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Democracy promotion by international organizations: the role of the United Nations
Prepared for delivery at the 2008 Annual Meeting of the International Studies
Association, March 25-29, 2008
Danilo Marcondes Neto
Institute of International Relations
Pontifical Catholic University, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
DRAFT
The author welcomes all comments and suggestions. Please do not cite without
permission
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to look at the way the United Nations (UN) has taken the role
of democracy promotion as one of its main activities. The paper situates early democracy
promotion efforts in the UN´s Electoral Assistance Division and covers up to the newly
created United Nations Democracy Fund (UNDEF). The analyses focus on major UN
documents such as the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, and the
Declaration on Granting Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples as treaties who
helped set the foundations for democratic promotion by the UN, and also covers the
considerable importance given to democracy during the mandate of former UN
Secretary-Generals Boutros Boutros Ghali and Kofi Annan, and its relations with
development, human rights and UN reform. One of the main contributions of the paper is
to illustrate the history of democracy promotion by the UN and how the organization
works compared to other international institutions such as regional integration
organizations and the Community of Democracies. The research shows how the UN has
overcomed the main challenge that faces democracy promotion: the lack of an universal
acceptable definition of what is and what constitutes democracy, by stressing the
importance of democratic practice and the importance of democracy promotion as a
bottoms up rather than a top down phenomenon, therefore stimulating that local society
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