Assessing Progress Toward Democracy and Good Governance: Summary of a Workshop (1992)

Kong), the development failures of many authoritarian regimes among the developing countries in the 1970s and 1980s has sent a strong message.

Carey also discussed some of the difficulties facing the developing countries as they attempt to implement reforms. In the West, the evolution of democracy and the market economy took place over centuries, beginning with the agricultural revolution. Major social and political struggles were involved, but, broadly speaking, political, social, and technological developments were closely interrelated. In developing countries today, however, there is a major disjunction between political, social, and technological developments. In the absence of an equilibrium between political, social, and technological change, there is severe disfunctioning in many countries. Perhaps the most dramatic example of this is the population explosion. The emergence of indigenous modernizing capacities on both the economic front and the political front in developing countries is thus of great urgency.

Raymond Gastil, a consultant to A.I.D., reported the results of a survey that had been done by DAC on their members’ views of participatory development. The results highlight considerable variation among the countries in defining political and economic development, how the country acts on these definitions, its rationale for its strategy, and the regions of the world it chooses as its focus for aid. Moreover, the respondents differed on the meaning of good governance (components may include democracy, accountability, respect for human rights, and a rule of law), and they also differed on a definition for human rights. Further lack of agreement was apparent in attempting to link macro level political changes with institutional reforms.

The lack of consensus about the key problems around which aid strategies are designed to alleviate or change has made it difficult for the DAC to act as a unified body. The DAC has now agreed on a set of general principles regarding “participatory democracy” and has begun the effort to develop common concepts and methodology through its working groups. It is hoped that the discussions in this workshop contribute some clarification to the debates on definitions, indicators, and possible strategies.

Robert Dahl opened the discussion of defining democracy with a set of questions that he presented as challenges to scholars and practitioners:

• Are there values and goals other than democratic values against which to evaluate political systems? How should we evaluate nondemocratic systems?

• When we examine democracies, should we attend only to process or deal also with substantive issues? (Dahl said his own preference is to view democracy as a process that may be constrained by certain substantive requirements such as the violation of rights.)

• Should democracy be defined as a global, universal concept or as a region-specific, historically bounded phenomenon? (Dahl said he prefers to use universal criteria in defining democracy but notes that it cannot be regarded in strictly ahistorical terms.)

• How do we deal with the fact that modern democracies differ from those in classical political systems? One dimension of difference is between the modern version of

large democratic countries and the classical version of the relatively small democratic city-states.

• Can we specify a distinct set of contemporary institution as our focus of study? Once specified, how would we measure progress toward democracy?

• Can we distinguish between the conditions that facilitate or impede progress toward democracy and the definition of democracy? What are the conditions that make democratic institutions viable?

• Are there criteria other than the achievement of or movement toward democracy that can be used to distinguish among the nondemocratic countries, especially those countries where it is highly improbable that democratic institutions will develop in the foreseeable future? One possible dimension is progress toward improved governance. An important research question suggested by this issue is the relationship between types of political systems and rates of economic growth.

The discussion on definitions produced further elaborations of the concept. A minimum list of components is suggested by Dahl’s 1971 work on polyarchy: broad participation, elected rulers, freedom of expression and freedom to organize, and a media that reflect pluralistic ideas. Socioeconomic equality is not included in the definition. Two other elements were suggested by Michael Green: that democracies allow for the peaceful transfer of power as opinion shifts and that democracies exhibit a stable equilibrium in the sense of checks and balances that correct for malfeasance while preserving the system. Dahl acknowledged that Green’s first element could be included in a definition. However, he suggested that the second element confuses definitional criteria with conditions that promote or interfere with the functioning of democratic institutions.

Raymond Gastil called for more acceptance of the fact that it is legitimate to define democracy in many ways. He noted five levels on which democracy has been defined by different participants: self-determination, majority rule (through multiparty government), basic civil liberties, extended human rights, and government fairness or freedom from corruption (see Gastil, 1990). He also discussed the preconditions that some have viewed as necessary for a democracy to be sustainable. One is a sense of nationhood: Can a country defined by arbitrary, perhaps colonially determined, borders be a democracy? Another is literacy: Can citizens in a large country participate in the democratic process without being literate? A third is an adequate development of nongovernmental institutions. A fourth is the equality of women. Many in the development community appear to believe that it is incorrect to focus on formal democratic institutions before such preconditions exist.

Gastil summarized his idea of varieties of democracies, noting that many countries that we regard as democracies do not satisfy standard political science criteria. One criterion not satisfied by a number of “democratic” countries is multipartyism. For example, Japan is ruled essentially by one party, and Switzerland has a “frozen party system” in which one party always wins. Democracy in Switzerland is more evident at the local level, where citizens vote on initiatives and referendums. Other variants on the classic definition can be found in such countries as the United States, Sweden, and India. Thus, there may be a need for more open definitions of democracy that take into account unique social or cultural conditions.