As noted above, it has become fashionable among political scientists
to speak of “autocracy promotion” as a kind of symmetrical opposite of
democracy promotion. But the taste for equivalence so common among
Western scholars turns misleading here. These two phenomena are not
equal, and this is not because we like democracy more. What we vaguely and generally call “autocracy” is usually a kind of default setting, a
historically entrenched way of ruling in countries that traditionally lack
power centers capable of offsetting whoever holds executive authority.
In other words, most autocratic behavior is homegrown and not an import: There is no need to “promote” it from abroad. As a rule, democracy
is a novelty that has to be introduced in defiance of local resistance; autocracy is something that is already there, and only has to be maintained.
In uncertain and hybrid regimes, autocratic behavior is also a matter of
old habits, even if superficially transformed, that might or might not be
replaced by new democratic norms, institutions, and practices. These
innovations may indeed benefit from some foreign help. But what is
countering them is democracy resistance, not autocracy promotion.