Democracy as a Prerequisite for Development? -seminar notes by Päivi Kuusela
International Democracy Support Keynote by Thomas Carothers, Vice-President for Studies, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, USA

The seminar was organized by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland and Political Parties of Finland for Democracy (Demo Finland) on Thursday, September 16th, 2010. I attended the seminar hoping to obtain a good overall assessment of the state, role and possibility of international democracy support today. The keynote by Thomas Carothers provided this, as well as excellent insight into the role of authoritarian developmental models as related to international democracy support. The other speakers of the seminar were Secretary of State Pertti Torstila (Ministry), Ambassador for Human Rights and Democracy Sauli Feodorow (Ministry), Executive Director Sari Varpama (Demo), Chairperson Anna Abdallah (Tanzania Women Cross-Party Platform), Hiranya Joshi (Joint Student and Youth Platform Nepal), Executive Director Roel von Meijenfeldt (Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy) and distinguished panelists.

In Carothers view, international democracy support is in a difficult situation; it is ”at a pause”. Yet, although within the core of the community there are doubts as to whether we have been doing the right thing these years, on the edges of the community – for example in Asia, democratic support is growing. As examples Carothers gave the Korean Foundation for Democracy and the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy. He is wary of the usage of ”developmental models” as they are in the end based on very particular cases, and the contexts of each and every country are always unique. Carothers made the observation that the China model is not taking hold elsewhere, and looks much more insecure when seen from the inside (Carnegie Beijing office).

There is a new era between Washington and Europe in democracy support and there is much interest to finding methods of cooperation. Carothers feels that in global action, the EU overrates consensus on basic values. This is related to the question of whether democracy should be a part of EU strategic partnerships. For good reason, there are many policy-elites in the developing world who are wary of alignment and cross-border policies; instead, they emphasize sovereignty. The Obama administration does understand that there are different kinds of democracy in the world; it is not just about American democracy (democracy as freedom), but also about justice et cetera. Recently, the administration has been reconsidering whether to emphasize democracy or not. There has been a cautionary note to action in matters relating to global re-engagement, when dealing with parties who do not agree with everything, for example, with China. Democracy has been more in the sidelines, and instead common interests have been the basis for building relationships.

The keynote contained excellent insight on the role of democracy in nation-building and in developmental states. In the end, a state is about the relations of the power holders and its citizens. What is key is creating this inter-relationship, that is, the relation of the state to its society. The recipe for this is pluralism added to accountability, added to openness (free media).

Finally, on lessons learned in democracy support, Carothers gave the example of failed US projects in Iraq. Only now are the local political elites negotiating; many of the US projects did not have local roots, thus huge amounts of finances were washed away. Carothers does feel that we should not pull back too far on international democracy support. To his mind this is more a pause than a retreat of democracy. Despite the challenges, there are good news also in Latin America and Africa. It is good to hope for democracy, but the key problem of today is emphasis on geo-political power instead of principles.

Päivi Kuusela