Alternative Information Finding homegrown solutions to foreign development strategies

Abstract

The current trend in democracy assistance approaches has made the core of democracy essential to study. Democracy today must grow from within?yet supported from the outside. International donor agencies and donor recipients call for ?homegrown? strategies. The question that arises is how this correlates to the theories of liberal democracy. The overall important principal of democracy is to generate and spread alternative information. How this is spread in a politically hostile environment is the core of this essay. Through the social structures of civil society, information finds its way. Or is it so that Western donor agencies facilitate the space necessary for political activism. The aim of this thesis is to illustrate the impact ? or non-impact ? Western democracy assistance programs have in two Muslim societies. Three decades ago democracy promotion was steered through top-down strategies, funding elections and political parties. After the 1980s the trend shifted to bottom-up strategies. Bolstered by outside assistance, donors envisioned that virtuous civil societies of democratic-minded groups would erode authoritarian regimes. These two strategies are examined by two case studies on countries in a transformational process. The essay concludes that a homegrown democratic strategy may impose different ideas among the varity of members in developing societies and that the international democracy assistance community faces challenges designing indigenous strategies in politically restricted settings. Jordan and Kyrgyzstan will illustrate societies in change, dependent on foreign aid ? craving for homegrown solutions.

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