EIU, Spread of Democracy Has Halted

EIU’s second annual democracy index concludes, unsuprisingly that the spread of democracy has halted. Their index has more statistical detail than Freedom House…have a look

Addressing the democratic recession

CDACS Executive Director Barak Hoffman and I have a draft paper online.

Abstract

According to Freedom House, the number of electoral democracies has declined for three years in a row. This is the first democratic recession since the end of the Cold War. The decline, in part, stems from the policies of the Bush Administration as well as from incomplete democratic transitions. It is also the result of deliberate reforms to strengthen authoritarian regimes. Unless the Obama administration addresses the causes of the democratic recession by focusing more attention on the difficulties of democratic consolidation, it is likely to deepen.

Obama on Democracy Promotion

In Strasbourg, France today, President Obama gave a Town Hall style meeting. Among the many interesting questions was one about Obama’s strategy to help people living under autocratic regimes, victims of human rights abuses, and those living in poverty. I couldn’t find a video clip, but here is a section of the transcript:

Q Thank you, Mr. President. I’m a student from Heidelberg, Germany, and — (applause) — my mother tongue is German, but my French is not good enough, so I ask my question in English.

You mentioned in your speech that we are a lucky generation. We live in peace, we live in democracies and free states, and we really — we are very pleased to have this situation in Europe. But this is not the case all over the world, even not in Europe. Look to Belarus, for example; there’s an autocratic regime.

And so my question concerns the many children all over the world that live in poverty, under human rights violation. They have hunger, they have no education, and other problems. So what is your strategy, Mr. President, to solve this problem?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, it’s an excellent question, and the — first of all, I think one of the things that we should be very proud of from the G20 summit yesterday was that we made a significant commitment to additional resources through the IMF and other mechanisms to provide assistance to emerging markets and poor countries that, as I said, are bearing the burden of a collapse in the financial system that they had nothing to do with.

The problem is so many of these countries had export-oriented markets, and when the economies contracted in our developing nations, it made them extremely vulnerable. You know, you have a country like Botswana, which is actually a well-managed country that has made enormous progress, but their main revenue generator is diamond sales, and they have literally seen the diamond market collapse — in part because they couldn’t get trade financing, in part because the demand in developed countries has dropped off. So we started to make progress there. Our most important task right now is helping them get through this crisis.

Over the long term, though, we’ve got to have a strategy that recognizes that the interest of the developed world in feeding the hungry, in educating children, that that’s not just charity; it’s in our interest. There’s not a direct correlation between poverty and violence and conflict and terrorism. But I can tell you that if children have no education whatsoever, if young men are standing idle each and every day, and feel completely detached and completely removed from the modern world, they are more likely, they are more susceptible to ideologies that appeal to violence and destruction.

If you have no health facilities whatsoever in countries in Africa, these days a pandemic can get on a plane and be in Strasbourg or New York City or Chicago overnight. So we better think about making sure that there are basic public health facilities and public health infrastructure in those countries, because we can’t shield ourselves from these problems. So that means developed countries have to increase aid, but it also means that the countries who are receiving aid have to use it wisely.

My father was from Kenya. And when I traveled to Kenya — I had just been elected to the United States Senate — everybody was very excited and they greeted me as if I was already a head of state, and there were people waving and lining the streets. I went to speak at a university and I had to be honest, which was, America has an obligation to provide Kenya help on a whole range of issues, but if Kenya doesn’t solve its own corruption problem, then Kenya will never grow. It will never be able to provide for its own.

And so there’s nothing wrong with the developed nations insisting that we will increase our commitments, that we will design our aid programs more effectively, that we will open up our markets to trade from poor countries, but that we will also insist that there is good governance and rule of law, and other critical factors in order to make these countries work.

We spend so much time talking about democracy — and obviously we should be promoting democracy everywhere we can. But democracy, a well-functioning society that promotes liberty and equality and fraternity, a well-functioning society does not just depend on going to the ballot box. It also means that you’re not going to be shaken down by police because the police aren’t getting properly paid. It also means that if you want to start a business, you don’t have to pay a bribe. I mean, there are a whole host of other factors that people need to — need to recognize in building a civil society that allows a country to be successful. And hopefully that will — that approach will be reflected not just in my administration’s policies but in the policies that are pursued by international agencies around the world. Okay, good. (Applause.)

While it took him a few minutes to get to the D-word, President Obama’s response shows his nuanced view of U.S. democracy promotion and the recognition that there is more to democracy than voting. Hopefully President Obama and the future administrator of USAID remain committed to developing accountable democracies in countries that receive foreign aid and making aid programs more effective.

Australian political party assistance under fire

According to the National Audit Office (ANAO), Australia’s main political parties – Liberal and Labor – have run shoddy overseas party-building programs.

ANAO’s report argues the three year old Australian Political Parties for Democracy Program needs clearer lines of accountability and more M&E. The parties have not always used funds as promised in grant applications, according to ANAO. The audit further recommended “a performance measurement framework combined with public reporting of the extent to which the Program is meeting its objective of ‘strengthening democracy internationally.’”

ANAO’s report is critical of the program’s organizational structure in general and the process by which it was set up.

The overall program can receive up to $2m annually. Since 2005, the parties have spent $3m of a disbursed $4.2m.

The program is not related to the Australian Electoral Commission’s election assistance work, which gets most of its money from non-governmental sources.

h/t to Rick Hasen for pointing out the Australian Democratic Audit.

Democratic “Delivery”

David Ignatius has an interest story today about the “fake war” on the crisis.  He chastises Congress for talking a lot about the “crisis” but then acting as if nothing had changed.  Partisans are partisans and everyone is sure to return home on Friday to tout how much they’ve been “working”.

The key quote for people interested in democracy promotion comes at the end:

What will happen if Obama’s efforts fail? That’s the question that really worries me when I remember my history. During the 1930s, European politicians failed to solve the economic crisis through normal democratic means. So the public turned elsewhere. People became so angry with bankers and business tycoons, and with the bickering parliamentarians, that they turned to authoritarian leaders who promised national action — in the form of fascism. That nightmare scenario may seem far off today. But there’s an ugly mood developing, as people start looking for villains to blame for the economic mess.

We at Democratic Piece have been talking about the problem Ignatius mentions for a while: essentially, if democratic governments fail to solve the economic crises affecting their nations around the world, people will reject the system.

Ignatius’s warning that in the U.S. we might turn to non-democratic leaders is in my opinion mostly hyperbole.  We might allow our government to expand its powers but I do not believe we’d ever turn to authoritarians or strong-men. I might be wrong, but it’s my opinion about the American polity.  However, the democratic institutions that affect our behavior are much stronger here, where we have a 250+ year experience with democracy.  In a Ukraine, on the other hand, with less than a decade of experience with democratic institutions, it is not so far-fetched to argue that people might turn their backs on democracy.

After all, of all the systems of government in the world, democracy requires the most participation and support from society.  We must remain involved in politics, we have to vote and we have to be vigilant of our rights.  If a people feel that all their vigilance and activity yielded a government incapable of dealing with a crisis that affects the majority of their population and destroys their wealth and livelihood, why not turn against it (or stay at home) in hopes of finding a government that can actually govern?  As Huntington once wrote, it is governance that distinguishes political systems in the modern era.

We must also remember, other countries live in much more “dangerous” neighborhoods.  We don’t have a Russia or an Iran or a Venezuela breathing down our necks attempting to exert their influence and undermine democratic institutions.

From a policy standpoint, we should not make it easier for the Russias, Irans and Venezuelas.  We need to financially and technically support young democracies facing hard times to ensure they weather the storm and maintain their credibility.  We need to help democratic governments prove to their populations that democracy was worth fighting for and is able to handle serious crises. We might not be able to “convert” other governments to democracy, but we can definitely help those that are already democratic stay that way.

A New Foreign Assistance Strategy

The MacLeans article, cited in an earlier story, presents the argument that perhaps the U.S. should focus democracy assistance on democratic countries facing problems as opposed to authoritarian governments that we want to become democratic.

The author writes:

[James] Traub believes democracy can be nurtured, however, which is why he says the democratic world would make better use of its time and resources by strengthening and consolidating feeble democratic states, rather than trying to bring democracy to outright dictatorships. Georgia and Ukraine, for example, should be supported and protected from Russian machinations. Trying to establish a pro-democracy NGO in North Korea, on the other hand, would be a waste of time.

I tend to agree with Traub.  It makes more sense to use the limited democracy assistance funding available to support democracies with problems (Ukraine) than it does to fund NGO’s in socieities such as North Korea.

Right now, with the economic downturn threatening the legitimacy of many democratic governments (since legitimacy in democracies tends to come with service delivery and improvements in standard of living), it is important for the larger democracies of the world to fill in the shortcomings of newly democratic governments until they are back on their feet.  Doing so might just help consolidate democracy in those countries.

More Friday humor

From The Onion, an interesting take on political reform.

Sudan Passes Campaign-Finance Reform
[...]
“It is not fair that certain individuals vying for the presidency should hold a large advantage over others,” said Sen. Nyala Uwayi (L-Atbara), co-sponsor of the Khandaq-Uwayi Campaign Finance Act. “Why should I have a better shot at becoming president just because I have twice as many AK-47 Kalishnikov assault rifles as my opponent? In a fair system, everyone should have the same chance to seize power.”

This operates on many levels. I leave interpretation to the beholder.

Failing to Meet Expectations

The NYT carried a story about Ukraine’s economic collapse and the results for Ukraine’s young democracy.

Basically, the economic collapse, coupled with the inability of the political system to effectively deal with rising unemployment, rising debt obligations, inflation and bank runs, has disillusioned Ukrainians.  One Ukrainian stated, ironically standing in the same place where the Orange Revolution began, that: “There will be a revolt,” he said. “And people will come because they are just fed up.”

The problem for democracy promoters is that the Ukrainian people blame the political system – the democratic political system – for their current predicament.  As the artcle makes clear, Ukraine’s proximity to Russia makes the crisis, and the subsequent loss of government legitimacy, more worrisome as Russia will undoubtedly seek to take advantage of any opportunity to undermine the pro-Western, democratic government on its doorstep.

Finally, the situation highlights the need for democracatic systems to overcome partisan divides and provide tangible  improvements in their citizens’ lives.

Update   I felt Jack’s comments should be highlighted as he raises a good point:

And, in the interim, the need for the old democracies’ heads of state to pressure Ukranian leaders to stick with democratic institutions through the crisis.

Obama drops democracy. Or does he?

Saturday’s NY Times piece is causing a stir. These snippets capture the essence:

[Obama's] Inaugural Address a few days later was a sharp contrast from Mr. Bush’s four years ago. Where Mr. Bush called the spread of freedom the central goal of American policy, Mr. Obama made just passing reference to those who silence dissent being on “the wrong side of history.” Indeed, his secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, outlined a policy of the “Three D’s” — defense, diplomacy and development. The fourth D, democracy, did not make the list.

And:

To many Democrats, [democracy promotion] ought to be lower on the agenda. America should not lecture others, if only because quiet diplomacy may work better, they argue. In this view, the whole focus on elections, particularly, is misplaced when so much of the world is suffering from poverty, hunger and disease. Mr. Obama seems to side with that point.

Going by the quotations, many in the democracy business are concerned that Obama’s foreign aid approach will emphasize AIDS, cholera and mosquito nets in rural Zimbabwe, for instance, over political reform in the capital city Harare. We cannot reject the possibility, however, that this is a recalibration of democracy assistance in light of new challenges.

The Third Wave has crested. As measured by Freedom House, the number of democracies in the world has declined for the third year in a row. Just as Huntington identified reverse waves of dictatorship following each of the first two democratization waves, we appear to be in the midst of a third reverse wave.

At a symposium held jointly by IFES and Georgetown last December, several experts and practitioners discussed the challenge and how to respond.¹ In sum, authoritarian leaders have become more sophisticated in the means by which they maintain power. They back each other in multilateral institutions like the UN, support each other with bilateral aid and share best practices on stymieing opposition without resort to naked repression.²

These manifestations of reversal call conventional democracy assistance methods into question. Conventional democracy assistance refers to the usual programs: political party development, NGO development, election assistance, training journalists, et cetera. It is important to note that, most often, these programs require permission from host governments. Broadly speaking, from the perspective of promoting democracy, there are three kinds of countries:

1) New democracies where underdevelopment poses a latent threat to the legitimacy of democratic institutions. These states represent the Third Wave’s most stable gains. These are the countries with leaders most amenable to democracy assistance. Therefore they can benefit from it most. At the same time, persistent underdevelopment combined with the current financial crisis means these regimes are at risk of losing performance legitimacy. Frustration with democracy’s perceived inability to solve complex social problems can make non-democratic ‘solutions’ palatable to populations. So development assistance and governance reform are as important as democracy promotion in these cases.³

2) Weaker democracies whose leaders are ambivalent about democratic institutions. The number of regimes in this category is shrinking, most recently with the exits of Venezuela and many Central Asian states. Now Pakistan and Ukraine are at risk. In these countries, leaders may tolerate democracy assistance programs, but pressure at the top to respect democratic institutions is more likely to produce results. Likewise, development assistance is important for building bottom-up demand for institutions of limited government.

3) Closed regimes. These are countries where leaders do not tolerate democracy assistance at all (North Korea) or only to the point where an opposition might win an election (Egypt, Morocco). There is little sense in running programs to build opposition – that is, conventional democracy assistance – when leaders are unwilling to transfer power after a free and fair election. In these cases, combined pressure at the top and development assistance are jointly more important than conventional democracy assistance.

Gone are the days of smooth transitions. Most of those happened in Eastern Europe. Three factors explain much of their success: post-Soviet window of opportunity, strong incentives for economic and political reform and concerted, high-level pressure to effect it. The last two factors resulted from European Union expansion. The EU unfortunately does not exist in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America or Eurasia. The challenge, then, is to replicate elsewhere the conditions that advance political liberalization, free markets and more equitable distributions of wealth.

If the above is correct, Obama’s recalibration is not based solely on a widely recognized need to tone down democracy rhetoric. It reflects recognition that, in today’s political landscape, conventional democracy assistance is insufficient for consolidating and ineffective at creating democratic gains. Perhaps we are moving toward the unification of democracy and governance assistances with a dose of incentives to liberalize. In light of that possibility, it is worth revisiting a line from the President’s inaugural address:

To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

1. The causes of democratic breakdowns are multiple and beyond the scope of this short blog post.
2. Several means have been covered on this blog. See our tag on authoritarian upgrading.
3. Paradoxically, however, these states get the least democracy assistance. States in the other two categories get more.

The Future of Democracy Promotion

Yesterday’s New York Times ran a story by Peter Baker about the new administration’s approach (thus far) to democracy promotion.  Anyone in the democracy promotion business – or those interested in starting in that business – would do well to read it.

Simply put, the author suggests that the Obama administration is “demoting” democracy.

While many of the practitioners interviewed for Baker’s piece worried that Obama might write off democracy promotion, most of them agreed that we need to lower our profile, so to speak.  Thomas Carothers, who is releasing an article soon (for those interested in such happenings), expresses the sentiment well for the practitioners when he writes,

“Caution and moderation on democracy promotion are very much in order, including a careful post-Bush process of repair and recovery,” he wrote. “At the same time, however, President Obama and his foreign policy team should not, either explicitly or implicitly, embrace a broad realist corrective.”

It seems what most practitioners worry about is a “realist” backlash, whereby we remove democracy promotion from our foreign policy, on account of the hangover we worked up from eight years of an often hypocritical democracy promotion agenda.

Jennifer Windsor, assistant director at Freedom House, also captures the mood of democracy promoters when she says,

“The challenge for the Obama team is to find words and concepts that enable the administration to distinguish itself from the Bush administration, but not to downgrade support for democracy and civil and political rights,” she said. “So far, I haven’t seen them even try.”

It’s too early to pass judgment but so far it seems the administration is, understandably so, putting democracy promotion on the back-burner while they attempt to save the economy (oh, and Pakistan and Afghanistan).  It will be interesting to see how they Obama-ize democracy promotion abroad.