Aiding Democracy Abroad: The Learning Curve
by Thomas Carothers

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Book Reviews of Aiding Democracy Abroad: The Learning Curve

Book Review: A Decent Start
Summary: 2 Stars

One area where Carothers makes good points is his explanation of the need to build within a populace a sense of what democracy means to them. Oddly, though, he then writes a chapter suggesting that civic education is ineffective. Despite the attempt at critique, I put this book down with a feeling that Carothers still basically believes in the "magic hand" of democracy despite having written a book that is supposed to be a critique of such thinking.

If democratic development requires a process of developing democratic principles within a nation's citizenry, it seems antithetical if not mad to exclude civic education as an integral component of this process. Of course, after reading the activities Carothers considers civic education, it is no wonder that his evaluation is that it doesn't work. Namely, he gives examples of projects that had U.S. democracy experts come into countries, create pamphlets and posters extolling a very American view of democracy (with a primary emphasis on voting), attempt to push these pamphlets and posters primarily upon adult groups, and then sit back and wonder why their efforts failed. It strikes me that even a moderately thoughtful development worker would know beforehand that efforts such as these would fail. There are decades worth of development literature suggesting this is exactly the wrong method for introducing change. A proper civic education program is much more open-ended, assists the participants in developing their own authentic concepts of what democracy and human rights means to them, and includes youth as well as adults. Unfortunately, Carothers seems to associate civic education with only the first case and claims it doesn't work. You wouldn't have to extrapolate his argument too far to reach a conclusion that U.S. schools should stop teaching social studies, political science, and government courses...

It seems suspect to me that Carothers would reach these conclusions... The U.S. government has put a great deal of money into limiting access to quality civic education worldwide, particularly in its efforts to stamp out liberation pedagogy and liberation theology by largely labelling it socialist propaganda. Further, it's simply too easy for aid programs to ignore this field, as many of the host country governments are patently uncomfortable with encouraging the development of a citizenry that has the tools to critically analyze policy and act upon this analysis.P>If you are looking for a first or yet another analysis of the bureacratic failings of development agencies, this is a decent start. If you want a more in-depth analysis of the difficulties associated with the development of democratic governments that truly listen to their people and respect human rights...look elsewhere. Carothers has some serious blind spots.

Summary of Aiding Democracy Abroad: The Learning Curve

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• Business & Investing
• Nonfiction > Government > Democracy
• Politics > International > Relations
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