Sarah S. Bush, “The Taming of Democracy Assistance: Why Democracy Promotion Does Not Confront Dictators” (Cambridge UP, 2015)

Sarah S. Bush is the author of The Taming of Democracy Assistance: Why Democracy Promotion Does Not Confront Dictators (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Dunn is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Temple University.

Bush’s book examines the assortment of strategies countries use to promote democracy abroad. She tracks a change in strategy over the last several decades that are increasingly compatible to existing regimes. Rather than the approaches taken in the 1980s, which often threatened regime change, more recent attempts to spread democracy have become much tamer. The turn to non-governmental organizations to deliver these programs has changed the nature of democracy assistance. The book ends with two interesting illustrative case studies drawn from Tunisia and Jordan.