Thanks very much.
I'm familiar with the committee's work. I accompanied Thomas Axworthy — he's the chair of the centre — when he was here in October. Also, I heard good things from my colleagues at International IDEA in Stockholm.
The committee has asked witnesses to comment on three broad areas: democracy assistance as an objective, comparative lessons, and the Canadian role in democracy promotion. I'll address these aspects in order. In terms of Canada's role, I'll speak to the political party function of democracy assistance. I'll try not to be redundant, as Dr. Axworthy has outlined our case in a Democracy Canada Institute paper, so I'll focus on different aspects that he didn't touch on.
I'll start with democracy promotion as an objective. Democracy is one of the most contested concepts in political science, chock full of normative connotations. As such, aiding democratic development can be a tricky process, as the evolution of a transition to democracy will necessarily leave room for debate regarding the democratic status achieved by a particular country.
Political theorist Robert Dahl argues that representation is an essential element of a democracy, and to have democracy in a meaningful sense, political institutions must be established and entrenched that facilitate this representation. Dahl points to free and fair elections as the necessary component of this representation. Political parties are typically employed to undertake this representative role.
Next I'll talk about democratic transitions. Over what has been termed the “third wave” of democratization, several international democracy-promotion organizations have been created and strengthened in Europe and North America and in many new democracies themselves. Now, beyond the third wave, democracy promotion has taken on an even more prominent role on the international stage. Moreover, demand for international democracy assistance remains high in developing democracies throughout the world.
How do transitions to democracy occur? Thomas Carothers, a leading writer in democratic studies, notes that, broadly speaking, there are two main paths for democratic reform under authoritarian regimes. The first method sees an authoritarian regime collapse due to a lack of legitimacy through popular uprisings, revolutions, or similar overthrows of dictatorships or authoritarian regimes. The second path takes place when an authoritarian regime gradually releases control over the state through liberalization initiatives in which social, economic, and political reforms are expanded in a manageable way and a goal of consolidated democracy is eventually achieved.
Finally, I will talk about comparative cases. Allow me to highlight key features of democratic transitions in Taiwan and Afghanistan, which we have studied at the Centre for the Study of Democracy. I'll place those in the context of Carothers' categorization of how democratic transitions occur.
In Taiwan, democratic reform was a gradual, 50-year, election-driven process, from about 1946, with the beginnings of local elections, to 1996, with the first open presidential election. Participation in local elections helped to instill a democratic ethos among the Taiwanese population and facilitated the political representation of a growing opposition movement. Taiwan possessed all the right preconditions for democratic reform to occur in a gradual and relatively stable process, namely: economic success and the growth of an often foreign-educated middle class who returned to Taiwan; a system of local elections that allowed legitimate political dissent through an organized process; and outside reform pressure from the United States and other players.
If Taiwan underwent a gradual transition to democracy, Afghanistan represents the opposite case of a failed state. More than a development project for the international community, rebuilding Afghanistan has meant rebuilding and redesigning its political institutions as well. In fact, Afghanistan is undergoing a transition to democracy. Making the transition to a democratic form of government in Afghanistan is fraught with difficulties and is likely to experience setbacks. Afghanistan's economic structure has been gravely weakened, distorted, and made more vulnerable through two decades of sustained conflict. The importance of international intervention on a large scale is an essential point when determining whether a democratic transition in Afghanistan has any chance of being sustained over the long term, both in terms of military and security aid, and in terms of political and governance assistance and humanitarian aid and development.
Now I'll speak to the comparative context and how democracy assistance is structured in other developed countries. Democracy assistance organizations can be placed into three main categories: political party institutes, like the German and Swedish party models; international or multilateral organizations, like the Stockholm-based International IDEA; and national umbrella organizations and multi-party institutes, like the National Endowment for Democracy, the Westminster Foundation for Democracy in Britain, or the Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy.
The international multilateral model... The field of democracy assistance benefits from mutual learning and international cooperation. Thus it is useful to highlight the multilateral model. For example, International IDEA, of which Canada is a member, is a multilateral organization with member states across all continents that seek to support sustainable democracy in both new and long-established democracies. It is important for Canada to be represented in multilateral democracy assistance bodies such as IDEA to learn from and influence the best practices of other organizations. However, the creation of an independent democracy Canada institute would promote Canadian democracy assistance priorities in a more direct way.
The political party foundation model... In democracy assistance, the political party foundation model is a prominent feature, particularly in Germany, but also notably in Sweden. The German party foundation model, or stiftungen, has served as a model for all party foundations. The two largest German foundations have yearly revenues exceeding 100 million euros each, although they divide resources between international and domestic initiatives. The revenue for the National Democratic Institute in Washington, for 2005, exceeded $80 million U.S. and their activities were almost exclusively geared for international projects.
In international democracy assistance projects, the foundations tend to work with sister parties with like-minded political views in partner countries. For example, Sweden's Olof Palme Foundation, the Social Democratic Party, tends to provide political party assistance to sister parties within Socialist International.
Political party foundations generally have a significant degree of independence from their affiliated parties. Because of the nature of independent party foundations, coordinated democracy promotion efforts among political parties in a given country may be difficult to achieve.
The multi-party and umbrella model... Organizations that best fit the model of the internationalization of democracy assistance and exemplify the cooperative model of working both with international partners and through indigenous organizations include the NED, the Netherlands IMD, the Westminster Foundation, and the newly created Norwegian Centre for Democracy Support.
Multi-party organizations, unlike party foundations, provide differing degrees of oversight to the democracy assistance projects undertaken by political parties. IMD, for example, employs a proportional representation from the seven major political parties in the Netherlands to undertake program activities, while maintaining a permanent non-partisan bureau staff to manage the institute's overall approach. Multi-party organizations receive core funding from public sources and maintain an arm's-length relationship with government agencies.
The multi-party model is particularly intriguing because it incorporates elements of political party independence in which parties are free to work with and develop programs with sister parties in partner countries, while at the same time having the benefit of the broad oversight of an umbrella organization to ensure policy coherence.
I'll speak to Canada's role in democracy promotion now. Thomas Axworthy laid out the Centre for the Study of Democracy's approach for establishing a Democracy Canada institute when he appeared before this committee last October. The paper can be viewed in full through the IRPP.
So that I'm not repetitive, I will highlight a key feature of our paper, the role of political party assistance in democracy promotion. Based on our analysis of existing organizations in the Canadian democracy assistance community, it is clear that no single organization focuses exclusively on political party assistance or democratization. Many organizations have elements of these, but none could be described as an institution exclusively focused on the provision of democracy assistance internationally. Specifically, Canada lacks an institution comparable to the Dutch IMD or the United States NED.
A role for Canada within the democracy assistance community... I received a study grant to examine European models of democracy assistance in 2005. I learned that not only are international political party assistance organizations thriving in many European countries, but their operations are also expanding markedly in the Netherlands and Sweden, and new organizations have been created in Finland and Norway.
The Democracy Canada institute proposal has received international attention, being referenced by organizations such as the OECD, the UNDP, and International IDEA. The CSD's international consultations made it clear that the democracy assistance community would see the creation of Democracy Canada as a very worthwhile initiative, particularly in the area of political party assistance.
Moreover, because Canada lacks a central democracy assistance organization, Canadians contribute to other organizations and other countries' aid and foreign policy objectives. This means that Canada is losing some of its best and brightest democracy practitioners, who therefore contribute primarily to U.S. or European foreign policy priorities.
Canada has a wealth of experience in democratic institutions and processes that can be shared with emerging democracies. I was speaking at a conference on democratic transitions in Taiwan in 2005. At the conference, a young group of Taiwanese law students, who were coming to terms with their own national identities in relation to China, engaged with me in lengthy discussions of Quebec's place within Canada — a topic on which they were quite knowledgeable.
A Canadian-based democracy institution, with its experience in a federal, ethnically diverse, multilateral, and bilingual country, would be welcome into the international democracy promotion community and would have a significant impact in assisting developing democracies.
Thank you.
