Manal Jamal’s Promoting Democracy attempts to turn the consensus on foreign aid—particularly Western and US aid—on its head. The author argues that foreign aid does not cause antidemocratic outcomes; instead, it plays a mediating factor. According to Jamal, the more accurate causal story is that it is the degree of inclusion within the postconflict political settlement that determines how foreign aid affects subsequent state–society relations in recipient countries. Jamal uses the cases of Palestine following the first intifada (or uprising) and of El Salvador after the Salvadoran civil war in 1992. She focuses on the women’s sectors as a microcosm of how aid functioned in both cases and how the inclusive or non-inclusive nature of the political settlement changed how this sector operated. In these two main cases, she provides a meticulously detailed look at women’s groups and the nature of aid, relying on extensive fieldwork and more than 100 interviews with members of these organizations. In other parts of the book, Jamal expands the scope of her focus and also addresses labor organizations, how foreign aid functions more generally, and the application of her argument to other cases of inclusive versus non-inclusive political settlement (South Africa and Iraq).

This book is a useful addition to the literature on foreign aid and international intervention more broadly in the Global South and should appeal to those with a specific interest in the main cases of Palestine and El Salvador. The outlining of definitions in chapter 1 is a particularly helpful resource to students and new scholars interested not only in the impacts of foreign aid but also in the concept of civil society and how we distinguish it from political society. Moreover, Jamal’s detailed analysis of foreign aid effectiveness is an important contribution; her takeaway that aid focused on local governance initiatives and economic development is more useful than aid that broadly addresses democracy promotion and professionalization of civil society is a significant result, one that both scholars and practitioners should consider.

Throughout the book, Jamal also notes the geopolitical conditions that facilitated specific aid objectives in Palestine versus those in El Salvador and affected the relationship of these recipient countries to Western donors. She argues that whereas the end of the Cold War changed the nature of Western—and specifically US interest in El Salvador, opening up space for local agency and more inclusive political development, the situation in Palestine was quite different. Palestine’s unique position in relation to US and Israeli security interests meant that, to foster a political settlement that upheld the “post–Cold War liberal order,” Western intervention and aid had to facilitate exclusionary practices. The author notes, “The West and many dominant political groups embrace the notion of democratic governance that is based on exclusion” (p. 15).

This acknowledgment of the very different geopolitical space that each country occupies complicates Jamal’s argument a great deal. The reader would benefit from having these differences explained in more detail. Why did the end of the Cold War facilitate a sort of withdrawal of Western intervention in a case like El Salvador but greater, more politically motivated intervention in a case like Palestine? One can think of a few explanations—including the importance of the Middle East region to US hegemony—but it would have been useful for the reader to see how the author clarifies these issues and accounts for them more explicitly in her theoretical argument. The causal graph (on p. 8) that summarizes Jamal’s argument does not take into consideration this apparently very important antecedent variable, which seems to be determining why Western intervention varies across cases.

Moreover, this issue complicates the causal story. There is a great deal of evidence one can draw from the book that supports the notion that Western intervention in fact determined the nature of political settlement and the degree of inclusivity, rather than simply played a mediating factor after the fact. For instance, on the one hand (starting on p. 98) Jamal notes that the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization—emerging out of secret negotiations backed by Western powers—had deliberately excluded certain segments of the opposition forces, as well as parts of the PLO itself. Western powers only elevated those groups and actors within the Palestinian political sphere who were willing to concede on certain issues in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. This set the conditions for the exclusionary system of governance that followed in the Palestinian territories. In that way, the political settlement that emerged had a divisive impact on Palestinian political groups.

In contrast, Western intervention during the postconflict time period in El Salvador did not affect the inclusivity of the political settlement. Subsequent foreign aid to the country was quite different than that for Palestine: it was not only lower in amount but also much more nonpolitical in its objectives. The key difference between the two cases seems to be the geopolitical considerations of Western powers, in particular the United States. Preventing possible Soviet allies from coming to power in El Salvador was no longer a priority for the United States after the fall of the Soviet Union, whereas the centrality of Israel in US foreign policy continued.

It would also have been useful for Jamal to explore how the nature of conflict in the two main cases affected the type of political settlement that emerged. In El Salvador, the political settlement ended a civil war between two parties with ideological and class differences. In Palestine, the political settlement was intended to end a national liberation struggle between an Indigenous population and an occupying force—but this process was never completed. The role of Israel was not tangential but rather was a key complicating factor in how dynamics played out in terms of democratic accountability. For example, concerns over Israeli security prompted exclusion both in the original peace accords and in subsequent developments in Palestinian politics, including most starkly the overturning of elections when the Islamist party Hamas won in 2006. Thus, the two cases differ dramatically not just in the dependent variable/outcome but also in key independent variables: primacy in US/Western foreign policy and type of conflict. Both variables affected subsequent conflict and policies of exclusion. This complicates the argument further: it becomes difficult to disentangle which variables are actually doing the work in the causal argument, given the plausible alternative explanations that are unaccounted for.

Nevertheless, Jamal’s cross-regional comparisons are a very useful contribution and a crucial starting point for further study of foreign aid and its impacts. Often, political science studies with a focus on the Middle East do not attempt to generalize the lessons learned from the study of the region and engage less with the broader discipline. Jamal’s contribution here is commendable for using cases from different regions and attempting to bring the Middle East into conversation with the larger subfield of comparative politics. Her generalizable argument, together with the rich detail of her case studies, makes for a thought-provoking read and will surely generate future inquiry.