For all the musings of dictators, little is known about the effectiveness of such assistance. Wary of drawing the ire of authoritarian leaders or risking the impatience of Western taxpayers, groups like the NDI and IRI have kept a low profile. As a result, we know little about how—or if—these groups and the governments that fund them effectively influence democracy abroad. This book answers those questions.
On the basis of more than 150 interviews with activists and politicians, political party aid professionals, diplomats, and scholars, and extensive archival research, including access to thousands of pages of previously unreleased donor reports and declassified CIA documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), Engineering Revolution explores the role of foreign aid in bringing down dictators and building democratic political parties in nondemocratic and newly democratic regimes. It does so by focusing on a case that has long fascinated scholars and practitioners: Serbia—a country that has entered history as “democracy promotion legend” (Mendelson 2004: 88).
Serbia as Democracy Promotion Legend
Serbia is located in the remnants of what was once the multiethnic federation of Yugoslavia. Unlike most postcommunist states, Yugoslavia’s transition from one-party to multiparty rule was mired not only in contention but, ultimately, in bloodshed. In 1990, new rights to self-empowerment transformed into demands for self-determination. Before long, most of Yugoslavia’s six constituent republics—which included Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Slovenia, and Serbia (along with the Serbian province of Kosovo)—voiced calls for independence. By 1992, the federation was embroiled in a protracted civil war that would leave millions as refugees and 140, 000 people dead.1
The Serbia that emerged from these wars was weak and insular.2 Its economy was in shambles and its politics tyrannized by Slobodan Milošević, a staunch autocrat branded “Europe’s last dictator.” Over the course of ten years, Milošević oversaw Serbia’s transition to a semi-authoritarian state in which political opposition was hampered, independent media was stifled, and competitive elections were stolen.
Despite these obstacles, however, on 5 October 2000 a democratic Serbia emerged. After a decade in power, Milošević was forced to cede ground to Serbia’s fledgling democratic forces. To the surprise of many, Milošević’s resignation came not amid a hail of bullets or a violent coup d’état but through a wave of peaceful public protests that extended from small towns and villages to the heart of Serbia’s capital of Belgrade.3 Strategically organized and avowedly nonviolent,4 5 October 2000 was hailed as a “Bulldozer Revolution” and would allegedly serve as inspiration for democratic revolutionaries from Kiev to Cairo and Tbilisi to Tunis.
The United States and its allies were quick to take credit for Milošević’s fall. Within weeks of Milošević’s ouster, a common narrative emerged in which one explanatory factor loomed large: foreign intervention. Of all the forms of intervention—and there were many—it was democracy assistance in the form of training, grants, and material resources to political parties, independent media, and civil society organizations that won the greatest praise. Donors of such assistance eagerly branded “their” Serbian experiment as an emblem of aid’s utility. The distributors of U.S. aid to Eastern Europe credited their assistance for having played a “key role” in regime change by strengthening democratic political parties and equipping Serbia’s citizens with “the tools needed to liberate themselves” (SEED 2001: 1, 149). Similarly, the Office of Transition Initiative (OTI) identified its assistance as one of but three factors accounting for the “surprising and extraordinary defeat of Milošević” (Cook and Spalatin 2002: 2).
The self-congratulatory accounts of donors were bolstered by evidence presented in both the media and academic scholarship. In the United States, the Washington Post reported that “U.S.-funded consultants played a crucial role behind the scenes in virtually every facet of the anti-Milošević drive.”5 In Germany, Der Spiegel applauded the “massive political and material support from Berlin” for having “contributed to the fact that opposition groups and parties could develop the strength to force Milošević to surrender.”6 Scholars and analysts were similarly impressed, going so far as to call such assistance “crucial to the birth of democracy in Serbia” (Cevallos 2001: 4) and among U.S. foreign policy’s “greatest success” stories (Traub 2008: 82).7
Integral to this narrative was one highly controversial form of democracy aid: assistance designed to target political parties and electoral processes—a form of aid known among the development community as “political party assistance.” Long ranked among the most contentious forms of democracy assistance, political party aid was said to be key to Milošević’s ouster, enabling everything from opposition unity and the fine-tuning of electoral messages to the breadth of Serbia’s Get-Out-the-Vote (GOTV) campaign and the stellar quality of election monitoring. Without party aid, many believe, “opposition parties would not have succeeded in toppling the Milošević regime” (Kumar 2004: 24). The perceived success of political party assistance in bolstering Serbia’s anti-Milošević candidates and electoral processes has been heralded as proof that “partisan assistance can and does promote peace and democracy” (Kumar 2004).
The bold assertions of aid’s success in Serbia are striking in at least two respects. First, there is the issue of its otherwise unremarkable reputation. Democracy aid is generally believed to be only modest in impact—its influence on the democratization of political parties in new and nondemocracies is thought minimal at best (Burnell 2000a; Burnell and Gerrits 2010; Carothers 2006a; Kumar 2005). Second, despite the many accolades it has received in Serbia, party assistance was and remains a highly contested form of foreign assistance—one that risks politicizing a development industry that longs to be seen as apolitical. Given the low esteem in which many parties are held (in new democracies and established democracies alike), donors have been reluctant to assist parties directly. In fact, until Serbia, many eschewed party aid altogether.8
The perceived success of party aid in Serbia helped change such perceptions. Inspired by party aid’s ostensibly transformative impact in the Balkans, assistance to Serbia’s anti-Milošević forces quickly emerged as a blueprint for how aid should and could be orchestrated in other authoritarian regimes.
Exporting the Serbian Model
Among the first regimes to receive the Serbia treatment was Belarus. As the dust settled on Milošević’s exit in late 2000, donors hoped that Belarus, a former Soviet stronghold with strong ties to Russia, would emulate Serbia’s success. To outside observers, Alexander Lukašenko’s iron-fisted presidency was eerily reminiscent of Milošević’s reign. And so, the aid community rapidly set about developing an aid program “in exile,” mimicking that witnessed in Serbia.
Belarus would quickly prove a disappointment. Lukašenko’s grip on power proved more enduring, and the opposition to his rule less widespread and organized than was the case in Serbia in 2000. But if Belarus failed to live up to the high expectations of the democracy promotion community, similar ventures in Georgia in 2003 and Ukraine in 2005 more than made up for it. In both of these countries, democracy promoters would seek to brand a model of “electoral revolution” in which party aid loomed large.
Lessons learned from Serbia would soon be applied beyond Europe’s borders. Within months of Milošević’s fall, young Serbs from the anti-Milošević youth movement Otpor traveled to authoritarian strongholds in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, relying on Western funding and training to export a model of revolution allegedly tried and tested in Milošević’s Serbia.
Serbian aid practitioners—who had taken part in training-of-trainers programs in Serbia in the run-up to Milošević’s ouster and become employees of NDI and IRI—went on to replicate that assistance in Egypt, Tunisia, Iraq, and elsewhere, becoming resident directors and senior program officers for the American party institutes’ offices throughout the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. The aid enterprise forged in Serbia, it was thought, could provide a model for the delivery of aid in other authoritarian and post-authoritarian countries.
For all the accolades thrust