Tying International Aid to Free Elections Is Key to Promoting Democracy in Egypt

Newswise — Hein Goemans, coauthor of the forthcoming book, Leaders and International Conflict (Cambridge University Press, 2011), is available to discuss how international aid can help to promote democracy in Egypt and other counties that have experienced a military coup.

Although military takeovers have a nefarious tradition of installing brutal dictators, tying international aid to free elections helps to promote democracy after a coup, says Goemans, an associate professor of political science at the University of Rochester.

Goemans and Yale political scientist Nikolay Marinov have studied all 233 military takeovers worldwide since 1960 and found that during the Cold War, “almost all forceful seizures of power resulted in the military keeping power to themselves.”

But from 1991 to 2004, after the demise of the Soviet Union, three out of every four military takeovers led to free elections, the research showed.

What caused this radical reversal?

Goemans and Marinov say that the United States, Britain and the European Community have more consistently linked international assistance to democratic elections. This critical change has created a systematic trend in which recent coups tend to lead to elections and do so sooner rather than later.

Explicitly tying international aid to free elections also has led to a reduction in military coups in the first place. For example, in 2004 there were just 21 countries headed by leaders who came to power during a coup, half the historical peak of 42 in 1976.

The findings, says Goemans, point to the critical role that the international community can play in supporting democracy in Egypt and other countries emerging from an irregular transfer of power.

“The countries most susceptible to military coups are frequently the most dependent on international aid. By requiring competitive elections as a condition of that aid, the international community can go a long way toward making the ballot box, not force, the norm,” says Goemans.