| Summary: | Several international actors have been engaged in democracy promotion initiatives devoted to supporting and
assisting democratisation reforms. Various projects were implemented to assist political parties in societies in transition.
In this paper, I will integrate the debate concerning political party aid with the international dimensions of
democratisation and theories of cooperation. This is motivated by the fact that most research on the development of
political parties and party systems in transitional societies is still very much concentrated on internal factors, neglecting
the intervention and the potential impact of democracy promotion initiatives. I begin with a clarification of the main
concepts in discussion, followed by a critical assessment of the theoretical approaches proposed in the literature,
focusing in the impacts for societies in transition. I argue that disaggregating democracy aid into its components is a
more promising analytical strategy. In terms of donors’ strategies, two tendencies emerge clearly: there is a preference
for the model of influence by consent and a tendency to formulate linear assumptions on the attitudes and strategies of
the actors in the recipient country.
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