This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.

Administrator J. Brian Atwood
Freedom House Forum
Washington, D.C., March 2, 1998
U.S. Agency for International Development

I want to thank Peter Rodmon for that kind introduction; also Bette Bao Lord, Adrian Karatnycky and the Freedom House Board for inviting me here.

Today a number of organizations promote democracy around the world, but Freedom House was the first and its influence remains dominant. Each year national leaders, opposition parties, academics, journalists and other organizations in the democracy business await Freedom House's authoritative report on the state of democracy around the world. We at USAID use the Freedom House report as the key indicator of our own progress.

As we meet, serious doubts once again are being raised about democratic development work. I want to address these skeptics today and offer some thoughts about the challenges we face in different parts of the world.

In the 1980's, some members of the human rights community charged that democracy work was a serious move away from concern for individual rights. While some strains between the human rights community and the democracy community still exist, for the most part that gap has been closed. Nations who have benefitted from democratization assistance and have strengthened their own institutions have demonstrated enhanced respect for the individual rights of their citizens. There shouldn't be any surprises there.

During this same period, it was extremely difficult to convince development professionals that a significant part of their work was to facilitate democratic governance. Finally, it dawned on donors that their own investments were threatened by corrupt and inefficient governments and that transparent systems and governmental accountability were essential to achieving sustainability. More recently, it is accepted in donor countries that sustainable development results are unlikely in societies where the people do not participate in the political life of a country.

This debate on the relationship between democracy, human rights and development was going on at a time when there was unprecedented demand for help coming from the former communist world and developing nations. Nations and individual citizens wanted advice, resources and partnerships with counterpart organizations in the more mature democracies.

We have vastly expanded U.S. Government resources -- mostly through USIA and the National Endowment for Democracy -- but the demand still far exceeds our capacity to respond. Each year at AID, we have to turn down missions who want more resources for democracy work. Our USAID democracy budget is approximately $400 million from all accounts but it is still not enough.

Now we face a new debate over democracy work that threatens to reduce even further our capacity to respond to those societies wanting democratic change. The critics, I believe, are sincerely responding to the frustrations of pursuing democratization in fragile post-conflict or post-authoritarian societies. They are taking snapshots of moving trains, works in progress with all their imperfections. Their reactions to what they see are sincere but I believe their prescriptions are dead wrong.

Fareed Zakaria, for example, who I understand was here with you today, regrets the "rise of illiberal democracy." He criticizes what he perceives is a preoccupation with elections that bring extreme nationalists to power in some cases. He proposes that the United States support "liberal autocracies" in the less developed nations -- governments that, though not democratically elected, respect individual rights.

Robert Kaplan writing in Atlantic Monthly goes even further. He believes we should abandon altogether our efforts to support democratic change in the poorest countries. He is vivid in his descriptions of the squalor, the crime and the desperation of these societies and he concludes that democracy is irrelevant to the needs of people in that condition.

The cameras these two excellent writers are using to take their snapshots are somewhat unique. They capture with great clarity certain aspects of democratic transitions. For example: the tendency of new democracies to elect strong personalities, sometimes with authoritarian traits; the spread of crime as military forces demobilize and civilian police and courts begin to learn the difficult challenges of justice and law enforcement; the wrenching unemployment as public companies become private and restructure to compete; the lack of revenue as new tax systems and collection agencies are put into operation; the corruption as private economies come into being without the regulatory or legal systems to support them.

The snapshots of the problem areas are so clear. So should be the emergence of democratic values and institutions that will eventually produce the correctives and stabilize these fragile societies. Why does the photograph blur and ignore the proliferation of non-governmental organizations, the foundation for civil society and the training ground for new leadership? Why does the camera ignore the new political dynamic created by officially sanctioned dissent, criticism directed at government through fledgling political parties and free press? Why does it ignore the potential of new municipal leaders, new entrepreneurs, new judges and a newly empowered citizenry?

The answer to the problems of new democracies does not lie in finding that rare breed, a liberal autocrat, and supporting him or her. The answer lies in pressing ahead to strengthen the institutions of democracy, including elections. Liberal-minded democratic leaders are more likely to emerge from an electoral process than from an autocracy.

We all agree that elections do not create by themselves viable democracies. A viable democracy is made up of a strong civil society, a fair and objective legal system, strong political institutions, open fiscal, financial and economic systems and, of course, guarantees of personal freedom.

But without an acceptable system to peacefully transfer power, it is less likely that the other attributes of democracy will be created, or, if created, will be sustained.

The annual Freedom House report gains great credibility because it categorizes nations by where they stand along the democratic continuum. Managed democracies, even those managed by liberal autocrats, are at one end of the continuum. In these societies, the institutions of democracy are present on paper but they are manipulated by governments and leaders whose main objective is to maintain power for personal or party gain.

It is no coincidence that official corruption pervades managed democracies -- crony capitalism as it was called in Marco's Philippines. No matter how benevolent the leadership, these managed democracies are susceptible over time to corrupt influences.

When a sincere effort is made to bring a very poor country through a democratic transition, the risks are high because government performance can rarely rise to the people's expectations. In places like Mali where the government is as democratic as any in Africa, international community assistance is indispensable. President Konare has said he cannot sustain democracy if he has insufficient resources to educate even half his children.

This is where our policy of democracy promotion risks creating a moral issue. If we use our considerable influence to convince nations to take a democratic course, as we should, we must in turn invest the resources to help these societies through the early stages where they are most vulnerable. To me there is no more compelling justification for our foreign assistance programs today. Both parties in our country have endorsed a foreign policy of democracy promotion and our political parties should not escape the moral imperative such a policy creates.

That is what worries me about Kaplan's and Zakaria's writings. They risk giving politicians a place to hide. Their criticisms of policy need to be addressed head on. To be fair they do not come out in the same place on this issue, but they both use the same snapshot approach to justify their conclusions. By the way, Zakaria has given John Shattuck and I space in Foreign Affairs to refute him, so I want to state for the record that his conclusions should not be lumped with Kaplan's, just his methods.

Clearly, one must examine particular situations to justify one's conclusions about democracy work. I simply prefer doing that with a long-running video camera -- with several extra tapes for good measure -- rather than with a snapshot.

In the past month, I have travelled to Bosnia and Guatemala, two nations pursuing democratization in the aftermath of tragic civil wars. The geography, history, culture and ethnic makeup of these two nations are as night and day, but the democratization process in these post-conflict transitions deals with similar conditions. Let me spend a few moments running my personal video camera for you.

Many have declared the Dayton Accords to be a naive effort to superimpose democratic structures over deeply divided communities. Some have even suggested that prospects for an integrated, unitary state were sacrificed to bring an end to the fighting. To these critics, Dayton sanctioned ethnic cleansing.

I would not dispute that Dayton represented the art of the possible in diplomatic negotiations. But it contains within it requirements for democratic structures that could, with a great deal of effort and outside assistance, create a stable unitary state. Perhaps the critics could devise a better document in a laboratory but they probably would have failed to create one the parties would have signed. And I hope they would not have advocated abandoning a democratic process for an imposed solution.

Yes, Dayton represents the art of the possible, but it also creates a democratic path toward reconciliation. It obviously will not work without constant international pressure and international assistance.

Because the civilian implementation effort is beginning to work, we are beginning to see progress on the ground. Jobs have been created, vital infrastructure has been repaired and many Bosnians have begun to acquire a real stake in peace.

Political leaders who believed that their mandate was to prepare for the next war are beginning to lose ground to those who reflect the aspirations of those who want a continuation of peace. The issues of the day now relate to education, health care and jobs. The islands of resistance to Dayton are beginning to break down.

The election in the Republika Srpska of a young advocate of a multi-ethnic Bosnia has dramatically exposed the gap between nationalist demagogues and the new leaders who are listening to the demands of the people. Milorad Dodik, the new Prime Minister of the Republika Srpska, supports the Dayton peace process and he advocates sweeping economic reform that will create open, private markets and modern economic and fiscal systems. As an owner of a newspaper, he is also a strong advocate of free press.

Those who are on board with Dayton will see their towns benefit greatly from our programs.

Those who wish to stand in the way of progress will continue to suffer unemployment and the absence of electricity and running water. They will be small islands of despair whose people will soon come to realize that their leaders have let them down.

Many of the political leaders who made their names by waging the war continue to prepare for the next conflict. They are driving the vehicle of government with both eyes on the rear view mirror. But new leaders are emerging that are more in tune with the ambitions of ordinary people. More positive change is coming in Bosnia, but it would not be possible without frequent, scheduled elections that give ordinary people a voice in government.

Similarly, in Guatemala we are seeing how closely peace, democratic governance and economic opportunity are intertwined. To support the December 1996 Peace Accords, AID's Office of Transitions Initiatives moved quickly to immediately implement a plan for the demobilization of the guerrilla (URNG) forces.

In fairly short order, more than 2,900 former fighters gave up their arms. They were surveyed to determine their educational and health care needs and by May of 1997, these former guerrillas were given vocational training and emerged as civilians.

But this was only the beginning of the process. Guatemala had for too many years practiced its own form of apartheid, leaving a vast indigenous population to fend for itself. Now the challenge is to reform judicial codes and to address the great social, economic and ethnic cleavages that created the thirty-year civil war.

To do this the government has promised to raise significant revenues on its own. Last week, during my visit, the government was forced to request that Congress repeal a property tax law because of country-wide demonstrations and the prospect of violent confrontation. Ironically, the people protesting would have been the beneficiaries of the tax revenue raised by this law and, for the most part, would have had to pay no taxes as most of them do not own land or property.

Is there any more difficult challenge in a democracy than raising taxes? Still, the Guatemalan Government of President Alvaro Arzu deserves great credit for its efforts to democratize and develop its country under the Peace Accords. Our government is there too, to the tune of $260 million over four years, most of the program work being done by USAID.

As I indicated, USAID is spending about $400 million a year to implement democracy programs across the globe. The expansion of democracy and good governance is a core agency objective. Promoting democracy is not only an essential foreign policy priority, but open and strong democratic institutions are absolutely critical to the realization of our goals as an agency. We approach democracy as part of the larger process of development, especially the development of free market economies that link economic and political freedom.

I am very pleased that our agency has become so responsive to new opportunities. Our Office of Transitions Initiatives and our Democracy Governance Center -- two new units created four years ago -- enable AID to respond quickly to new openings, as we have done in recent years around the globe.

Closed societies such as Cuba and China represent a special challenge for our government as there is less space to operate and more potential danger to our partners. But we have learned a great deal about this in our partnership with Freedom House in Cuba and we are prepared to do even more to aid people living under totalitarian regimes.

We are living at a time when democracy is on the ascendancy but at a time when the dangerous realities -- the threats to democracy -- are intruding on our collective consciousness. Inexperienced governments and political leaders, economic stagnation and unmet expectations are threatening the democratic movement. It is, however, time to redouble our efforts to support the world's democrats, not a time to retrench.

Those of us who have long advocated a commitment to democratic development never argued that democratization is a linear process. We never claimed that a snapshot of a nation undergoing democratic change would produce a pretty picture. All we claimed, with all due humility, was that we were in this for the long haul. All we asked was that we have the means to help courageous democrats seeking the same freedom we have.

We Americans pursue democratic values because that is what defines our national character and that is what serves our national interests. The expansion of democracy in all its aspects -- elections, civil society, rule of law, respect for human rights and personal freedom -- represents a mission to which many of us have dedicated years of our lives. What keeps us going are the thousands of individuals around the world who have risked their lives -- in many cases sacrificed their lives -- to live in freedom.

This is not a time to hesitate in the face of difficulty. This is a time to redouble our efforts. Thank you.

This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.

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