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April 18, 2023

The case for expanding democracy work.

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We need to expand the landscape of democracy work

The work of protecting liberal democracy has grown since the 2016 election of Donald Trump. The landscape has been largely divided between national non-partisan organizations, which have focused on protecting democratic processes, and grassroots groups, which have focused on empowering everyday people to participate in our democracy. But this reconfigured field of democratic advocacy also requires a reevaluation of the resources available to organizers as well as a long-term vision of the future of our democracy.

Non-partisan national organizations, such as Protect Democracy, Campaign Legal Center, and Issue One, have focused on litigation and federal legislative advocacy to strengthen democratic systems and processes without taking policy positions. Issue-based national organizations, such as Planned Parenthood, the Debt Collective, and Color of Change, seek to advance policy positions and vary in their degree of focus on democratic systems and processes.

Meanwhile, grassroots organizers on both sides of the aisle, such as Mormon Women for Ethical Government, We the People Michigan, or Florida Rising, work at the state and local level. They mobilize people to vote, push for or against policies, and hold their elected officials accountable. Grassroots groups are also operating on the front lines of voter education in an environment of growing misinformation and threats of political violence.

The disconnect between the work and experience of national organizations (both those that are democracy-focused and those that are issue-based) and grassroots organizers means that the different elements of the pro-democracy political ecosystem are not working together as effectively as they could be. Democracy-focused national organizations are not engaging on policy issues that matter the most to voters. Progressive, issue-based national organizations are experiencing the new challenges in our democracy to varying degrees depending on their theories of change, including how much organizing they are doing. Moreover, national political funders are often not clear about what is happening at the grassroots — making it more challenging to provide effective polling, messaging guidance, research, and training for organizers on the ground.

For the progressive movement to be effective, national issue-based organizations and funders need to develop a sophisticated understanding of democracy and the threats to it and to commit to providing resources and supporting strategies to protect democracy on the ground through grassroots organizers. They also need to pair this sophisticated understanding with a thoughtful vision of how US democracy could evolve.

Beyond voting rights: understand the authoritarian playbook

Often, progressives treat democracy as synonymous with voting rights. National issue-based organizations in particular have thus far failed to consider all of the other areas that democracy scholars view as part of the playbook that authoritarians use to erode democracy. These moves include spreading misinformation, corrupting elections, politicizing independent institutions, quashing dissent, stoking violence, and marginalizing vulnerable communities. Since the election of Trump, the Republican Party has normalized lying, sowing doubt in election results, and promoting violence towards elected officials — changing the threats and challenges facing progressive organizers.

However, my experience with national progressive issue-based organizations and funders suggests that changes across these areas are not fully baked into our analysis of the political landscape or reflected in our strategies. Large progressive political funders of grassroots groups have struggled to identify resources or offer capacity-building support around these challenges. Most progressive political funders have no stated commitment to supporting organizations dealing with these types of threats. For example, there is a lack of resources to support organizers, candidates, and local election officials dealing with threats of violence. Similarly, there is still a limited amount of research regarding how organizers can effectively combat misinformation, and this lack is having a tremendous impact on organizers’ attempts to do voter education and mobilization.

Clarify commitments to democracy

Progressive organizations’ ideologies need to be well-developed not just on the political axis of left to right but also on the axis of democracy to authoritarianism. During the Trump administration, it was possible for those who were pro-democracy, regardless of ideological leaning, to work together due to the defensive nature of the work. In the absence of political power, a coalition spanning progressives and former Republicans did not need to align on policy priorities or proposals. Additionally, it was not necessary to have a shared view of whether passing a policy agenda or preserving institutions and democratic norms was more important. Coalition partners didn’t even have to oppose everything Trump proposed; it was enough to find shared goals and aligned strategies and work together on those.

For example, the Border Network for Human Rights, a grassroots group organizing border communities to change our immigration system, won a nationwide injunction against Trump’s border wall while represented by a legal team that included a non-partisan organization (Protect Democracy), a liberal law professor (Laurence Tribe), a center-right think tank (the Niskanen Center), and a lawyer who had worked under George H.W. Bush (Stuart Gerson). Coalitions of this sort were powerful in sending a clear message that some issues are beyond partisan politics and were persuasive to moderate or center-right decision-makers.

Once Democrats won governing power in 2020, albeit by slim margins, it became necessary for progressive organizations to get clear on priorities and policies to support in order to know what to advocate for. This is always true when the party most aligned with your values gains governing power. However, post-2020, new questions arose about democratic processes and structures. For example, organizations needed to decide whether they supported overturning the filibuster and wanted to advocate for Biden using his executive powers. For organizations rooted in progressive values and policy, but lacking a sophisticated understanding or ideology around democracy, these types of questions about democratic processes are rife with possibilities for internal conflict and confusion, particularly in regards to coalition partners.

In the absence of this clarity, the types of broad coalitions that were working together in the Trump years are beginning to fracture over differences in how much they prioritize democratic processes and improving them versus achieving policy outcomes. This does not have to be a binary choice: with authoritarian candidates losing traction in the last two election cycles there is also some breathing room for folks to be attentive to the deeper and more creative work to not only defend but truly build the world’s first multi-racial democracy.

Openings for national pro-democracy organizations and funders

There is a tremendous opportunity, as democracy expert Rachel Kleinfeld pointed out, to help democracy deliver for people by fixing its structural shortcomings and systematic failures to deliver for the average citizen.

Our political structures do not ensure that the majority’s perspectives are represented in Congress or in the presidential election. We can see this in the way the U.S. Constitution creates minority rule through the Senate and the Electoral College. And, of course, minority rule has been further entrenched through gerrymandering and legislation making it impossible to expand the House as the Constitution requires. Additionally, the Supreme Court decisions in Shelby County and Citizens United limit the ability of people to have their political views given equal weight. The Supreme Court itself can undermine or change policy in ways that contradict the views of the majority of Americans. Most national issue-based progressive organizations spend little or no resources working to address those concerns comprehensively and in a sustained way.

As a result, it’s extraordinarily difficult to implement even popular policies for systemic change championed by progressives. Our system of governance is unable to meet challenges that our founders didn’t contemplate, from automatic weapons to mass incarceration to childcare (with most people working outside the home) to climate change to technology that allows information to travel faster than ever and data to be harvested. A 2014 study demonstrated that when the economic elites support a given policy change it has about a one-in-two chance of being enacted. (The exact estimated probability is 45%.) When the elites oppose a given measure its chances of becoming law are less than one-in-five. As a result, in our system economic elites have a de facto veto on policy. The study also found that “The probability of policy change is nearly the same (around 0.3) whether a tiny minority or a large majority of average citizens favor a proposed policy change.” As a result, our policy outcomes are not reflecting the views of a majority of voters but, rather, those that manage to successfully navigate the process.

Addressing these challenges will take more than an assortment of reforms. Unfortunately, as outlined in the recently released Imagining Better Futures for American Democracy report, the U.S. democracy field is suffering from short-termism and a lack of positive visioning about what American democracy could evolve to become. Most democracy-focused organizations don’t think further out than two to four years and are mired in crisis framing and a scarcity mentality. There is a tremendous opportunity for work that takes a long-term and holistic view of the future of democracy in the United States. While this type of long-term holistic effort doesn’t exist yet in the U.S. democracy space, we can see global efforts to do this kind of thinking in the space of nuclear prohibition through projects like Horizon 2045.

I am working to launch an organization called Democracy 2076. One of its key projects is to center pro-democracy organizers who work across the political spectrum in envisioning what a Constitution could look like in the year 2076 and which would last for the following century of American democracy, and then build a campaign to achieve it. To my knowledge, it would be the first effort to reconceive the Constitution that centers the voices of organizers. Having a vision for the Constitution we want in 2076 and a campaign to achieve it would provide a holistic package of reforms and a north star orienting organizations to develop their programs. Finally, working towards an affirmative vision for our democracy would allow organizers to shift from a mentality of trying to out-organize authoritarianism cycle after cycle to a mentality where they are able to be on the offensive.

About Aditi Juneja

Aditi is the Executive Director for Democracy 2076, a project working to renew our democracy for the third century of American democracy. Most recently, she was Chief of Staff and VP of Operations at Movement Voter Project. Prior, she spent 4 years at Protect Democracy.

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We must ensure that the decisions reached by community-led decision-making processes are taken seriously, honored, and implemented transparently. Community-led decision-making processes should hold real tangible value — not be relegated to trivial and theoretical exercises. They should have power over significant budgets or policies. True participatory democracy requires that committees or councils are not just “surveys” to gauge attitudes and views – followed by a business as usual process where people already in power go behind closed doors to make the final decision. In order to be transformational, community-led decision-making processes must have teeth and transparency — from beginning to end, including implementation.

We must equip community members with the tools, knowledge, and information they need to meaningfully participate. It is not enough to say that everyone can participate. We must create the conditions in our processes that make it so everyone can participate. This means community-led decision making processes that provide and center access needs including but not limited to language access, disability access, and economic access. This requires us to ensure that processes are built with community so that they take into account the access to technology, meeting times and locations, and even modes of communication that work for the particular community. Barriers to participation like age, citizenship, registering to vote, location, should be directly addressed and removed.

We must ensure that if you live in the community, you have a role and a voice in how decisions are made – and in making them. Unlike traditional elections, which are filled with barriers to participation, community-led decision making centers directly impacted community members.

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We must ensure that community-led decision-making processes center and serve the needs of most impacted communities — from outreach, participation, and voice, through to implementation.

Improving Democracy Assistance: Building Knowledge Through Evaluations and Research (2008)

Chapter: 4 learning from the past: using case studies of democratic transitions to inform democracy assistance.

Below is the uncorrected machine-read text of this chapter, intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text of each book. Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.

4 Learning from the Past: Using Case Studies of Democratic Transitions to Inform Democracy Assistance Introduction The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) asked the National Research Council (NRC) to recommend methodologies to carry out retrospective analyses of democracy assistance programs. The recom- mendations were to include “a plan for cross-national case-study research to determine program effectiveness and inform strategic planning.” There is a substantial and growing literature of case studies of democ- racy assistance programs, many of them commissioned by USAID or other agencies engaged in democracy assistance. The goal of such case studies is to learn what has worked and what has not among the varied democracy and governance (DG) programs in a variety of places. The vast majority of such studies focus on a particular program in a particular country, such as human rights in Cambodia (Asia Watch 2002), party organization in Uganda (Barya et al 2004), voter education in Ethio- pia (McMahon et al 2004), or justice reform in Sierra Leone (Dougherty 2004). In addition, there have been more ambitious works that looked at multiple countries to try to draw broader lessons about program impacts. For example, Abbink and Hesseling (2000) bring together several stud- ies of election observation and democratization in Africa; Lippman and Emmert (1997) study legislative assistance in five countries; Blair and Hansen (1994) assess the impact of rule of law programs in six countries; Kumar (1998) examines the impact of elections in several postconflict con- ditions; O’Neill (2003) presents lessons from human rights promotion in 99 

100 IMPROVING DEMOCRACY ASSISTANCE varied regions; Carter et al (2003) study the overall impact of USAID DG programs in six countries; and de Zeeuw and Kumar (2006) look at media, human rights, and election programs in nine postconflict states. While these studies have generated valuable insights into how pro- grams were carried out, how they were received, and how participants and donors perceived their effects, they are not ideal either for “deter- mining program effectiveness” or to “inform strategic planning.” This is because such studies focused almost entirely on specific DG projects, rather than on the broader context of democratization in the countries being studied. They did not systematically compare cases of varying levels of DG assistance or compare the effects of DG projects with com- parison groups that did not receive assistance. Case Study Designs and Methods The basic tool of case study analysis is process tracing (George and Bennett 2005). In this method, researchers track the unfolding of strings of events, testing hypotheses regarding the causal relationships among them by considering multiple hypotheses that could account for the strings of events and searching for confirming and disconfirming evidence. The pro- cess is not unlike a detective’s efforts to solve a murder mystery by recon- structing a timeline of events, examining all possible suspects and their alibis, assessing plausible motives and opportunities for the observed actions and events, and building a case in favor of one causal chain as having determined the ultimate outcome rather than others. Like solving any mystery, process tracing can be painstaking and time-consuming work, and the results often depend on an analyst’s skill in recognizing how specific social conditions, motivations, events, and opportunities link to form a coherent explanatory chain. Also like any criminal case, the persuasiveness of pointing out any one factor or event as causal depends on the analyst’s imagination and skill in identifying and considering alternative causal pathways and gathering evidence as to how likely or unlikely they were. Case studies to demonstrate the effectiveness of aid programs thus face the same challenge as formal statistical evaluations—they must try to determine what would have happened in the absence of the aid program, whether by including studies of both groups receiving aid and those not receiving aid in their case studies (a comparative case study design) or by trying to trace and account for historical trends and confounding fac-   Hence the famous quote from Sherlock Holmes in Adventure of the Beryl Coronet: “When you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth” (Doyle 1998). 

LEARNING FROM THE PAST 101 tors to estimate the likely causal chains that would have unfolded in the absence of the aid program (a long-term historical case study design). Yet in most case studies of democracy assistance, researchers have not used such designs. They have instead assumed that the informa- tion they needed could be found by studying the unfolding of the aid program itself. For a process-type evaluation, where the main questions asked by researchers are “Did the project achieve the goals expected by the donors?” and “Why or why not?” this is reasonable and most case studies of aid assistance have taken this form. However, if USAID now wishes to use case studies to study the impact of DG programs on policy goals, they are not the most appropriate tool. This is because retrospective case studies can rarely obtain or recon- struct the comparable baseline and outcome information for appropriate comparison groups that is necessary for sound inference of program effects. The committee’s field studies tried to determine if missions had retained such baseline data if collected before DG projects or if they had collected any comparable baseline data for nonassisted groups. The teams had limited success with finding the former and no success in finding the latter. Thus the committee believes that for most DG programs informa- tion on project effects would most credibly be obtained by well-designed impact evaluations, rather than retrospective case studies. However, case studies can provide information to help inform strate- gic planning. Comparative and historical case studies that examine varied trajectories of democratic change, and trace the relationship of DG activi- ties to other factors and events that influence long-term democracy out- comes, can help generate hypotheses about opportunities and obstacles for DG assistance to support democratic progress. In addition, sometimes the greatest insights regarding where and when to intervene with certain programs arise from detailed studies of program failures. One can often learn more from tracing the causes of program failure than from studies of successes, especially if such success rests on chance factors that supported a program but are not observed or reported in the study. Yet case studies of DG assistance rarely seek out failures for sustained examination—there are few rewards in the current incentive structure of donors for seeking out failures and investing in their study. This chapter develops guidelines for case studies that better explore the roles that democracy assistance programs may play in varied contexts of social change.   One exception is the scholarly work of Carothers (1999, 2004, 2006), who has investigated instances of disappointing results in democracy assistance programs. 

102 IMPROVING DEMOCRACY ASSISTANCE Insights from Current Research: Results of a Conference of Case Study Specialists on Democracy Under the “transformational diplomacy” plan of the Bush adminis- tration and the closer supervision of USAID by the State Department, it was anticipated that USAID’s DG efforts would often be undertaken as part of broader strategies to help achieve desired outcomes in particular states (Rice 2006). Faced with such demands, USAID would like to be able to respond to policymakers with information such as the following: “Based on what we know about transitions to democracy in countries with conditions like that, the chances of achieving a successful transition to democracy in X years is fairly low (or high),” or “Based on what we know about the time and volume of assistance it usually takes to build and stabilize democracy in postconflict societies with these characteristics, we can give you some broad parameters regarding the expected time and financial support required to have a realistic chance of attaining that goal in country Y.” For these objectives a clustered set of case studies, tracing the pro- cesses through which advances toward democracy were made from vari- ous sets of initial conditions, is an appropriate mode of investigation. A sufficient number of case studies would help build a knowledge base to answer questions such as the following: “For most countries we have observed with initial conditions X, Y, and Z, what have been the observed trajectories of political change, and which factors A, B, C (and others) were most prominent in shaping or constraining those trajectories?” Case studies are particularly valuable in this kind of mapping exer- cise, where instead of trying to identify the average impact of one or more causal factors across a wide range of conditions, the goal of the investiga- tion is to identify diverse patterns or combinations of relationships that are associated with varying pathways of change over time (Goldstone 1998, 2003). Rather than starting out to design such a study, the committee first noted that a great deal of case study research is already being done by academics who focus on democracy and democratization. The committee decided that its first step should be to investigate that body of scholar- ship and see how much value it already provided for meeting USAID’s goals. The committee therefore convened a conference of leading aca- demic experts on case study analyses of democracies and democratic transitions to help it assess the “state of the art” on how such knowledge could guide strategies for democracy assistance (see Appendix D for the details of this conference). This section presents the main findings that emerged during that conference, followed by the committee’s own conclusions and recom- mendations for future studies. The committee does not present the fol- 

LEARNING FROM THE PAST 103 lowing findings as definitive, nor are they endorsed as the results of the committee’s own research. Rather, what follows is a synopsis of the main points expressed by scholars at the conference, with particular attention to findings relevant to either DG assistance planning or research designs for case studies of DG assistance programs. I.  Democracy research conducted by the academic community gener- ally needs considerable translation to be useful for guiding democracy assistance. One problem that was immediately evident from discussions between the scholars and practitioners who attended the conference is that much of the academic research on democracy and democratic transitions is not developed or presented in ways that offer much practical guidance to policy professionals. This is much more than a simple matter of pure versus applied research. Rather, policymakers dealing with democracy assistance simply have to act in much more constrained circumstances than the typical academic study implies. For example, Terry Karl of Stanford University noted that one major conclusion of her research was that agreements, which she terms “pacts,” should be developed among elites before elections, rather than holding elections first and hoping to bring agreements among elites afterward. As an academic finding, this seems impeccable—an increasingly large body of empirical and theoretical work argues that elections can be stabilizing if they affirm agreements that bridge social cleavages and unite diverse elites in a commitment to abide by democratic rules, but tend to be desta- bilizing if the elections harden or polarize prior social cleavages and pit rival elites against each other in a zero-sum struggle for control of society (Berman 1997, 2001; Goldstone and Ulfelder 2004; Zakaria 2004; cf. the election in Kenya in December 2007). However, the reality facing policymakers is that they are often called on to organize and hold elections that are demanded by the society in question, or by the international community, in which influential and crit- ical actors are not prepared to wait until after a pact has been agreed on (Carothers 2007). Unless the weight of experience and academic research reduce the current pressures felt by policymakers to hold elections as soon as possible in emerging democracies or postconflict states, some group needs to take up the challenge of translating the findings of academic research into guidelines for actions that can be more flexible and adapted to adverse or rapidly changing conditions. Thus, one lesson to draw from Professor Karl’s research may be that when elections need to be held rap- idly in the absence of prior pacts, the electoral process should be designed as much as possible to lead rival factions to seek pacts in the process of seeking electoral success. That is, rules on the composition of electoral 

104 IMPROVING DEMOCRACY ASSISTANCE commissions, or restrictions on parties to require party lists to have cross- group representation, or voting schemes that require regionally dispersed support to attain electoral success should be developed to use the election process itself to bring elites together and to “tame” factionalism. While the specific adjustments must be tailored to each case (from using an extant body with strong legitimacy that has traditionally bridged factions, like the Afghan loya jirga, as part of the process, to the require- ments in Nigeria and Kenya that candidates demonstrate cross-regional support to qualify for the ballot), the translation process needs to show how a clear but academic principle—“pacts before elections”—can be adapted to the rough-and-tumble and uncontrolled circumstances of actual transition policymaking and response. One finding from the conference was thus that, although a large number of meetings between academics and policy professionals do occur (e.g., under the aegis of the National Endowment for Democracy), a more structured forum in which policymakers and academics can spend time focusing on discussing one particular type of policy intervention, or one group of countries, is needed if academics and policy professionals are to become able to understand each other fully and gain from each other’s knowledge and experience. It often appeared in the committee’s meet- ing that academics were interested in offering broad general insights or developing abstract categories to sort out developments in a large number of states, while policy professionals worried more about what would help them deal with the rapidly changing conditions and diverse pressures they face on the job. To answer the question “How do you best assist the development of democracy under these conditions?” academic researchers and policy pro- fessionals first need to work out some agreement on what they consider to be the relevant conditions. Where academics usually will define them by abstract or historical categories, policy professionals will more often refer to the conditions under which they are expected to work. A host of such issues of varying vocabulary and references need to be worked out by direct communications before the fruits of academic research are likely to answer questions posed by USAID professionals and vice versa. II.  Democracy assistance donors and policymakers need to be aware that donors do not control the context. In approaching the question “How much time and resources will it typically take to help secure a democratic outcome in a country like X?” it became clear that this query is not phrased correctly. This is because, as the academic scholars repeatedly noted and the practitioners readily acknowledged, democracy assistance providers do not control the context 

LEARNING FROM THE PAST 105 in which they work. Thus it is not always possible to form stable estimates of the likelihood or costs of attaining specific outcomes. First, this principle means that expectations for success in democracy assistance must be tempered. A host of issues impinge on a country’s progress toward democracy—for example, standards of living, govern- ment structures, international influences, regional conditions—that are usually completely beyond the ability of democracy assistance donors to affect. Thus democracy assistance always needs to be opportunistic as well as strategic, identifying promising steps that can be taken in both the short term and the long term and then being ready to assist when condi- tions rapidly change and new openings for democracy arise. Second, because context is more generally controlled and opportuni- ties more readily grasped by members of the society than by outsiders, democracy assistance is only effective when supporting the activity of committed individuals and groups within the society and cannot be suc- cessfully manipulated wholly from the outside. This point is often made by those with experience in democracy assistance, such as de Zeeuw and Kumar (2006:282): “Although external actors can perhaps do more to avoid legitimating political window-dressing and thwart the incentives for corrupt activities, in the end it is up to domestic political leaders to stop these practices.” Third, the inability to control context means that the success of democracy assistance efforts can rarely be judged in the short term with regard to overall progress toward democracy. Rather, such success has to be judged in terms of whether any steps that may contribute to future democracy are leaving a demonstrable footprint on institutions or behav- ior; whether reactions to opportunities were prompt, creative, and effec- tive in using such opportunities to assist democratic reformers and efforts to secure democracy; and whether steps that reverse democratic progress are being discouraged. Modest success in the face of the most discourag- ing and hostile contexts is a considerable achievement, while being able to take advantage of the most favorable contexts is probably the most cost-effective approach to improving democratic prospects. Given that context varies greatly and that many elements important to   Although there is much debate on the conditions that facilitate democratic transitions and consolidation, empirical work by Barro (1999), Boix and Stokes (2003), and Epstein et al (2006) all concur that economic performance is a major factor in democratic transitions, while studies by Haggard and Kauffman (1995) and Przeworski et al (2000) underline the importance of economic performance for democratic consolidation. Goldstone and Ulfelder (2004) also point to the importance of such factors as the presence of ethnic or religious discrimination and conflicts in neighboring countries as key factors that can undermine democracies.  This point is also emphasized by Dobbins (2003) and McFaul (2006). 

106 IMPROVING DEMOCRACY ASSISTANCE democratic development in a society are beyond the control of democracy assistance donors, it is probably wrong to ask “how much” time, effort, or expense will be required to “move” a country into the democratic column. More realistically, it could be asked under what conditions might what kind of investments pay off and in what time frame? This also has implications for framing any case studies of democracy assistance. Given the vital importance of widely varying contexts, case studies would need to cover a substantial range of contexts that favor or disfavor democratization, not merely a diverse set of nations. III.  Democratic transitions are highly nonlinear processes. A linear process is one that occurs in a fairly smooth and continuous fashion and in which outputs change in proportion to various inputs. Unfortunately, democratic transitions do not have this character. Instead, such transitions are often sudden and discontinuous events, in which little or no change is observed at the national level for a long time, and then rapid shifts in power or political conditions occur. Similarly, even emerg- ing democracies that appear to be stable can suddenly be overturned by an antidemocratic coup (e.g., Thailand) or collapse into violent conflicts (Nepal, Rwanda, Côte d’Ivoire). This nonlinearity has major implications for planning and assessing democracy assistance policies. It means that the impact of democracy assistance in a given nation cannot simply be measured by looking for a smooth and proportional movement to democracy in response to such assistance. Instead, it may take years for the impact of democracy assis- tance to be revealed in the course of a sudden transition. For example, in a recent study of the democratic transition in the Ukraine, McFaul (2006) argues that during many years of President Leo- nid Kuchma’s regime, democracy assistance aimed at strengthening the media, improving the autonomy of the judiciary, upgrading election com- missions, and building civil society and party organizations had little or no impact on the nature of Ukraine’s regime. However, when an opening for democratic action arose during the maneuvering around elections to choose Kuchma’s successor, particularly around suspicions that the elections were fraudulent, the institutions that had been strengthened by external democracy assistance helped challenge the efforts of the Kuchma regime to control the electoral outcome. McFaul’s analysis concludes that the impact of democracy assistance was thus only “revealed” when new opportunities arose for challenging the authoritarian regime.   For a detailed examination of nations’ trajectories toward democracy since World War II, which illustrates how “bouncy” and “jerky” such transitions have been, see Goldstone (2007). 

LEARNING FROM THE PAST 107 This nonlinearity also reinforces the point made above that democ- racy assistance itself must be flexible, patient, and opportunistic. Further- more, when transitions occur, they cannot be taken for granted as having achieved a new and therefore stable equilibrium. Rather, aid may need to be sustained and retargeted to support emerging democracies for a con- siderable period in order to hold off sudden backsliding or collapse or to respond to new threats to democratic stability. This nonlinearity also has major implications for the conduct of research on the impact of democracy assistance. Rather than looking for the impact of such assistance simply by focusing on the area receiving aid and searching for near-term impacts, it is necessary to place such assis- tance in a longer term and large-scale context. While the specific forms of assistance need to be related to changes in the character of specific institutions or behaviors, researchers must then address the full process of democratic change, sustainability, or retreat over a considerable period in the country where assistance is being studied in order to identify lagging and late-emerging effects. Without attention to the impact of contingency and changing context on a longer scale, a full and accurate assessment of democracy assistance is unlikely. IV.  Different policy guidelines are needed for different democratiza- tion contexts. The scholars at the Stanford conference identified at least three distinc- tive contexts in which donors have been active in providing democracy assistance: (1) currently authoritarian and semiauthoritarian regimes, (2) transition and posttransition regimes, and (3) postconflict regimes. Recog- nizing that there can be many arguments over how to categorize regimes— and even what categories to use—they suggested that these three offer particular opportunities and constraints for democracy assistance. A. Authoritarian and semiauthoritarian regimes Authoritarian regimes are those in which a single individual or group (e.g., a single party or the military) wields unshakable power. There may be greater or lesser subordinate powers, even some with a demo- cratic façade (e.g., elected but pliant legislatures, subordinate parties with no chance of acquiring power), but there is no question where ulti- mate decision-making power resides and that authority faces no effective checks or accountability. Under such conditions, as long as the authori- tarian regime has sufficient resources and elite support, only incremental progress toward building the foundations of democracy is possible. The scholars suggested that useful actions could include promoting transpar- ency in government finance, fighting corruption, and promoting human rights. The goal of these actions is to seek to open a space in which the 

108 IMPROVING DEMOCRACY ASSISTANCE absolute authority of the leadership can be subjected to scrutiny or criti- cism. Engagement in international relations, including trade, educational exchange, diplomatic relations, and information/broadcasting, is useful for providing leverage and openings for these causes, which are almost impossible to advance solely from outside in the absence of any relations with the country. Support for democrats within the society—insofar as can be done without undermining their legitimacy by making them appear as subordinate to external powers—also can help advance the foundations for future democratic reform. Many scholars insisted on a further distinction between “hard” authoritarian regimes, also called “full autocracies,” in which all opposi- tion is ruthlessly crushed and dissent is not tolerated (as in Saddam’s Iraq or Stalin’s Soviet Union), and “semiauthoritarian regimes” (also called “partial autocracies”). In these latter regimes, power is still monopolized by a single person or group. However, there are also limited openings for opposition to appear. There may be some press or media outlets that are independent of the regime; there may be opposition parties that, while small and ineffective, are not co-opted or repressed by the ruler; there may be professional organizations or even some elements of govern- ment—certain judges or commissions—that operate autonomously and have some respect and authority apart from their support of the regime. Examples include the Philippines under Ferdinand Marcos, Nicaragua under the Somozas, and Ukraine under Kuchma. Several studies—both using case studies (McFaul 2005) and large N statistical analysis (Epstein et al 2006)—have argued that such partial autocracies are more likely to make the move to democratic politics than are full autocracies. In the authoritarian context, major advances toward democracy are usually dependent on crisis events that weaken the regime but that democracy assistance donors cannot create or control. Typically, such crises include war, fiscal or monetary collapse, a looming succession, exposure of corruption, a major repressive overstep by the regime, natural disasters, or an electoral surprise (e.g., unexpected results in an election that would normally be fully controlled by the regime). Such events create a window of opportunity in which democracy assistance has the chance to be more powerful. In the wake of such events, democracy assistance that would be infeasible or ineffective under a firm authoritarian regime, such as support for opposition organizations, support for independent media, or support for election monitors/commissions, may help local democratic forces use the opportunity to press for major reforms. B. Transition and posttransition regimes Transition and posttransition regimes are those in which a democratic regime has been established but has not yet been consolidated by repeated 

LEARNING FROM THE PAST 109 peaceful and effective electoral choice of leaders and the secure institu- tionalization of civil and political freedoms. In this context, a relatively long-term commitment to the support and improvement of democratic behavior and institutions may promote democratic stability. The scholars cited one major problem of democracy assistance in this context: External assistance often is increased in authoritarian contexts, or at the time of transition, but then swiftly reduced after the initial transi- tion to democracy. They argued that instead a steady flow of assistance through a substantial posttransition period is often needed to help stabi- lize the new democracy and avoid backsliding or to head off subsequent crises. The list of actions needed to support democratic stabilization is lengthy, for during this period many aspects of democratic institutions may need nurturing or protection, and the society is relatively open to receiving such support. Areas that might benefit from assistance in this phase include assuring the competitiveness of multiple political parties that are inclusive and able to compromise; consolidating free, fair, and inclusive electoral procedures; developing legislatures that are effective in writing and passing needed legislation; improving the accountability of government at national and local levels; supporting varied media; pro- moting transparency, human rights, and fighting corruption; building a fair and effective criminal and civil justice system (police and judiciary); establishing a professional military that is subordinate to civilian control; improving social services (health, education, sanitation); and improv- ing economic performance. Careful assessment is needed to determine which donors and agencies are best suited to assist in these varied areas, which areas require the most help, and whether such commitments can be sustained. C. Postconflict regimes Postconflict regimes are those in which recent conflict has left either an absence of central political authority or a weak central authority unable to control violence and crime or unable to control local warlords or sup- press regional rebellions. There may be an authoritarian or democratic regime trying to acquire power over the society or the country may be divided, with various regions held by conflicting groups, warlords, or rebels. For postconflict regimes several of the scholars at the conference pointed to a smaller number of key tasks that are imperative to complete if further actions to help achieve democracy are to have a chance of success. These were (1) reduce factional conflicts by building elite coop- eration and agreements; (2) create security by establishing military and policy protection of civilians by the central regime and undertaking dis- 

110 IMPROVING DEMOCRACY ASSISTANCE armament of rebels, warlords, or other competing authorities; (3) design and secure agreement on constitutional and electoral processes that will promote inclusion, participation, and legitimacy for the regime; (4) create effective processes for the integration of combatant and extremist groups into civilian society; and (5) create truth and reconciliation processes that will blunt the drive for personal and arbitrary vengeance. If these steps are not successfully completed, other steps—such as building political parties or holding elections—are unlikely to bear fruit, and conflict is likely to recur. One of the problems of democracy assistance programs in places such as Iraq or other postconflict contexts has been a tendency by donors to jump to the activities listed under B above without first achiev- ing the five items listed here for postconflict regimes. Yet without mak- ing substantial progress on most or all of these five items, efforts on the activities listed under B are not likely to be effective in helping to achieve democracy in postconflict settings. It is crucial to realize that the above comments represent rather sweep- ing but preliminary generalizations from current academic research on democracy. There are, in fact, a variety of kinds of authoritarian and semi- authoritarian regimes, ranging from hereditary monarchies and military dictatorships to one-party states, and similarly a variety of postconflict conditions depending on the nature, severity, and extent of the conflict. The broad goals cited above for various contexts also still leave as highly problematic whether, and which, specific actions have significant effects in advancing those goals. Thus the only true conclusion at this point is that context matters greatly, both for designing policy and for planning future research on democratization and democracy assistance. V. Popular protest and mobilization are a double-edged sword. Democracy assistance donors often face very difficult choices regard- ing popular protest and mobilization. Should change be pursued by encouraging popular protest or only through formal and institutional means? Should one work mainly through elites, or is it better to pressure or outflank elites through popular movements? If popular movements are currently mobilizing or a protest wave is starting in a currently authori- tarian state or transition state, should it be encouraged, viewed as an opportunity to push further change, or blunted as a potential threat to creating dangerous disorder? The scholars at the Stanford conference suggested that popular pro- test is often an important factor in encouraging democratic transitions but noted that mobilization needs to be diverted into electoral activity and civil society organizations—rather than militias, populist movements, or competing factions—if democratic consolidation is to occur. Popular protests have frequently played a crucial role in turning crises of opportunity into democratic transitions. Protest—or fear of pro- 

LEARNING FROM THE PAST 111 test—often forces weak leaders to abandon office and forces elites to enter into pacting agreements. These are positive elements in the development of democracy from authoritarian regimes. However, it is imperative that inclusive and effective political parties emerge to channel popular mobilization into peaceful political competi- tion. Otherwise, popular groups may be mobilized into support for eth- nic or regional groups, individual populist leaders, or even militias that become major security threats. In such cases, popular mobilization pro- motes further unrest and conflict. Assistance in building inclusive politi- cal parties that bridge social cleavages (class, regions, ethnic groups) and are capable of leading their supporters and engaging in effective political negotiations should thus become a priority wherever political protest has played a major role in democratic transitions. Institutions that can medi- ate conflicts—such as supreme courts, national election commissions, or representative parliaments—are also vital factors in stemming the violent confrontation between popular groups and unpopular authorities. VI. There is no magic bullet or golden pathway to democracy and democratic consolidation. Finally, although it no doubt makes the job of policymakers more difficult (which they readily acknowledge), the scholars at the Stanford conference noted that there are many different paths that have led to democracy and democratic consolidation. Yet none of these are assured, as all of these paths have also failed to have the desired results. Pacts, protests, or combinations of the two, peaceful transitions and postconflict transitions, on average show similar rates of success in building stable democracies. Presidential and parliamentary and federal and centralized systems of government have been both successful and unsuccessful in different times and places. The scholars noted that what matters is not so much the specific path or sequence of events leading to a transition, or the form of regime adopted, but whether the appropriate combination of factors is brought together to secure that transition, given attention to the specific context. Thus, resources should not be spent too freely in stable authoritarian con- texts where change is unlikely; in postconflict states the basic conditions for progress must be secured before the transition and posttransition steps can be effective; and for countries in transition and posttransition their progress must not be neglected or starved of support in the aftermath of a transition. In addition, when opportunities arise, appropriate reactions to support change are needed in a timely fashion, and where popular mobilization is believed to be the key to change, such mobilization needs to be channeled into organizations that promote rather than undermine a peaceful and diverse civil society. To achieve these aims it is important for democracy assistance donors 

112 IMPROVING DEMOCRACY ASSISTANCE to work with local elites and democratic forces. The academic researchers expressed the view that effective democracy assistance is more a matter of facilitating than creating change, of working to encourage and maintain domestic processes, than of directing those processes. A Multicase Study Design to Generate and Investigate Strategic Hypotheses Regarding Democracy Assistance For questions of strategic assessment faced by USAID—Where is spending on democracy assistance likely to pay off? How can we recog- nize favorable opportunities when they emerge? What kinds of obstacles are likely to prevent typical USAID democracy assistance from being fully effective? Over how long a period is assistance usefully continued under an authoritarian or semiauthoritarian regime or as a postconflict democ- racy seeks stability?—the committee thought that case studies could be valuable in generating and investigating hypotheses to guide USAID’s allocation of DG resources. Nonetheless, the committee was unable to agree on a firm recommen- dation that USAID should invest its own funds in such case studies. Since much case study research on democratization is being undertaken by academics funded by foundations and nongovernmental organizations, the committee could not reach a conclusion on how likely or unlikely this research was to be undertaken if not funded by USAID. By contrast, the improvement of its project evaluations is something that can only by done by USAID and will not be done unless the agency spends its own time and energy mandating that better evaluations be carried out. Thus the committee could agree unanimously to recommend that USAID invest in improving its project evaluations, as described in the following chapters, but not that USAID fund additional case study research of democracy assistance. If USAID decides to invest in supporting case study research, the committee recommends using a competitive proposal solicitation pro- cess to elicit the best designs, similar to what the Strategic and Opera- tional Research Agenda (SORA) undertook to select the design for its large-scale quantitative study (Finkel et al 2007). USAID should not specify a precise case study design but instead should specify key cri- teria that proposals must meet: • The criteria for choosing cases should be explicit and theoreti- cally driven. Cases should not be selected simply because they cluster in a given region or implement a particular type of DG project. A design may focus 

LEARNING FROM THE PAST 113 on a specific region or DG project, but then it should ensure that the cases within that constraint display a sufficient range of levels of USAID invest- ment, of outcomes, and of initial contexts that they will provide a basis for identifying diverse trajectories of democratic change. The cases should be selected on criteria that will allow insights into the research question: Why did some countries make greater progress toward democracy than others, and what role did various levels of DG assistance, along with other driving factors, opportunities, and constraints, appear to play in various trajectories of progress or regress? The cases should not be selected on the arbitrary basis of a question such as: What happened in several states where USAID had DG activities? • The cases should include a variety of initial conditions or con- texts in which USAID DG projects operate. The previous discussion identified three major contexts in which USAID operates programs of democracy assistance: predemocratic (authoritarian and semiauthoritarian) regimes, transition and posttransi- tion regimes (places where authoritarian regimes no longer hold sway and democratic institutions have begun to dominate), and postconflict regimes (places where state breakdown and violence have recently occurred). Of course, postconflict regimes can be authoritarian or transi- tioning, and both authoritarian regimes and conflicts vary in their char- acteristics, as noted above. Thus this categorization only begins to frame contexts. What is crucial is that any research design acknowledge that the impact of USAID DG assistance, and prospects for democratization and stabilization, depends to a large degree on initial conditions, which vary widely across countries where USAID is asked to undertake DG projects. A good research design should not only incorporate this viewpoint but also seek to investigate how varying initial conditions affected the success of DG programming. • The cases should include at least one, if not several, countries in which USAID and other donors have made little or no investment in DG projects. Current case studies generally weigh observed outcomes in countries with DG projects against the goals of the donors. While this is sensible from one perspective—donors want to know if projects have achieved their professed goals—this is not a sound basis for gaining insights into the role that DG projects play in complex political processes. For example, a recent study of political party assistance that looked only at countries where party assistance projects were implemented concluded that such projects did little to transform political systems into more inclusive and competitive systems (Carothers 2006). Thus the donor expectations were 

114 IMPROVING DEMOCRACY ASSISTANCE not met. Nonetheless, this conclusion does not allow for the possibility that party behavior might have deteriorated much more if no party assis- tance projects had been in place. If a comparative study that included countries with emerging political parties but few donor projects for party assistance showed that for countries without assistance, political par- ties tended to deteriorate more rapidly (or to more extreme levels) in regard to corruption, nepotism, factionalism, exclusion, and violence, one might argue that party assistance is effective, at least in holding the line against party capture by individuals or agendas adverse to democracy. The appropriate standard of comparison is thus not only what donors hoped for from DG projects but also what would have happened in the absence of such projects. By similar logic, in assessing the side effects of DG projects, including possible harm, it is important to know whether the side effects being observed are really consequences of DG assistance or are consequences that tend to arise generally as an aspect of transitions to democracy in certain contexts. Little light can be shed on this possibility unless the multicase design includes countries where DG projects were not present. • The cases should include countries with varied outcomes regard- ing democratic progress or stabilization. Prior USAID multicountry evaluations focus mainly on the degree to which DG projects in those countries met or fell short of donor expecta- tions and sought to explain those shortfalls where they occurred (e.g., Carter 2001, de Zeeuw and Kumar 2006). But such evaluations did not seek out failures or the worst setbacks for detailed study. Nonetheless, sometimes the most useful information for USAID would be why projects were ineffective in particular countries. USAID has come to recognize this, but has moved too far in this direction—so that process evaluations now arise most often only when a project has failed to generate expected results. USAID needs to know both how and why DG projects succeed in various contexts and how and why they fail to generate progress in others. A rich design would include examples of both successful and unsuccessful trajectories in countries where donors have made substantial investments in DG activities. Other Design Details The committee does not wish to prescribe a certain number of cases for such a multicase study. Rather, that should be part of the design pro- cess and respond to the financial and time constraints chosen by USAID for the scope of the study and by the expertise and resources of the investi- gators. The committee does believe that a set of case studies structured by 

LEARNING FROM THE PAST 115 the above criteria would provide a more comprehensive, more analytically powerful, and more valuable assessment of how democracy assistance affects countries’ trajectories toward democracy than any such studies in the current literature. At the very least, it would help ensure that USAID planners have before them a diverse set of contexts and experiences from which to draw judgments, rather than the past practice of selecting five to nine cases in which USAID has intervened and then seeking to assess the results of those interventions. The committee suggests such a more structured multicase study if SORA wishes to draw on retrospective case study analysis to guide future USAID democracy programming. However, as noted, the committee was divided over how important it would be for USAID to invest its own funds in such a research effort. Research on democracy and democracy assistance is now a rapidly grow- ing field in the academic community (e.g., the American Political Science Association has a new section on comparative democratization), and several think tanks (e.g., Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Center for Global Development) are supporting studies of democratiza- tion or programs to advance good governance. With the growth of interest in democracy assistance in the academic and foundation worlds, many of these issues will be investigated, and USAID may be able, in a few years, to draw on existing sets of case studies to compose a larger multicase comparison, rather than starting it from scratch. For example, a study being undertaken by the Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University has a design similar to that laid out in this section (CDDRL 2006:6-7). USAID may wish to simply await the completion of such academic studies over the next few years and then determine if it still needs to commission such research or if it can draw on what has already been produced in the public domain. In sum, USAID may choose, according to its resources, to solicit proposals for comparative case studies that fulfill the above conditions, or it may choose to explore whether existing case study projects being undertaken by academics and NGOs can be tapped and combined to provide a set of case studies that meet these conditions. Either way, the committee urges USAID to encourage and examine works that go beyond the valuable, but incomplete, studies that currently focus on one or more situations in which democracy assistance has been provided. To bet- ter understand how democracy assistance affects a country’s trajectory   In addition to the CDDRL project, which seeks to place democracy assistance programs in the long-term and national context of diverse factors bearing on trajectories toward democracy, a number of other policy or academic works are exceptional in their breadth and quality of analysis, attending to both domestic and international factors and varying contexts and outcomes. These include particularly the work of Whitehead (1996), Carothers (1999, 2004, 2006), Mendelson and Glenn (2002), and Youngs (2004). 

116 IMPROVING DEMOCRACY ASSISTANCE to democracy, it is valuable to compare trajectories with and without democracy assistance (or with relatively large and small amounts) and trajectories with varied outcomes. However, for USAID to benefit from ongoing academic research, as well as the studies of DG assistance being undertaken by think tanks and NGOs, it will be necessary for USAID to organize regular struc- tured interactions between such researchers and USAID DG staff. As the committee learned from the Stanford conference, academics do not always present their findings in ways that DG policy professionals find relevant; structured exchange with give and take on specific topics allows academics and professionals to bridge gaps in concepts and policy needs more effectively than passive consumption of such research. One major service that the SORA project could perform would be to devise ways for the more regular introduction of scholars’ research on democracy into structured discussions with USAID DG personnel. Besides such a multicountry case study design, the committee also believes that there are other ways for USAID to learn from its past DG activities. These include discussions of outside studies of DG assistance, such as those undertaken by the Carnegie Endowment (e.g., Carothers 2006, 2007) or other nations’ development agencies, statistical analyses of international data, and surveys. These also include making better use of the experience of USAID DG mission personnel by engaging in regular meetings in which DG officers could share and discuss their own experi- ences with democracy assistance. Although not adequate for determining the impact of specific projects, such sources can provide valuable insights regarding problems of program implementation, responses to rapidly changing conditions in the field, issues in the reception of DG programs, or the shifting contexts in which such programs are carried out. USAID should include these varied sources of information as part of the regu- lar organizational learning activities recommended in Chapter 8. Conclusions The committee found that much can be gleaned from existing case studies of democracy and governance. These studies of particular pro- grams, or of DG assistance in specific regions, shed light on how DG programs have operated in various settings and whether they met the expectations of donors or participants. Yet for all their strengths it is often difficult to solve the problem of causal attribution of specific outcomes to DG activities with this type of research. This is particularly true of studies that attempt to discern the causal impact of a particular project or set of projects on democracy by focusing only on the unfolding of DG projects within a single country or across a set of countries. 

LEARNING FROM THE PAST 117 The committee thus recommends the use of more diverse and the- oretically structured clusters of case studies of democratization and democracy assistance to develop hypotheses to guide democracy assis- tance planning in a diverse range of settings. Whether USAID chooses to support such studies or gather them from ongoing academic research, it is important to look at how democracy assistance functions in a range of different initial conditions and trajectories of political change. Such case studies should seek to map out long-term trajectories of political change and to place democracy assistance in the context of national and international factors affecting those trajectories, rather than focus mainly on specific democracy assistance programs. REFERENCES Abbink, J., and Hesseling, G., eds. 2000. Election Observation and Democratization in Africa. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Asia Watch. 2002. Cambodia’s Commune Elections: Setting the Stage for the 2003 National Elections. HRW Index 14(4). Available at: http://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/camb)402/. Ac- cessed on January 10, 2008. Barro, R.J. 1999. Determinants of Democracy. Journal of Political Economy 6:158-183. Barya, J.J., Opolot, S.J., and Otim, P.O. 2004. The Limits of “No Party” Politics: The Role of International Assistance in Uganda’s Democratisation Process. Working Paper 28. Con- flict Research Unit, Netherlands Institute of International Relations, Clingendael. Berman, S.E. 1997. Civil Society and the Collapse of the Weimar Republic. World Politics 49(3):401-429. Berman, S.E. 2001. Modernization in Historical Perspective: The Case of Imperial Germany. World Politics 53(2):431-462. Blair, H., and Hansen, G. 1994. Weighing in on the Scales of Justice: Strategic Approaches for Donor-Supported Rule of Law Programs. CDIE Program and Operations Assessment Report No. 7. Washington, DC: USAID. Boix, C., and Stokes, S. 2003. Endogenous Democratization. World Politics 55(4):517-549. Carothers, T. 1999. Aiding Democracy Abroad: The Learning Curve. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment. Carothers, T. 2004. Critical Mission: Essays on Democracy Promotion. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment. Carothers, T. 2006. Confronting the Weakest Link: Aiding Political Parties in New Democracies. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment. Carothers, T. 2007. The “Sequencing” Fallacy. Journal of Democracy 18(1):12-27. Carter, L. 2001. Linking USAID Democracy Program Impact to Political Change: A Synthesis of Findings from Three Case Studies. Revised draft (unpublished). Carter, L., Silver, R., and Smith, Z. 2003. Linking USAID Democracy Program Impact to Politi- cal Change: A Synthesis of Findings from Six Case Studies. Washington, DC: Management Systems International. CDDRL (Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law). 2006. Project Prospec- tus. Unpublished. Dobbins, J. 2003. America’s Role in Nation Building: From Germany to Iraq. Santa Monica, CA: RAND. 

118 IMPROVING DEMOCRACY ASSISTANCE Dougherty, B.K. 2004. Searching for Answers: Sierra Leone’s Truth & Reconciliation Com- mission. African Studies Quarterly 8(1). Online. Available at http://web.africa.ufl.edu/asq/ v8/v8ia3.hm. Doyle, A.C. 1998. The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Oxford World’s Classics. New York: Oxford University Press. Epstein, D., Bates, R., Goldstone, J.A., Kristensen, I., and Halloran, S. 2006. Democratic Transitions. American Journal of Political Science 50:551-569. Finkel, S.E., Pérez-Liñán, A., and Seligson, M.A. 2007. The Effects of U.S. Foreign Assistance on Democracy Building, 1990-2003. World Politics 59(3):404-439. George, A., and Bennett, A. 2005. Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Goldstone, J.A. 1998. Initial Conditions, General Laws, Path-Dependence, and Explanation in Historical Sociology. American Journal of Sociology 104:829-845. Goldstone, J.A. 2003. Comparative Historical Analysis and Knowledge Accumulation in the Study of Revolutions. Pp. 41-90 in Comparative Historical Analysis, D. Reuschemeyer and J. Mahoney, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goldstone, J.A. 2007. Trajectories of Democracy and Development: New Insights from Graphic Analysis. Paper presented to Wilton House, UK, October 23. Goldstone, J.A., and Ulfelder, J. 2004. How to Construct Stable Democracies. Washington Quarterly 28(1):9-20. Haggard, S., and Kauffman, R.R. 1995. The Political Economy of Democratic Transitions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Kumar, K. 1998. Post-Conflict Elections, Democratization, and International Assistance. Boulder: Lynne Rienner. Lippman, H., and Emmert, J. 1997. Assisting Legislatures in Developing Countries: A Framework for Program Planning and Implementation. Washington, DC: USAID. McFaul, M. 2005. Transitions from Post-Communism. Journal of Democracy 16(3):5-19. McFaul, M. 2006. The 2004 Presidential Elections in Ukraine and the Orange Revolution: The Role of U.S. Assistance. Washington, DC: USAID, Office for Democracy and Governance. McMahon, E., Beale, S., and Menelik-Swanson, G. 2004. Ethiopia Pre-Election Assessment Report. Washington, DC: International Foundation for Election Systems. Available at: http://www.ifes.org/publication/f6f42ace604bfb37be74675f7d4d002b/Ethiopia.pdf. Mendelson, S.E., and Glenn, J.K., eds. 2002. The Power and Limits of NGOs: A Critical Look at Building Democracies in Eastern Europe and Eurasia. New York: Colombia University Press. O’Neill, W.G. 2003. International Human Rights Assistance: A Review of Donor Activities and Lessons Learned. Working Paper No. 18. The Hague, Netherlands: Clingendael Institute. Przeworski, A., Alvarez, M.E., Cheibub, J.A., and Limongi, F. 2000. Democracy and Develop- ment: Political Institutions and Well-Being in the World, 1950-1990. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rice, C. 2006. Transformational Diplomacy. U.S. Department of State. Available at: http:// www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2006/59339.htm. Whitehead, L. ed. 1996. The International Dimensions of Democracy: Europe and the Americas. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Youngs, R. 2004. International Democracy and the West: The Role of Governments, NGOs and Multinationals. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Zakaria, F. 2004. The Future of Freedom. New York: Norton. de Zeeuw, J., and Kumar, K. 2006. Promoting Democracy in Post-Conflict Societies. Boulder: Lynne Reinner. 

Over the past 25 years, the United States has made support for the spread of democracy to other nations an increasingly important element of its national security policy. These efforts have created a growing demand to find the most effective means to assist in building and strengthening democratic governance under varied conditions.

Since 1990, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has supported democracy and governance (DG) programs in approximately 120 countries and territories, spending an estimated total of $8.47 billion (in constant 2000 U.S. dollars) between 1990 and 2005. Despite these substantial expenditures, our understanding of the actual impacts of USAID DG assistance on progress toward democracy remains limited—and is the subject of much current debate in the policy and scholarly communities.

This book, by the National Research Council, provides a roadmap to enable USAID and its partners to assess what works and what does not, both retrospectively and in the future through improved monitoring and evaluation methods and rebuilding USAID's internal capacity to build, absorb, and act on improved knowledge.

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28 Case Study Research

• Published: October 2022
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Case study research is widely used in the field of deliberative democracy due to the depth of insight and attention to context that this method provides. This chapter explains why case study research has been integral to deliberative democracy’s development from a normative theory to an established and mature theory guided by significant empirical evidence. This chapter also suggests that as deliberative democracy research moves towards a systemic approach, case studies will continue to be essential for understanding the practice of deliberative democracy across the huge variety of contexts a system involves. Case studies are a research approach that is relevant to both positivist and interpretivist research traditions, but, as this chapter also demonstrates, this distinction is one that deliberative democracy can transcend. This chapter provides guidance on selecting a suitable case as well as collecting and analysing data, specifically in relation to the field of deliberative democracy.

Deliberative democrats are usually interested in finding evidence for different kinds of causal claims. For example, what causes people to change their mind? In which contexts is deliberation most likely to cause opinion change? What conditions are required for good quality deliberation? Under what conditions can deliberation be consequential? There are different ways of studying these questions. Statistical research usually focuses on responding to these questions across a large number of cases, paying particular attention to average effects.

There is a different way to answer these questions, however, and that is through case study research. Case study research can be defined as ‘the study of the particularity and complexity of a single case, coming to understand its activity in important circumstances’ ( Stake 1995 , ix). A case can be a person, event, activity, process, group, organization, or institution. The focus on an individual unit means that within-case analysis is conducted as opposed to comparative cross-case research ( Ryan 2019 ; see also Ryan, Chapter 17 in this volume). This is to enable intensive and context-dependent data collection and analysis on important cases that include a large number of variables, thereby producing more depth, detail, richness, completeness, and variance than cross unit analysis can generally achieve. In general, the more cases there are, the less data is collected on each ( Gomm et al. 2004 ). Case studies enable researchers to move beyond covariation between variables and focus on ‘causes-of-effects’ in a specific case ( Mahoney and Goertz 2006 ).

Case study research has been prevalent throughout the history of deliberative democracy due to the depth of insight and attention to context that this method provides ( Boswell and Corbett 2017 ). In this chapter, we argue that case study research has been integral in helping deliberative democracy develop from a new normative theory to an established and mature theory guided by significant empirical evidence. Moreover, we suggest that as deliberative democracy research moves towards a systemic approach, case studies will continue to be essential for understanding the practice of deliberative democracy across the huge variety of contexts that a system involves. Case studies are a research approach that is relevant to both positivist and interpretivist research traditions. However, in this chapter, we suggest that case study research can help deliberative democracy move beyond this distinction. Guidance is provided on how to select a suitable case and how to collect and analyse data, specifically in relation to the field of deliberative democracy.

The Value of Case Studies in Deliberative Democracy Research

Case study research is important to both the positivist and interpretivist research traditions. Both approaches are prevalent within deliberative democratic research. Nevertheless, these two broad methodological approaches utilize case study research differently for the purposes of responding to different research questions. The positivist tradition is more interested in questions of generalization, which involves hypothesis generation and testing through the consideration of intervening variables. In contrast, the interpretivist tradition favours contextual richness, which includes considering the perceptions, values, and expectations of actors ( Ercan et al. 2017 ). Here, cases are seen as specific and unique, worthy of understanding in their own right. We advocate a ‘third way’, believing case study research has relevance to both traditions.

Case studies are useful for building theory by generating hypotheses ( Flyvbjerg 2006 ; Crasnow 2012 ; Yin 2014 ; Toshkov 2016 ). The research identifies a phenomenon in one case and this leads to the generation of hypotheses that this will be found in the whole population or some of the population. However, there is much more scope for theory building in newer theories that are not yet established ( Toshkov 2016 ). The use of case studies for theory building is often considered most appropriate within the positivist research tradition. However, deliberative democracy, emerging as it did in the late 1980s, is still a relatively new theory, so there has been plenty of scope for theory building and much of the case analysis has followed an interpretivist approach. For example, at the birth of deliberative democracy ( Floridia 2014 ), we see seminal case studies on town hall meetings and cooperative workplace democracy in America using ethnography and qualitative interviews generating hypotheses, amongst others: that participatory processes can lead to representational and elitist dynamics; that people can find deliberation hard; and that features of complexity represent unavoidable facts, leading to conflicts of interests ( Mansbridge 1983 ). Mansbridge (1983) concluded that participatory and deliberative approaches are more successful in decentralized processes, but must still be combined with more traditional representative and adversarial institutions.

Deliberative democracy is a normative theory; it is about a counter-factual, political ideal. As a result, relevant cases of it being even approximated in practice have been few and far between. Particularly in its infancy, there were simply not the number of cases available for large statistical or comparative research. As a result, case studies were often the focus of deliberative democratic research because they were the first case of a certain type. Consider, for example, the first ever deliberative poll ( Luskin et al. 2002 ), citizens’ assembly ( Warren and Pearse 2008 ), and participatory budget ( Abers 2000 ). These practices were used as cases to investigate the extent to which ordinary citizens can deliberate about complex issues effectively, and to discern what institutional conditions are required to promote this.

This explains why case studies have been at the vanguard of empirical deliberative democracy research to date, but it is becoming an established theory now with developed hypotheses that need testing and refining ( Curato et al. 2017 ) and as a result we are seeing more positivist approaches that compare cases. Comparative content analysis on the deliberative quality of cases, such as legislative debates ( Steiner et al. 2004 ) and televised election debates ( Marien et al. 2019 ), are some examples. Case study research is often criticized from a positivist perspective, claiming, for example, that it is impossible to generalize and to test theories as this would assume the full population of cases was homogenous and causes deterministic ( Stake 1994 ; Yin 2014 ; Boswell and Corbett 2017 ). Consequently, the statistical significance of the single case is usually unknown. This can certainly be the case if there is heterogeneity in the population under study and the hypothesized effects are weak: ‘There is not much point in testing a weak causal relationship relevant for a heterogeneous population with a single-case study design because the result of the investigation, whatever it may be, would have very little import’ ( Toshkov 2016 , 290). We must, therefore, be very cautious about making inferences about the population of cases, as a whole, from case study research. Should case studies, therefore, be sidelined for large-N statistical and comparative methods in deliberative democratic research now the theory has matured?

We believe that this critique is misplaced for three reasons. First, we do not always need to seek generalization if the case is significant in its own right. This is often how cases are viewed from an interpretivist perspective. As democratic innovation increases in practice, we are still witnessing a stream of new cases, relevant to deliberative democracy, that merit in-depth, within-case analysis. This is a crucial development, as case study research contributes to the building of deliberative theory in important respects. For example, Hendriks (2016) was able to develop the concept of ‘designed coupling’ in deliberative systems only through in-depth case study research.

Second, in contrast to what critics assume, generalization can be possible from a single case study, making case study research compatible with a positivist research tradition. It very much depends on the rationale for case selection. For example, Michels (1959 [1911]) researched the German Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 1911. He selected this case study because the SDP had sought to be an internally democratic party, and as such it should be the least likely to be oligarchical. The fact that Michels found that the party was oligarchical led him to conclude most others would be too, without researching these other cases. 1 Furthermore, a single case study can test hypotheses, and thereby also lead to generalization, if it falsifies a theory, providing a case is suitably selected for its validity. The classic example being a single black swan disproving the claim that ‘all swans are white’. We would then need only to find one example of an internally democratic organization to falsify Michels’ ‘iron law of oligarchy’. 2 This is because average cases will not always be the most revealing: ‘Atypical or extreme cases often reveal more information because they activate more actors and more basic mechanisms in the situation studied’ ( Flyvbjerg 2006 , 229).

Third, at present, the focus of both theoretical and empirical research on deliberative democracy is moving towards (or returning to) a focus on systems, which requires analysing the connections and relationships between different parts of the system ( Elstub et al. 2016 ). It has been argued that deliberative systems must be researched in context and that this requires interpretivist methods, where hypotheses are less relevant, to understand the perspectives of a multiplicity of actors in numerous sites and the different types of communication that exist between them ( Ercan et al. 2017 ). For example, case study analysis has developed our understanding of transmission in deliberative systems ( Boswell et al. 2016 ). Case study research enables us to investigate a number of research questions on how instances of micro deliberation relate to the broader public sphere, such as how politicians view a particular site or the discourses that emerge from it, or how citizens and associations view different political organizations and their discourses in particular contexts. These questions are not always possible to address through statistical analysis: ‘in large-N research it is not always possible to verify the incentives that the various actors face, the information they have and the beliefs they hold’ ( Toshkov 2016 , 299). Therefore, as deliberative democrats increasingly consider how deliberation can be scaled-up, the need for case study research grows. For example, how participants deliberate an issue, the likelihood of them changing their opinion, and their attitudes to deliberation, need to be researched in case studies embedded in real-life policy processes, precisely because they are imperfect, if we are to really understand deliberative democracy in practice. Communication about policy issues is inevitably different when a decision is going to be taken that will actually affect people, as indicated by a land management case study from the Peak District in the United Kingdom ( Elstub 2010 ). Nevertheless, it is this type of communication that we must gain a greater understanding of if we are going to get greater leverage on deliberative systems in practice and revise the theory accordingly.

Conducting Case Studies Research

Case studies aim to extend our knowledge of how and why deliberative processes embedded in real-life policy processes work and do not work, as well as which elements of the process lead to policy influence. To achieve this goal, case study research should critically examine the implementation of deliberative processes in both structured forums and the unstructured public sphere; the dynamics between participants; and the broader social and political context in which the deliberative processes are embedded, including the reciprocal influences between the deliberative process and policy context.

In other terms, interpretive case study analysis reconstructs the deliberative process as it has been implemented in the most accurate and detailed way possible. This enables us to make judgements as to their effectiveness from a deliberative perspective because we examine how deliberative processes have been adapted to the external social and political context—the adjustments and variations that they have been subjected to during their implementation due to the explicit or implicit choices of the organizers, internal or external pressures, or other relevant factors. Different actors—organizers, participants, external influencers (such us political actors or the media)—should therefore be a key focus of case study research in deliberative processes.

To achieve this, it is of paramount importance that case studies identify all the actors that, formally or informally, internally or externally, influence deliberative processes and their results. At the same time, it is crucial that case studies explain the purposes of the actors, the logic of action that they follow, the behaviour they adopt, the relations they establish with other actors, and their interpretation of the events ( Scheirer and Griffith 1990 ; Pawson and Tilley 1997 ). Take, for example, the use of citizens’ juries as case studies on the reconfiguration of a hospital service in the city of Leicester in the UK ( Parkinson 2006 ). The study not only focuses on the internal dimensions the jury, but also analyses the role played by all relevant external actors, such as Health Authorities, the citizen committee that collected 150,000 signatures against a first version of the reconfiguration plan, health professionals, unions, charity groups, and the media. As highlighted by the author of the study: ‘The key feature of this case to keep in mind is that the jury was not the only element, but just the end point of a much bigger, Leicester-wide debate’ ( Parkinson 2006 , 14).

Case Selection

Choosing a case to study is the first step in case study research. Yin’s (2014) distinction between four main types of case studies with different rationales for selection, albeit not exhaustive, is widely used by empirical scholars undertaking case study research:

The revelatory case is one that reveals new or underexplored phenomena. In the context of deliberative democratic research, the revelatory case enables access to deliberative processes on which existing literature is not available at all or is largely absent. In this situation, case studies have an explorative aim; they are useful to produce empirical evidence of what deliberative processes consist in and to elaborate inductive hypotheses to be tested in further research. Revelatory case studies can be carried out in innovative or unprecedented applications of the deliberative approach, as in the case of the deliberative processes on constitutional reforms ( Levy et al. 2018 ), or cases implemented in the context of deeply divided societies ( Steiner et al. 2017 ), such as the case study of a deliberative poll on education policy in Northern Ireland to demonstrate that citizens can deliberate constructively together in these contexts ( Luskin et al. 2014 ). Although deliberative approaches are growing in number, they are also expanding in geographical and policy reach, variety, and significance. Therefore, there are many revelatory cases that merit further study.

The common case is one that is prevalent, typical, or representative. In deliberative democratic research, it might consist in a deliberative process presenting a typical design embedded in a sociopolitical context with ordinary characteristics. Mini-publics on salient issues in local communities characterized by average social conditions and deeply rooted democratic institutions belong to this category. One example is the deliberative processes implemented in the Tuscany Region in Italy, financed by a regional law on participation of citizens in policymaking approved in 2007. In the first five years of implementation, 116 deliberative processes were funded. Most of them were processes promoted by centre-left or left-wing municipalities in small localities characterized by an active civil society. Participants were generally recruited through random selection and the topics under discussion were not particularly conflicting, focusing on issues such as urban renewal and land planning ( Lewanski 2013 ).

The critical case presents conditions and contexts that are particularly challenging or extreme. Examples of these kinds of cases could be deliberative processes implemented on particularly controversial issues or in a context in which democratic institutions are weak or even non-existent. Case studies of deliberative democracy in China, for example, include deliberative polling ( Leib and He 2006 ); deliberation in rural and urban areas and in a state-owned enterprise ( Unger et al. 2014 ); and online forums ( Medaglia and Yang 2017 ). The implementation of deliberative processes in China is a critical case of particular interest because it consists in an unexpected and apparently contradictory combination of an authoritarian regime at the national level and deliberative practices at the local level. The study of several empirical cases of local deliberative processes suggests that deliberation and democracy are not synonymous and that a deliberative authoritarianism could develop.

The unusual case can be considered a variation of the critical case. It consists in a deliberative process particularly rare or uncommon for its design or for the context in which it is embedded, albeit not particularly adverse or challenging. The study of unusual cases is useful in shedding light on specific factors influencing deliberative processes that are poorly studied so far. For example, Davidson et al. (2017) analysed the deliberative quality of the first ever televised election debates in the UK. The Ostbelgien Model in Belgium represents an unusual case since it is the first permanent citizens’ assembly ( Niessen and Reuchamps 2019 ). Unusual cases are different from revelatory cases as the latter explore new or underexplored phenomena, but are not necessarily rare cases. The unusual case is always a rare case, but it does not necessarily pertain to a new or underexplored phenomenon.

Data Collection

The second step to conduct case studies consists in collecting empirical data in the field. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to cover the different methods of data collection that can be used in case study research in detail. Most of the methods presented in this volume are suitable for case studies. Importantly, data can be collected which illuminates the deliberative process itself, as well as its relationships to other actors and institutions, and causes of the outcomes. Therefore, the aim is to collect a large amount of data on the case to analyse a significant number of variables or dimensions. Nevertheless, data collection choices inevitably need to be made, even when researching just one case. The data-gathering strategy should be determined by the nature of the research question and the type of case study that has been selected. However, it is worth noting that case studies are particularly suitable for mixed methods approaches ( Escobar and Thompson 2019 ; see also Escobar, Chapter 27 in this volume). This can enable triangulation—the application of several research methods to study the same phenomenon—but also increases the amount of evidence we have to assess causal hypotheses ( Gerring 2004 ) or to enhance the interpretation of the case. For example, the mixed method study on the case of citizens’ juries on onshore windfarms in Scotland had several data sources including juror survey data, non-participant observation, interviews with the witnesses, and an analysis of the jury discussions, which enabled triangulation about good practice for the use of evidence in mini-publics ( Drury et al. 2021 ; Roberts et al. 2020 ).

Relevant quantitative data collection can include characteristics of the processes under investigation, for example the number of participants, duration of process, volume of media coverage, etc.; surveys of participants that can help evaluate opinion change in the process and attitudes towards the process; and content analysis that can test the deliberative quality and media coverage of the case. However, these aspects of one case are not comparable in the same way that we might compare a number of cases on just one variable ( Toshkov 2016 ). Relevant qualitative data include descriptions, narratives, opinions, and interpretations on what has happened during the implementation of the processes and after their conclusion, from those involved and other stakeholders. This can be collected through archival research, participant observation, interviews, and focus groups involving actors and other key informants, often in combination. Secondary literature can be used before collecting evidence from primary sources in order to have an overall picture of existing information and interpretations. Moreover, it can be used to enrich and problematize evidence deriving from primary sources.

Analysing the Data

The third step to conduct case studies is analysing the data in order to produce a coherent, plausible, and well-founded interpretation of the specific social mechanisms working in the case under investigation. There are two main challenges here. The first risk is that of only producing a detailed chronicle of the studied process that does not go beyond the descriptive level. The second risk is the opposite: producing a subjective interpretation of the processes based on cherry-picking and in line with a preconceived thesis. Two main recommendations are useful in seeking to avoid these risks and they apply to all types of case studies.

The first recommendation is to avoid a simplistic interpretation of the behaviour of social actors. For example, exclusively referring to rational choice theory where social actors would be considered to be motivated only by egoistic interest would result in a biased narrative with actors depicted as caricatures. Take, for example, a case study on Tuscany law on citizens’ participation in policymaking ( O’Miel 2016 ). The case study focuses on the role played by some actors that directly contributed to the formulation of the law: a politician, a scholar, a civil servant, and a practitioner. All of them are depicted as being motivated by self-interest. The analysis suggests that they contributed to the formulation of the law in order to extend consensus, to achieve legitimation, to strengthen their own influence, and to obtain economic advantages. In contrast, Bobbio and Floridia (2016) highlight that a major role in fostering a new regional law on citizens’ participation in Tuscany was played by a large movement of associations and intellectuals, and that, therefore, the role attributed to the presumed self-interest of a limited number of actors, albeit influential, is a clear deformation of what transpired. The authors highlight that to produce a profound and realistic interpretation, researchers should refer to a plurality of social theories: the behaviour of actors is influenced not only by interests, but also by values, beliefs, cognitive shortcomings, and shortcuts, the social and historical context in which they are embedded, and the networks of which they are a part, amongst other factors. Therefore, researchers should exercise a critical analysis in all possible directions, taking into consideration, comparing, and questioning competing hypotheses.

The second recommendation is to conduct the case study as a skilled detective solving a crime mystery. In this analogy, hypotheses are suspects. A detective collects clues in the field, identifies all the possible suspects with different motives and analyses, and combines the clues until a solid proof of the guilt of one of the suspects is reached. Data analysis is not sequential, but, developed along an iterative and incremental process. During this process it is crucial for the researcher-detective to evaluate the solidity of hypotheses in the light of the collected evidence. Process tracing methodology , also called causal process observation , is a method of qualitative analysis that is particularly useful for case study analysis (see Pickering, Chapter 20 of this volume). It can be defined as ‘tracing the decision process by which various initial conditions are translated into outcomes’ ( George and McKeown 1985 , 35). Given the focus on decision-making, it is a useful approach for research on the policy processes and institutions from a deliberative democratic perspective, because it provides a clear formalization of the logical steps that a detective-researcher has to take in order to reach a valid interpretation. These logical steps can be considered a tool in the hand of researchers in order to avoid simplistic and biased interpretations, and helps to explain why the proposed interpretation has been developed.

Process tracing provides four logical tests of causal hypotheses and is useful for evaluating different pieces of evidence and their contribution to causal inference and whether they are necessary and/or sufficient for the cause to occur ( Collier 2011 ):

The straw-in-the-wind test (which way is the wind blowing?): A hypothesis passes this test when some of the collected evidence could be effectively considered to be supporting it, but at the same time the evidence is not decisive. It is useful for the researcher to conduct an initial assessment of the collected evidence and to better focus on which directions merit further investigation.

The hoop test (jumping through the hoop): The collected evidence is useful to eliminate one or more hypotheses and to strengthen one or more other hypotheses. This means that the researcher is getting closer to a plausible interpretation, but other efforts are yet required.

The smoking-gun test (a murder suspect is found holding a smoking gun): If a hypothesis passes this test, then it has very strong support. The alternative hypotheses are substantially weakened, although not completely eliminated.

The doubly decisive test : If a hypothesis passes the test, it is confirmed and at the same time all the alternative hypotheses are rejected. It is a level of solidity that is particularly difficult to achieve, and it can be considered an ideal research objective.

The tests vary according to how unique they are and their level of certainty. The former relates to how likely it is that the evidence will be there if the hypothesis is not true, and the latter if it is true: ‘High certitude means that the hypothesis is very unlikely to hold if the piece of evidence is not available and vice versa … High uniqueness means that, if the evidence is found, it could have been produced under only one hypothesis and not others. Low uniqueness means that the evidence could have been left by several competing hypotheses’ ( Toshkov 2016 , 295). How these four tests relate to the two criteria is depicted in Table 28.1 below.

A useful way to highlight the validity of this approach for research on deliberative democracy is the case study on a public debate on the project of a highway in Italy that has combined participant observation with in-depth interviews with key informants ( Pomatto 2015 ). The conflict between citizen committees and public institutions willing to build a new highway lasted more than ten years. Before the beginning of the debate, citizen committees were particularly distrustful of it. They maintained that the public debate was an attempt by public institutions to produce consensus for the infrastructure without any real possibility to change the original project. A failure of the public debate and the prosecution of the conflict between citizen committees and public institutions without any changes appeared probable. However, the study highlights that public debate did not fail and that some positive solutions can be reached even if the conflict is not completely resolved. It is a thesis progressively developed by researchers in the field using the logical tests provided by the Process Tracing Methodology.

At the beginning of the debate, citizens’ committees, which were strongly against the infrastructure under discussion, accepted the invitation to take part in the public debate. This is a first piece of evidence that passes the straw-in-the-wind test. On the one hand, the fact that citizen committees did not boycott the debate does not mean that they were willing to discuss the project with the proponent of the highway. On the other hand, it suggests that the conflict is not completely unresolvable, meaning that there is merit in further research on the behaviour of the citizen committee during the debate.

Two revelatory episodes occurred in two different public meetings of the debate. On both occasions, the facilitator did not tolerate contestations from a group of participants against supporters of the highway who were speaking. In both instances, the facilitator was strongly challenged by the participants and in both cases the leaders of the citizen committees stopped the contestation against the facilitator and asked the public to be respectful. These two episodes constitute evidence that passes the hoop test. They strengthen the hypothesis that citizen committees wanted the debate to continue. However, these episodes do not prove that positive sum solutions can be produced through the debate.

In the last part of the debate, two lay citizens advanced some proposals to change the layout of the highway in order to reduce the project’s negative externalities. These citizens discussed their proposals with technicians in a specific workshop. The new project advanced by the technicians after the conclusion of the debate included a variation of the original layout very similar to the proposals advanced by these citizens. This is evidence that passes the smoking-gun test: it proves that the public debate could produce positive sum solutions even if it is implemented in a strongly conflicting context ( Ravazzi and Pomatto 2014 ; Pomatto 2015 ).

In this chapter, we provided an overview of how case studies can be used in deliberative democratic research. Case study research is not always required, nor is it always the best approach. Far from it. Comparison across cases, experiments, and large random sample research methods are hugely valuable for the study of deliberative democracy: ‘The advantage of large samples is breadth, whereas their problem is one of depth. For the case study, the situation is the reverse. Both approaches are necessary for a sound development of social science’ ( Flyvbjerg 2006 , 241). Our epistemological approach does not lead us to favour a particular methodological tradition. Rather, we see methods as tools and it is a matter of selecting the right tool for the job in hand, so it very much depends on the research question. Case studies are very useful for investigating causes in context, and should therefore continue to be a method widely used for deliberative democratic research.

Further Reading

Hendriks, Carolyn. 2016. ‘Coupling Citizens and Elites in Deliberative Systems: The Role of Institutional Design’. European Journal of Political Research 55 (1): 43–60.

Ravazzi, Stefania, and Gianfranco Pomatto. 2014. ‘Flexibility, Argumentation and Confrontation: How Deliberative Minipublics Can Affect Policies on Controversial Issues’. Journal of Public Deliberation 10 (2), Article 10.

Roberts, Jennifer, Ruth Lightbody, Ragne Low, and Stephen Elstub. 2020. ‘Experts and Evidence in Deliberation: Scrutinising the Role of Witnesses and Evidence in Mini-Publics, a Case Study’. Policy Sciences 53 : 3–32.

Abers, Rebecca . 2000 . Inventing Local Democracy: Grassroots Politics in Brazil . London: Lynne Rienner.

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Boswell, John , and Jack Corbett . 2017 . ‘Why and How to Compare Deliberative Systems’.   European Journal of Political Research 56 (4): 801–819.

Collier, D.   2011 . ‘Understanding Process Tracing’.   Political Science and Politics 44 (4): 823–830.

Crasnow, Sharon . 2012 . ‘The Role of Case Study Research in Political Science: Evidence for Causal Claims’.   Philosophy of Science 79 (5): 655–666.

Curato, Nicole ., John S. Dryzek , Selen Ercan , Caroline Hendriks , and Simon Niemeyer ( 2017 ) ‘ Twelve Key Findings in Deliberative Democracy Research ’, Daedalus 146 (3): 28–38.

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Drury, Sara , Stephen Elstub , Oliver Escobar , and Jennifer Roberts . 2021 . ‘Deliberative Quality and Expertise: Uses of Evidence in Citizens’ Juries on Wind Farms’.   Journal of Deliberative Democracy 17 (2): doi: https://doi.org/10.16997/jdd.986 .

Dryzek, John . 2007 . ‘Theory, Evidence, and the Tasks of Deliberation’. In Deliberation, Participation and Democracy: Can the People Govern? , edited by Shawn Rosenberg , pp. 237–250. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

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Leib, Ethan , and Baogang He.   2006 . The Search for Deliberative Democracy in China . Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Levy, Ron , Hoi Kong , Graeme Orr , and Jeff King , eds. 2018 . The Cambridge Handbook of Deliberative Constitutionalism . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lewanski, Rodolfo . 2013 . ‘Institutionalizing Deliberative Democracy: The “Tuscany Laboratory”’.   Journal of Public Deliberation 9 (1). doi: https://doi.org/10.16997/jdd.155

Luskin, Robert , James Fishkin , and Roger Jowell   2002 . ‘Considered Opinions: Deliberative Polling in Britain’.   British Journal of Political Science 32 (3): 455–487.

Luskin, Robert , Ian O’Flynn , James Fishkin , and David Russell . 2014 . ‘Deliberating Across Deep Divides’.   Political Studies 62 (1): 116–135.

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Roberts, Jennifer , Ruth Lightbody , Ragne Low , and Stephen Elstub . 2020 . ‘Experts and Evidence in Deliberation: Scrutinising the Role of Witnesses and Evidence in Mini-Publics, a Case Study’.   Policy Sciences 53: 3–32.

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While there are some problems with Michels’ analysis of the case data (see Elstub 2008 , 188–191), the rationale for case selection was sound.

It should be noted that as a normative theory, deliberative democracy as a whole is not a falsifiable theory ( Dryzek 2007 ); however, there are elements that could be refined through falsification.

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New project places personal stories at center of democracy research

In a time of question and doubt for many Americans about the future of democracy in the U.S., a group of units at Arizona State University have partnered to create the Defending Democracy project.

Defending Democracy, created by the  Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict ,  The Melikian Center: Russian, Eurasian and East European Studies , the  Narrative Storytelling Initiative  and the  Center for Work and Democracy , asks Americans to share their personal experiences with attacks on and threats to democracy in their community.

The project is an effort to spotlight the kinds of attacks Americans have experienced and witnessed and the variety of ways Americans have pushed back against anti-democratic forces in their everyday lives. The project is accepting submissions of 150–400 words or 1–2-minute videos at defendingdemocracy.asu.edu .

“We launched Defending Democracy with a sense of urgency and hope that this public outreach can shed new insights on both specific actions and underlying motives,” says Steven Beschloss , director of the Narrative Storytelling Initiative at the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory. “The Narrative Storytelling Initiative is committed to transdisciplinary projects that draw on academic expertise and meaningful public input, and that positively address relevant societal challenges.”

The Defending Democracy team recognizes the need to hear the stories of everyday Americans when attempting to study and understand the current state of American democracy. This project is an opportunity for scholars at ASU and beyond to study the thoughts and experiences of real Americans alongside the cultural, historical and political contexts that usually drive academic work in this area. 

“This new project provides an opportunity for everyday citizens — rather than pundits and politicians — to say in their own words what democracy means to them and to register how they see it being threatened,” says John Carlson , director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict and associate professor of religious studies.

The aim of the Defending Democracy project is to capture and understand the scale and variety of anti-democratic encounters, and to create hope for democracy’s future by amplifying the voices of those individuals seeking to sustain democracy within their communities. 

“In a democracy, everyone has a voice and a right to participate,” Carlson says. “This platform provides a way for Americans — Arizonans especially — to share stories, incidents or encounters in which there has been an effort to suppress, undermine or attack these democratic rights and responsibilities. We want to hear how Americans are actually experiencing democracy — and threats to it — as they go about their daily lives.”

The Defending Democracy team anticipates that these personal stories or accounts will be a source of vital information about the current state of American democracy from the very specific perspective of lived experience. 

“We’re eager to hear from our fellow citizens and to hear what they are experiencing in their lives,” Carlson says. “Depending on what we learn, we also hope to offer some constructive suggestions and proposals for improving the health of our democratic body politic.”

The submitted essays and videos will be used to guide academics who are researching and writing about the current reality and future of democracy; a multidisciplinary collection of ASU scholars and thinkers who are joining forces to reflect on this particular time in American history and the motivating narratives influencing the public’s understanding of and response to democracy. The Defending Democracy team also hopes to share the insights gained from the submissions through a series of essays, but they are also open to other, more innovative uses for the submissions as well.

“While we can imagine sharing the results in expected ways in written form or as videos, we are also considering the possibility of sharing the collection in audio, as a tapestry of voices and experiences, or even working with actors to help bring the submissions to life,” Beschloss says. “We also intend to partner with outside media organizations to share and amplify what we learn.” 

Although the content and quantity of the submissions will ultimately determine the outcome of the project, the team is optimistic about the possibilities early on. They anticipate that the project will be a catalyst for important conversations about American democracy.

“We think the issues surrounding threats to democracy are not only serious, they represent an existential danger to the country,” Beschloss says. “We hope the project will encourage thoughtful discourse, within ASU and beyond.”

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