Since the turn of the century, the struggle for democracy in Latin America has entered a new period. With the shift to the left across the region, the model of liberal, market-oriented democracy is increasingly contested, as are North American policies aimed at consolidating a regional order ‘predicated on neoliberal economics and low-intensity democracy’ (p. 2). In The New Democracy Wars, Neil A. Burron analyses the ways in which the United States and Canada have dealt with this challenge in their democracy promotion policies. He does so from a critical perspective that is informed by neo-Gramscian international political economy and, in particular, by William I. Robinson's Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, United States Intervention and Hegemony (Cambridge University Press, 1996). In updating Robinson's landmark study on US democracy promotion in Latin America, Burron's analysis reveals how far-reaching shifts in domestic and regional power relations are increasingly limiting the ability of the United States (and Canada) ‘to intervene in the affairs of the Americas’ (p. 55).

Following a brief introduction, Burron starts by outlining the historical and theoretical background of his study. The author traces the evolution of US and Canadian democracy promotion in the Americas, develops a typology of political approaches to democracy promotion and introduces his theoretical perspective, which understands democracy promotion ‘as a modality of power intended to secure a hegemonic vision of regional order predicated on neoliberal polyarchy’ (p. 38). Chapter 2 analyses the overall changes and continuities in US and Canadian democracy promotion since 2000, focusing on democracy assistance (that is, democracy promotion by means of foreign aid programmes). During the presidency of George W. Bush, the US administration combined ‘a strategy of regime change [intended] to reverse the threat posed by the radical left in Haiti, Venezuela and Bolivia’ with an attempt ‘to stabilize allies’ (p. 65). Under the Obama administration, resistance against US interference across the region made the former strategy of destabilising ideological enemies increasingly unfeasible, and US democracy assistance thus increasingly focused on strengthening allied governments. In the case of Canada, Burron detects a gradual convergence with the United States at the expense of the ‘human internationalist’ tradition in Canada's development cooperation (p. 31). Under the Liberal governments of Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin, Canada adopted ‘a more instrumentalist approach to democracy promotion based on its security objectives and support for free markets’ (p. 52). The Conservative government of Stephen Harper then directly attacked ‘the autonomy of more progressive NGOs delivering democracy assistance’ (p. 54), increasingly replacing Canada's grassroots and rights-based tradition with a policy in line with the interests of Canadian mining companies.

The following three chapters deepen the analysis with a view to three countries that have been important targets of North American democracy promotion activities. Haiti represents a country in ‘perpetual political crisis’ (p. 6), in which ‘neoliberal polyarchy’ was never established in any reasonably stable way. In this context, both the United States and Canada ‘intervened on behalf of the country's unpopular elite to prevent a rupture with the established order and to assist them in the ongoing task of imposing neoliberalism by force’ (p. 8). This explicitly included a policy of undermining the Aristide government. Peru, by contrast, ‘provides a case study of how democracy promotion operates on friendly terrain’ (p. 6). Peruvian governments have consistently respected and even furthered US and Canadian interests, including the administration of the current president, Ollanta Humala. Bolivia, finally, shows ‘how US democracy promotion can switch from “soft” to “hard” tactics depending upon the shifting balance of power between contending social forces’ (p. 8). Prior to the election of Evo Morales in December 2005, ‘both Canada and the United States sought to stabilize the neoliberal state’ (p. 120), though with different strategies. With Morales in power, the United States shifted ‘to a strategy of regime change through a decentralization programme designed to empower regional prefects as a counterweight to the MAS and left indigenous social forces in the eastern lowlands’ (p. 120). Canada did not follow the US lead in the case of Bolivia, and in fact ‘Canadian organizations provided assistance to progressive NGOs and social movements with mass social constituencies’ (p. 141).

In the concluding chapter, Burron briefly summarises his main argument that North American democracy promotion is less concerned with ‘the lofty and idealistic aims evoked by its discourse’, but rather aims at ‘securing stable social orders in a context of neoliberal regionalism’ (p. 142). With a view to the future of North American regional policies, Burron argues that an increasingly multipolar hemisphere will continue to impose constraints on both the US exercise of hegemony and Canada's ‘attempts to leverage its status as a middlepower to legitimize Pax Americana’ (p. 144). This provides space for radical governments, even if it is far from guaranteed that such governments will actually break with neoliberalism and seriously attempt to deepen democracy.

This is a well-written, accessible book which in an admirable way is broad in scope (empirically and theoretically) and short in number of pages (148, excluding the bibliography). The strong points of the book are the twofold comparative design (two democracy promoters, three target countries) and the embedding of the case studies in a larger theoretical and regional argument. The case studies also contain important empirical insights into contemporary practices of North American democracy promotion, in particular with a view to the much less studied case of Canada.

Given that the book does so much in so few pages, there are inevitably some issues that would deserve a more thorough treatment. For instance, Burron's field research-based case studies reveal quite a few facets of North American democracy promotion that do not sit easily with the rather clear-cut Robinsonian argument. In the case of Haiti, Burron finds that Canadian NGOs ‘were not merely carrying out the state's agenda’; it was rather their alignment ‘with their counterpart Haitian NGOs, who were largely disillusioned with the Lavalas government and remained detached from the popular movement’, which helps explain their support for the toppling of Aristide (p. 68). In the US case, he writes that ‘the local elite [in Haiti] and their Republican allies in Washington remained viscerally opposed’ to Aristide, although the latter ‘had implemented most of the neoliberal reforms demanded by the international financial institutions’ (p. 68). In both instances, North American policies were apparently much less driven by cool-headed strategic reasoning on behalf of some overarching capitalist interests than the neo-Gramscian argument would suggest. How the overall strategic logic of democracy promotion emphasised by Robinson and Burron is realised (or not) through the multiplicity of organisations and individuals involved in the democracy aid business would clearly deserve a more detailed empirical analysis and a more nuanced theoretical reflection.

Also in the case of Bolivia, North American democracy promotion proves more complex than a mere extrapolation of Robinson's argument would suggest. Canada's relations with Bolivia remained remarkably friendly, and even US ‘regime change’ policy was fairly moderate when compared to the history of US Latin American policy. For instance, US support for the opposition autonomy movements in Bolivia's lowland departments, as reported by Burron, consisted of official development aid for the departmental governments and a visit by the US ambassador to the governor of Santa Cruz, Rubén Costas. Not too ‘hard’ a tactic, if judged by historical standards, and certainly nothing worth calling a ‘democracy war’.