Notes by Panel Chair Bernard Wood
Panel on “Democratic development in different contexts: challenges,
opportunities and lessons learned”
Dialogue on Canada’s Approach to Democratic Development
Ottawa, 15 February 2007
“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
Tolstoy’s aphorism from the opening words of Anna Karenina is still as charmingly
irreverent as it ever was. But, of course, it falls down, because if one looked carefully,
there was never the expected long parade of monotonously happy families to be found.
The same is true of societies. All are unhappy - although to vastly differing degrees because the work of managing human cooperation and conflict is endlessly difficult and
imperfectible. Democratic politics is a messy work in progress, always and everywhere.
Starting from that enduring proposition, our discussion comes at a time of swirling
trends, counter trends, and events that make it difficult to assess the global state or
direction of democratization, and even more difficult to prescribe. As a small illustration,
over the weeks I have been incubating these comments, I have been in Mexico,
Canada, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand and India as well as several Western European
countries. Making sense of both recent events and longer-term trends and issues in
even this range of countries is truly intimidating, and the sample is small and far from
globally representative.
Both the flow of events and the literature in this field constantly challenge
generalization, to the point that a purely case-specific approach is tempting. But such an
approach in fact merely tends to obscure the implicit assumptions that everyone brings
to each case. Therefore in this brief paper I propose to make the foolhardy attempt to
test what we have actually learned and may be able to agree upon as starting points. I
will put forward a number of propositions about democratization and development that
reflect my understanding of points of possible agreement. If they are in fact generally
accepted by the diverse group assembled in this forum. Our discussion can be
launched from a slightly higher platform. If some of these points remain controversial
among us, they may offer some useful points for discussion. Perhaps they will have no
berraing on the issues that people are keen to discuss.
As an opening point, I will mildly criticize the sequencing of our panels, beginning with
the record of international democracy promotion, and then coming to our discussion of
countries in different situations. The basis for my criticism is my first proposition:
1. Too much of the writing, thinking and attempts to promote the linkages
between democracy and development has focused on the perspectives and
efforts of the industrialized countries, and particularly of the United States. My
criticism of the agenda is a mild one, because I trust that our sister panel will already
have begun to redress some of these imbalances, and that our panel will anyway have
the further chance to do so if required.
Having stressed that this discussion should not be “all about us” in the industrialized
countries, I will briefly recount some direct, and I think instructive, experience from my
involvement with the early efforts of the donor countries collectively to come to grips
with the interfaces between governance and development cooperation.
In the early 1990s, as the aid donors began debating these linkages, I was heading the
secretariat of the OECD DAC, the forum of donors - all established democracies where these debates took place. They were vigorous and complex debates. Most
member-countries were distinctly uncomfortable with too-activist an approach to the
political dimensions of development, and some with any explicit an approach at all.
Some were very concerned with what they saw as ideological and culturally-insensitive
undertones of the advocacy - we need only recall the ferocious “Asian values” debates
of the time. Meanwhile, still others were acutely sensitive to recent and recurring
instances of glaring gaps between pro-democratic rhetoric and ruthless realpolitik in the
behavior of a number of major donor countries. Some were insistent on starting from the
base of internationally-enshrined human rights, others pressed l’etat de droit as the
starting-point, while the ends of the spectrum saw forceful advocates of liberal
democracy ranged against those of “political non-interventionism.” Crudely simplified
notions of “conditionality on aid” further complicated the picture.
Working by consensus among 22 member-countries, we had to struggle to get any
mandate to pursue this work, and when we did, it had to navigate very carefully and
skillfully through the minefields of our members’ strongly-held differences to arrive at the
DAC Orientations on Participatory Development and Good Governance in 1995 and
further work in 1997, and a succession of further products after that. Human rights,
participatory development and good governance were the best entry-points, the first
because of their established universal legitimacy, and the latter two because of their
indisputable connection to performance in economic and social development.
One criticism sometimes made was that the “participatory development/good
governance” approach was something of a “cop-out,” attempting to treat ultimately
political issues as a set of administrative or technical challenges. There may have been
elements of truth to this at time, but there is no question that it has provided a basis for
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impressive forward movement by the whole international community, in policy and
action. It must also be said that one key to the way ahead, among these seasoned aid
practitioners and diplomats from the Western democracies, was always to challenge
and strip away slogans - which tended to overblown rhetoric and missionary zeal – and
probe always for the functional elements of development at work. The term “democracy”
was used, but sparingly, and its use was always carefully measured.
By 2006, we have reached a point where the UK Government has compellingly hinged
its whole new White Paper on Development and Development Cooperation on the
Governance linkage to development and poverty reduction, African Governments are
submitting themselves to peer review of governance and other aspects of performance,
and the whole international community is pushing further into the neuralgic issues of
corruption than would have been thought possible a decade ago, as well as working
constructively on the full range of other governance questions. My second proposition
flows in part from this brief history.
2. For once and for all, it is important to get beyond “sectarian” arguments and
build a synthesis of approach and strategies to advance economic and social
development and democracy in tandem. The disputes between the “development
community” and the “democracy community,” or between champions of electoral
assistance, human rights, or strengthening the rule of law are, like most such schisms,
completely mystifying to non-adherents to any of the sects, who rightly see all of them
as extremely close in their basic aims. The evident fact is that all these elements need
to come together and reinforce each other, with their combinations and sequences
dependent on particular situations. While Amartya Sen, in dismissing the old question of
whether countries were “fit for democracy,” may have overstated the case that they will
become “fit through democracy” there is ample evidence that these pillars can reinforce
each other powerfully. Presumably it is a key part of the vision and mission of the
Democracy Council of Canada to build these bridges in Canadian efforts, and we must
hope that it succeeds.
3. The essential attributes of democratic governance have in effect become a
universal expectation and yardstick. Under appropriate conditions and barring further
monstrous blunders, contrary interpretations of “Muslim values” or other bases for
exceptionalism to this standard can be overcome by appropriate experience and
adaptation, as is happening with the “Asian values” argument. However, it is sobering to
note that it probably took the shock of the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s to give
a real foothold to these standards of transparency and accountability in a good number
of East and Southeast Asian countries.
4. Sponsorship and history matter. The concrete example of freedoms in Western
countries is a far more effective propagator of democratization than any amount of
pressure or missionary activity by these countries. Aggressive advocacy can in fact be
counter-productive, stirring resistance and re-kindling memories of past and recent
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inconsistencies by the West. Even responsive assistance in these areas requires great
discretion and sensitivity.
5. Elections and formal institutions are not enough. While technical and formal
institutional arrangements can make important contributions to effective
democratization, they must be underpinned by the spread and absorption of democratic
civic values (e.g. of constitutionalism, citizenship and participation, probity and
accountability) and attuned to political realities.
6. Sustainable democratization requires parallel progress on expanding equity
and opportunity, as well as participation, to give all a sufficient stake in the
democratic project. The failure to deliver tangible benefits and opportunities to
widening numbers, together with glaring or growing disparities, can lead to loss of trust
in democratic politics and/or the election of demagogues prepared to sweep aside
constitutional processes and guarantees. As Plutarch wrote, “An imbalance between the
rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.”
7. Limits on the scope and role of the State are essential to sustaining democratic
politics. Quite independent of the efficiency and other arguments for a market economy
and circumscribed roles of the State, experience has shown the need to carefully
insulate wide areas of individual and community life from the domain of political
intervention and decision. Where such limits have not been recognized and protected,
politics has too often becomes a “winner takes all” contest in which opposition is delegitimized and the livelihoods and very lives of defeated politicians are at stake, with
the logical consequence that they will do virtually anything to avoid defeat. One related
proposition relates to the growing understanding of the healthy discipline of taxation as
a part of a “social contract” that must be negotiated between the State and citizens and
interest groups, in the process often strengthening both their ownership and the
accountability of the governors. The dangers of resources coming into the hands of
governments without such disciplines – often resource rents and, under some
conditions, foreign aid – are increasingly being recognized.
8. Healthy democratic politics are not utopian, but anti-utopian. Never forgetting
that the utopians of the twentieth century were its leading totalitarians and mass
murderers, it is important to keep in mind that the paradoxical nobility of democratic
politics is its ability to encompass and accommodate imperfect human beings and
societies. Democratisation must by definition be an enormously long, complex and often
seemingly chaotic historical evolution. As Bernard Crick, the British MP and political
scientist, long ago demonstrated, a functioning democracy is an eternal bazaar of
different values and interests, never entirely secure from human vices, but ultimately
bounded by some conception of civic virtues.
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It is hoped that these scene-setting remarks by the chair may do something to help
launch the panel discussion and to start mining the deep and diverse experience of the
eminent panelists. But we most look forward to the reflections of the panelists
themselves, covering a wide array of countries facing different types of challenges, and
from their personal experience, sometimes on the very front lines. Taking into account
the discussion in the earlier panel on international involvement, the panelists will be
asked to offer several key reflections or lessons for Canada.
Finally, almost any aspect of these topics can rapidly become controversial, often
passionately so. No matter how careful a definition is offered of the terms of
democratization and development, they are simply too totemic and too loaded with
competing values, cultures and vivid past and present baggage to either be avoided or
corralled. So I propose that we simply accept the fact of volatility and approach the
topics with an honest recognition that we probably all carry deep and universalistic
assumptions and preferences about them, and then see what we can learn from each
other. Of course, the passion should in no way be surprising, because in the modern
world these two movements, and their antitheses, have become the arenas for
struggles over the both the basic ends and the basic means of human societies.
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