Protecting Democracy: International Responses

Over the past several decades, democracy has taken root or been re-established in a number of countries with support from other democratic states and private groups. While the increase in the number of democracies worldwide has been widely heralded, very little has been written on how democracy can be protected and sustained where it has been chosen by the people of a state. In this first comprehensive guide to preventing and responding to threats to coups and erosions in democracies. Through case studies and in-depth analyses, this book provides legal and policy justification for these processes and discusses how they can be made more effective, combining the findings of an international task force on threats to democracy with contributions from leading scholars and policymakers.

Halperin (director, Open Society Policy Center) and Galic (national security analyst, Center for American Progress) present seven papers that address issues of collective international support of democracy in states where it is perceived to be failing or at risk. Papers on current policy and practice discuss the evolution of conceptions of sovereignty and legitimacy, collective international actions since the early 1990s, regional trends and developments, and the role of the Organization of American States in protecting democracy from internal interruption. Other chapters discuss current threats to democracy, domestic responses, the necessity of vigilance regarding the erosion of democracy, and international legal recourse. Sandwiched between these two sets of chapters is the Report of the Independent Task Force on Threats to Democracy, which was penned by former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and others.
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