Does International Moral Suasion Influence Democratic Development? The Nobel Peace Prize and Political Reform in Burma and East Timor

The Nobel Peace Prize can be viewed as an instrument of international moral suasion. This article asks how much, if at all, the Prize encourages authoritarian regimes to liberalize when awarded to dissident democratic activists. Using comparative case analysis of Burma and East Timor, it studies patterns in media coverage and in sanctions and aid policies imposed on the two countries ’ regimes by important international actors. The Prize awards seem not to have encouraged political liberalization in any obvious way. They did raise international awareness of the two countries ’ situations, but did not clearly increase outside pressures on the regimes. Key Words: Nobel Peace Prize; Moral suasion; Liberalization; Democratization; Burma; Myanmar; East Timor; Timor-Leste. Democratization has often been considered a largely internal affair. But in a world in which state boundaries appear increasingly permeable, international influences on democratization seem more significant than ever. This article examines one potential international influence on democratic development: the awarding to dissident democratic activists of the Nobel Peace Prize. Studies of international influences on democratic development have increased in recent years. For the most part, however, such studies have focused on how states or international organizations have used particular democracy promotion policies (Carothers 1999; Burnell 2000