In recent years, Latin American leaders including Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and Bolivia’s Evo Morales have denounced U.S. democracy promotion as a form of interventionism. Although the media have rarely investigated such allegations, scholars and policy analysts have produced a growing body of critical literature demonstrating that democracy promotion typically favors a formal liberal-democratic model referred to as polyarchy, a term coined by the political scientist Robert Dahl to signify political systems based on electoral contestation and the right of citizens to participate. In a 2007 edition of the NACLA Report devoted to the topic of democracy promotion, analyst Michael Coppedge noted that the debate over democracy promotion versus interventionism is less about whether the United States favors polyarchy—a “precious achievement,” according to Coppedge—than whether it uses its promotion of polyarchy to impede movement toward social democracy.1
The same question must be asked of Canada, the other major source of bilateral democracy assistance in the Americas. As the Conservative government of Stephen Harper prioritizes democracy promotion as part of its foreign policy strategy and renews its engagement in the Americas, researchers must take stock of Canada’s track record. Has the Canadian government used its democracy assistance programs to undermine governments or movements, particularly in countries where the free-market model or liberal democracy has been challenged?
Bolivia, which has consistently ranked among the top five hemispheric recipients of Canadian democracy-assistance funding during the past decade, lends itself to inquiry on this question. Governed since 2005 by the left-wing Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) under Morales, Bolivia is one of the places where polyarchy—dismissed by its critics as “low-intensity democracy”—has been most adamantly rejected and charges of U.S. interventionism the fiercest. Canada has not used its democracy-assistance programs to strategically undermine the MAS, though its preference for a neoliberal brand of polyarchy in Bolivia has been explicit. With the development of a more ideologically charged democracy-promotion agenda under the Stephen Harper government, however, a more interventionist model for the region may be in the making.
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The case against U.S. interventionism in Bolivia was first made by Jeremy Bigwood, an investigative journalist who, through requests made under the Freedom of Information Act, revealed a pattern of intent by U.S. Embassy officials and democracy promotion agencies to undermine the MAS as early as 2001 (even USAID’s reports in the public domain regularly refer to the MAS as “anti-systemic”).2 The work of Eva Golinger and Jean-Guy Allard further documented the attempt by USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) to undermine the MAS as it made its way toward state power through a new phase in the agency’s decentralization program.3 To be sure, the OTI program provided support to both MAS and opposition prefects. Given the previous patterns of interventionism, however, it is clear that OTI sought to shift the balance of power away from the central government. The cornerstone of the approach was shifting support from the municipalities to the prefects (the equivalent of governors) in the country’s eastern media luna zone, where right-wing forces constituted the focal point of resistance to the growing dominance of the MAS and the indigenous movement.
After the general elections of 2005 brought Morales to the presidency and gave the MAS a congressional majority, Bolivia increasingly clashed with the United States over its foreign policy. As tensions between eastern elites and the central government escalated in September 2008, U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg was asked to leave the country for allegedly supporting the opposition. In this increasingly polarized context, Minister of the Presidency Juan Ramón Quintana publicly denounced U.S. programs at a press conference in August 2007.4 Research conducted by his staff revealed a striking pattern—USAID’s democracy-promotion programs employed no less than 20 former high-level officials from three former governments that represent opposition to the MAS: Jorge Quiroga, Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, and Carlos Mesa. These officials were working in various capacities as consultants for USAID and the U.S. contractor Chemonics, as well as several local organizations contracted to implement democracy programs. According to Quintana, in the aftermath of the political crisis that led to Morales’s election, “all of these bureaucrats found a secure refuge—those of them from the highest political and economic circles were contracted by USAID.”5
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Unlike the United States, Canada has not been the target of public criticisms by the Morales government for the content of its democracy-assistance programs. Its approach has been more in line with its tradition of supporting both democratic institutions and grassroots organizations. While most democracy assistance comes from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), much of it is channeled through Canadian NGOs. Canada does not directly support political parties, although at the time of this writing, the Harper government is preparing to launch an institute that will. One of the main organizations involved in promoting democracy is Rights and Democracy, an arm’s-length agency established in 1988 that reports to Parliament. Rights and Democracy was established by a previous Conservative government but first headed by Ed Broadbent, former leader of the social-democratic New Democratic Party. When it was established, Canadian parliamentarians were particularly concerned that the agency adopt a more inclusive approach to promoting human rights and democratic development, explicitly criticizing the U.S. model as too ideological.
But Canada’s commitment to democratic development in the Americas has steadily eroded over the years, as successive governments have insisted on advancing a free trade agenda that most of the region’s people have rejected. The low point came in 2004, when Canada offered unconditional support to the coup government of Gérard Latortue in Haiti, which represented the most reactionary sectors of society and presided over a repressive campaign to quash the popular Lavalas movement. Canadian NGOs helped legitimize the actions of the Canadian state, supporting Haitian organizations opposed to Lavalas under the claim—not entirely false—that the movement had become criminalized.
As Haiti was undergoing a political crisis in the early 2000s, Bolivia was experiencing its own transformative events. Though Canada’s trade relations with Bolivia remained modest, Canadian mining companies were rapidly expanding their presence in the country. By 2007, Canadian companies held the dominant share of the larger-company mineral exploration market.6 Canada’s growing economic interests were slowly translating into increased diplomatic ties and development assistance. Until 2000, there was only one CIDA representative in La Paz—the Head of Aid, who was also charged with consular affairs. Canadian staff increased to two in 2002 and a third member was added in 2006.7 Canada’s Development Programming Framework, which ran from 2003 to 2007 and was formulated under the Liberal government of Jean Chrétien, considerably expanded Canadian development assistance to $50 million.
The program praised the neoliberal reform process carried out by Morales’s predecessors but emphasized the need for a more concerted attempt to tackle poverty. Its governance-reform programs were predicated on the political objective of counteracting the lack of state legitimacy. The strategy document summarizing Canada’s programming framework lamented the fragmentation of the traditional party system and warned that the near victory of Morales in the 2002 presidential elections and the rise of “anti-systemic parties” like the MAS in the Congress represented “a very disconcerting trend to many Bolivians.” Consequently, the program allocated $17 million to democratic governance, focusing primarily on supporting state institutions. Concerns over the rise of the MAS have been expressed by other players in the Canadian foreign policy community as well, particularly the quasi-governmental organization, Focal. Although the organization has not carried out activities directly in Bolivia, it did publish policy papers criticizing the Morales government, denouncing it as neo-populist, divisive, and confrontational, arguing that anti-system challengers in Bolivia and Venezuela represent a serious threat to pluralism and representative democracy.8
One of the main Bolivian institutions to receive CIDA support was the Office of the Ombudsman, which received $5 million in assistance from 2000 to 2007, making it by far the largest single recipient of Canadian democracy aid. The institution’s mandate is twofold: defend the rights of Bolivians from abuses by state authorities and defend and promote human rights in the country more broadly. The office has played an important role in advocating for the rights of marginalized and exploited sectors of the population. Although it may be viewed critically as a mechanism intended to manage and defuse social conflict, this role does not preclude a more radical advocacy role. During the Gas War in the fall of 2003—when a popular uprising challenged the neoliberal government’s plans to sell Bolivian natural gas at bargain prices—the office strongly denounced the state’s actions when a confrontation between demonstrators in the town of Warisata and security forces left seven dead. Former human rights ombudsman Ana María Romero de Campero joined intellectuals, human rights advocates, and NGO workers in a hunger strike that helped force the unpopular and increasingly authoritarian president, Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, to resign.9
During this first phase of programming, the vast majority of Canadian democracy assistance to civil society organizations in Bolivia was channeled through Development and Peace and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM)—International. In 2007–08, CIDA began providing significant support to women’s organizations, though all 10 grants that were awarded that year went to organizations working primarily on health and reproduction issues.10 Development and Peace, a Canadian Catholic NGO, launched a Bolivia country program that contributed $923,724 to Bolivian civil society organizations in its 2003–06 phase and allocated an additional $2.56 million for its five-year program from 2006 to 2011.11 Initially, the program supported 13 grassroots organizations, though this was later reduced to six in its second phase. The stated objective of Development and Peace’s program has been to strengthen the capacity of social actors to promote change. Some of its partners, most notably the National Federation of Domestic Workers (FENATRAHOB) and the regional Coordinator of Indigenous Peoples in Santa Cruz (CPESC), have been at the forefront of progressive struggles. Both of these organizations represent mass social constituencies. Development and Peace has also supported progressive NGOs that have acted in solidarity with popular movements.
Over the years, FENATRAHOB has led the struggle to regulate the salaries and benefits of domestic workers and has also been a major force in the indigenous popular movement. One of its founders and leaders, Casimira Rodríguez, herself a former domestic worker, served as Morales’s first minister of justice in 2006, during which time the government issued by supreme decree a Declaration of the Rights of Domestic Workers.12 FENATRAHOB’s leaders fight patriarchal, racist relations between domestic workers and their employers within the overall struggle against the legacy of colonialism.13 CPESC is the regional affiliate representing the indigenous peoples of Santa Cruz within the national indigenous movement led by the Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of Bolivia and has retained close ties with the MAS. It was a key supporter of the project for constitutional change and has repeatedly clashed with regional authorities and civic organizations that have supported regional autonomy. In September 2008, its headquarters were looted and nearly destroyed, allegedly by vandals associated with the prefect.14
FCM, for its part, began working with Bolivia’s two main municipal peak associations, the Federation of Municipalities (FAM) and the Association of Women Councilors of Bolivia (ACOBOL), in 2002. FAM was formed in 1999 as the national association representing all municipal governments; the following year, ACOBOL was created within FAM as an institutional mechanism representing women councilors and mayors. FCM supports institutional-strengthening to both of these associations, including expertise in policy development to enable them to more effectively engage the central government. Another important theme over the years has been strategic planning for local economic development. The program also couples Canadian municipalities with departmental municipal associations in Bolivia in similar capacity-building initiatives.
Given the strong centrifugal tendencies in Bolivia and the regional basis of political opposition, support to municipal associations is inherently susceptible to political manipulation. Decentralization itself was the cornerstone of the inclusive neoliberal project launched by Sánchez de Lozada in the mid-1990s that sought to contain social discontent with considerable support from USAID. Yet the question that must be asked in evaluating the contribution of Canadian actors is whether they have supported one political tendency at the expense of another within the municipal associations. In this regard, FCM members have worked with regional associations of municipalities from both La Paz and Santa Cruz, though most program activities are carried out by FCM itself in collaboration with FAM. FCM has also organized three exchanges with FAM representatives in Canada, with participating delegates representing various regional tendencies.
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As the Bolivian political crisis reached its zenith and elections were scheduled for December 2005, Canada provided assistance to the national electoral commission to organize elections.15 Canada also committed about $50,000 to the OAS-led observation mission for the presidential, legislative, and provincial governor elections. The mission emphasized the overall integrity of the electoral process, concluding that “we believe, without the shadow of a doubt, that the elections held in Bolivia on December 8, 2005 were peaceful, free, fair, and massively participatory.”16
Thus, if Canada’s intent was to help counter-balance so-called anti-systemic forces, its democracy assistance programs were not particularly well configured to accomplish this objective. While U.S. democracy assistance has also supported state institutions like the Office of the Ombudsman and the electoral process, U.S. programs have been much more multifaceted and strategically oriented than Canada’s. The fact that Canada did not switch to a strategy more clearly designed to contain “anti-systemic” forces—like the one introduced by the OTI program—demonstrates that the Canadian state was less inclined to take on an interventionist approach to advance its ideological objectives. Canada may have been supporting polyarchy, but this did not translate into an active policy of opposing social democracy. Development and Peace even supported groups linked to the popular movement.
Despite these contrasts with U.S. democracy promotion, CIDA’s political objective remained explicitly to reinforce the legitimacy of the neoliberal state. In this period, CIDA also used its programming to advance Canadian mining interests; in the same year that Bolivians mobilized against the neoliberal model in what has become known as the Gas War, CIDA launched a $13.25 million Hydrocarbon Regulation project, ostensibly designed to “ensure sustainable resource development while maximizing benefits to Bolivia.”17 Implemented under the auspices of IBM Business Consulting, the timing of the program indicates CIDA’s attempt to intervene on behalf of the state in opposition to the popular movements that vigorously rejected how Bolivia’s natural resources were being managed. Specific areas of assistance included support to a Petroleum Information Centre to attract private investment. While CIDA’s lack of transparency renders it difficult to evaluate the affects of the program, it has clearly favored a liberal approach to resource management.
Yet Canada did not allow its general dislike of the Bolivian government’s socialist politics to tarnish its diplomatic relations. In the new political context, CIDA launched an $18 million Strategic Governance Mechanism that continues to support the state while Bolivia remains one of 20 priority countries for Canada’s bilateral aid efforts. The program’s overall approach is designed to strengthen the technical capacity of state institutions, including the National Institute of Statistics, the Auditor General’s Office, and the National Electoral Commission. The Office of the Ombudsman remains the largest recipient of assistance. CIDA’s Gender Equality Basket Fund channels additional assistance to a government multi-donor basket fund that provides institutional support to the Vice Ministry of Gender and Generational Affairs. From 2005 to 2008, CIDA contributed $1.079 million to the multi-donor basket fund.18 CIDA also contributed $500,000 to the OAS observation mission for the recall referendums in August 2008, which upheld the overall integrity of the process.19
Rights and Democracy, for its part, only established its Bolivian country program, Strengthening the Participation and Capacity of Indigenous Organizations, in 2006. Its main objective has been to foster greater political participation of indigenous peoples and women, particularly in the current process of social change. Through this program, Rights and Democracy has supported an alliance of indigenous, peasant, and women’s organizations, all of which are linked to mass social constituencies, called the Pact of Unity. The most politically significant of these organizations is the Confederation of Bolivian Peasant Workers (CSUTCB), which was one of the first indigenous peasant organizations to emerge in the late 1970s. The Bartolina Sisa National Federation of Peasant Women (FNMCB-BS), as the main popular organization bringing together peasant women, is also highly significant. Although the pact strongly favored constitutional change, it was at times quite critical of decisions made by MAS representatives in the Constituent Assembly that sidelined their proposals. Nonetheless, the pact did ensure that most of its demands were incorporated in the proposed constitution, for which the CSUTCB campaigned strongly in favor.20 Thus, even after the MAS had come to power, Canada continued to advance an approach that focused on strengthening basic democratic institutions while Canadian NGOs supported grassroots organizations. Yes, CIDA supported a limited notion of democracy—polyarchy—but this did not entail an active policy of undermining social democracy.
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Yet there are strong indications that a more ideological approach toward Canadian democracy promotion is in the making under the Harper government. This is apparent in its Americas Strategy, adopted in 2009, which prioritizes three areas in Canada’s engagement: promoting basic democratic values, strengthening economic linkages, and meeting new security challenges. The strategy identifies free trade and investment as essential to shared regional prosperity, as well as important features of democratic governance. However, as the Canadian Council for International Cooperation (CCIC), a coalition of Canadian NGOs, states: “The exercise of human rights and democracy are prerequisites of broadly based prosperity and not the other way around. There is no ‘trickle-down’ relationship that links increased investment, for example, with greater recognition and protection of human rights or the growth of democracy.”21
Meanwhile, Canada has considerably enhanced its financial commitment to supporting democratic development while rationalizing and centralizing its overall approach. CIDA’s democracy assistance budget rose from $223 million in 1996 to $477.9 million in 2006—an increase of 114%.22 CIDA and Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) have also played a leadership role in reorganizing Canadian democracy promotion initiatives at the institutional level. Most importantly, Minister of State for Democratic Reform Steven Fletcher announced in June 2009 that an independent advisory panel would be convened to provide advice on establishing a “non-partisan democracy promotion agency” that would focus on strengthening political parties. This comes on the heels of the establishment of a Democratic Transitions Fund within DFAIT, which emphasizes “non-partisan support to political parties” in countries where there is violence and political instability or where there is a risk of democratic backsliding.
The direction of Canadian foreign policy suggests that the new agencies will serve as vehicles for a highly politicized form of democracy assistance in the tradition of USAID’s OTI and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which have led many efforts to destabilize governments opposed by the United States, regardless of their democratic credentials. With respect to Bolivia, however, the Canadian government may be inclined to act cautiously so as not to jeopardize its growing economic interests. After visiting both Venezuela and Bolivia in January, Minister of State for the Americas Peter Kent spoke out against the state of democracy in Venezuela while noting, favorably, that the situation in Bolivia was not comparable.
Nonetheless, the overall direction of Canadian democracy promotion, together with the willingness of Canadian NGOs to legitimize Canada’s imperialistic approach in Haiti, indicate that there is cause for concern. Some left-leaning NGOs, like the Montreal-based Alternatives, have had their funding cut.23 The recent controversy over the Harper government’s appointment of neoconservatives to the board of Rights and Democracy is no more encouraging. The internal conflict at Rights and Democracy apparently contributed to a heart attack that killed its president, Rémy Beauregard, after a particularly tense board meeting in January.24 Although Alternatives is generally progressive, it was also among the group of NGOs that was criticized for its role in Haiti. Although the verdict is still out, Canada may harness (and sacrifice) its superior reputation in the region to contain threats to neoliberal polyarchy just as the United States loses the ability to do so itself. Indeed, proponents of U.S. democracy promotion, like the well-known commentator Thomas Carothers, have argued that “U.S. democracy promotion must be made less America-centric” to counter its growing crisis of legitimacy.25
Neil Burron is a Ph.D. candidate in the political science department at Carleton University. His dissertation provides a comparative analysis of U.S. and Canadian democracy promotion programs in Bolivia, Haiti, and Peru.
1. Michael Coppedge, “In Defense of Polyarchy,” NACLA Report on the Americas 40, no. 1 (January/February 2007): 36–38.
2. All of the declassified documents and project documents are available on Bigwood’s website, boliviamatters.wordpress.com.
3. Eva Golinger and Jean-Guy Allard, La Agresión Permanente (Caracas: Ministerio del Poder Popular para la Comunicación y la Información, 2009).
4. D. Antonio Velásquez Espejo, “EEUU Armo Aparato de Analisis Financiero Para Conspirar Contra Estabilidad Economica del Pais,” Ciberandes.com, August 30, 2007.
5. “USAID Contrato a Politicos Neoliberales para Conspirar Contra Evo,” Agencia Boliviana de Información, September 9, 2008.
6. Natural Resources Canada, “Overview of Trends in Canadian Mineral Exploration 2007,” June 4, 2009
7. CIDA, Bolivia Country Program Evaluation: Executive Report (Gatineau, Quebec: November 2007).
8. Vladimir Torres, “The Impact of ‘Populism’ on Political, Social, and Economic Development in the Hemisphere,” FOCAL, July 2006; Thomas Legler, “Bridging Divides, Breaking Impasses: Civil Society and the Protection and Promotion of Democracy in the Americas,” FOCAL (May 2006).
9. Willem Assies, “Bolivia: A Gasified Democracy,” Revista Europea de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe 76 (April 2004): 25–43.
10. See CIDA’s Disclosure of Grant and Contribution Awards over $25,000 at acdi-cida.gc.ca/acdi-cida/contributions.nsf/rprts-eng?readForm.
11. See Development and Peace reports, Support for the Democratization of Development: 2003–2006 and Integrated Program 2006–2011: Building More Just and Equitable Communities.
12. Nancy Romer, “Interview With Former Bolivian Justice Minister Casimira Rodríguez,” nacla.org, September 1, 2008.
13. Merike Blofield, “Feudal Enclaves and Political Reforms: Domestic Workers in Latin America,” Latin American Research Review 44, no. 1 (2009): 158–190.
14. CPESC, “Public Denouncement: Assault, Looting, and Destruction of the Headquarters of the Indigenous People of Santa Cruz-Bolivia,” Ukhampacha Bolivia (Santa Cruz de la Sierra), 2008.
15. CIDA, “Democratic Governance in the Americas: Canada’s Role,” November 23, 2007.
16. OAS, Informe de la Misión de Observación Electoral sobre el Referéndum Revocatorio del Mandato Popular celebrado en Bolivia el 10 de Agosto de 2008 (CP/doc. 4429/09, September 1, 2009).
17. CIDA, Hydrocarbon Regulation (Gatineau, Quebec: December 23, 2009).
18. CIDA, Programming Framework for Bolivia (2003-2007) (Gatineau, Quebec: 2007).
19. CIDA, Project profile for Electoral Observation Mission—Recall Referendum (Gatineau, Quebec: December 23, 2009); OAS, Report of the Electoral Observation Mission in Bolivia Presidential and Prefects Election 2005 (Washington: May 8, 2009).
20. “El Gobierno y Organizaciones Sociales del Pacto de Unidad en Campaña por el Sí a la Nueva Constitución,” Rebelión, May 3, 2009.
21. Americas Policy Group, What Role for Canada in the Americas: Statement of the Americas Policy Group, April 15, 2009.
22. Government of Canada, Government Response to the Eight Report of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development: A New Focus on Democracy Support, 2007.
23. John Ivison, “Funding for Leftist Group to Be Cut,” The National Post (Toronto), December 5, 2009
24. See Haroon Siddiqui, “Stephen Harper’s Homegrown Human Rights Problem,” The Toronto Star, January 24, 2010.
25. Thomas Carothers, Repairing Democracy Promotion (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, September 14, 2007).
