The forms of international intervention have deeply changed since the end of the Cold War. They have assumed a democratic character: recent cases of intervention are mainly carried out by democracies and are justified by democratic principles as the protection of human rights or the promotion of human dignity. Moreover, they are aimed at the democratization of the target-country. This unprecedented democratic attitude has given birth to a new kind of relationship between international intervention and democratization - which in the past was understood only as a domestic political process. This ISPI study investigates the topic by looking at the relationship between intervention and democratization from four different perspectives. In the first place, it addresses the record of US military interventions for promoting democracy, assessing whether US interventions that are focused on democratization are likely to result in better human rights conditions. In the second place, similarly, it addresses the role of NATO in democratic transition processes. In the third place, it investigates the conditions under which democracy promotion by external intervention is more likely to succeed. Finally, it suggests the idea that the new forms of trusteeship can only be understood as an effect of the paradoxes entailed in the democratization's purpose of intervention.

 

Read the ISPI Studies "International Intervention and Democratization"