New Multilateral Democracy Initiative Announced

In an unprecedented display of cooperation, a new multilateral democracy initiative was announced on Monday that has the potential to fundamentally change the way democracy assistance is approached by both national and international donor organizations.  The Partnership for Democratic Governance (PDG) is a joint venture aimed at supporting new or fragile democracies, as well as states emerging from conflict, by building governance capacity and especially at improving service delivery to the countries’ citizens.  What makes the PDG remarkable are the partners themselves, which include both donor countries and international and regional development institutions, all of which have until now worked independently of each other in promoting democracy and governance in the developing world. 

The founding members of the PDG are Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Denmark, Japan, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, Turkey, the United States, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Organization of American States (OAS), and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).  All of these members have pledged to work together to further their mutual goals of promoting democracy and governance (though I was unaware that DG work was a high priority for Turkey, Mexico, or Poland).  The plan is to use the new PDG to better coordinate international assistance given to developing states by allowing its operational arm, the PDG Advisory Unit (housed at the OECD), to conduct assessments and recommend particular countries that have specialized knowledge or experience in dealing with challenges faced by particular developing countries.  In addition, the PDG is intended to coordinate the focus of the international community on countries with problems of particular slaience by using the considerable combined clout of the partner countries and organizations.

The bottom line – if this works, it has the potential to drastically increase the efficiency and effectiveness of democracy and governance assistance.  There are two caveats, however, that I feel should be mentioned: 1) the PDG can only provide assistance to countries whose governments officially request it, and 2) will non-PDG santioned democracy assistance activities still be allowed in countries that have requested PDG assistance.  The first caveat will obviously prevent PDG activities in many of the countries that need democracy and governance assistance the most, which the second one could have serious effects for NGOs and foreign-funded civil-society organizations working in countries that then decide to assert some control over democracy-related assistance efforts in their country by applying to the PDG for help.  They then have more control over the money tap, as well as an excuse to restrict the activities of non-sanctioned organizations.

Fundamentally, the PDG is a new template for providing democracy assistance with great potential, but also with some potential drawbacks.  As it begins to develop its Assistance Unit and review requests for aid, we will get a better picture of how well this new template will work.

Aussie diplomat named new head of UN Democracy Fund

Australia’s Foreign Minister released a statement last week announcing that long-time diplomat and democracy advocate Roland Rich has been appointed as the new Executive Head of the United Nations’ Democracy Fund (UNDEF), and is expected to take up his post early next month.  Mr Rich was the founding director of Canberra’s Centre for Democratic Institutions, and has 30 years’ experience in diplomacy and international law.

In an interview released today by Radio Australia, Mr. Rich characterizes the somewhat controversial UNDEF as working “at the level of the people of a nation, not at the level of international relations,” in response to a question regarding the recent use of democratic rhetoric as a political and diplomatic weapon by China, among other savvy, non-democratic states.

It remains to be seen how effective the UNDEF will become under Mr. Rich, who sees the main challenge for the Fund as effectively using “the legitimacy that the UN brings to be involved in countries where bilateral democracy promotion projects are finding it difficult to be effective.”  Given that these countries will also be sovereign members of the U.N., and will most likely resist any international efforts for reform, the challenge Mr. Rich identifies could be a great one.  Despite these serious challenges, however, the UNDEF represents a welcome alternative to the current perception of democracy promotion as an American enterprise, or even as a pet project of President Bush.  Hopefully the UNDEF under Mr. Rich will indeed be able to bring the substantial legitimacy offered by the United Nations to bear on states that have to date been recalcitrant political reformers.