The Democracy Promotion Paradox Book Presentation

Lincoln Mitchell, writer, practitioner of democracy promotion, scholar and the current national political correspondent of New York Observer, was in Tbilisi this week to present his new book The Democracy Promotion Paradox, at Prospero’s Books&Caliban’s Cofeehouse. Representatives of the American Chamber of Commerce, Georgian youth and a variety of public figures attended the event.

In the book, Mitchell examines the future of democracy promotion in the context of evolving US domestic policy and politics in a changed global environment where the US is no longer the hegemon. He also provides an overview of the origins of US democracy promotion, analyzing its development and evolution and discussing how it came to be an unquestioned assumption at the heart of US foreign policy. Mitchel give us bureaucratic logic that underlies democracy promotion and offers important insight into how it can be adopted to remain affective.

“American Democracy Promotion has been getting much more focus here in Georgia,” Lincoln Mitchell told GEORGIA TODAY. “American organizations have influence here and American and Georgian local NGOs are very significant. All that the US has done in Georgia in the last twenty years is to a global standard and Georgia’s been pretty open to American efforts to promote democracy. It’s been a good environment here for democracy promotion- not an easy mission to take on.”

Meri Taliashvili