Sarah Sunn Bush is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Temple University, Philadelphia and a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Her research focuses on democracy promotion, non-state actors in world politics, and gender and human rights policy, and has been published in several journals, including International Organization and International Studies Quarterly. Dr Bush was the 2014 winner of the Deborah Gerner Grant for Professional Development.

• Part I. Introduction and Argument: 1. Introduction; 2. The argument: structure, agency, and democracy promotion; 3. Tame democracy assistance: what it is and why it matters; Part II. Testing the Argument: 4. Delegation and the allocation of democracy assistance; 5. Changes in American grant-making; 6. Creating the democracy establishment; 7. Jordan: aid in the shadow of geopolitics; 8. Tunisia: reform after revolution; Part III. Conclusions: 9. Should democracy promoters be set free?; Part IV. Appendices and References: A. Descriptions of categories of democracy assistance; B. List of interviewee affiliations; C. Major organizations in the democracy establishment; D. Data appendix.

'The Taming of Democracy Assistance is an impressive 'whodunit' that is an original contribution to the study of democracy assistance and an important statement on the lifeworlds of global NGOs. When rounding up those who might have tamed democracy assistance, the usual suspects are donors, who have the financial power to tell NGOs what to do and not do, and authoritarian governments, who have the power to keep democracy-promoting NGOs in their place and the motivation to do so. Although their fingerprints are at the scene, according to Bush, these NGOs are responsible for their own domestication. Worried about their own survival, they played the game in ways that kept their programs open and the money flowing in. And the very professionalization of the sector introduced a more technocratic, means-oriented expert class that lost the big picture.' Michael Barnett, George Washington University, Washington DC