Administration ‘reframing’, not downgrading democracy

Democracy remains a foreign policy priority, says Anne-Marie Slaughter, State's head of policy planning

The Obama administration had downplayed, but not downgraded democracy as a foreign policy objective, Anne-Marie Slaughter, the State Department’s head of policy planning, told Democracy Digest this week.

“Give us time,” was her response to critics who cite changes to Egyptian NGO funding and cuts to Iranian human rights groups to charge the administration with backtracking on democracy. Rejecting the suggestion that the administration was over-reacting to the perceived excesses of the Bush administration’s Freedom Agenda, she nevertheless accepted that adjustments had been made.

The administration is changing the discourse and framework in which it articulates its support for promoting democracy, she told yesterday’s Center for International Private Enterprise conference.

“For the first six to eight months, there was a concern that the discussion [of democracy promotion] was too tied to the use of military force,” said Slaughter, a leading liberal internationalist and democracy advocate. Consequently, the administration has stressed values conducive to democracy rather than overplaying the D-word itself.

Addressing concerns that State’s ongoing Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review could subsume democracy assistance within a development agenda, she conceded that we “can expect greater integration with the development agenda”.

There is “a strong desire to support those countries where democratization and development go together”, but Slaughter would be “surprised if it [democracy assistance] was subordinated.” She specifically said that the US was not like the European Union, where democracy activists charge that a developmental approach has depoliticized and taken the cutting edge from democracy assistance efforts.

Slaughter’s comments echo those of a State Department official who recently told Democracy Digest that the administration was not downplaying democracy, but reframing the issue within a developmental perspective.

In a wide-ranging interview with Democratiya, she has explained the rationale for “supporting countries that are trying to become democracies and supporting groups within democracies that are trying to achieve democracy, but via mechanisms that have a multilateral stamp of approval.”