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| Editors: | Morton H. Halperin Mirna Galic |
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| Publisher: | A CFR Book. Lexington Books |
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Release Date: May 2005
256 pages
ISBN 0739108247
$29.95
Over the past several decades, democracy has taken root or been reestablished 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. Through case studies and in-depth analyses, this book provides a first comprehensive guide to preventing and responding to coups and erosions of democracy in democratic states. It sets forth a 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.
“Protecting democracy where it has taken root must be considered a fundamentally important element of the foreign policy of all democratic countries. For if we can help peoples to espouse democracy, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, but we cannot help them to sustain it, then democratic gains are illusory.... The following chapters bring the imperative of protecting democracy to sharp focus. The stakes are higher now than they were [at the first Community of Democracies meeting] in Warsaw in 2000, but with the groundwork laid out in these pages, so too is the likelihood of real progress.”
—Madeleine Albright and Bronislaw Geremek
“This important book provides timely prescriptions for what the world’s community of democratic countries should do when open society is threatened in an emerging democratic state. Events in 2005 in Nepal and Togo underline the urgency of these proposals.”
—George Soros, Founder and Chairman, Open Society Institute and Soros Foundations Network
“Morton H. Halperin has long been at the forefront of analyzing and advocating ways in which the international community can respond to unconstitutional actions aimed at overturning democratic governments. He and Mirna Galic have performed a great service by bringing together a volume that addresses this critically important but relatively unexplored topic.”
—Marc F. Plattner, Editor, Journal of Democracy, and Director, International Forum for Democratic Studies
“This book blends scholarly international legal analysis with a comprehensive look at provisions and practices of current international and regional institutions, all grounded in real-life examples of responses to recent democratic breakdowns. Halperin and Galic have set out an action plan of steps that the international community, and particularly the Community of Democracies, needs to take if it wants to fulfill its goals of promoting and protecting the expansion of democracy around the world.”
—Jennifer Windsor, Executive Director, Freedom House
Morton Halperin is Director of the Open Society Policy Center.
Mirna Galic is National Security Analyst at the Center for American Progress.
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