The Concept of Democratic Consolidation : A Tool to Aid Actors with Democracy Assistance?

This paper tries to answer the question whether the concept of democratic consolidation can help external actors in the field of democracy assistance in fragile democracies to analyze and modify (or improve) their programs aiming at a consolidation of democracy? Using the concept of consolidation by Wolfgang Merkel as a tool for the analysis, the case of German organizations in Sri Lanka is studied – more precisely the state of consolidation in Sri Lanka, the work of the organizations and how they target at the problems of consolidation. The result is that to a certain degree the concept of consolidation can be a helpful tool for the analysis of the state of democracy in a country, for mapping projects of external actors roughly within the system of democracy and for modifying the programs of the actors.