PREVIOUS ARTICLE ALL CONTENTS Next ARTICLE

Marketing Democracy: The Political Economy of Democracy Aid in the Middle East, Erin A. Snider

Reviewed by Shamiran Mako
 

Scholars have long elucidated how the international environment affects democratization outcomes. Across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), democracy aid allocations have become a key US foreign policy tool for leveraging influence since the Cold War and, subsequently, post-9/11 as part of a long durée of securitizing American interests in the region. Erin Snider’s timely and much needed contribution in Marketing Democracy advances our understanding of why democracy aid programs to the region persisted as a standard practice among American policymakers despite their limited success at ushering democratization.

Focusing on what Snider calls the “micropolitics of democracy aid” (13), the book’s contribution shifts the analytical and empirical lens to highlight processes that determine the construction, definition, and allocation of democracy aid programs. These processes, Snider argues, are embedded in ideas donors hold about the strategic use and purpose of democracy aid within a given policy field. Snider’s political economy approach synthesizes ideational, interest-based, and institutional approaches to develop a framework of macro-and micro-level incentive structures that guide the “evolution, construction, and negotiation” (37) of democracy aid between donors and authoritarian recipient

To continue reading, see options above.

About PSQ's Editor

ROBERT Y. SHAPIRO

Full Access

Join the Academy of Political Science and automatically receive Political Science Quarterly.

CONFERENCES & EVENTS

Academy Forum | Latino Voters, Demographic Determinism, and the Myth of an Inevitable Democratic Party Majority
October 9, 2024
4:00 p.m.–5:00 p.m. ET
WEBINAR

MORE ABOUT THIS EVENT VIEW ALL EVENTS

Editor’s spotlight

Virtual Issue

Introduction: Black Power and the Civil Rights Agendas of Charles V. Hamilton
Marylena Mantas and Robert Y. Shapiro

MORE ABOUT THIS TOPIC

Search the Archives

Publishing since 1886, PSQ is the most widely read and accessible scholarly journal with distinguished contributors such as: Lisa Anderson, Robert A. Dahl, Samuel P. Huntington, Robert Jervis, Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Theda Skocpol, Woodrow Wilson

view additional issues

Most read

Articles | Book reviews

Understanding the Bush Doctrine
Robert Jervis

The Study of Administration
Woodrow Wilson

Notes on Roosevelt's "Quarantine" Speech
Dorothy Borg

view all

New APS Book

China in a World of Great Power Competition   CHINA IN A WORLD OF GREAT POWER COMPETITION

About US

Academy of Political Science

The Academy of Political Science, promotes objective, scholarly analyses of political, social, and economic issues. Through its conferences and publications APS provides analysis and insight into both domestic and foreign policy issues.

Political Science Quarterly

With neither an ideological nor a partisan bias, PSQ looks at facts and analyzes data objectively to help readers understand what is really going on in national and world affairs.

Stay Connected

newsstand locator
About APS