DEMOCRACY PROMOTION UNDER AUTOCRATIZING STATE RESTRICTIONS. A Comparative Study of INGO Democracy Promotion in Türkiye and Georgia

Abstract: International non-governmental organizations (INGOs) are central actors within international democracy promotion. By not being formally state-affiliated, these actors have many advantages in furthering democratic developments around the world. Meanwhile, following current autocratization trends are increasingly restrictive operating environments for democracy promoters. Previously open countries are now increasingly closing themselves off as part of a broader autocratization trend across many states targeted for democracy promotion. This poses several challenges to democracy promoting INGOs, not least in relation to how this may affect their programs to further democratization in increasingly restrictive target states. This thesis builds on previous literature in proposing a theoretical model that outlines how increasingly restrictive operating environments in autocratizing states lead to political compromises in the democracy promotion strategies of INGOs. In utilizing this model, this thesis compares two target states diverging on recent autocratization trends, Türkiye and Georgia, for their respective impacts on INGO-led democracy promotion programs. By interviewing INGO personnel active with democracy promotion in Türkiye and Georgia combined with a document analysis of INGO documents, this thesis investigates whether democracy promotion in Türkiye as a highly autocratizing state has led to more politically compromised democracy promotion strategies when compared to operations in a non-autocratizing state such as Georgia. It is found that INGO democracy promotion strategies indeed have been compromised to a certain degree in autocratizing target states. However, the analysis also shows that the specific ways in which this occurs depends on a number of other factors, such as organizational mandates, different impacts on INGOs and their partner organizations, varying state restrictions within target states etc. Such findings provide contributions for potential future research on international democracy promotion.