well. I think the weakness in progressive forces internationally is to see the political dynamic in the world today as an effort at U.S. empire. And so the story becomes the U.S. against the rest of the world, and that’s a grave mistake. One of the things that has taken place-one of the key aspects of globalization-is the rise of a transnational elite that shares an interest in attempting to preserve the current global capitalist order, in defending it and extending it, and they also share the view that “democracy promotion” is one key instrument in advancing and stabilizing this global capitalist order. There might be tactical differences and there might be strategic differences in how to do that-what happened in Iraq, for example. In Venezuela we see the same thing: Western Europe, Canada, and most Latin American governments would like to see Chávez out of power and an elite order restored, but the question is how to go about it. The U.S. strategy has largely backfired so far. So there are tactical and strategic differences, but there is a commonality of interest among the leading capitalist states.

Do you think that the academics and policymakers behind the “democracy promotion” strategy believe that they are promoting genuine democracy? Or are they cynically aware of their imperialist role?

You ask me if academics from the “democracy promotion” industry actually believe they are promoting democracy. Antonio Gramsci once pointed out that popular masses don’t have a false consciousness; they have a contradictory consciousness, due to their lived experience. But intellectuals-who are never free-floating, always attached to the projects of dominant or of subordinate groups-they have a false consciousness.

Perhaps Gramsci was giving the benefit of the doubt to these intellectuals. There are many respectable and well-intentioned academics from the “First World” who unfortunately trumpet the new modalities of U.S. intervention conducted as “democracy promotion,” and others who deceive themselves, intentionally or otherwise, into believing they can participate intellectually-or directly-in U.S. political intervention in order to somehow steer it into a wholesome or acceptable foreign policy.

We should recall that intellectual labor is never neutral or divorced from competing and antagonistic social interests. To state this in overly harsh terms, some-perhaps many-academics who defend U.S. “democracy promotion” are organic intellectuals of the transnational elite. Some are outright opportunists who know before whom they need to prostrate themselves in order to secure funding and status in the halls of global power. They are intellectual mercenaries. Others, as I’ve said, are well intentioned. But there is almost always an arrogance of power and privilege that many first world intellectuals bring to their “study” of the global South; there is an academic colonial mentality at work.

Let’s face it: so-called “democracy promotion” has become a veritable academic industry that has numerous organic, ideological, and funding links with the U.S. intervention apparatus. Let us recall that projects of domination always have their organic intellectuals. The prevailing global order has attracted many intellectual defenders, academics, pundits, and ideologues, who in the end serve to mystify the real inner workings of the emerging order and the social and political interests embedded therein. These intellectuals have become central cogs in the system of global capitalist domination. Maybe they want a global capitalism with a more “human face,” but in the end they not only help to legitimize this system but also provide technical solutions in response to the problems and contradictions of the system.

How can any academic actually follow what the U.S. does around the world in the name of “democracy promotion” and not acknowledge the blatant farce? These are harsh words, but we must ask, what is the role and responsibility of intellectuals in the face of the global crisis, the crisis of civilizational proportions we face in 2005.

Based on your experiences in Nicaragua, how serious is the U.S. “democracy promotion” strategy in Venezuela?

This is a full-blown operation, a massive foreign-policy operation to undermine the Venezuelan revolution, to overthrow the government of Hugo Chávez, and to reinstall the elite back in power in Venezuela. Within the elite, this operation seeks to cultivate a particular trans-national group or faction so that once Venezuela’s internal political system is once again an elite political system, the transnationally-oriented elites will proceed to more deeply and systematically integrate Venezuela into global capitalism. This is a massive operation underway. And it is important to emphasize that anywhere where U.S. foreign policy is operating-and that is a large part of the world-”democracy promotion” operations are going to be part of a larger foreign policy strategy. So it’s not a question of whether-and this was a whole new thing for Nicaragua and the Ukraine and so forth-it’s not a question of whether “democracy promotion” is not being undertaken because there are paramilitary operations. Rather, they’re all part of a larger foreign policy strategy, which is employing all instruments available to achieve U.S. ends.

“Democracy promotion” will continue unhindered and if the chance and the opportunity arises for paramilitary actions against Venezuela, the opportunity will be taken. And if the opportunity arises and the circumstances permit for Venezuela to be isolated by international organizations such as the Organization of American States (OAS), the United Nations, and so forth, then the U.S. will go ahead and promote that type of diplomatic aggression. And if the opportunity arises to cut Venezuela off from international financing and the international financial institutions that will be undertaken. The U.S. state is going to assess all the different instruments it has and look at what are the international circumstances that allow them to be deployed or not deployed in any given moment. And they’re all going to be undertaken in synchronization and conjunction with one another: the internal “democracy promotion” operations, the funding of internal opposition groups, the electoral intervention and trying to build up counter-hegemonic anti-Chávez forces in civil society. All of that is going to be done in conjunction with whatever can be done with paramilitary groups from Colombia, and in conjunction with denunciations made to the international press and U.S. press conferences by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and others. That will all be done in careful synchronization with things going on on the ground in Venezuela, in synchronization with what’s going at the UN, and so forth. So just to summarize once again, there is no doubt whatsoever: all of the information indicates that there are massive covert and overt, systematic, military, economic, political, and ideological operations against Venezuela to completely defeat the revolution and put the elite back in power. All of the telltale signs are there.

While I would never rule out an invasion by U.S. forces or attempted assassinations of Chávez, I think it is more important to see this strategy against Venezuela as a campaign of attrition against the popular classes in Venezuela, to create a situation where sooner or later the poor majority “gives up” and simply decides that there is no point in continuing to resist the U.S. campaign, to continue to reject the return of the elite, to continue to struggle. Key to this strategy of attrition will be, first, to exacerbate economic hardships, difficulties, and deprivation for ordinary people, and second, to adroitly exploit mistakes made by the Bolivarian revolution, weaknesses internal to the revolutionary process.

What makes Venezuela so dangerous to the US?

There are a number of things. First, it’s the only genuinely revolutionary process underway since Cuba in 1959 that is still alive today. In the recent past there was the Nicaraguan revolution in 1979, which was completely reversed, and there was the Haitian revolution in 1990-91 and that, at this point, has also been reversed, although it’s still a problem for U.S. foreign policy. But Venezuela represents a revolutionary process underway, and it comes at a strategic and critical moment for all of Latin America and the world, in which the “Washington Consensus,”-the whole neo-liberal program-is moribund, it’s in complete crisis. What exactly is going to take the place of the neo-liberal model is not clear; that’s the current battle throughout Latin American and worldwide. In Venezuela there is a revolutionary process promoting agrarian reform, redistribution of wealth, that is using the country’s resources to challenge international economic structures, and it is a tremendous example of this moment of transition from neo-liberalism to whatever’s going to come next.

The Bolivarian process is taking place at a time when the implementation of neo-liberalism in the 1980s and 90s is now discredited throughout the region. Is Venezuela going to tip the balance and encourage social and political forces to move beyond the “Washington Consensus”, the global capital model for Latin America? Neo-liberal elites face a major challenge from below, so this is a critical transition in Latin America, and Venezuela represents a revolutionary alternative to the moribund neo-liberal order. So that’s why Venezuela’s so dangerous, not to mention of course that Venezuela is a major oil supplier. Even if this had taken place in the 1980s in the heyday of neo-liberalism and neo-liberal hegemony, Venezuela also controls a key global resource at a time when the Middle East is in turmoil, at a time when Iraq is not going to be pumping millions of dollars of oil into the global economy for a while. This is a rupture. We need to see what’s taking place in Venezuela both historically and also with respect to a new twenty-first century situation of globalization, because historically this is nothing new: there are permanent outbursts from below throughout Latin America and now and then those outbursts actually manage to take state power and challenge the international system. Each time the U.S. has organized a massive response, so we’re seeing them lay the groundwork.

How can a government like Venezuela counter an imperialism that is articulated as the promotion of “democracy”?

One of the reasons this shift in U.S. policy has been so powerful is because they’ve been able to set up this hegemonic discourse, a very powerful rhetoric of “promoting democracy.” But another reason is the failure of the Left, a worldwide democratic failure. If I were a government being targeted by U.S. political intervention-and I have to be very careful with how I word this because I don’t want to be misconstrued-I would probably wield a heavy hand against that intervention, but I would do so while at the same time exposing U.S. intervention for what it is. For instance, I would point out that U.S. electoral laws don’t allow any foreign interference in U.S. elections.

If the Venezuelan government and Venezuelan organizations attempted to do in the United States what the U.S. is doing in Venezuela, anyone accepting money, anyone involved in this program in the United States (US citizens or foreigners) would be arrested and they would be tried and they would be jailed. Funding for electoral organizations by the Venezuelan government inside the U.S. would be completely prohibited, completely illegal, it would be a massive scandal, and there would be an outcry. If governments around the world that are targets of this kind of U.S. intervention simply applied the same criteria that the U.S. state applies inside the U.S. then these operations could be closed down. In the U.S. no candidate, no party, can accept foreign funding and no foreign government can make any donations at all to groups that are involved in electoral processes. And for that matter, any organization which is receiving funding from a foreign government needs to register with the State Department as an agent of a foreign government. So if I set up a get-out-the-vote organization in California and started receiving funding from a Venezuelan equivalent of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), I would have to register with the State Department as an agent of a foreign government. That means that the diverse organizations that are receiving funding in Venezuela-if there were an equivalent to U.S. law in Venezuela-would have to register with Venezuela as agents of the U.S. government.

It’s a catch-22 for any popular, Left, or revolutionary force, any progressive forces that want to challenge the global order. There’s no way that the government of Venezuela, or that progressive forces in Venezuela are going to make a serious dent in global capital’s complete control over the international flow of information and the images that are going to flow out of Venezuela to South America and to the rest of the world, with regard to so-called “democracy promotion,” with regard to the role of the elite in Venezuela and so forth. One of the key things about the global capitalist economy is that the flow of information is very tightly controlled and image-making is a very powerful instrument controlled by global media which is itself transnational capital, just a massive global business. The most important thing is to maintain legitimacy and the mass base of support inside Venezuela, with the understanding that the strength of a revolution or a process of social change is ultimately going to be that internal legitimacy and that support.

Have you come across any examples of strategies that have successfully faced off against the rhetoric of “freedom,” “democracy,” “terrorism” etc…in your studies? Do you see a strategy that Venezuela could pursue in this regard?

There’s really only so much that a government in a particular country can do to win that battle, and I’ll give you two examples in just a moment: Cuba and Nicaragua. But the other thing of course is for progressive forces worldwide, the global justice movement, to become aware of these changes in U.S. policy and to recognize what it actually means for the U.S. to be “promoting democracy.” This should be part of our global agenda; the global justice movement, solidarity organizations, and social movements around the world. I know that last year at the World Social Forum there was a workshop organized by the Focus on the Global South specifically on exposing “democracy promotion” as a new more sophisticated form of intervention. So we have our work cut out for us, and complimentary to our work are those efforts by progressive forces, whether or not they take state power, to promote meaningful social change, like in Venezuela.

Look at what happened in Cuba in 2003. There were seventy-five dissidents; among them were perfectly legitimate opposition forces, and among them there were simple instruments of U.S. foreign policy-a very diverse group of seventy-five. But the thing is that all seventy-five were collaborating actively with these U.S. programs-which in just about any country in the world would be considered felonous activity-and all of them had met with James Casson (Chief of Missions, U.S. Special Interests Section in Havana). Now if the head of the Cuban interests section in Washington D.C. came to California and worked with seventy-five of U.S. who are against the invasion of Iraq, who are part of the global justice movement and so forth, if we took funding and money from the Cuban Chargés d’Affaires and met at his residency in Washington D.C. to plan strategy against the U.S. government, we would all be in jail now. So what did the Cuban government do? They said “we’re not going to worry about international opinion. This is something which is illegal in any country in the world, it’s a blatant violation of Cuban and international law,” and the seventy-five were imprisoned, they were jailed. In fact they got off very easy: they would have received much more serious sentences if that had taken place in the US, or in any other country in the world.

But what did the Cuban government lose? They lost a tremendous amount in public opinion internationally, they lost a lot of ground that had been gained in the previous years. They were condemned by the European Union, and condemned by international organizations, and of course the U.S. propaganda machine had a hey-day. That’s an example of a government doing what is necessary to respect its own political system, in exchange for international public opinion, because they couldn’t go both ways.

Nicaragua was a no-win situation. The U.S. had the military and economic power to continue to strangle Nicaragua to the point where the population couldn’t possibly stand any more. But the strategy that the Sandinistas had in the late 1980s was to go ahead with this electoral process and do anything and everything to appease international public opinion and to convince the world that they were a democratic force-which they were anyway. But that meant sacrificing a tremendous amount of internal legitimacy. It meant allowing things to happen on the ground in Nicaragua that didn’t take place in any other country in the world. And so the Sandinistas came away looking like wonderful democrats, in the end they were really the good guys. And then they lost power and the revolution unraveled and Nicaragua went back fifty years.

I think that exposing and denouncing and fighting against this new type of intervention should top the agenda of the global social justice movement and of international solidarity work. That would be the international public opinion battle.

Why do you think the “democracy promotion” strategy was not applied to Venezuela in the late 1990s when Chávez’s movement was building momentum?

We need to avoid thinking of U.S. policymakers as omnipotent because they’re not in the least. On the contrary, they tend to be permanently on the defensive, permanently reacting to social and political forces, often from below, that they can’t control, with very little foresight and very little understanding of the consequences of their foreign policy. It would be a contradiction in terms for U.S. policymakers to identify and acknowledge the structural underpinnings of the challenges to an international order that they are attempting to promote and defend. I mean, Condoleezza Rice is not going to come out and say, “the problem with all this instability and revolutions popping up everywhere and the fires we’re trying to put out is the unjust distribution of wealth and power in the world.” That would be a contradiction in terms. Because that can’t be recognized, even strategic thinkers in the CIA and intellectuals recruited to help design U.S. foreign policy are not going to reach that conclusion; it’s not going to enter onto their radar. And so what that means is that the U.S. policymakers have very little foresight.

The U.S. was already deeply involved in Venezuela in 1989 and beyond in the early 1990s with NED programs, but they were programs for a different scenario; a scenario in which a pro-global capital neo-liberal elite is in power and U.S. polyarchy-promotion[1] programs were meant to assure that the elite would continue to be groomed on an ongoing basis, to slowly assure that organizations in civil society continue to be favorable-towards the U.S. transnational project. I don’t think that U.S. policymakers saw the massive discontent in Venezuela and saw that there were different groups that moving towards a project that would challenge the U.S. and the international order.

In the late 1990s, the U.S. was trying to promote controlled political change in Venezuela, but they were doing so at a much slower pace, because it wasn’t yet a crisis situation for them. It didn’t look like a situation where there was going to be a revolutionary upheaval against the regime as you had in Marcos’ Philippines, as you had in Somocista Nicaragua, or as you had in Chile. In the early to mid-1980s with Pinochet, for example, that’s exactly what happened: you had U.S. policymakers witnessing an anti-dictatorial groundswell that was out of the elite’s control. U.S. operatives and policymakers concluded, “we could potentially have a revolutionary situation on our hands here, we could have coalescing opposition forces against the dictatorship led by the left, in which the outcome is not going to be a reversion to elite rule, but something much more serious.” But it didn’t have that foresight in Venezuela, for reasons that I think are much more complicated: there was no clear left force which was hegemonizing a mass democratization movement, there was no clear dictatorship or single figure among the elite that could be the target of a popular upsurge. One more thing: I don’t think it was clear to U.S. policymakers that Chávez was going to end up being a revolutionary figure (I don’t even think it was clear to Chávez). If I were a U.S. policymaker in 1997-98 leading up to the Presidential elections, I would have said “Chávez is a maverick, but he’s certainly not a Fidel Castro, or a Marxist-revolutionary, and if he looks like he’s going to come into power we could certainly try and control him in other ways. He could turn out to be a Velasco [Peru 1968], or this could be like Bolivia in the early 50s, but this is not a revolutionary situation.” There were none of the red-blinkers going off that there were in Nicaragua in 1978-79.

Venezuela is scheduled to hold Presidential elections in 2006. Do you perceive the Venezuelan anti-Chávez opposition to be more or less divided than the Nicaraguan anti-Sandinista opposition in 1989 prior to the US’ success in unifying them? To what extent does the crisis of the “Washington Consensus” that you spoke of hamper the US’ ability to “promote democracy” successfully?

I would say that the elite in Venezuela after the referendum is probably weaker and more fractured relative to the elite in Nicaragua for a number of reasons. By the time you have the late 1980s and the elections in Nicaragua coming in 1990, you essentially had 10 years in which the U.S. has been able to work on reconstituting the elite, which was totally shattered after Somoza’s overthrow. And the U.S. also has the military aggression and many other things it could use in Nicaragua that it hasn’t been able to do in Venezuela, particularly the military aggression. This military aggression opened up internal space within in the Nicaraguan elite in ways that we’re not seeing in Venezuela. The other thing about the elite is that there is some portion of the business community in Venezuela and the elite which, after the referendum, decided that they should seek some kind of modus vivendi with Chávez, and that’s something that the U.S. wants to avoid. So U.S. “democracy promotion” operations in Venezuela are going to be aimed not only at unifying the elite, but also making sure no one collaborates with Chávez.

The international situation is very different than it was in the late 80s with Nicaragua. In the late 80s the world economic crisis had given way to the “Washington consensus” and neo-liberalism, presenting the Sandinista government with an increasingly difficult international situation. When we look at Latin America in 2005, there’s an opening in the GLOBAL system for an alternative, which gives breathing room to Venezuela.

US policy is going to continue. The coup in April, 2002 failed, so the U.S. picks up the pieces and says “now what do we have on the agenda, what’s the next event, what’s the next possibility, what’s the next angle we could work?” The next one was the oil industry shutdown from December 2002 to February 2003. That petered out, so next up was the referendum, eventually held in August 2004, which Chávez won with 59% of the vote. Each time the elite comes away more internally divided. But if Chávez is in power, or if the Bolivarian revolution continues, for forty years, for no matter how long, the U.S. will still be plugging away here. It’s never going to end.

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[1] In Promoting Polyarchy, Robinson defines polyarchy as “a system in which a small group actually rules and mass participation in decision-making is confined to leadership choice in elections carefully managed by competing elites.”

Polyarchy and its procedures by itself may be insufficient for achieving full democracy. For example, poor people may be unable to participate in the political process.[3]

Moreover, perceived polyarchies -such as the United States- may bar a substantial amount of its citizens from participating in its national electoral process. For example, more than four million U.S. citizens residing in the U.S. territories (such as Puerto Rico, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands) are excluded from voting for the President and are excluded from participating in the election of any voting-member of Congress, which are the political bodies that hold ultimate sovereignty over them.[2][3]

When, in the 1940s, Joseph Schumpeter argued that ordinary citizens should limit their participation in a democracy to electing its leaders, he was effectively arguing for polyarchy. This contrasts with the view presented in the eighteenth century by Rousseau, that the health of a polity depended on active citizen involvement in all aspects of governance. According to Schumpeter, massive political participation is regarded as undesirable and even dangerous. Schumpeter thought that the electoral masses are incapable of political participation other than voting for their leaders. He claimed most political issues are so remote from the daily lives of ordinary people, that they can not make sound judgements about opinions, policies and ideologies.

In Preface to Democratic Theory (1956) Dahl argues that an increase in citizen political involvement may not always be beneficial for polyarchy. An increase in the political participation of members of “lower” socioeconomic classes, for example, could reduce the support for the basic norms of polyarchy, because members of those classes are more pre-disposed to be authoritarian-minded.[4] [5]

In a discussion of contemporary British foreign policy, Mark Curtis stated that “Polyarchy is generally what British leaders mean when they speak of promoting ‘democracy’ abroad. This is a system in which a small group actually rules and mass participation is confined to choosing leaders in elections managed by competing elites.” [6]

According to William I. Robinson, democracy is a contested concept. He argues that when U.S. policymakers use the term democracy, they mean polyarchy – a system in which a small group rules and mass participation in decision-making is confined to leadership choice in elections carefully managed by competing elites. Polyarchy then may be thought of as “low intensity democracy” or “consensual domination”. In contrast to polyarchy, Robinson posits “popular democracy”, which refers to a dispersal throughout society of political power that can be used to change unjust social and economic structures.[7] Wikipedia

References
^ polyarchy – Definitions from Dictionary.com
^ Raskin, James B. (2003). Overruling Democracy: The Supreme Court Vs. the American People. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 36-38. ISBN 0415934397
^ Torruella, Juan R. (1985). The Supreme Court and Puerto Rico: The Doctrine of Separate and Unequal.
^ Dahl, Preface to Democratic Theory, p. 89
^ “Citizen participation and democracy in the Netherlands”, by Ank Michels (referenced 26 September 2006)
^ Mark Curtis, Web of Deceit: Britain’s Real Role in the World, p. 247, London: Vintage UK Random House. ISBN 0-09-944839-4
^ Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, U. S. Intervention, and Hegemony by William I. Robinson, Mershon International Studies Review, Vol. 41, No. 2 (Nov., 1997), pp. 308-310, in JSTOR
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