Foreign Affairs committee  If I have time to contribute, although very briefly, one thing we really have to fight against is the view that development can be separated from democracy. I think we all know that Amartya Sen argued strongly against that. Democracy is development. What you see now is a Chinese editorial in The Economist magazine, paid for, which says that the old dichotomy between democracy and autocracy is dead; the new dichotomy is between bad governance and good governance.

Foreign Affairs committee  I have just a very brief addition to that. Within each country, obviously, you need to have democratic institutions that enable voices to be heard when the policies are made—the trade policy of the country—that provide confidence that the trade agreements the country is signing on to have been subject to oversight by the parliament and are subject to effective judicial oversight as well.

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you, Carl. Our programs can only exist and operate if we have a partner in the country. We do not go in with an agenda for a country and say, “This is what we want it to do.” Of course, we have an overall strategy that pulls out certain things that we think are critically important for good democratic practice around the world, but that's a pretty broad mandate for us.

Foreign Affairs committee  Very quickly, the key issue for us about long-term presence is that what we're trying to support is a democratic culture. Helping to share rules and procedures and technical skills is one thing. What really counts is the leadership and the understanding at every level when political challenges arise.

Foreign Affairs committee  Let me start. Our operating model provides political stability in that we are a cross-party organization. All the parties in our Parliament are represented on our board. This means that in agreeing to a long-term strategy and in taking day-to-day operational decisions, we need to hit that sweet spot where we will maintain the support across our Parliament, across our political system, if you like, for what we do.

Foreign Affairs committee  I'll build that into a—

Foreign Affairs committee  My response to the first question is that I don't believe there is a continuing acceleration of decline. I think the decline coincided with a period of a range of crises in the world, including an economic crisis. The causes of it range from the political conflicts that resulted from those crises along with the phenomenon we've seen of countries adopting the form of democracy but in a hollow way, without the reality of a democratic culture underpinning that form.

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you very much.

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you very much, Chair. I'll try to be quicker than that. I'm very grateful for your invitation to give evidence to this inquiry. Having read the remarks of some of your previous witnesses, I won't repeat some of the general points they made about the recent trends in democratic governance and what they said about the importance of supporting democracy around the world.