In the late 1980s/early 1990s the EU started to purse a new policy: that of democracy promotion. It quickly put in place a whole range of instruments that would facilitate the transition to democracy and its consolidation in new democracies. Democracy assistance has over the last two decades, due to its 'positive' features, increasingly emerged as one of the EU's preferred instruments of that policy, expressed in particular in increasing budgets for democracy assistance programmes, new democracy assistance facilities, and explicit policy declarations on the topic. This thesis outlines and analyses the EU's strategy of democracy promotion through the use of democracy assistance from its inception in the early 1990s until 2011, focusing on all major world regions except the enlargement dimension. While revealing numerous details on the strategy, it attempts to also answer the following three more fundamental questions: What is the EU's underlying conception of democracy? What is its preferred model of democratization? And what is its preferred approach to democracy assistance? In looking for answers, the thesis first traces the emergence and evolution of the use of EU democracy assistance, revealing major developments, stumbling blocks, and key features of the policy tool. A discussion of primary law traces the partly difficult development of EC/EU competences to engage in democracy promotion and especially assistance as well as the limited role primary law plays in policy implementation. An outline of the procedural and institutional dimension investigates the role of core actors in policy-making and implementation, including EU institutions, civil society organizations, and third state governments. Further, the thesis provides detailed quantitative data on EU commitments and expenditure under its specific democracy assistance programme - the EIDHR - as well as under mainstream assistance programmes and analyses the thematic and geographical distribution of provided funds.