Rejuvenating Democracy Promotion

Rethinking democracy promotion

Despite the fact that democracy promotion is a major part of liberal foreign policies, the discipline of International Relations has not paid much systematic attention to it. Conversely, the study of democracy promotion is dominated by comparative politics and pays hardly any attention to the international system. This mutual neglect signifies a core weakness in the theory and practice of democ...

Democracy promotion and “ new ” democracies

Since the early decades of the 20 th century, an element of international relations has been the notion that democratic ideals are universal and that their spread across the globe can be encouraged by governments. One of the more recent expressions of the idea has been the “democracy promotion” programs funded by official aid agencies of developed democracies, but the idea has changed and evolv...

The American Experience with Democracy Promotion

Democracy through technocracy? Reflections on technocratic assumptions in EU democracy promotion discourse

For some time the notion ‘technocracy’ has been, for better or for worse, associated with the functioning of the European Union (EU). But what role do technocratic assumptions play in the EU’s new ‘symbolic’ policy agenda of democracy promotion, if any? Some authors have suggested that ‘depoliticising’ technocratic biases exist in the EU democracy promotion framework, despite its ‘normative’ rh...

Rejuvenating regeneration

the transcriptional coactivator CREB-binding protein, also known as CREBBP or CBP, maximizes embryonic neural precursor cell development. 5 These researchers also demonstrated that the effects of CBP on neurogenesis require CBP activation by atypical protein kinase C (aPKC). Because Wondisford and colleagues had demonstrated that metformin's ability to suppress hepatic gluconeogenesis requires ...