Inside this Issue:

• Democratic Imperative and “Civilian Surges” Endure, Despite Backlash
• ‘Unapologetic Autocrats’ Foster Democratic Downturn
• Authoritarians More Confident, Pro-Active, …
• Russia’s Neo-Soviet System – Robust, But No Model
• Iran’s Dissidents – Resilience vs. Repression
• Tehran’s Neoconservative Regimes Clamps Down as Elections Loom
• China’s (Unofficial) Labor Movement Emerges
• Pakistan’s Civil Society – Starved of Funding, Hungry for Change
• Arab Democracy – Rulers Resist, Democrats Persist, the West Desists?
• Arab Reform – A Prelude to Democracy or Stagnation?
• Upgraded Arab Authoritarianism – Represses, Redefines, Co-opts Reform Agenda
• Arab Democracy – “If Not This, Then What?”
• Democratic Development – Still The Best Long-Term Bet

See Also:

• News
• In Brief
• Resources
• Opportunities
• Events

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Democratic Imperative and “Civilian Surges” Endure, Despite Backlash

Differences over Iraq or Afghanistan should not “obscure our national interest, never mind our moral impulse, in supporting movements for democracy,” British foreign secretary, David Miliband, insisted yesterday. But, he cautioned, the emergence of China means that the world can no longer take "the forward march of democracy for granted", while noting that even autocratic regimes seek “a veil of legitimacy” by claiming to be democratic.

Spreading democracy should “combine both soft and hard power”, he said, arguing that differences over the most appropriate or effective approaches should not detract from the democratic imperative. “We should not let the debate about the how of foreign policy obscure the clarity about the what, ” he said. “Civilian surges” for democracy, like the Burmese monks’ protests, should be unequivocally supported.

He called for the EU to engage more actively in promoting democracy beyond its immediate neighborhood. The foreign secretary also stressed the importance of consolidating fragile democracies, citing Paul Collier’s suggestion that security guarantees offered to new and fragile governments, conditional on adherence democratic rules, would create a strong incentive to abide by the democratic process.

Miliband’s is the latest contribution to a growing debate about democracy promotion as a foreign policy objective and reflects concern at the pause in democratic advances occasioned by the authoritarian backlash. “For a time, democracy enjoyed an aura of inevitability. “No longer,” former US secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright recently warned. “The more democracy is challenged, the more its champions must insist on its validity as the best system of government humans have devised,” she urged.

It is imperative that the backlash against democracy promotion – wrongly conflated with Iraq – not go too far, says one analyst. “Historical events usually throw up people who will push for political freedom at crucial moments,” notes Gideon Rachman, and “they deserve the strong support of the outside world.”

Western disillusion with democracy promotion is also fed by a sense of cultural relativism and post-colonial guilt, often heard in the refrain that “It is not our right or responsibility in the democratic West to impose democracy upon them.” Yet polls consistently show that democracy remains the single most popular form of government, especially among those – from whatever region, culture, religion or ethnicity – to whom it is denied.

The institutions and mechanisms required to resolve peacefully conflicts of interest and to change a government “may take different forms, according to local cultures and conditions,” notes Ian Buruma. “But they can all be adequately described by one word, which has been much abused of late, but still has enough power left to inspire, in Beijing and Rangoon no less than in Barcelona or Washington DC: democracy.”

“Representative government with multiple parties will generally produce superior governance to dictatorships and one-party states, where rent-seeking behaviour is generally unchecked by free political opposition,” says Niall Ferguson. Corruption is invariably worse – and more economically distorting – in non-democracies which is why, “if they remain one-party states, China and Russia will sooner or later stumble and fall behind the democratic tortoises, Brazil and India.” The key to spreading democracy, he says Niall Ferguson is to generate self-enforcing rules, “so that the more they are applied, the more respected they become, until at last they become inviolable,” a process which is feasible in any culture.

The extent to which democracy promotion should be a cornerstone of US foreign policy is the focus of a new report from the Congressional Research Service. The CRS discusses definitions of democracy, costs and benefits of democracy promotion, problems of evaluating impact, and surveys US Government engagement in the field. It draws a helpful contrast between low cost-low risk programs which are welcomed by recipient states; medium cost-medium risk efforts on, for example, post-conflict stabilization; and high cost-high risk-high stakes cases to foster democratic transition in authoritarian states or closed societies.

The CRS report discusses the dilemma of promoting democracy in authoritarian states which are, for strategic or other reasons, US allies. This dilemma is easier to address than resolve, but government officials should at least adhere to three key precepts in relations with non-democratic regimes: no whitewashing their record on democracy and human rights; no silence on coups, human rights violations, or other anti-democratic measures; and no exclusivity, as the US should engage with dissidents and civil society groups in addition to allied governments.

Many Europeans expect a new US Administration to usher in radical changes in foreign policy. But they will discover democracy promotion will be the one factor that has not changed in US foreign policy, says French analyst Francois Heisbourg, even if it assumes “a more humane and multilateral face…than seen in the heyday of neo-conservatism.”

President George W. Bush was right to stress the US commitment to spreading freedom, Peter Beinart concedes. But the recent State of the Union speech confirmed that “by providing no conceptual framework except democracy-promotion, he found himself with no language for discussing U.S. policy toward authoritarian powers that we cannot realistically isolate”. The speech mentioned Sudan, Zimbabwe, Belarus, and Burma, but ignored Russia and China. If democracy promotion alone determines the foreign policy framework, “countries weak enough to pressure are worth discussing [while] countries too powerful to pressure, by contrast, must be ignored lest they expose the limitations of the theme.”

‘Unapologetic Autocrats’ Foster Democratic Downturn

The past year saw a “notable setback for global freedom” according to the new Freedom House survey, a decline that affected an ominously large number of politically significant states, including Russia, Pakistan, Kenya, Egypt, Nigeria and Venezuela. The study highlights the negative influence of regionally powerful autocracies on smaller states as “a particularly worrying phenomenon,” citing Russia’s impact in Central Asia and interference in Georgia and Estonia; Iran and Syria’s support for anti-democratic forces (of which this week’s assassination of Hezbollah operative Imad Mughniyeh offers a timely reminder; and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s attempts to export Bolivarian socialism.

The most significant trends underlying the decline include diminishing freedom of association, weak governance, Islamist extremism, and “a resurgence of pragmatic, market-oriented or energy-rich dictatorships.” The latter are “unapologetic and increasingly assertive,” not least in seeking to undermine international norm-setting bodies like the UN Human Rights Council and the OSCE.

Freedom House rejects the authoritarian rationale that diluting democracy represents an assertion of sovereignty against outside interference, observing that the main targets of repressive policies are domestic democracy advocates. “Even as autocrats fine-tune the mechanisms of repression and control,” the report notes, such activists continue to furnish “impressive and inspiring examples of resistance,” citing the Venezuelan students’ campaign against Chavez’s proposed constitution, Iranian dissidents, Pakistan’s lawyers, Chinese bloggers and legal advocates, Zimbabwean trade unionists and Bangladeshi students.

In the wake of the color revolutions, notes Freedom House director of studies Chris Walker, authoritarian regimes realized that they could defer or postpone democratic transition by systematically impeding opposition organizations, communications, and coordination. The non-Baltic former Soviet Union has become one of the world’s most freedom-deprived regions, he said at the report’s Washington, DC, launch.

New democracies’ problems of consolidation reflect the genuine difficulties of entrenching democratic institutions in countries lacking a history or culture of freedom and pluralism, said Arch Puddington, Freedom House director of research. But history suggests that a strategy of patiently maintaining practical and material solidarity with democratic forces would ultimately “pay off further down the road.”

Authoritarians More Confident, Pro-Active, …

The backlash against democracy has gone beyond the administrative obstacles, legislative constraints and sporadically repressive actions designed to impede or frustrate independent civil society and, in particular, democracy assistance activity. Authoritarian regimes are becoming more vocal, aggressive and confident in seeking to represent alternatives to a Western model of political development.

These were some of the insights of a recent transatlantic seminar on “Countering Anti-Democratic Strategies” organized by Freedom House and Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty. Russia, Iran, and China featured as case studies of regimes currently “intensifying the use of modern technology and marketing insights to monopolize political debate” and to restrict international broadcasters, NGOs, and other groups supporting freedom of expression and democratic values.

The backlash is taking place on at least three levels: the operational, through a range of restrictive measures from constraints on NGOs to internet jamming and filtering; the ideological, with authoritarians framing new arguments and promoting fresh rationales within and beyond their borders, distorting and diluting democracy in the name of sovereignty; and, at the strategic level, a still inchoate but emerging authoritarian axis encompassing a range of regimes, from China’s Market Leninism to Russia’s “sovereign democracy,” that are viewed or projected as a developmental alternative to Western models.

It is well-known that Russia, for instance, has impeded the work of democracy and human rights groups through bureaucratic intervention, aggressive financial scrutiny and more traditional forms of harassment, as well as through a selective law enforcement which sees NGOs prosecuted for using black market software routinely used even in state agencies. But the Kremlin has also been increasingly sophisticated and effective in successfully marginalizing and discrediting opposition groups, promoting regime-friendly GONGOs like the Public Chamber.

The Kremlin has also encouraged a particularly nasty strain of nationalism, the seminar heard, blending xenophobia, Soviet nostalgia (a majority of Russians consider Stalin did more good than bad) and “hyper-sovereignty.” Its political technologists disseminate their messages through aggressive “social marketing,” using Web-based and other forms of sophisticated communications and marketing which far eclipse the amateur efforts of opposition NGOs.

The success of Putin’s broad antidemocratic counterrevolution is striking, says Sergei Kovalev, a human rights activist and former Gulag prisoner. “We could not imagine that…the words ‘democracy,’ ‘pluralism,’ ‘multiparty system,’ and ‘human rights’ would be used as obscenities by Russians.”

Among the false assumptions about authoritarian regimes, one panelist argued, is the notion that they seek to impose a single party line. In fact, there is a degree of constrained pluralism within regimes like Russia, China and Iran. Civil society is accorded some political space and a degree of dissent is permitted, if only to facilitate monitoring, provide a safety-valve for discontent and concede the freedoms a modern economy demands.

Much international democracy assistance, once so promising, is often inappropriate, one panelist claimed, reflecting the concerns of Western donors and their NGO partners rather than genuine public grievances, while many local democracy and human rights NGOs are little-known and ineffective. Recent surveys suggest that while 65% of respondents knew and were supportive of the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers, only 22% knew Memorial and less than 10% recognized the Moscow Helsinki Group.

Russia’s liberal opposition is small, elitist and doesn't understand the society’s “new conceptual vocabulary.” As one activist conceded, “civil society is minuscule and…we all know each other.” The opposition’s democratic discourse is associated with the humiliation and crises of the 1990s while a “demographic crisis” within the leading groups reflects their ageing leaderships’ failure to attract younger activists. A current academic analysis argues that Russia’s new social movements are insufficiently networked and tend to replicate the prevalent hierarchical and authoritarian model of other organizations. But, democracy assistance practitioners countered, new, younger groups are emerging and forging links to currently inchoate but nevertheless publicly assertive protest groups among drivers, soldiers’ mothers and labor unions.

Yet, the discussion concluded, authoritarian regimes are ultimately fragile, lacking the institutional flexibility and “release valves” required to accommodate change, especially when economic crisis hits. China, for instance, faces “economic, financial, social and political landmines,” with rising social inequality, greater than in the U.S. or Russia, placing “enormous strains on the political system.”

… and Internationally Assertive

These regimes are no longer exclusively restrictive or repressive, but becoming increasingly proactive in generating what one panellist called new “ideological constellations,” not least through aggressive networking, both through the internet and through more formal structures, including cross-border groupings like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. While China and Russia’ relationship remains “ambivalent,” there are “striking similarities between the maturing ideological foundations that underpin Russia’s and China’s respective outlooks.” It may, however, be premature to speak of an emerging authoritarian axis.

Authoritarian regimes are also undertaking soft power offensives internationally, as reflected in China’s network of Confucius Institutes, overseas propaganda drive and development projects in sub-Saharan Africa, and the Kremlin’s establishment of "democracy institutes" in Brussels, Paris and New York. The latter’s independence and credibility are, of course, questionable. "An extensive number of independent NGOs and news media are already scrutinizing the activities of United States and EU governments," says Christopher Walker, Freedom House director of studies. "Such scrutiny is no longer the case in Russia where they have been systematically sidelined."

Russia is having a greater impact on international human rights structure than the reverse, another panelist noted, referring to the regime’s success on the UN Security Council in vetoing action on Darfur and Burma, and in undermining the work of the OSCE and ODIHR. “The rise of Putinism has been felt acutely in the countries on Russia’s borders, where the Kremlin is exerting political and economic pressure on a set of vulnerable post-Soviet states,” notes Walker and Robert Orttung. It would be surprising if it were otherwise given the "strong correlation between the regime’s domestic ideological priorities and policies on the one hand and its behavior in the world on the other."

Similarly, China’s success in negotiating a path to modernity, generating growth and stability without conceding political freedom, represents the "most serious challenge that liberal democracy has faced since fascism in the 1930s." But, even in a regional stronghold for dictatorships, China’s appeal is limited. There is no clamour in Africa for the Chinese model of authoritarian capitalism, according to a recent account.

But analyst Andreas Goldthau cautions against exaggerating Russia’s energy-based leverage, particularly in its foreign policy, highlighting five myths of resurgent Russia. It is a myth that Russia has an energy weapon, as with only 25 percent of oil production in state-controlled firms, the Kremlin has a limited ability to wield oil and gas instrumentally; Russia is not an energy power, as huge investment shortfalls make it is questionable whether it can even maintain its current position, let alone increase market share; the economic recovery is not due to high gas and oil prices but to increases in domestic consumption and investment; there is no emerging resource-based Sino-Russian alliance since neither will subordinate geo-economic interests for geo-strategic advantage; nor is Gazprom an instrument of the Kremlin: recent gas disputes are essentially about profits, not politics, as Gazprom tries to compensate for a loss-generating domestic market.

Russia’s Neo-Soviet System – Robust, But No Model

"Old malice bites the air/Old ravings rave again" wrote Anna Akhmatova, Russia’s "voice of memory," in her classic Poem Without a Hero. Her words have a disturbing resonance when strident neo-Soviet rhetoric is again emanating from the Kremlin.

Russian president Vladimir Putin has described the Soviet Union’s collapse as the greatest geo-political tragedy of the 20th century, and many of his colleagues seem committed to restoring at least some of the trappings of communist rule. "Over the last decade, the siloviki waged a "quiet cultural counterrevolution" with tremendous effect," notes RFE/RL’s Victor Yasmann. "They worked to systematically devalue and compromise liberal values, standards, and institutions – values that had massive public support in the early 1990s," using state-controlled television, pro-Kremlin intellectuals, the Orthodox Church, and pseudo-independent organizations.

Lilia Shevstova believes "strengthening authoritarian trends…have put Russian liberals and democrats in a painful dilemma, one seemingly without a solution: either to preserve the role of the systemic opposition and take part in public politics, including elections, or to shift to the role of radical, anti-systemic, and anti-regime opposition, without the hope of a role in public life."

Yet the Kremlin’s political technologists have drawn on popular resentment and anxieties, on Soviet nostalgia and nationalist sentiment, and brilliantly adapted them to create a compelling narrative, says Sergei Kovalev. "The ideological ingredients of Putinism existed in the consciousness of a part of the population long before Putin’s rule; his "team" transformed them into usable modern propaganda and aggressively rebroadcast them to the whole country."

Democrats urgently need to develop a concise hard-hitting narrative alternative to the Kremlin line which promotes, through snappy if sinister short films, Putin’s authoritarianism as Russia’s salvation. This should be facilitated by the fact that, as a recent analysis of the myth of the authoritarian model suggests, "the data simply do not support the popular notion that by erecting autocracy Putin has built an orderly and highly capable state that is addressing and overcoming Russia’s rather formidable development problems."

Michael McFaul and Katherine Stoner-Weiss demonstrate that Putin benefited from the upsurge in oil and natural gas revenues but Russia’s development would have accelerated further and faster with stronger institutions of accountability — a real opposition, independent media, an independent judiciary — that would have countered corruption, protected property rights and thereby encouraged more investment and growth. "The Russian economy is doing well today, but it is doing well in spite of, not because of, autocracy," they argue.

Indeed, Russia’s economic indicators are far from healthy, argues Financial Times analyst Martin Wolf, principally as a result of Putin’s failure to implement structural reform and improve governance. Russia rates low in international comparisons of business environment, governance and rule of law. Far from Putin restoring the state’s integrity, he argues, “If one judges a state by its ability to serve the people and protect them from the powerful, Russia’s is ineffective.”

The normative timidity of Western democratizers is one reason why market reform succeeded in Russia and democratic consolidation did not, suggests regional specialist Anders Aslund “The initial big bang of radical economic reform was sufficient, while democratic reforms were never designed.”

The centralization of power - Putin’s "power vertical" - consolidated Kremlin power at the expense of state and public institutions, a move facilitated by the fact that, as Steven Sestanovich observed, his predecessor Boris Yeltsin "was not bold enough to insist on creating new democratic institutions [and] left the Soviet-era constitution in place as well as the Soviet-era parliament." Consequently, as The Moscow Times reported recently, "the whole state machinery has been modeled to serve the Kremlin rather than to develop the country." The social basis of the state shifted too, notes Moscow State University analyst Dmitry Badovsky, as "the siloviki swiftly replaced the regional, business and media elites that played a very important role in politics under Yeltsin."

Yet Putin’s regime is not as monolithic as it appears, some observers suggest. The ex-KGB siloviki faction is currently dominant, but relatively liberal elements are not entirely defeated. Some view the nomination of Dmitry Medvedev as Putin’s heir apparent in the forthcoming presidential election, a move that "may have been a victory for the Kremlin’s non-KGB groupings."

Tensions between the siloviki and business-oriented elites were recently evident when prominent figures recently criticized Kremlin belligerence. “How much does our external policy cost Russia?” Anatoly Chubais recently asked. "We might be able to pay the price in a good world economic situation, but can we continue to pay the price now?," he warns. "We can continue to persecute the British Council and demand the closure of its branch in St Petersburg. But we cannot make peace with this."

Without exaggeration, Russia is a country of legal nihilism," Medvedev concedes. "No European country can boast of such disregard for law." He has reportedly rejected notions of "controlled" or "sovereign" democracy even though he has been complicit in the administration’s anti-democratic crackdowns. In any case, Medvedev will have a "hard time proving his democratic credentials by opposing the siloviki, divesting the state from media control, and allowing unhindered political activities–an almost impossible task."

Imprisoned former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky believes that even if Medvedev were inclined to change Russia’s course, it will be difficult for him. "Tradition, and the state of people’s minds, and the lack of forces able to [support] any movement towards the rule of law, everything’s against him." But he is optimistic over the long term. It is "not possible" that Russia could relapse to its Soviet past and he rejects China’s authoritarian capitalism as a model. "I’m convinced that Russia is a European country, it’s a country with democratic traditions which more than once have been broken off during its history, but nonetheless there are traditions."

Returning to Akhmatova, Russia seems set to endure "bitter years of sickness/Suffocation, insomnia, fever" before "the storm clouds over darkened Russia/Might become a cloud of glorious rays."

Iran’s Dissidents – Resilience vs. Repression

A more pro-active authoritarianism can also be found in Iran’s Islamic Republic, a panel of dissident activists told the RFE-RL/Freedom House conference. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government has boosted investment in mosque-based foundations and other radical Islamist groups in a concerted effort to counter genuinely independent movements among students, workers, and women. The regime’s inner circle is attempting the difficult task of opening and closing at the same time,” notes Asrin Alavi, “offering the economic freedoms of a country like the UAE while maintaining the political restrictions of China.”

Iranian opposition groups face a de facto parallel civil society based in the charities, social welfare networks and militias of the basij, in the military-industrial complex of the Revolutionary Guards – a major obstacle to democratization – and in the many foundations (bonyads) that function as sources of patronage to bolster the regime. The regime is also actively fostering conspiracy theories about Western plots to undermine and attack Iran.

Few of the several thousand genuine NGOs active at the time of the reformist Khatami presidency remain so today, partly because of repression, but also due to initially weak capacity. Yet, notes exiled dissident Ladan Boroumand, Iranian civil society and opposition groups remain resilient, showing “signal resourcefulness, courage and perseverance.” This is evidenced by the vibrancy of the women’s movement, including its Million Signatures campaign , and growing ferment within the emerging independent labor movement, both of which have been subjected to physical attacks and harassment.

“Workers in Iran are in a delicate situation in which they are moving beyond lack of organizations to a new stage in which mass organizations are being formed,” according to leading labor activist Mahmoud Salehi in a letter smuggled from prison. As Boroumand notes, Iran’s unions have long been “sites of struggle” between competing political orientations. The regime has targeted activists like Salehi and Mansour Osanlou, leader of the Tehran bus drivers’ union, fearful that a resurgent labor movement – like the women’s movement – would significantly expand the opposition’s social base and undermine government attempts to characterize opponents as pro-Western elites.

With independent groups facing such pressures, it is unfortunate that purported representatives of Iranian civil society have chosen to criticize foreign funding for the country’s beleaguered democrats. Critics of "dollar democracy" like Akbar Ganji and Shirin Ebadi, whatever their individual merits and achievements, do not speak for Iranian civil society, other activists insist. Such criticism is particularly noxious, said one former student leader, when it comes from exile groups that appear to spend more time and effort defending the regime than raising human rights abuses.

Over the past year, the authorities executed without due process over 100 people (often in grisly public executions), "yet none were said to be connected to U.S. democracy funds," notes Akbar Atri, an exiled student leader. Criticism of U.S. support for Iran’s democracy movement "is not defensible when made by those who have barely seen Iran, much less been a part of its struggle for freedom" he contends.

International assistance and solidarity can be fashioned and delivered, Atri suggests, in ways that do not endanger activists who, in any case, are harassed, brutalized and murdered irrespective of Western funding initiatives. When "many executions have been carried out in public in an apparent bid to create a climate of intimidation while sending out uncompromising signals to the West," critics of solidarity actions would appear to be validating the regime’s agenda.

Tehran’s ‘Neoconservative’ Regimes Clamps Down as Elections Loom

Iran’s hybrid political system is typical of the new authoritarianism. "It is not a democracy or an absolute totalitarian regime," says former student leader Ali Afshari. "Nor is it a communist system or monarchy or dictatorship. It is a mixture." The forthcoming elections will see a stand-off between elite factions, but between rival conservatives rather than reformists confronting the regime.

The non-monolithic nature of the regime is all too evident in current factional strife between reformists and conservatives and between traditional and “neo” conservatives, “far more ideological even than their American namesakes.” A victory for Ahmadinejad would consolidate his “neoconservative” faction’s silent revolution over their traditional conservative rivals. In appealing to the country’s impoverished masses with a crude economic populism, notes a recent analysis, the former “rightly calculated that the support of the masses would help them preserve the classical, Khomeini-promoted definition of the Islamic Iranian state.” Ahmadinejad’s main opposition does not come from the reformists, argue Anoushiravan Ehteshami and Mahjoob Zweiri, but from the marginalized old guard traditionalists.

There is genuine politics, at least within the ruling elite of the khodi, Persian for "one of us." "In our society there is a red line between khodi and non-khodi," says a political activist. "If you’re not khodi, you don’t have the right to criticize." With at least 2,400 reformist candidates barred for standing in the March 14 parliamentary elections, the criteria for inclusion are clearly getting stricter.

Elements in the regime have tried to interpret Ayatollah Khomeini’s theory of government velayat-e faqih (rule by the Islamic jurist) – along fascistic lines in order to monopolize power and silence dissent, notes Akbar Ganji. But the political system remains different from that of a fascist state. "Power is…diffused among competing factions; the regime is authoritarian, but not totalitarian."

"Nearly everyone seems to recognize that one of the biggest problems is the nature of the political system – divided as it is among multiple factions, each striving for access to power," notes a recent account, citing one diplomat "stunned by their emotion and antagonism they demonstrate in their fighting with each other. "The current infighting could provoke alternative scenarios, the report suggests. One sees growing economic hardships moderating or marginalizing the radical Ahmadinejad camp. The other sees the radical Islamist ideologues consolidating their power. Said Hajjaria, a former intelligence chief and reformist critic of the regime, has advanced a model of democratic transition based on "pressure from below, bickering at the top." Infighting among the elite is certainly on the rise in the run-up to the March elections for the majlis, judging from reports of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s growing estrangement from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei suggest that the president no longer enjoys his support. Following a budgetary dispute between the government and the majlis, the supreme leader recently admonished the president in a public letter.

The tone of the debate has turned toxic. The conservative daily Keyhan has accused “extremist reformist political movements” of planning to use the coming elections “to butcher the [Islamic] Revolution.” The website Baztab, close to Mohsen Rezai, formerly chief commander of the Revolutionary Guards, was been openly critical of Ahmadinejad who reacted by closing the site down. Such developments will hearten those who argue that "when the crunch comes, [the Revolutionary Guards] will side with the people against an increasingly repressive and unpopular regime." Others are less sure and some reformers are concerned about leading officials’ strong ties to the hard-line Revolutionary Guards, whose blend of business interests and ideological dogma provides a compelling incentive to resist change.

Others contend that the ruling radicals are repeating the central mistake of the Islamic revolution in prioritizing ideology over people’s needs. “One of the achievements of the revolution is the [political] awareness of the people," author Azar Nafisi told Radio Farda. "Without the people’s participation and in the absence of meeting their demands, any ideology would fail, and using religion as an ideology would not work either."

With the economy faltering, and radicals imposing stringent enforcement of Islamic laws, says Abbas Milani, head of Stanford’s Iran Democracy Project, it is "easy to imagine the emergence of a grand coalition, consisting of technocrats within and outside the regime, disgruntled reformists, quietist clerics, members of the Iranian private sector, women demanding equality, students, democratic parties, and labor unions." But, he notes, Hajjarian is one of many activists who consider the notion of a color revolution-style transition to democracy through civil disobedience to be naive. "The Iranian regime not only has coercive power at its disposal, but ideological conviction and a steely determination to destroy the democratic movement, "Milani cautions.

China’s (Unofficial) Labor Movement Emerges

The issue of engagement with China’s official labor front, the Communist Party-controlled All China Federation of Trade Unions, has re-emerged as a source of debate amongst international labor and democracy advocates, prompted by the introduction of an important new labor law.  The debate has implications beyond the trade unions however, raising questions about the autonomy and reform capacity of China’s state-controlled “civil society” groups and the extent to which “constructive engagement” – whether by labor, business or academia – reinforces the communist system or indirectly promotes incremental reform conducive to democracy.

The debate broke out as China’s communist authorities stepped-up their harassment of independent NGOs and dissidents like on-line activist Hu Jia and dissident writer Lu Gengsong in “a coordinated cleansing campaign” in the run-up to Beijing’s Genocide Olympics.

The new Labour Contract Law is both a challenge and an opportunity for the ACFTU, according to China Labour Bulletin. The law provides it with the tools to negotiate factory-level collective agreements with management and help minimize continuing labor rights abuses. But, if it fails to do so, workers will organize independently (as they seem to have done in at least one case already).

CLB’s latest report on the state of the workers’ movement in China highlights the upsurge in labor unrest. While organized labor remains fragmented and disorganized, workers increasingly recognize that they have a common interest and a common adversary. The situation is “analogous to the pre-unionized period in Western industrialized countries,” CLB’s Robin Munro argues, presaging the emergence of organized labor as an autonomous industrial and, ultimately, political force.

Much has been made of recent middle class "collective walking” protests which drew on the success of the Xianmen civic mobilization. The protests may represent, if not "the beginning of a new political movement," at least the "awakening of a sense of real citizenship," serving as a demonstration that “as people from other places learn about Xianmen, and new methods are put into place as they learn, then a snowball starts rolling and getting bigger and bigger.” Yet well-known dissident Wang Lixiong cautions that the Xiamen precedent could have the opposite effect, leading the authorities to decide “they cannot encourage a pattern where compromise follows collective walking."

An upsurge in worker militancy is a particularly threatening prospect for the ruling elite. "Communist leaders view labor unrest as the most threatening form of protest," argues a leading analyst. Their ideological training leads them to expect workers to be, if not the vanguard, at least a part of any future insurgency,” notes Susan L Shirk. A new set of regulations explain in detail how police and local authorities should handle "collective incidents," protests and demonstrations which largely arise from labour disputes. The rules confirm a certain sensitivity in moving away from manifestly violent and heavy-handed tactics but nevertheless give the authorities license to crack down on freedom of association and expression.

“Even during the most ruthless phases of western capitalism, civil society in Europe and the U.S. was made up of a huge network of organisations independent of the state – churches, clubs, parties, societies, and associations that were available to all social classes,” Ian Buruma notes. “In China, by contrast, while individuals have regained many personal freedoms since the death of Maoism, they are not free to organise anything that is not controlled by the Communist Party.”

Accordingly, the same control applies to trade unions. The vast majority of ‘unions’ are controlled by the party and factory management, notes Han Dongfang, who founded China’s only autonomous trade union during the Tiananmen Square protests. “They do not speak for the workers nor do they really listen to the higher-level unions that are supposed to supervise them,” he says. But if workers can exploit the new law to democratically elect their own union leaders who then effectively represent employees, the union will gain workers’ credibility and trust.

The Brussels-based International Trade Union Confederation stoked the ACFTU controversy with its recent decision to start a dialogue with the Communist Party’s labor arm, a body that most unions have considered an instrument of worker suppression, not representation. Only the Dutch FNV union, Poland’s Solidarnosc, and trade unions in Hong Kong opposed the overture. The AFL-CIO, the principal center of the US labor movement, has yet to establish official relations with the ACFTU, initially opposed the move at first but then OK’d the move at the ITUC's December convention.

European unions have taken the lead in using an industrial rationale – the presence of Western firms in China – as a political justification for official relations with the ACFTU. But the past year has seen the Change to Win Coalition, a split from the AFL-CIO, follow the European lead and become the first U.S. unions to engage with the ACFTU in a move that prompted fierce criticism.

The limitations to such engagement were evident at a recent conference on the issue in Washington, DC, organized by the Albert Shanker Institute, publishers of A Cry For Justice: The Voices of Chinese Workers, an excellent chronicle of Chinese labor struggles. The meeting heard a leading official from a pro-engagement union to justify relations with the ACFTU in part on the grounds that it gave his union leadership an opportunity to raise the issue of independent labor activists imprisoned by the communist regime. His admission that the union readily dropped the issue when the ACFTU simply requested that it do so prompted both incredulity and indignation.

Pakistan’s Civil Society – Starved of Funding, Hungry for Change

Pakistan’s forthcoming election is expected to be marred by irregularities, if not entirely fraudulent. Free, fair and transparent elections are impossible without restoring Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and other deposed justices, said former US Senate majority leader, Tom Daschle. Failing Chaudhry’s restoration, there will be little public confidence in the judiciary’s ability to ensure electoral transparency, he said, drawing on the observations of a National Democratic Institute pre-election assessment. Chaudhry was re-arrested last week.

The International Republican Institute has called off plans to monitor the elections, citing security concerns. The government refused to guarantee sufficient polling place access for international monitors, said IRI South Asian officer Tom Garrett.

Nevertheless, a large contingent of international and domestic observers primed to expose any attempts to steal the election, and the country’s political parties and civil society groups are mobilized to respond. The danger is, as history suggests, that dangerous and violent political polarization results from the election, giving the security services a pretext to intervene in the name of order and stability.

A common technique of electoral fraud involves tabulating results from “ghost” voting stations, says Pat Merloe, director of electoral programs with the National Democratic Institute. But this runs the risk of alerting the public when official results differ markedly from pre-election polls. Ominously, President Pervez Musharaff recently intimated that he would only give up power if he was convinced the people wanted him to quit. But his decision would be based on his feeling and perception, not necessarily on the election result.

As Aqil Shah argued in the Journal of Democracy, “the Pakistani military clearly sees that it can best serve its own interests by going through the motions of formally transferring power to a civilian government that the generals can claim is democratically elected, even as the soldiers retain their iron grip on the levers of state power.”

Should President Musharaff try to steal the election, the West would finally be forced to reconsider the flawed decision to back him as the perceived sole alternative to a dubious threat of an Islamist takeover, despite his intelligence services’ known complicity with radical Islamists. As one observer noted during the president’s abortive PR trip to Europe, “if Musharraf was truly fighting extremism and promoting democracy, he would not have released 28 prisoners accused of terrorism during the martial law period while filling jails with lawyers and journalists.”

Lorne W. Craner, IRI president, confirms that when he was assistant secretary of state for democracy and human rights during President Bush’s first term, "there was no interest in a broad and deep democratization program in Pakistan that might have given the United States more policy alternatives now.” His Democratic counterpart echoes the concern. "I found it troubling that there was virtually no money until recently for any work other than the Election Commission, which was controlled by the president," says Peter M. Manikas, NDI’s Asia director. NDI received $1.5 million from the State Department to train poll watchers and $2.6 million from USAID for political party training but that is "a relatively small amount of money, given the size of the country". NDI also raised about $1.5 million for Pakistan from the Dutch, British, Canadians and the National Endowment for Democracy.

To compensate somewhat for its ineffective parties which remain rooted in semi-feudal regional and family loyalties, Pakistan is blessed with a vibrant civil society, including innovative NGOs like Interactive Resource Center, a non-profit group focused on developing awareness of basic rights among marginalized sections of society. The real flaw of the political parties has been their mutual distrust, which allowed the military to play them off against each other, said NED’s Carl Gershman, who met with Benazir Bhutto shortly before her return to Pakistan. “It had been hoped that with both Bhutto and Sharif back in the country, and with pressure coming from a burgeoning protest movement of lawyers, journalists, and civil society activists, the two parties might be able to come together around the Charter of Democracy they had signed in May 2006, agreeing on a new blueprint for Pakistani democracy that would include a design for democratic civil-military relations.”

“Pakistan needs a compromise that will stop the demonization of politicians by the military, restore the military’s prestige and end its political role, limit the intelligence agencies to external security functions, and form a government that unites the Pakistani nation against terrorism and disintegration,” argues former Benazir Bhutto adviser Husain Haqqani.

The U.S. and the broader international democratic community must “build a relationship with a broader cross-sector of Pakistanis, like the students and lawyers,” argues analyst Josh Kurlantzick, otherwise they, “just like average Pakistanis, will remain locked into a Sophie’s choice between generals and feudocrats.” Given the manifest failure of betting on the single horse of Musharaff, the international community has both an opportunity and responsibility, says analyst Aqil Shah, to play an "instrumental role in influencing political liberalization in the direction of civil democracy."

Arab Democracy – Rulers Resist, Democrats Persist, the West Desists?

Promoting democracy in the Arab world remains a strategic imperative despite the genuine dilemmas and costs, an important new analysis asserts. The U.S. Administration’s Freedom Agenda, while flawed in design and execution, nevertheless “responds, intentionally or not, to a real and growing crisis in Middle East governance,” argues Brookings analyst Tamara Cofman Wittes.

The structures charged with implementing the Freedom Agenda in the Arab world were underfunded and “woefully inadequate to the task at hand”. Initiatives were undercut by lack of commitment among foreign policy bureaucrats, by a “mismatch between the assistance strategy and realities on the ground”, and, “most notably, by a lack of sufficient support at senior policy levels to bolster democracy assistance with frank government-to-government dialogue.”

Nevertheless, Wittes contends, there is no serious strategic alternative to a revived, country-customized democracy promotion strategy which prioritizes the expansion of basic political rights in the region’s strongest states, like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Morocco. “Failing to press assertively for basic political rights serves to entrench the Islamists’ position as the sole viable opposition to the autocrats, just as surely as it entrenches the autocrats – for now, at least – in power,” she concludes.

Over the short run, democratization risks undermining friendly regimes and empowering Islamists opposed to U.S. interests. Such risks and costs induce understandable ambivalence. "Five years ago, there was a sense that things couldn’t get any worse in the Middle East and we should push for change whatever the consequences," notes Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Now, there is a keen appreciation of how many ways things could actually get much worse and how much better off we are working with people we know and with whom we share at least some interests."

It has even been suggested that in countries like Egypt, Syria and Libya “hereditary succession is not an inherently reactionary move” since it could entail “a controlled transition…in which economic modernization and international integration might usher in greater political change.”

Others argue that the U.S. should “export security, not democracy” to avoid alienating what Amitai Etzioni calls "illiberal moderates," who constitute "a kind of global "swing vote" that outnumbers both illiberal extremists and pro-Western liberal moderates. But it is “exactly the wrong answer”, Wittes insists, to suggest that there is no alternative to sustaining the region’s autocratic regimes as bulwarks against extremism or to accepting glacial institutional reforms in the hope of eventual democratization. ("Gradual is fine, glacial is not,” as former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has argued.)

The authoritarian status quo is no longer sustainable, with the Arab states’ capacity to use economic rents, ideology, and repressive capacity to maintain their status as the “central repository and distributor of social and economic goods” threatened by the demographic youth bulge. “The risks that accompany Arab democratization are at least balanced by, if not overwhelmed by, the risks of failing to act on behalf of democratic development,” Wittes attests, including a “significant credibility deficit.”

Arab Reform – A Prelude to Democracy or Stagnation?

The question of whether the Middle East can sustain democracy is by no means new, as a recent debate reminds us. “In the Middle East the economic and social soil is still not deep enough to enable political democracy to strike root and flourish,” Charles Issawi argued over 50 years ago. “What is required is a great economic and social transformation which will strengthen society and make it capable of bearing the weight of the modern State.”

Socio-economic development is a “necessary, if not a sufficient, condition” for sustainable democracy in the region. “In politics as in religion, a Reformation must be preceded by a Renaissance,” he suggested, proposing an interim strategy designed to “improve means of communication, multiply schools,…and to create opportunities which will allow the individual to emancipate himself from the grip of the family, tribe, and village.”

His arguments elicited several illuminating responses. The majority of contemporary democracies are in countries that were not in 1956, and probably are not today, ready for democracy, according to Issawi’s criteria, Joshua Muravchik notes. Furthermore, as Jon Alterman argues, the region’s authoritarian regimes have proven to be remarkably durable and adaptive. Economic, educational, and institutional reform are legitimate objectives in themselves, says Michelle Dunne, but it is a sequencing fallacy that institutional reform alone can generate democratization when “only the pressure that comes from political opposition can compel [incumbent regimes] to compromise.”

Incremental economic and social reforms are more often used by Arab regimes to avoid substantive political change that would jeopardize elites’ hold on power, according to a recent paper from the Carnegie Endowment. Technocrats within ruling establishments appreciate that change is essential for addressing pressing economic and demographic challenges. But, the report argues, the “preferred process of  ‘managed reform’ is leading to further political stagnation.” Gradual and moderate reform has the benefit of enhancing the work of insider reformists but is also easily accommodated by authoritarian regimes. The report argues that despite passing considerable economic and social reforms Arab regimes continue to avoid substantive political reforms that would jeopardize their own power.

An earlier phase of incremental reform in the 1980s failed to address underlying structural crises and what economist Sufyan Alisaa calls the region’s institutional deficit. Reform suffers from lack of consensus among key stakeholders, he argues. “The majority of the private sector, represented by small and medium enterprises (SMEs), and members of civil society, especially workers and grassroots organizations, is excluded from the debate over economic reform strategy.”

Similarly, former MEPI head J Scott Carpenter observes that economic growth in the region has not expanded human liberty while socio-economic characteristics like a secular, educated middle class, and ethnic and religious homogeneity have not facilitated a transition to democracy in Tunisia. “By creating a path to a proliferation of parties, a truly free press, a thriving civil society and a growing middle class many of these countries will unlock their potential and, given time, defeat the Islamist threat from within,” he believes.

“If the United States gives up on the democracy agenda, it will be forced to choose between increasingly decrepit autocrats and antidemocratic Islamists,” insists Carpenter, director of The Washington Institute’s Project Fikra, which strives to empower Arab moderates and liberals against extremism. This capitulation would further undermine U.S. credibility among potential partners and allies. “Abandoning democracy promotion would be the equivalent of waving the white flag in the battle of ideas,” he concludes.

Upgraded Arab Authoritarianism – Represses, Redefines, Co-opts Reform Agenda

“Autocracy in the Arab Middle East has become extremely sophisticated, deft and more oppressive, covering a fist of iron with a silk glove,” says analyst Ayman El-Amir. He confirms that Arab regimes have countered or neutralized the democracy challenge using what Middle East analyst Barry Rubin calls “a multilayered response,” including repression, redefinition, and cooption. While the details and balance differ in each country, Rubin argues, they largely comprise “a reassertion of a traditional agenda; the de-legitimization of opponents; repression and harassment; pretense and cooption; and finally, actual reforms.”

Similarly, Steve Heydemann’s Upgrading Authoritarianism in the Arab World contends that democracy assistance practitioners have been “gamed” – i.e., Arab regimes have used not only external pressures but also exploited democracy assistance funds and programs to adapt selectively, at least to demands for economic liberalization and expanded opportunities for élites. They have expanded political space, at least in the electoral arena, but only to permit limited contestation, including a degree of Islamist political participation in Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco.

Heydemann cites five key features of authoritarian upgrading: co-opting and containing civil society organizations; managing political contestation; capturing the benefits of selective economic reforms; controlling telecommunications technologies; and increasing international linkages between regimes.

Authoritarian upgrading requires a re-think of democracy promotion practices, Heydemann suggests; first, by adapting democracy promotion policies to exploit the openings that upgrading produces, including greater use of conditionality, and binding benchmarks linking aid to democratic reform; second, weakening the coalitions on which upgrading depends. As regimes retreat from populist social and redistributive policies that bound core constituencies to the ruling elite, opposition democrats must highlight issues of economic empowerment, job creation, social service provision, health care, housing and education. In a recent debate with Heydemann at Washington’s Brookings Institution, NDI’s Ken Wollack agreed that certain regimes have learned to adapt to democracy promotion efforts in the Arab world. But, he argued, democracy promotion in the region is a relatively recent phenomenon so it is too early to evaluate such efforts.

Liberal democratic forces have been criticized for overly stressing constitutional issues and human rights, thereby allowing Islamist groups to monopolize the socio-economic agenda, not least through the provision of basic social services, from soup and bread kitchens to health clinics. A new report from the Arab NGO Network for Development - "Democratic Reform in the Arab Region: a Focus on Socioeconomic Policies" highlights the need for "open dialogue between government, civil society and the media on issues relating to socioeconomic reform", such as healthcare and the right to work.

But, as a new report from the World Bank points out, the region remains a global laggard in perhaps the single most vital area of reform. Education is a precondition for poverty alleviation and economic growth, and for the region’s integration into the global economy. Although MENA states vary in their approaches to reform, most have “focused too much on the engineering of education and too little on incentives and public accountability.”The relative weakness of Arab liberals and democrats has led some to argue that “centrist Islamic politics are the only credible way forward” for democratic reform. Khalil Al-Anani cites the example of groups “moving away from traditional political movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood”, such as Tunisia’s Nahda (Awakening) Party, Morocco’s Justice and Development Party, the Jordanian Islamic Centre Party, the Sudanese Middle Party, and al Wasat, Egypt’s Center party.

It is essential to take a long-term perspective, argues the National Democratic Institute’s Ken Wollack. As in other regions, Arab democracy is a generational project and genuine gains have been secured in election monitoring and media freedom. The most useful debate is not whether democracy will come to the Middle East, but whether we should promote a narrow, Western-centric view of democracy or acknowledge alternative, Middle Eastern variations.

It is also a multi-tiered project, notes Lorne Craner, his Republican counterpart. The U.S. should maintain policies that have encouraged reform in places like in Oman, Morocco, and Qatar. Realpolitiik dictates that Washington maintain good relations with regional rulers, but it can do so, says the head of the International Republican Institute, “while also pushing for political liberalization by working with local and American nongovernmental organizations”, and supporting local dissidents.

Arab Democracy – “If Not This, Then What?”

"The year 2005 was the best year my generation has seen," says Hashem Kassem, a leading Egyptian liberal and publisher of Al Masry Al Youm. "I am openly saying that without the [U.S.] pressure, there was no way that this progress would have happened." But he is "furious" at the volte face in U.S. policy.

While some observers have blamed the U.S. or the West for abandoning the democracy agenda, Bahey Eldin Hassan, director of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, credits the "outstanding adroitness" with which ruling regimes managed demands for change by adopting reformists discourse,  claimed Arab "cultural specificity" to defuse external pressures, and exploited the Islamist threat "as a scarecrow to dampen enthusiasm for reform" on the part of the international community and local elites.

Democratic reform “is an issue that has been completely closed," Hassan concedes. Not only did the fourth wave of democracy fail in the region, the prospect of change provoked a counter-democratic current reflected in several disturbing trends: the growth of terrorist forces in the Arab world, with Iraq as a major base; the violent rise of sectarian and confessional identity; the growth of private militias, especially in Iraq and Palestine; increasing popular support for Islamist forces; Arab regimes’ intensification of repression; and the defeat of reformism in Iran, and the consequent rise of conservative forces hostile to modernity and democracy, willing to “base their regional projects on sectarian identity.”

In the absence of democratization, he outlines a scenario in which the Arab region becomes “a volcano spewing fire in all directions”, including beyond the region. “Counter-offensives waged by forces of terror; religious extremism; sectarian violence; political authoritarianism and police repression, will not be confined to the walls of the Arab world,” Hassan cautions. “Dire and unprecedented consequences on the condition of human rights in the entire region will follow.”

Charles Hill shares his concern for the spillover effects of Middle East instability. Recognising the insight of Elie Kedourie’s skepticism about the meliorism of western liberals towards the region, he nevertheless believes the region has “so deteriorated that its pathologies are being spat out into other regions”, through terrorism, “ever-spreading cultural and religious intimidation” fuelled by vast petro-wealth and “a radical ideology that proposes to overthrow and replace the established international state system.”

The U.S. Administration’s post- 9/11 strategy for regional transformation “through, inter alia, the use of major military power, pressures for political reform from democratization to just plain ‘good governance,’ working for changed information and communications standards, offering cultural exchanges, imposing targeted sanctions, fostering integration into the global economy, arguing for women’s rights and, to be sure, seeing a necessity to try to include the Israel-Palestinian confrontation in this overall strategy, amounts to an historic shift in American policy necessitated by an historic expansion of the threat to world order posed by the malignancies of the Middle East. If not this, then what?”

Democratic Development – Still The Best Long-Term Bet

The democratic moment is not over but it is threatened as it has not been since 1990, said Marc Plattner, speaking at a joint book launch for his Democracy Without Borders and Larry Diamond’s The Spirit of Democracy. This was the conclusion reached by the Journal of Democracy editor and former NED program director after re-assessing prognoses reached in the early 1990s.

His book – recently lauded as “the most lucid and readable introduction imaginable to the debate over ‘the democracy project’’ – examines two of the principal tensions within democratic theory and practice – the relationships between liberalism and democracy, and between democracy and the sovereign nation state. On the former, Plattner revisited his celebrated debate with Fareed Zakaria, to re-affirm the importance of elections and re-iterate his criticism of the sequencing fallacy. Free elections cannot guarantee liberalism, but genuine liberalism cannot exist without them.

On the latter, globalization has prompted considerable speculation about cosmopolitan democracy, democratizing post-Westphalian global governance and the death of the nation state. But Plattner is unconvinced and insists that liberal democracy needs the framework of the national state. He cited the malaise afflicting the European Union to justify his skepticism, a view influenced by Pierre Manent’s defence of the nation, resistance to techno-politics and contention that the nation state remains the only viable ‘political community’ for the democratic principle.

Outside western European elite circles, notions of what Ivan Krastev calls "post-national politics" appear somewhat quaint, not least to its East. “Europe’s nightmares are the 1930s; Russia’s nightmares are the 1990s,” as Robert Kagan notes. In a new era of geopolitics, “Europe sees the answer to its problems in transcending the nation-state and power. For Russians, the solution is in restoring them.” 

Larry Diamond agreed that the world has entered a democratic downturn and possibly even entered a third reverse wave. “We have entered a period of global democratic recession, with the swing states as harbingers of a possible broader downturn,” he states in his book. More significantly, he echoes the recent Freedom House report in emphasizing that regression is most marked in those strategic swing states outside the democratic West which have significant populations and gross national incomes but exhibit authoritarian or potentially regressive traits.

“Sustained support for institutional rehabilitation is needed to overcome autocratic legacies,” according to democracy and development analyst Joe Siegle. Diamond concurs, arguing that bad governance, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, is largely responsible for the growth of illiberal democracy. Consequently, establishing institutions of horizontal accountability is an urgent priority in unconsolidated democracies. Diamond also stressed the need to strengthen and empower civil society, strengthen and reform representative institutions, and deliver targeted poverty reduction programs to address the socio-economic needs of a marginalized underclass otherwise vulnerable to the appeal of populist and as the tragic events in Kenya attest – tribal demagogy.

Despite recent setbacks, democracy still has a “lock on the higher rungs of the development ladder,” argued Gideon Rose, managing editor of Foreign Affairs. If one was investing in political futures, democracy is still the best long-term bet, he said, since the “dirty little secret” is that Francis Fukuyama was more right than wrong: market-based liberal democracy is the only political form appropriate for modernity.

As a recent analysis suggests, democracy can hinder development through competitive populism – electorally-driven short-term policies and patronage practices which come at the expense of long-term investment. But democracy has at least four advantages for development. Democracies are better able to avoid catastrophic mistakes, (such as China’s Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution); democracies experience more pressure to share and sustain development benefits; they can mitigate social inequalities that impede social and economic mobility; and open societies provide a better environment for nurturing the information and related technologies required in a knowledge-driven global economy.

“A real danger exists that the world will again be split by competing ideologies, not communist versus capitalist but democratic versus autocratic,” former U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright recently argued. “Twenty years after the Cold War ended, we may see Putin — not the likes of Havel, Walesa or Mandela — pointing the way to the future.” Some commentators have gone as far as to argue that China and Russia "may represent a viable alternative path to modernity,” reminding us that there is "nothing inevitable about liberal democracy’s ultimate victory — or future dominance."

But Rose is more sanguine. The new authoritarian regimes are essentially fragile, artificially buoyed by economies temporarily benefitting from high energy prices or low labor costs, and with little international appeal as sustainable models of development. As one recent analysis argues, “sustained high growth under autocracy is the exception, not the rule, around the world.” As McFaul and Stoner-Weiss remind us, “for every China, there is an autocratic developmental disaster such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo; for every authoritarian success such as Singapore, there is a resounding failure such as Myanmar; for every South Korea, a North Korea.”

NED board member and Brookings scholar Bill Galston drew attention to the links between modernization, cultural change, and democracy, citing Inglehart and Welzel’s pioneering work. Recent events in Kenya resent a chilling reminder of the importance of identity cleavages in establishing political affiliations. When peoples’ primary identity determines their political loyalty, the logic of electoral democracy, let alone liberal democracy, is undermined.

Democratic norms are as robust and internationally legitimate as ever, argued Tamara Cofman Wittes. Citing the Arab world’s democracy deficit, she noted that the region’s autocrats had exploited the opportunities arising from the Iraq war to beat back demands for reform. Yet the basic underlying drivers of change – the demographic bulge, economic inequality, limited social mobility, etc., – were not going away. The priority is to “diversify the political marketplace” beyond the stale polarity of autocratic status quo-or-Islamists.

Ending on a slightly more optimistic note, Marc Plattner cited Pierre Hassner’s characterization of the Cold War as a form of “competitive decadence.” The result of that epic struggle at least suggested that democracy has a capacity for self-renewal that alternative systems lack.

Tom Lantos, 1928-2008
Congressman Tom Lantos, Chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Foreign Affairs and a leading champion of human rights and democracy, has died due to complications from cancer. Late last year, he announced that he would not seek reelection after being diagnosed with esophageal cancer. “It is only in the United States that a penniless survivor of the Holocaust and a fighter in the anti-Nazi underground could have received an education, raised a family, and had the privilege of serving the last three decades of his life as a Member of Congress,” he said at the time.

The only Holocaust survivor ever elected to Congress, Lantos was the founding co-chairman of the 24-year-old Congressional Human Rights Caucus. The date for a public memorial service has not yet been set.

European Democracy Foundation Launched
Several European democracy NGOs have joined forces in a new foundation to enhance their activities’ impact through cross-national cooperation. The European Foundation for Democracy through Partnership will serve as a knowledge hub and portal to Europe for activist groups struggling for democracy who are otherwise too small or loosely organized to qualify for European Union funding.

At a time when democracy is on the defence, pro-democracy groups from the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Spain, Norway, Portugal and Finland also aim to raise the profile of democracy assistance on the EU agenda. “Historically the EU was based on shared ideals of democracy and human rights,” says Šimon Pánek, director of Czech NGO People in Need. “Nowadays these core values are more and more overshadowed by an increased focus amongst the EU member states on financial and technical issues.”

EU politicians and democracy promotion activists have been pushing for the EU to adopt a more flexible, expert and deniable mechanism, like the NED, that could support and sustain "below-the-radar" activities that do not require the approval of host country governments. Edward MacMillan Scott, a Member of the European Parliament, notes that this requirement is one reason why “in Belarus, literally on the EU’s border, the [NED] is running some 60 pro-reform programmes [and] the EU is running none.”

The EFDP will be officially launched in Brussels on 15 April in the presence of EU Commission president José Barroso and Václav Havel, EFDP president of the Council of Patrons. Prior to the official launch, the EFDP will host a workshop entitled, “From European principles to performance: How can Europeans strengthen their support to democratization processes world-wide?” at the 5th General Assembly of the World Movement for Democracy in Kiev, Ukraine (6 – 9 April).

Freedom of Association in Arab Mediterranean Cause for “Grave Concern”
The European Union should consistently and publicly denounce repressive measures against associations and human rights defenders by Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EMP) member states, a new report from the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network concludes.

Freedom of association is an “important indicator of democratic development” and “a prerequisite for the sound development of political parties, trade unions, NGOs…and more generally for a vibrant civil society,” the network adds. The report describes the “deliberate ambiguity of the so-called ‘dualist’ regime of constitutional guarantees, coupled with legislative changes that systematically limit the enjoyment of freedoms,” a combination found across the region that effectively denies freedom of association.

Cuban Student Arrested for Questioning Authority
State Security agents have arrested a computer science student who asked Ricardo Alarcon, the president of Cuban National Assembly, why Cubans could not travel abroad or enter hotels on the island. The student, Eliécer Ávila Sicilia was arrested on Saturday, February 9, was one of several students who subjected Alarcon to an unprecedented scrutiny in a clandestinely-filmed session. One of the agents told Avila’s grandmother she would soon see her grandson on national TV, raising concerns that the authorities would force him to issue a public retraction, according to Ersilia Correoso of the Council of Human Rights Rapporteurs of Cuba.

• The Netherlands Institute for Multi-party Democracy is actively assisting former UN chief Kofi Annan in efforts to resolve the political crisis in Kenya. NIMD director Roel von Meijenfeldt believes that recent tragic events are the result of a “dangerous cocktail of manipulation by political vultures, criminal militias, unreliable security services, ethnic tensions, youth unemployment and poverty, and unresolved past inequities.” NIMD’s local partner, the Centre for Multiparty Democracy, is also working to get the conflicting parties to negotiate. Kenya is at a cross-road, analogous to the U.S. Civil War, that will lead to the country’s disintegration or the start of a more democratic, sustainable nation, says Maina Kiai, a leading democracy activist and chair of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights.
  


• Several celebrated Syrian democracy activists and signatories of the Damascus Declaration for Democratic Change, have been charged with publishing false information, membership of a secret organization aimed at destabilizing the state and attacking the prestige of the state. The defendants include some of Syria’s leading opposition activists, including Akram Al-Bunni, Secretary-General of the Damascus Declaration, Fida'a Al-Horani, President of the Executive Bureau of the National Council of Declaration, and members Ahmad To'meh, Jaber, Al-Shufi, Mohammed Darwish, Marwan Al-Aashi, Walid Bunni, Mohammad Yasser. If convicted, they face between three and 15 years in prison. State security officials subsequently arrested Riad Seif, President of the General Secretariat of the National Council of the Damascus Declaration. The defendants were arrested in a nationwide crackdown against activists associated with the declaration. More than 170 Declaration signatories and activists attended a meeting last December to elect a new executive committee, prompting police raids a week later.

• Journal of Democracy:
  Morocco’s recent elections are examined in the latest issue of the Journal of Democracy, with several commentators discussing the limits of partial reform, the respective roles of Islamists, technocrats, and the monarchy, the proliferation and influence of civil society groups and future scenarios.
  
  Zeyno Baran suggests that Turkey’s 2007 elections highlighted the country’s vibrantly democratic political sphere, but also exposed acute social division over the role of Islam. Other articles suggest that European experience demonstrates that extremist political forces can be moderated by robust democratic institutions; that Sierra Leone is emerging from a horrifying civil war to see its citizens demand better governance; that the people of South Asia prefer democracy to authoritarianism, but are prepared to compromise some aspects of liberal democracy; and that Arab authoritarianism has not prevailed because it reflects citizens’ attitudes and values.



• Strategies for Policy Reform:
  At a time when populists of various stripes are exploiting popular discontent, it is imperative to show that democratic governance and business can be reformed to deliver tangible benefits: in short, to make democracy deliver. A new report from the Center for International Private Enterprise provides a wealth of examples of innovative and participative strategies, including an independent Ethiopian radio program challenging received wisdom viewpoints on the economy and initiating public-private dialogue; 79 development finance institutions across Asia-Pacific implementing corporate governance policies and practices; business communities in eight Russian regions acting to protect entrepreneurs’ rights and secure reforms in licensing, inspections, and other areas to assist small businesses; the first national corporate governance code in the world to be written entirely in Arabic was created for Egypt; following Hernando de Soto’s influence in changing understanding of informal economic activity, 300,000 small enterprises were integrated into Peru’s formal economy. To request bound paper copies, please e-mail partners@cipe.org. (and check out CIPE’s excellent blog too!)

2008 Samir Kassir Award for Freedom of the Press
The third Samir Kassir Award for Freedom of the Press, awarded by the European Commission’s Delegation to Lebanon in association with the Samir Kassir Foundation, has been launched. One journalist and one researcher will be awarded with £15, 000 for work related to the rule of law, such as good governance, anti-corruption, freedom of expression or human rights. Candidates have until 30 March 2008 to apply. The award ceremony will be on 2 June 2008 in Beirut.

Civil Society and External Democratization in Post-Socialist Europe
The Heinrich Böll Foundation (Heinrich-Böll- Stiftung) in cooperation with the European University Viadrina Frankfurt/Oder and the Federal Institute of Technology Zurich is pleased to announce six doctoral scholarships in Civil Society and External Democratization in Post-Socialist Europe. The proposed doctoral program will explore the diverse activities of civil societies in European post-transition countries. As well as analyzing the presence and activities of civil societies, the course will focus primarily on the effects of civil society interventions and their interaction with external democratization efforts, particularly through regional organizations such as the Council of Europe or the European Union, NGOs, and transnational networks. The application deadline is 1 March 2008. Full details available here.

Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy: Call for Paper Proposals: Political Islam and Democracy - What do Islamists and Islamic Movements Want? CSID’s 9th Annual Conference, Washington DC, May 14, 2008.
In the past 10 or 15 years, many Islamic movements have become strong advocates of democracy, but still have vague interpretations of what democracy means. Does democracy – in their view – include equal rights for non-Muslims and secularists? Does it include equal rights for women? How do they reconcile the basic concept of democracy (rule of the people, by the people, and for the people) with their understanding of “divine sovereignty” (al-Hakimiyya)?

The Ninth annual conference of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy (CSID) will be devoted to exploring the complexities of this highly important topic today in the context of democracy and democratization in these diverse Muslim-majority societies. Paper proposals are invited from prospective participants on the following five broad topics. Possible topics are not restricted to the ones that follow but proposals must establish their relevance in general to the issues of democracy and democratization processes in the Islamic world: 1. What do the main Islamic parties from Morocco to Indonesia say about democracy, human rights, equality, and rule of law? Do they believe in implementing sharia laws, and if so, what is their understanding of the shari&rsquoa and how do they intend to implement such laws? 2. Are Islamist movements capable of generating interpretations of Islamic law so as to promote a democratic political culture and pluralist civil society? If so, where have they succeeded in doing so, and how can these experiences and views be replicated in other parts of the Muslim world? 3. Should the U.S., Europe, and the West engage these moderate Islamists in a dialogue and encourage them to participate in peaceful political movements and processes? Can broad coalitions between moderate Islamists and secularists be built to support moderation and peaceful democratization in the Muslim world? 4. How has the rise of political Islam or Islamism in late twentieth century affected the rights of women and religious minorities in Muslim majority societies? 5. How can moderate Islamist movements be harnessed to promote gender rights and the equality of citizens today? What is the spectrum of views now current among these groups in various parts of the Islamic world? 6. Has the current exclusion of Islamist groups in general from the broader political dialogue in the Middle East, for example, adversely affected the process of democratization in the region? Both broad theoretical studies and specific case studies are welcome.

Full details available here. Paper proposals (no more than 400 words) are due by February 20, 2008 and should be sent to: Prof. Asma Afsaruddin, Chair, Conference Program Committee, 1625 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Suite 601, Washington, D.C. 20036. Tel.: (202) 265-1200. Fax: (202) 265-1222. E-mail: conference2008@islam-democracy.org.

EVENTS

February 15: Radicalization in the West. Speakers : Marc Sageman, Senior Fellow, Center on Terrorism, Counter-Terrorism, and Homeland Security, Foreign Policy Research Institute; Amel Boubekeur, Research Fellow, CEPS. Moderator : Michael Emerson, Senior Fellow, CEPS. Contact Anne-Marie Boudou - amboudou@ceps.eu. Venue: The Centre for European Policy Studies, CEPS Conference Room, 1 Place du Congrès, 1000 Brussels. Register here.

February 17: 5 p.m. Katyn (Poland, 115 min, in Polish with English subtitles). A "movie that matters," this account of the events surrounding the Soviet NKVD’s 1940 massacre of captured Polish army officers in the Katyn Forest focuses on the story of a captain and his wife, who refuses to believe he is dead. A gesture of friendship within the harsh confines of the prison camp where Andrzej and his fellow officers are held will result in the mistaken identification that helps keep his wife&rsquos hopes alive. Other Oscar-Nominated Foreign Language Films in the series include The Counterfeiters (Austria), 12 (Russia), Beaufort (Israel) and Mongol (Kazakhstan). Venue: Grosvenor Auditorium, National Geographic Society, 1600 M Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20036 Tel: +1 202 857 7700 Further details here.

February 18: The New Cold War: How the Kremlin Menaces Both Russia and the West. The American Foreign Policy Program and The Eurasia Club present a discussion of the new book by Edward Lucas, Deputy Editor, International Section, Central and Eastern Europe Correspondent of The Economist. 5:30-7:00pm, Rome Auditorium, 1619 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20036. The event is free and open to the public

February 20: Should Labor and the Democrats Revive the Muscular Liberal Internationalism of Albert Shanker?, including a discussion of Richard Kahlenberg’s new book, Tough Liberal: Albert Shanker and the Battles over Schools, Unions, Race, and Democracy. For many years, the American labor movement was at the center of an assertive liberal internationalism that fought authoritarianism on the left and right. As Kahlenberg describes in Tough Liberal, Shanker personified a tradition in both organized labor and liberalism that believed unions should be a driving force in a broad movement to promote freedom abroad. This world view came under attack after Vietnam, and more recently, during the Iraq War. As the United States enters a new political period, what role should labor play in American foreign policy and democracy promotion? Can labor again occupy a central role in an American policy that seeks to further the spread of freedom?

Panel participants: Richard Kahlenberg, senior fellow, Century Foundation; Carl Gershman, president, National Endowment for Democracy; Harold Meyerson, columnist and editor-at-large, American Prospect; Arch Puddington, Freedom House director of research and author of Lane Kirkland: Champion of American Labor; Herb Magidson, vice president, American Federation of Teachers. Moderator: Will Marshall, president, Progressive Policy Institute. Sponsored by Freedom House, the Albert Shanker Institute and the Progressive Policy Institute. 10:00 – 11:30 am, Reid Ballroom, Heldref Publications, 1319 18th Street, NW, Washington, DC. Breakfast and registration at 9:45 a.m. Please RSVP to Elena Postnikova by email (postnikova@freedomhouse.org) or by calling 202-747-7038.

February 20: 2:15-4:00 pm, Arch Puddington, Freedom House on Freedom in the World 2008: Is the Tide Turning? Arch Puddington is Freedom House’s Director of Research and author of Freedom in the World 2008. He previously worked as research director for the A. Philip Randolph Institute, as executive director for the League for Industrial Democracy, and as a bureau manager for Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty. Venue: Georgetown University, Car Barn, 3520 Prospect Street, NW, Washington, DC. Please RSVP to mhb26@georgetown.edu or cdacs@georgetown.edu or 202-687-0596

February 20: The International Forum for Democratic Studies at the National Endowment for Democracy, A Tale of Two Regimes: Oil and Politics in Azerbaijan, featuring Dr. Leila Alieva, Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow with comments by Dr. S. Frederick Starr, Johns Hopkins University. The increasing global demand for oil complicates countries’ ability to strengthen state capacity and democratize. The oil-rich state of Azerbaijan, having experienced two major oil booms with very different political outcomes, provides a unique opportunity to examine whether, and under what conditions, the large-scale development of oil can either promote or obstruct political change and democratization. The first boom, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, led to independent capital, interest groups, and political pluralism, laying the foundation for the establishment of a European-style democratic parliamentary republic in Azerbaijan, the first of its kind in the Muslim world. A century later, in the post-Soviet era of the 1990s, a second boom led the country in a more troubling direction, to super-presidentialism and autocratic rule. Drawing on her expertise in the field of political development in the Caucasus, Dr. Leila Alieva, founding director of the Center for National and International Studies, a Baku-based think tank, will provide a comparative analysis of these two experiences, and explain how the issues of ownership, an independent judiciary, and the sequencing of reforms are vital factors in understanding the ways in which oil development can affect a country’s political trajectory. Her presentation will be followed by comments by Dr. Frederick Starr, chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute and a research professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. 12:00 noon–2:00 p.m. (Lunch served 12:00–12:30 pm) 1025 F. Street, N.W., Suite 800, Washington, DC 20004 Tel.: 202-378-9675 RSV P(acceptances only) with name and affiliation by Monday, February 18 by email to fellowsrsvp@ned.org

February 21: The International Forum for Democratic Studies at the National Endowment for Democracy, Consolidating Democracy in Asia: Is a Civili