Stephen D. Krasner
52 «¬® ̄°±² ³««³°® ́
THE SWEET SPOT
American naiveté about the likelihood o
creating wealthy democratic states has
been based on a widely held view o
development and democracy known as
“modernization theory.” This theory holds
that wealth and democracy can be at-
tained relatively easily. All that is neces-
sary are population growth and techno-
logical progress. Greater wealth begets
greater democracy, which in turn begets
greater wealth. I countries can ¥nd the
¥rst step o the escalator, they can ride it
all the way to the top. Yet modernization
theory has a conspicuous failure: it
cannot explain why consolidated democ-
racy has emerged only very recently,
only in a small number o countries, and
only in certain geographic areas.
U.S. leaders have also been inu-
enced by a second perspective on devel-
opment, one that emphasizes institutional
capacity. They have usually assumed that
rulers in poorly governed states want to
do the right thing but fail because their
governments do not have the capacity to
govern well, not because the rulers want
to stay in power. But theories that stress
institutional capacity fall at the ¥rst
hurdle: they cannot explain why leaders
in most countries would want to act in
the best interests o their populations
rather than in their own best interests.
U.S. leaders would be more successful
i they adopted a third theory o devel-
opment: rational choice institutionalism.
This theory emphasizes the importance
o elites and stresses that only under
certain conditions will they be willing to
tie their own hands and adopt policies
that bene¥t the population as a whole.
The sweet spot, in which the govern-
ment is strong enough to provide key
services but does not repress its people,where for the past two decades, the
United States has sought to curb violence
and drug tra¾cking by providing ¥nan-
cial aid, security training, military
technology, and intelligence under what
was known until 2016 as Plan Colombia
(now Peace Colombia). The results have
been remarkable. Between 2002 and
2008, homicides in Colombia dropped
by 45 percent. Between 2002 and 2012,
kidnappings dropped by 90 percent. Since
the turn o the century, Colombia has
improved its scores on a number o
governance measures, including control
o corruption, the rule o law, govern-
ment eectiveness, and government
accountability. That progress culmi-
nated in 2016 with a peace deal between
the government and the guerilla move-
ment the «³®Å (Revolutionary Armed
Forces o Colombia).
Yet despite Plan Colombia’s success,
it has not transformed the country.
Violence has declined, but Colombia is
not yet on the path to becoming a
consolidated democracy. A narrow elite
still dominates the country. Colombia’s
high economic inequality has not
budged. Elections matter, but they serve
mostly to transfer power from one
segment o the ruling class to another.
Colombia’s elites accepted intrusive
U.S. assistance not because they were
committed to making the country a
consolidated democracy but because, by
the 1990s, violence in Colombia had
reached such an extreme level that the
country was near collapse. Without U.S.
help, the elites would not have been
able to maintain their position. Plan
Colombia provides both a model for U.S.
intervention elsewhere and a sobering
reminder o the limits o change that
can be brought from the outside.