Protecting Democracy: International Responses

Over the past several decades, democracy has taken root or been re-established in a number of countries with support from other democratic states and private groups. While the increase in the number of democracies worldwide has been widely heralded, very little has been written on how democracy can be protected and sustained where it has been chosen by the people of a state. Coups d'etat and the erosion of democratic freedoms and institutions remain the most salient threats to democratic governance around the globe. How can democratic states protect themselves and secure more effective international action against such threats? Protecting Democracy: International Responses is the first comprehensive guide to preventing and responding to threats to coups and erosions in democracies. Through case studies and in-depth analyses, the book provides legal and policy justification for these processes and discusses how they can be made more effective, combining the findings of an international task force on threats to democracy with contributions from leading scholars and policymakers. Timely and enthralling, Protecting Democracy is essential reading for policymakers and academics, as well as anyone committed to supporting democracy at home and abroad.

Table of Contents:
Part 1 Current Policy and Practice Chapter 1 Forward Part 2 Next Steps Chapter 2 Introduction Part 3 Beneath the Lens: A Closer Examination of Threats to Democracy and Measures Against Them Chapter 4 The Theory of Collective Response Chapter 5 Case Studies in Collective Response Chapter 6 International Mechanisms for Protecting Democracy Chapter 7 The Role of the Organization of American States Chapter 8 Report of the Independent Task Force on Threats to Democracy Chapter 9 Strenghtening Domestic Responses Chapter 10 Vigilance: Recognizing the Erosion of Democracy Chapter 11 International Legal Recourse

About the Author :
Morton H. Halperin is Director of the Open Society Policy Center. Mirna Galic is National Security Analyst at the Center for American Progress.

Review :
Protecting democracy where it has taken root must be considered a fundamentally important element of the foreign policy of all democratic countries. For if we can help peoples to espouse democracy, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, but we cannot help them to sustain it, then democratic gains are illusory. ... The following chapters bring the imperative of protecting democracy to sharp focus. The stakes are higher now than they were [at the first Community of Democracies meeting] in Warsaw in 2000, but with the groundwork laid out in these pages, so too is the likelihood of real progress. Morton Halperin has long been at the forefront of analyzing and advocating ways in which the international community can respond to unconstitutional actions aimed at overturning democratic governments. He and Mirna Galic have performed a great service by bringing together a volume that addresses this critically important but relatively unexplored topic. Morton Halperin and Mirna Galic are to be congratulated for producing a book which significantly advances our thinking about how the international community can best respond to threats to democracy. While much attention has been devoted to how to promote transitions to democracy, there is an urgent need for proactive strategies to protect those fragile democracies that have been established over the last two decades-both from overt interruptions such as coups to more subtle erosions of democratic rights and institutions. This book blends scholarly international legal analysis with a comprehensive look at provisions and practices of current international and regional institutions, all grounded in real life examples of responses to recent democratic breakdowns. Halperin and Galic have set out an action plan of steps that the international community-and particularly the Community of Democracies-need to take if it wants to fulfill its goals of promoting and protecting the expansion of democracy around the world. This important book provides timely prescriptions for what the world's community of democratic countries should do when open society is threatened in an emerging democratic state. Events in 2005 in Nepal and Togo underline the urgency of these proposals.