The Transition to Democracy Proceedings of a Workshop (1991) / Chapter Skim
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Setting an Action Agenda: Plenary Session V
Setting an Action Agenda: Plenary Session V
Pages 84-88
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From page 84... ...
One concern was that a new initiative would simply lead to the repackaging of existing programs under a new label "democracy." Others expressed concern that a new initiative might stress visible short-term results over the potentially more important long-term consequences of sustained programs. Basic education and building community banking were mentioned as examples of specific programs with significant implications for promoting democratic values whose effects on democracy were gradual and thus unlikely to yield immediate measurable results.
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The difficulty of trying to engineer democracy cross-culturally surfaced frequently as a counterargument to promoting basic democratic principles. Some of the session's most heated exchanges revolved around this basic tension.
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A participant argued that promoting democracy is fundamentally different from supporting economic development because democracy is a moral issue. Hence, he said, it is important to make explicit exactly what we will not tolerate, to define the moral basis behind what we mean by "support for democracy." Unless such fundamental values are explicitly identified, he feared that old programs would simply be relabeled as "promoting democracy." One participant then proposed six fundamental democratic values he thought had emerged from 86
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The importance of taking into account economic upheaval occurring alongside political democratization was emphasized throughout the workshop. The area of clearest agreement to emerge was that NI.D.
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From page 88... ...
or in a country-to-country alliance of NGOs concerned with a specific issue. The weight of the evidence presented at the workshop suggested that supporting intermediary organizations as fundamental components of a healthy civil society would be as, if not more, important for successful democratization than support for the formal institutions and mechanisms of government.
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