Democracy Promotion Paradox

Lincoln A. Mitchell is a scholar, writer, and practitioner of democracy promotion. He was formerly on the faculty of Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs and is currently the national political correspondent for the New York Observer. His previous books include Uncertain Democracy: U.S. Foreign Policy and Georgia's Rose Revolution (2008) and The Color Revolutions (2012).

The belief of American policymakers that they can make other countries more democratic, liberal, just—in short, more American—is founded not on experience, but on national character. The United States promotes democracy, Lincoln Mitchell says, "because we cannot help ourselves." Mitchell would know. He is a recovering democracy promoter, a skeptic (though not quite a cynic), a wise and witty guide to self-delusion, folly, and old-fashioned American optimism. The paradoxes at the heart of this important book describe not only a vexed policy but the burden of a superpower that desperately wishes to do good in the world."- James Traub, author, The Freedom Agenda: Why America Must Spread Democracy (Just Not the Way George Bush Did);"Lincoln Mitchell, a deeply knowledgeable veteran of democracy promotion efforts abroad, surveys with a gimlet eye the track record and contradictions of America's democratizing mission. Foreseeing a hard uphill climb, this admirable realist counsels a strategic approach that concentrates limited resources on situations and methods that will yield the greatest payoff."- Jack Snyder, Professor of International Relations, Columbia University, and coauthor, Electing to Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go to War