ASSESSING DEMOCRACY PROMOTION: The Case of the Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy in Ghana (2003-2008

The post-Cold War ideological triumphalism which has characterized democracy promotion in most developing countries especially during the peak of the post Washington Consensus era has been criticized for its ‘political malaise’- critiqued for implicitly driving a form of free market neoliberal agenda which lacks the drive to engender the form of constitutional and liberal democracy that speaks to the local dynamics. While this process can be flawed for its ideological deception, there are other identifiable schools which have taken the issue of politics as the focus of their democracy promotion assistance. One such ‘proclaimed’ organization is the NIMD with the sole mandate of support to political parties as a means of political engagement towards democracy consolidation. Using the theory of democratisation and components of such theory within the framework of governance, I conceptualized and ‘problematized’ the activities of NIMD using the Ghana programme as a case study. This was done by assessing the works of the NIMD’s political agenda in Ghana and related cases. The conceptualization was done through a historical (time), cultural-(social dynamics) and political approach to studying the concepts and inherent logic of democracy promotion as informed by components of actors, their strategies, interest etc and their interaction towards democratization. While the study mainly identifies the strengths as adequate and ‘problematizes’ the conceptual paradigm of NIMD political approach as being ‘narrow-focused’, I argue that their assistance effort cannot be value-free and thus market plays a key factor . Furthermore, this research argues that if NIMD democracy promotion is more of market-driven, then the ideology may fail to function in most of their programme countries and for that matter Ghana and in the long-run it may decline in even the established industrial democracies due to the challenges and contradictions brought about by the politics of the market and ‘one fits all institutional repetitiveness’-the same policies which led to the collapse of the market (WC). In conclusion, I posit that in spite of the strengths of the NIMD as regards its political approach of democracy assistance over the more technical actors like the EU, World Bank suchlike, it is still not ‘value free ‘in terms of the ‘problematique’ of governance as ‘institutional fixes’ which appears in their mission statement informed by politics of the market. This leaves much to be desired as it fosters the economic aspect at the expense of the social aspect and may even undermine rather than bolster the universal declaration of the right of the individual against the tenets of democracy.