Daniel Nowack is a researcher at the German Institute for Development and Sustainability (IDOS), working in the research programme 'Transformation of Political (Dis-)Order'. In his capacity as researcher at IDOS, he provides evidence-based policy advice to national governmental agencies and to international organizations as well as conducts his own original research. He works on topics of democratization and autocratization as well as social and cultural change. He is particularly interested in democracy promotion and support which describes how democracy can be protected and nurtured through international (development) cooperation. His research furthermore focuses on how changes in values and attitudes influence democratization and autocratization and vice versa. He holds a doctoral degree from the University of Heidelberg.

Policy project: Rethink democracy support: Towards a policy of mutual learning

Currently democracy support in international development cooperation is a one-way street, in which donor states 'transfer' democratic practices to recipient states.
However, this practice of democracy support faces a legitimacy challenge: First, even though there is an increase in people-centered and co-creation approaches, and although the epistemic community agrees that democracy support needs contextualization, democracy support still remains very 'directional'. Second, increasing democratic backsliding and erosion in established democracies damage the reputation and legitimacy of democracy support by conventional donor states.
Hence, what is needed is a way to better contextualize democracy support while also contributing to democracy protection in conventional donor states. One (first) step to remedy the situation is to create a policy for mutual learning in democracy support programming. According to such a policy, donor and recipient agencies and organizations would jointly draft a democracy support programme which is then implemented in both countries, and afterwards a joint evaluation would generate lessons-learnt. To implement such a policy of mutual learning, we need to rethink the current structures of how democracy support is done.