More people are fooled when that which is promoted is called democracy than perhaps by any other name. North Korea, for example, is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, or DPKR. (See North Korea - Democracy Web, CIA Wolrd Factbook - North Korea, or Wikipedia - North Korea. Focus groups know this well (See How democracy turns out : Focus groups and polling or Democracy Corps - Focus Groups).

This article from Russia Today includes videos and provides a good, lengthy read on the topic.
Democracy promotion: America’s new regime change formula
Nov 18, 2011 Last edited: Nov 23, 2011

Snips:

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... " Congressman Ron Paul once wrote "It is particularly Orwellian to call US manipulation of foreign elections 'promoting democracy.' How would we Americans feel if for example the Chinese arrived with millions of dollars to support certain candidates deemed friendly to China?"

" “I think it’s terrible, we use taxpayer’s money to go over and use our military and the CIA these programs that say ‘this is what you outta do’ and influence them. There is no authority for that, it doesn’t work, it teaches a lot of people to despise us,” Congressman Paul told RT. "...

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..." Democracy, US-style, doesn't come cheap. Most of the money flows to forces in line with US interests. Washington has spent a far amount of money spread democracy worldwide.

" “We’re talking here about hundreds of millions of dollars, and over the years since this policy was consolidated, we’re talking about billions. The State Department will have an appropriation of several billion dollars for what it called the Office of Transition Initiatives. The Congress will have an appropriation hundreds of millions of dollars for the National Endowment for Democracy, USAID will have its own budget as well,” said Robinson.

" Over the past two decades, USAID has spent 9 billion dollars promoting Washington’s democracy initiatives.

" The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) received $132 million dollars during 2009; nearly all of the money came from U.S. government agencies.

" However, USAID and NED are not the only ones. There is an entire network of organizations involved in the democracy promotion business such as the National Democratic Institute (NDI), the International Republican Institute (IRI), and the American Center for International Labor, the Center for International Private Enterprise and Freedom House.
" But these are just the tip of the iceberg. There’s an entire network of organizations involved in the democracy promotion business." ...

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