USAID Democracy Promotion as a Possible Predictor of Revolutionary Destabilization

What is it about?

We show that the US financial assistance to the democracy promotion increase increase the likelihood of nonviolent revolutionary uprisings. However, its contribution is relatively modest in comparison to other factors. We also show that it is not the general democracy spending that has an impact on revolutionary destabilization, but rather some particular sub-sectors of democracy assistance, namely civil society, elections, human rights and media assistance, that increase the likelihood of revolutions. The USAID democracy promotion increases the probability of revolutionary destabilization in the world in two ways – directly (through strengthening political opponents of the incumbent regime via support for alternative media, civil society groups, political parties etc.) and indirectly - through the promotion of democratization of autocracies, which leads to the increase of the number of partial democracies/anocracies in the world. Anocracies are especially liable to revolutions; so, the growth of their number increases overall global revolutionary instability.

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