Larry Diamond will be visiting Williams to discuss his new book, Squandered Victory, which, for all you Central Asia people, reads much like The Devil and the Disappearing Sea, except that the scale (financially, geostrategically, historically, etc.) is exponentially larger, though it lacks Rob Ferguson’s wry humor.

Below are some draft questions I’m preparing for my interview with him. Please add your comments, suggestions, concerns, criticisms, etc. I’m hoping to have a good discussion about institutional vs. cultural strategies for democratization and the larger issues of US foreign policy. I’ll provide a wrap-up afterwards, so stay tuned.

• Your theory of democratic transition focuses on the development of civil society – non-governmental groups that check authority, organize people and advocate on particular issues. In Central Asia, these groups exist, but they are a creation of external donors, whom upon whom they are financially dependent. When I interviewed locals, they could not identify any such groups or describe their role in the national political process. Thus, it seems as though these groups largely do not contribute to the democratization of their country, since they do not have (or need) popular support. Do these groups qualify as civil society? If so, how can they establish popular support? What should donors’ policy be?

• The specter of Islam Karimov looms over all of Central Asia – a dictator able to maintain order at the cost of the liberties and, in several cases, lives of his own people. He represents one side of a zero-sum decision facing the governments of the republics – the stability of autocracy vs. the potential economic benefits of political liberalization. For many governments, particularly that of Tajikistan’s Emomali Rakhmonov, Uzbekistan presents a compelling example of the benefits of state control – Karimov held high-profile meetings with Putin and Hu Jintao after massacring hundreds of civilians at Andijan. How should democracy promotion programs (and their respective governments) respond to the threat of Karimov?

• In Squandered Victory, you say:

“Success in these difficult circumstances requires a substantial commitment of international human and financial resources, delivered in a timely fashion, and sustained over an extended period…Resources must reach the people of the society - ideally, with local participation and ownership.” (307)

How will you accomplish a sense of ownership in societies not founded on the rule of law? How do you prevent grant dependency? What about examples of corruption? (such as The Devil and the Disappearing Sea or, not to pick on the World Bank, the Dushanbe Water Supply Project, begun in at least 2001 - $17 million later, Dushanbe has no clean water).

• The book asserts that

“we cannot get to Jefferson and Madison without going through Thomas Hobbes. You can’t build a democratic state unless you first have a state, and the essential condition for a state is that it must have an effective monopoly over the means of violence.” (305)

How do states go from this “prisoners’ dilemma” situation to a Jeffersonian democracy?

• Who should take responsibility for democracy in a world of self-interested actors? What incentives should be provided to different actors within a country’s domestic political sphere?

• How can civic nationalism avoid the dangerous repercussions of ethnic nationalism or increased authoritarianism?

• What should the role of elections be in the overall democratic transition? How important are they?