Source: New Europe - The European Weekly: http://www.neurope.eu/
12 May 2007
12 May 2007 - Issue : 729
Democracy, cornerstone of a free and fair world order, cannot be imposed from outside but “there is need for democracy to be built from inside,” stressed Vidar Helgesen, Secretary General of IDEA (The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance) last week in Brussels, Belgium.
Speaking to Tejinder Singh (Tito) on the sidelines of an event “Democracy building in a diverse world,” organised by “The Royal Institute for International Relations (Formerly IRRI-KIIB),” Helgesen, Norway’s former Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs said, “Democracy is a basic idea but (it is) a very complex undertaking and requires complicated institutions and processes and they need to be rooted in national reality. Therefore you can never take one model and transfer it to country but what you can do is to provide a wealth of examples of various democracies, diverse democracies and let those examples inspire promoters of democracy from within.” Commenting on democracy in today’s world, Helgesen said, “Democracy building which went through a very optimistic period in the 90s after the fall of the Berlin Wall is now in a more difficult situation partly because of polarisation given post 9/11 world.” “Obviously the US made democracy a big part of its foreign policy and Iraq being seen as main expression of that policy, it made democracy promotion and democracy building more difficult.”
“Add to that in the economic field, you also have economically well performing powers that are not democratic but that are seen as or held up as models for economic growth. Autocrats use these to contest democracy as a model for economic and social development so there is a need for new approaches.”
Pointing out that in Norway, the Conservative Party is the strongest proponent of European Union membership and should not be coupled with British one, the former foreign minister felt that the EU “can and should play increasingly important role in democracy building.”
Helgesen urged, “The EU should move beyond the successes of enlargement and articulate value based policy for supporting democracy globally. Democracy does not feature very prominently (in EU agenda) but is part of a sort of big governance package.”
Lamenting that the “EU has not yet articulated where it will like to head in terms of supporting democracy building,” he said, “There is a great need for that and a great potential for EU and the world if the EU could do that.”
Asked to comment on the “double standards” from the West as in the case of Middle East, there is talk of promoting democracy and when people elect their governments, for example, the Palestinians elected Hamas and then conditions are put, Helgesen emphatically agreed. “Absolutely clear from the Arab world, Palestinian elections and West’s approach to the outcome of those elections is seen as another example of double standards in Western policies and clearly it is a dilemma what was probably the best and freest organised elections ever in an Arab-context produced an outcome and reactions to that outcome which increased polarisation rather than the opposite and it does require, I think reflection.”
Calling the EU to take a lead, he said, “There is a need for articulation, verbalisation of democratic principles how to apply them and I think EU could come a long way if they started by setting out that approach.”
Drawing the line of demarcation between governance-building approaches and democracy-building approaches, the Secretary General of IDEA said, “Governance support quite focuses on executive branches of the government, strengthening the capacity of the executive whereas democracy building has a higher focus on political society, political parties and parliament.”
Underlining that “political democracy thrives on diversity and pluralism is therefore extremely important for democracy,” Helgesen said, “In post-conflict situations there is a trade off between international community support for stability which falls for strong economy and security arrangements on the executive side. On the other hand there is need to put in place democratic institutions that make democracy thrive in the long run.”
Asked to comment on IDEA’s role to promote democracy in the simmering Kosovo situation and Belarus, Helgesen said, “We are intergovernmental organisation with member states so our mandate is to work on invitation which means we can not act directly in situations like that but material that we produce knowledge resources, tools training tools for example can be used and indeed have been used also in situations that are more complex.”
“One example is some of our material is translated into Burmese, obviously not for use by ruling military,” he added.
Reasoning that “The landscape of democracy building is more difficult than a few years ago,” Helgesen said, “There is more demand for approaches that are different than the so called freedom agenda has been dominating for last a few years and IDEA as an organisation is very well positioned to provide resources and provide advice and reform support in or along the lines of new non-prescriptive approach, an approach built on supporting national development of reform agenda.”
Listing supporting technicalities of building institutions and electoral systems as constitution building processes, political party systems, increasing participation of women in politics Helgesen pointed the importance of “a key tool which we use: democracy assessment which is not for ranking democracies from outside but national actors themselves apply in assessing for themselves and formulating reformative agenda.”
IDEA (The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance) has an observer status at United Nations and Secretary General outlined his pragmatic approach to step up activities. “We have recently just two months ago established an office in New York, for liaison as a permanent representative observer to the UN and that office will work on stepping up our relationship with different UN bodies like a peace building Commission which is relevant, UN Democracy building fund, UNDP, Electoral Assistance Division: we work with all of them and we would like to step up that activity.”
Tejinder Singh (Tito)
tito@neurope.eu