Foreign Affairs committee  Sure. As we saw with our study in Taiwan, I think the local level is where democracy really takes root. It took a long time to build up democratic values through local elections and the elections were really what drove the democratic transition. People came to rely on the electio

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes, it's obviously going to be very difficult to secure all those aspects. But the democratic values curriculum is one way to get at fostering a more deep-seated democratic belief in the country. And we're there. We could start it in our PRT, through Kabul University or these so

Foreign Affairs committee  There has been success in terms of electoral outcomes and voter turnout and these sorts of things. It's only been two or three years since the presidential elections, and then only about two years since the legislative elections. That's a very short timeframe, and most people wil

Foreign Affairs committee  I've touched on that already. I think one thing that Canada can do is create a democratic values curriculum through universities, and foster that through the education curriculum. More people are going to school in Afghanistan now, especially women, so I think there's a lot of ro

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes. The Ukraine project targeted all sorts of areas: universities, colleges, police academies, military training, and the regular education system. And a lot of academics and teachers and government officials were brought to Queen's University in the mid-1990s and were given tra

Foreign Affairs committee  None that come immediately to mind. I think the point I made in the paper that you touched on is sometimes there are liberal reforms that are scaled back or they are half-measures, but other times they can stick. As I said before, Afghanistan does have some experience with democr

Foreign Affairs committee  No, there are none that I can think of. There have probably been very few cases that have had the amount of international support Afghanistan has right now. A lot of theorists will say we should maintain the support and enhance it over the long term. I don't know how long it wo

Foreign Affairs committee  On the first point, there has to be sustained security. All the people I've spoken to and all the research I've done lead me to believe that you can't have democratic development without stability, and stability has to come from security. Economic development is another point t

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes, exactly--culture, history, all those aspects. In creating a democracy Canada institute, we not recommending that Canada export Canadian democracy. We want to foster democratic growth in other countries. To speak to your point, for a lot of the party foundations that are as

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes, I think that's true. With Taiwan, for example, they had all the right preconditions, strong economic reform, etc., to allow for democracy to take hold. There was stability there. So yes, I think you're right in saying they have to be looked at together.

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes, I think so. International IDEA, for example, has a political party assistance branch, but they're not actually going out and developing parties in other countries. They're supporting the parties that exist through comparative information about how parties function and that s

Foreign Affairs committee  Well, I'm not on the ground in Afghanistan, so I think I would have a hard time commenting with regard to sympathies for the Taliban and that type of thing. To be sure, there has to be sustained support through electoral processes. I'd like to see more, and I think Tom Axworthy

Foreign Affairs committee  As I mentioned before, development of a democratic values curriculum is something that Canada could do. Through the Centre for the Study of Democracy we saw that be a success in the Ukraine, and a similar model could be applied to Afghanistan.

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes, and I think that's key. Probably one of the most important functions is recognizing local context--

Foreign Affairs committee  I came to that conclusion from interviews and with people on the ground in Afghanistan, and after reading a lot of academic literature on democracy and democratic transitions and international reports from the OECD and these sorts of organizations. I have the quote somewhere in