The Democracy Establishment

This dissertation is about how and why the United States and other developed countries turned to democracy promotion at the end of the Cold War, and what the impact of doing so has been on the conduct of politics in developing countries across the world. Newly assembled quantitative data, archival records, and extensive field research in Jordan and Washington, D.C., show that many government programs to aid democracy abroad today are not designed to foster short- or even medium-term changes in countries' democracy levels. Instead, today's template of democracy assistance activities emphasizes technical programs that do not threaten the non-democratic regimes of the countries where the programs take place. That template contrasts with the more confrontational aid projects to dissidents, political parties, and trade unions that dominated the early era of democracy assistance in the 1980s. What explains the taming of democracy assistance? Previous research suggests that donor countries' self-interests and target states' characteristics drive patterns of foreign assistance. In contrast, this dissertation focuses on the people linking the democracy promoting countries and the target states. These people, who conduct democracy assistance programs, form the democracy establishment. The democracy establishment's ideas and incentives, which have their genesis in the funding structure of democracy assistance and have subsequently become institutionalized over time, matter greatly for the design of democracy assistance programs. In turn, the types of political practices and institutions that the democracy establishment promotes matter greatly for the conduct of politics in developing countries. Developing countries such as Afghanistan have, for example, adopted quotas for women's minimum representation in legislatures despite women's otherwise poor station in society; such countries adopt quotas because the democracy establishment has encouraged them to do so. The dissertation shows that the democracy establishment significantly influences politics in developing countries, and that its priorities come from incentives created by its funding structure. The theoretical and policy implications of these findings involve our understanding of the anatomy of foreign influence, non-state actors in world politics, principal-agent relationships, and current debates about how best to promote democracy abroad. In order to reward democracy assistance programs that are most likely to advance democracy, the funding structure of democracy assistance should be reformed

Gender Quotas and International Reputation

The global spread of electoral gender quotas has been characterized as one of the most significant institutional developments of the last 30 years. Many of the countries that have adopted these laws designed to increase women's political representation are electoral autocracies that have otherwise-stark gender inequalities. Some scholars argue that electoral authoritarian states have adopted quotas as a strategy for improving their international reputations for democracy. This article represents the first exploration of whether quotas really generate reputational boosts. Using large-scale survey experiments in Sweden and the United States concerning hypothetical developing countries, we find that they do. In particular, audiences perceived electoral autocracies as more democratic and were more likely to support giving them foreign aid when women's descriptive representation was greater. Beyond its contribution to our understanding of gender quotas and women's representation, this article contributes to broader debates about international reputation, human rights, and foreign aid attitudes

Do electronic devices in face-to-face interviews change survey behavior? Evidence from a developing country

A large literature shows that survey mode and survey technologies significantly affect item non-response and response distributions. Yet as researchers increasingly conduct surveys in the developing world, little attention has been devoted to understanding how new technologies—such as the use of electronic devices in face-to-face interviews—produce bias there. We hypothesize that using electronic devices instead of pen and paper can affect survey behavior via two pathways: a wealth effect and a surveillance effect. To test the hypotheses, we use data from a two-wave panel survey fielded in Tunisia. We investigate whether responses collected in Wave 1 with pen and paper changed when some individuals were interviewed in Wave 2 by interviewers using tablet computers. Consistent with the wealth effect hypothesis, more than half of the lowest income respondents reported a higher income in the second wave when interviewers used tablets. Conversely, we find little evidence that concerns about surveillance changed survey behavior

The Promise and Limits of Election Observers in Building Election Credibility

Replication Data and Code for: The Promise and Limits of Election Observers in Building Election Credibility