The Security Strategy adopted by the European Council in late 2003 underlines the importance of conflict prevention and civil, but also – wherever necessary – military intervention in weak or failing states. The new Security Strategy recommends that foreign and security policy be more...

Although Latin America is the world’s most democratic developing region and democratization has also caused an economic dividend, many Latin American democracies have a precarious basis of legitimacy. While most Latin American states are not as fragile nor as repressive as in some other...

While the emerging democracies of Southeast Asia still are characterised by legitimacy crises or have already collapsed, a higher level of political stability persists in most of the region's autocracies. In most countries of South-East Asia, however, the state's monopoly on the legitimate use...

Unlike China and Russia, India is a democratic country, which could act as an important partner in international democracy promotion. Despite increasing requests from the United States and European governments, the promotion of democracy has not so far had a high priority in India’s foreign...

How to combine the implementation of the new aid agenda with the challenges of advancing subsidiarityoriented decentralisation in many developing countries? This question has been neglected for some years, as most of the discussion on ownership, the use of partnercountry systems, donor...

Many a democratisation process since the end of the Cold War has proved to be a flash in the pan. On a global scale the steps taken in democratisation have been backwards rather than forwards for some years, at least until recent events in the Arab world. Stable democracies have emerged mainly...

Multi-Donor Budget Support (MDBS) has its origins in the critique of traditional aid interventions and is aimed at overcoming related deficiencies of aid by avoiding parallel administrative and decision making structures. It is commonly understood not merely as a financing instrument but also as...

Whether political conditionality should be attached to foreign aid and whether a recipient country's level of democracy should be the benchmark for conditionality and sanctioning instruments remain highly controversial issues. This is reflected by the debates around the Agenda for Change, the...