Western Conceptions of Democracy and the Transatlantic Divide over Democracy Promotion - Media Debates in the Context of Military Intervention
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Neue Amerika-Studien l7
Golareh Khalilpour
Western Conceptions of Democracy
and the Transatlantic Divide
over Democracy Promotion
Media Debates in the Context of
Military Intervention
NomosNeue Amerika-Studien
edited by
Dr. Christoph Haas
Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Wolfgang Jäger
Prof. Dr. Andreas Falke
Prof. Dr. Jürgen Wilzewski
Volume 7
BUT_Khalilpour-Khodadadi_6440-2.indd 2 03.04.20 11:31Golareh Khalilpour
Western Conceptions of Democracy
and the Transatlantic Divide
over Democracy Promotion
Media Debates in the Context of
Military Intervention
BUT_Khalilpour-Khodadadi_6440-2.indd 3 03.04.20 11:31This study is embedded in the larger interdisciplinary research project “Multiple Collective
Identities in International Debates on War and Peace since the End of the Cold War. Langu-
age technological Tools and Methods for the Analysis of multi-lingual Text Corpora in the
Social Sciences (eIdentity)” directed by Professor Dr. Cathleen Kantner, Professor Dr. Jonas
Kuhn, Professor Dr. Manfred Stede, and Professor Dr. Ulrich Heid, funded by the Bundes-
ministerium fuer Bildung und Forschung (German Ministry of Education and Research) for
the 2012-2015 period (support code: 01UG1234A).
© Coverpicture: smartboy10 – www.istockphoto.com
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the
Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data
are available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de
a.t.: Stuttgart, Univ., Diss., 2019
Original title: “Western Conceptions of Democracy and the Transatlantic Divide over
Democracy Promotion
Transatlantic Media Debates on Democracy Promotion in the Context of War and Military
Intervention”
ISBN 978-3-8487-6440-2 (Print)
978-3-7489-0563-9 (ePDF)
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-3-8487-6440-2 (Print)
978-3-7489-0563-9 (ePDF)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Khalilpour, Golareh
Western Conceptions of Democracy and the Transatlantic Divide over Democracy
Promotion
Media Debates in the Context of Military Intervention
Golareh Khalilpour
278 pp.
Includes bibliographic references.
ISBN 978-3-8487-6440-2 (Print)
978-3-7489-0563-9 (ePDF)
D 93 Onlineversion
Nomos eLibrary
1st Edition 2020
© Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, Baden-Baden, Germany 2020. Printed and bound in Germany.
This work is subject to copyright. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior per-
mission in writing from the publishers. Under § 54 of the German Copyright Law where
copies are made for other than private use a fee is payable to “Verwertungsgesellschaft Wort”,
Munich.
No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from
action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Nomos or the author.
BUT_Khalilpour-Khodadadi_6440-2.indd 4 03.04.20 11:31Content
List of Figures 9
List of Tables 13
Acknowledgements 17
Zusammenfassung 19
Abstract 21
Chapter 1 – Introduction 22
1.1 Research Question and Central Argument 24
1.2 Media Coverage on Wars and Military Interventions 33
1.3 Added Value and Structure of Book 38
Chapter 2 – The Road to Democracy: What has the West been doing? 42
2.1 Conceptualizing Democracy Promotion 45
2.2 Democratization and Democracy Promotion in Academic
Discourse 50
2.3 The Evolution of Democracy Promotion in the West 57
2.4 Transatlantic Tendencies in Democracy Promotion: Bottom up
versus Top Down 65
2.5 How Democracies emerge – A Question of Sequence: State
Institutions first, Citizen Participation second, or the other way
round? 77
2.6 The Divide Across The Atlantic 83
2.7 Four Events, Two Readings 90
2.7.1 The Collapse of the Soviet Union 91
2.7.2 The 2003 Iraq Invasion 93
2.7.3 The Orange Revolution and the Maidan Protests of 2014 97
2.7.4 The Arab Spring and Libya’s failed democratic transition 98
5Content
2.7.5 Interim Conclusion: Transatlantic Divide over
Assumptions about Democratization 100
Chapter 3 – The Relationship between the Conception of
Democracy and its Promotion 105
3.1 Early Debates about the Extent and Limitations of State Power 112
3.1.1 America’s Founding Principles: From the Town Halls to
the Beacon of Freedom 117
3.1.1.1 Antiquated Institutions and Modern Participation
in New England 117
3.1.1.2 Andrew Jackson’s Anti-Institutionalist Legacy 123
3.1.2 Europe’s Path to Political Modernization: Revolutions,
Wars, and Institutional Safeguards against the Siren’s Call 126
3.1.2.1 Revolution and Liberation 127
3.1.2.2 Ascendent Institutions and Outdistanced Civil
Society 130
3.2 The Conceptions underlying Western Democracy Promotion 135
3.2.1 Hamilton, Madison, and Jefferson: Three Conceptions of
Democracy 136
3.2.2 Theorizing the Impact of Conceptions of Democracy on
Democracy Promotion 145
3.2.3 Hypotheses about Conceptions of Democracy in Media
Debates 147
Chapter 4 – Conceptions of Democracy in Media Debates on War
and Military Intervention: Research Design 152
4.1 Content Analysis as a Tool to Trace Conceptions 153
4.2 Data, Country Selection, and Period of Study 155
4.3 Operationalization: Variables 164
4.3.1 Confronting Word Sense Ambiguity 170
4.3.2 Outcome Variables: Conception of Democracy 176
Chapter 5 – Revealing the Transatlantic Divide over Conceptions of
Democracy: Analysis 179
5.1 Data Preparation 180
5.2 Time-Series Plots: Conceptions of Democracy in Media
Discourse 186
6Content
5.3 Accounting for the Political Leanings of Newspapers 202
5.4 Time-Series Diagnostics: Democracy in Media Discourse 215
5.5 Time-Series Analysis: Democracy in Media Discourse 226
Chapter 6 – Conclusion: Democracy Promotion and Conceptions of
Democracy in Transatlantic Discourse 231
6.1 Summary of the Empirical Findings 232
6.2 Implications for the Future of Transatlantic Democracy
Promotion 234
6.3 Open Questions and Perspectives for Future Research 237
Bibliography 241
Appendix 257
Appendix A: Summary Statistics for Democracy Series 257
Appendix B: Augmented Dickey-Fuller Tests For Units Roots 258
Appendix C: Time-Series Diagnostic Plots 259
7List of Figures
Figure 1: Simplified presentation of transatlantic tendencies in
democracy promotion. 73
Figure 2: Example KWIC-list for the term “democracy”. 169
Figure 3: Word cloud of the US-wordlist “democracy”. 176
Figure 4: Frequency distribution of monthly number of
newspaper articles – UK corpus. 183
Figure 5: Frequency distribution of the concept “democracy” in
UK media. 184
Figure 6: Frequency distribution of the concept “democracy” in
UK media. 184
Figure 7: Density plot of newspaper articles mentioning
“democracy” in UK media. 185
Figure 8: Frequency distribution of the concept “stability” in UK
media. 185
Figure 9: Time-series plot of discourse on democracy and
democracy promotion. 187
Figure 10: Discourse on democracy and democracy promotion in
US and German media. 188
Figure 11: Discourse on democracy and democracy promotion in
British and US media. 188
Figure 12: Discourse on democracy and democracy promotion in
French and US media. 188
Figure 13: Time-series plot of discourse on bottom-up aspects of
democracy. 190
9List of Figures
Figure 14: Time-series plot of discourse on top-down aspects of
democracy. 190
Figure 15: Time-series plot of US discourse on bottom-up and top-
down aspects. 191
Figure 16: Time-series plot of German discourse on bottom-up and
top-down aspects. 191
Figure 17: Time-series plot of French discourse on bottom-up and
top-down aspects. 192
Figure 18: Time-series plot of British discourse on bottom-up and
top-down aspects. 192
Figure 19: US-UK comparison of time-series plots of top down and
bottom up. 194
Figure 20: Time-series plot of discourse on liberty. 195
Figure 21: Time-series plot of discourse on stability. 195
Figure 22: Time-series plot of US discourse on liberty and stability. 196
Figure 23: Time-series plot of German discourse on liberty and
stability. 196
Figure 24: Time-series plot of French discourse on liberty and
stability. 197
Figure 25: Time-series plot of British discourse on liberty and
stability. 197
Figure 26: Cross-country comparison of time-series plots of liberty
and stability. 199
Figure 27: Time-series plot of discourse on bottom-up aspects in
right-of-center newspapers. 203
Figure 28: Time-series plot of bottom-up aspects in left-of-center
publications. 203
10List of Figures
Figure 29: Time-series plot of top-down aspects in right-of-center
newspapers. 204
Figure 30: Time-series plot of top-down aspects in left-of-center
newspapers. 204
Figure 31: Graphs contrasting WaPo and NYT coverage on bottom
up and top down. 205
Figure 32: Graphs contrasting FAZ and SZ coverage on bottom-up
and top-down. 206
Figure 33: Graphs contrasting Le Figaro and Le Monde coverage
on bottom-up and top-down. 207
Figure 34: Graphs contrasting The Times and Guardian coverage
on bottom-up and top-down. 208
Figure 35: Time-series plot of liberty in right-of-center newspapers. 209
Figure 36: Time-series plot of liberty in left-of-center publications. 209
Figure 37: Time-series plot of stability in right-of-center
newspapers. 210
Figure 38: Time-series plot of stability in left-of-center newspapers. 210
Figure 39: Graphs contrasting WaPo and NYT coverage on liberty
and stability. 211
Figure 40: Graphs contrasting FAZ and SZ coverage on liberty and
stability. 212
Figure 41: Graphs contrasting Le Figaro and Le Monde coverage
on liberty and stability. 213
Figure 42: Graphs contrasting The Times and Guardian coverage
on liberty and stability. 214
Figure 43: Discourse on democracy (promotion) in US, UK,
French, and German media. 219
11List of Figures
Figure 44: Discourse on democracy (promotion) in US, UK,
French, and German media. 220
Figure 45: Correlograms for the logarithmized American
democracy series. 220
Figure 46: Correlograms for the logarithmized, differenced
American democracy series. 221
Figure 47: Correlograms for the logarithmized German democracy
series. 221
Figure 48: Correlograms for the logarithmized, differenced
German democracy series. 222
Figure 49: Correlograms for the logarithmized French democracy
series. 222
Figure 50: Correlograms for the logarithmized, differenced French
democracy series. 223
Figure 51: Correlograms for the logarithmized British democracy
series. 223
Figure 52: Correlograms for the logarithmized, differenced British
democracy series. 224
12List of Tables
Table 1: Categorized scheme of democracy promotion
instruments. 71
Table 2: The Founding Fathers’ conceptions of democracy. 143
Table 3: Table of strategies divided by conceptions of
democracy. 145
Table 4: Selection of daily newspapers and numbers of articles
for each broadsheet. 157
Table 5: Case selection – emergence of democracy and extent
of civil-society involvement. 162
Table 6: Fitting and unfitting text passages identified by the
word “democratization”. 170
Table 7: Fitting text passages identified by the word
“democracy”. 171
Table 8: Fitting and unfitting text passages identified by the
words “civil society”. 172
Table 9: Fitting and unfitting text passages identified by the
words “rule of law”. 173
Table 10: Fitting and unfitting text passages identified by the
words “human rights”. 174
Table 11: Categorized scheme of the political orientation of
newspapers. 202
Table 12: Box-Jenkins Model of democracy (promotion) in US
media discourse. 227
13List of Tables
Table 13: Box-Jenkins Model of democracy (promotion) in
German media discourse. 228
Table 14: Box-Jenkins Model of democracy (promotion) in
French media discourse. 228
Table 15: Box-Jenkins Model of democracy (promotion) in
British media discourse. 229
14List of Abbreviations
ACF Autocorrelation Function
ACP African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States
ADF Augmented Dickey-Fuller test
AIC Akaike Information Criterion
ARIMA Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average
ARMA Autoregressive Moving Average
BIC Bayesian Information Criterion
CARDS Community Assistance for Reconstruction, Development and Sta-
bilisation
CFSP Common Foreign and Security Policy
DOD United States Department of Defense
DRL Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor
EC European Communities
EEC European Economic Community
EIDHR European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights
ENI European Neigbourhood Instrument
ENP European Neighbourhood Policy
ENPI European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument
ESDP European Security and Defense Policy
EU European Union
FAZ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
HRDF Human Rights and Democracy Fund
KWIC Key Word in Context
IGO intergovernmental organization
IMF International Monetary Fund
IO international organization
IPA Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance
ISAF International Security Assistance Force
MENA Middle East and North Africa
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NGO nongovernmental organization
15List of Abbreviations
NYT New York Times
OECD Organization for Economic and Cultural Development
OLS Ordinary Least Squares
OSCE Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
OTI Office of Transition Initiatives
PACF Partial Autocorrelation Function
PHARE Poland and Hungary: Assistance for Restructuring their
Economies
SZ Sueddeutsche Zeitung
TACIS Technical Assistance to the Commonwealth of Independent States
TEU Treaty on the European Union
UK United Kingdom
UN United Nations
US/USA United States of America
USAID United States Agency for International Development
USSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
WaPo Washington Post
WMD Weapons of Mass Destruction
16Acknowledgements
Writing this book was a unique experience for me and for those close to
me. Needless to say, that it would not have been possible for me to com-
plete it without the support and guidance from my family, friends, and
colleagues.
I would like to first thank the members of my dissertation committee
for their time and invaluable feedback. I wish to thank my supervisor,
Cathleen Kantner, for her patience and guidance through my research and
for giving me the opportunity to write about something that I felt was im-
portant. A very special thank you to André Bächtiger for his generous in-
tellectual feedback and encouragement through my research. I am also
very grateful for being granted access to the technological and method-
ological innovations to study media discourse as well as to an extensive
corpus, without which this dissertation (and many others) would not have
been written. The development of these innovations was enabled by the
generous funding provided by the German Ministry of Education and Re-
search. This work is embedded in the larger interdisciplinary research
project “Multiple Collective Identities in International Debates on War
and Peace since the End of the Cold War. Language technological Tools
and Methods for the Analysis of multi-lingual Text Corpora in the Social
Sciences (eIdentity)” directed by Professor Dr. Cathleen Kantner, Professor
Dr. Jonas Kuhn, Professor Dr. Manfred Stede, and Professor Dr. Ulrich
Heid, funded by the Bundesministerium fuer Bildung und Forschung
(German Ministry of Education and Research) for the 2012-2015 period
(support code: 01UG1234A).
I am also very grateful for my colleagues Halima Akhrif, Aziz Elmu-
radov, Iris Nothofer, Maximilian Overbeck, and Eric Sangar for their
thoughtful comments and suggestions over the past developmental stages
of this study. Working with you was a very pleasant experience.
Many thanks go out to our student assistants, especially Marcel Böhm,
Robin Schuhmacher, Amélie Schäfer, Julian Armbruster, and Yaelle Wolf
for their extraordinary engagement. I also want to thank the other student
assistants working for the project.
17Acknowledgements A heartfelt thank you to my family, especially Mom and Dad, and my friends for their love, patience, and for always being so supporting of my work. All remaining errors are my own. 18
Zusammenfassung
Besitzen westliche liberale Demokratien ein einheitliches Demokratiever-
ständnis? Wenn ja, weshalb existiert dann eine sogenannte transatlantische
Kluft in der Demokratieförderung? Während die Vereinigten Staaten
einen Ansatz verfolgen, dem größtenteils eine Bottom-up-Logik zugrunde
liegt, wendet die Europäische Union einen flexibleren Top-down-Ansatz
an, der politische Eliten explizit in den Reformprozess einbezieht. Obwohl
die externe Demokratieförderung auf beiden Seiten des Atlantiks als legit-
imes außenpolitisches Ziel verfolgt wird, herrscht Uneinigkeit in der
Frage, welche Strategien besonders effektiv zur Erreichung dieses Ziels
beitragen. Die transatlantische Anerkennung der international zu fördern-
den Prinzipien wirft die Frage nach dem Ursprung dieser Differenz auf.
Die transatlantische Kluft als Forschungsgebiet war bislang hauptsächlich
Gegenstand der realistischen Theorieschule, die transatlantische Gemein-
samkeiten wie Unterschiede in der Außenpolitik hauptsächlich der Mach-
tasymmetrie zwischen Europa und den Vereinigten Staaten zuschrieb. Ich
wende dagegen ein, dass diese Sicht auf die transatlantischen Beziehungen
unvollständig ist. So vermag die realistische Theorieschule nicht zu erk-
lären, weshalb ausgerechnet die Vereinigten Staaten als einzig verbliebene
Supermacht auf eine weniger konfrontative Strategie in der
Demokratieförderung zurückgreifen. Meine Annahme lautet daher, dass
unterschiedliche Ansätze zur Demokratieförderung weniger auf relative
Machpositionen als vielmehr auf unterschiedliche historische Erfahrungen
mit politischer Modernisierung und den daraus resultierenden
Demokratieverständnissen zurückzuführen sind. Die unterschiedliche
Entstehungsgeschichte westlicher Demokratien hat zur Herausbildung un-
terschiedlicher Verständnisse von Demokratie beigetragen, so die zentrale
Annahme. Es ist anzunehmen, dass Demokratieförderer auf Strategien
zurückgreifen, die ihr jeweiliges Verständnis von Demokratie ausdrücken.
In diesem Buch untersuche ich Mediendebatten aus vier westlichen
Demokratien über Kriege und militärische Interventionen und entwickle
dabei einen neuen Indikator zur Messung von Demokratieverständnis. Die
empirischen Befunde unterstützen meine Annahmen in weiten Teilen. Die
Medieninhaltsanalyse fördert unterschiedliche Verständnisse über die zen-
tralen Dimensionen der liberalen Demokratie und über die Beziehung
zwischen Staat und Gesellschaft zutage. Dies stellt auch die von Samuel
19Zusammenfassung Huntington entwickelten zivilisatorischen Blöcke in seinem viel beachteten Buch “Kampf der Kulturen“ infrage. 20
Abstract
Do western liberal democracies share a common understanding of democ-
racy? If so, then why is there a transatlantic divide over democracy promo-
tion? While the United States apply a mainly bottom-up strategy, the Euro-
pean Union pursues a much more flexible approach often described as top
down and elite-driven. While there is consensus as to the desirability of ex-
ternal democracy promotion as a foreign-policy goal, disagreement persists
as to what kinds of strategies foster liberal democracy most effectively. This
raises the question of why there is a transatlantic divide over democracy
promotion, when there is consensus as to the validity of the principles be-
ing promoted internationally. As a research area, the transatlantic divide
has for too long been the preserve of realist theorists who assert that
transatlantic similarities and differences in foreign-policy orientation result
from America’s military dominance and international posture as opposed
to European economic strength but limited military capabilities. I contend
that this view is incomplete as it fails to offer a sensible explanation as to
why the US – the world’s only remaining superpower – resorts to strate-
gies, which are less overtly political and less confrontational. Instead, I sug-
gest that differences between the US and Europe in terms of democracy
promotion derive less from relative power positions rather than from dif-
ferent historical backgrounds and experiences with political moderniza-
tion, and, hence, historically embedded conceptions of democracy. These
conceptions comprise a set of convictions and assumptions about the na-
ture of political order, authority, and democratization. It is therefore rea-
sonable to assume that democracy promoters choose instruments that ad-
vance their vision of an ideal transition and that are congruent with their
respective understandings of democracy. This book will shed new light on
the nature of the long-cherished idea of the transatlantic divide and con-
ceptions of democracy by investigating media debates on wars and military
interventions in four western democracies using a new indicator of demo-
cratic conceptions. Consistent with the argument made here, the detailed
media content analysis reveals different understandings with regard to the
key aspects of democracy and state-society relations among western democ-
racies. The findings also challenge our understanding of the idea of a uni-
fied Western civilization and the civilizational identities developed by
Samuel Huntington in “Clash of Civilizations”.
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