Reports from the Regional Workshops
Democracy Forum 2000

Making democracy work for the poor
Key messages from the regional workshops

1. Introduction

The first International IDEA Democracy Forum was held in 1996. Since then, International IDEA annually brings together leading politicians, civil society representatives, academics, representatives of international multi-lateral and inter-governmental organizations to deliberate on a topic of immediate relevance to the goal of furthering democracy around the world. IDEA has also over the years used the forum as a launch pad for its publications such as the Women in Parliament: Beyond Numbers and the Youth Voter Participation books. Based on the evaluations of the Forum participants, the topics of the forum have been of great relevance and value to democracy debate around the world.

The Forum 2000 seeks to further develop the objective of the forum. The first intention is to make the forum discussion more fruitful by conducting some pre-forum studies and holding meetings on the findings in four regions of the Former Soviet Union (FSU), South Asia, Latin America, and Sub-Saharan Africa. The Arab region, which held an earlier workshop on a related subject, was added to the forum as another case study. The second objective was to establish partnerships both at international and regional levels and use these to prepare for a richer and more informed forum. Thirdly, the aim was to initiate a debate on the theme of the forum in the selected regions. This summary focuses solely on the first and primary objective.

The four regional workshops were held between April and mid May. The papers and workshops reports are available on International IDEA’s website. The participants were politicians, civil society representatives, researchers, regional and international organizations. This summary is an initial assessment of the extent to which the key objectives of the regional workshops have been met. Up front, we must say that the findings paint a rather gloomy picture of the situation on the ground. Indeed the real situation may be a lot better than presented here. However pessimistic, we consider the findings important as the participants were considered to have been a true representation of public opinion in these regions. Governments, civil society organizations and external actors conducting programs on democracy promotion and poverty reduction should benefit from these expressed frustrations.

2. Regional Workshops: Main Findings

The holding of the regional workshops as a preparation for this year’s forum is an effort to adapt the forum from being a single event into a project with practical, advocacy and research dimensions for International IDEA and its partners. The workshops were preceded in each region by a survey of issues relating to the link between democracy and poverty. The organizers identified four operational sub-themes for analysis:

1. accountable governance;
2. citizenship and rights,
3. participation, and
4. the role of external actors

In South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and the CIS regions each topic was given to a researcher/expert for elaboration. In Latin America a paper was commissioned on the wider theme of democracy and poverty. Given that this is a complex topic which requires a profound quantity of research and in-depth analysis, one would say the papers and the debates at the workshops were of agreeable quality especially given the limited time in which the papers had to be prepared. The papers provided a survey of the general issues for democracy and poverty in these different parts of the world. The following is a brief summary of what emerged from the regional studies and the workshop discussions under each sub-theme:

Accountable Governance

Across the four regions citizens appear to be quite disappointed with the progress of democracy to date. There is a feeling of disillusionment, especially in the former Soviet Union region where the hopes of democracy bringing economic benefits were initially very high. But in Asia, Africa and Latin America the predominant feeling is that in spite of the political changes including regular elections, existence of multi-parties and free organizations of civil society, etc., corruption of state institutions is pervasive. This arises partly from the fact that in many countries remnants of the old undemocratic institutions are still in place. Corruption is also seen as evidence that the political reforms have not gone far enough to allow for popular control of the leaders through other checks and balances beyond elections. Electoral fraud and party corruption are cited as a few indicators of the still undemocratic systems. A review of some of the political institutions, such as the presidency and type of electoral system, was cited as necessary in Africa.

In short, there is a call in these regions for more and deeper democratization of state and its institutions. In both Africa and the FSU region participants were clearly crying out for a "new type of leadership" which will be more sensitive to the needs of the people. In this context, the confidence in the state to promote democracy and address the problem of poverty is very low. Certainly, there are several factors such as history, past debt, economic underdevelopment and others that contribute to both tensions and public frustrations with the state. However, it must be stressed that democratization still has a long way to go in many of the countries in the regions under discussion.

There has evidently been some progress made at the civil society level. Many citizens are organized into non-governmental organizations and have created new space for policy debate, anti-corruption and human rights advocacy. Still others are working at service-delivery for the poor. However, the gap between the state and civil society is still wide and relations not so amicable. In the FSU region, the absence or a very weak and nascent civil society is very evident. This is limiting progress on democracy and poverty reduction efforts.

Citizenship and Rights

The following statement by one of the presenters in the South Asian workshop sums up the feelings across the regions on this topic. She said:

In both Africa and the FSU region, participants pointed to the well-constructed constitutions that define the rights of citizens and basic freedoms and to the reality that they do not exist in practice. Citizenship is reduced to mere identity with a geographical territory. Meager resources are allocated to substantiate freedoms and rights to security, equity and participation in national affairs. The precarious conditions of women, minority ethnic groups, "tribals"(as they are referred to in South Asia), cultural groups as well as those of the poor were identified as indications of how these citizens’ privileged and rights are inferior. In some cases, as in Armenia, rights to land were given, but because the owners did not have resources to work the land, the trend is the rich amalgamating the land back. Similarly, the loss of jobs across the FSU region was cited as one of the factors contributing to the disempowerment of the citizenry.

In some African countries citizenship was shown to be tenuous. Women, minorities and borderline communities were often subjected to hardships that took away their rights. Cases in Africa were quoted as evidence of how far democracy still has to go in ensuring equal citizenship rights to all. Examples were, the expulsion of Asians from Uganda in the late 1970s, the troubles faced by the former head of State in Zambia and the present situation of white minority farmers in Zimbabwe which threaten their propriety and indirectly citizenship rights.

The poor people were reported to serve as " a vote bank" for rich politicians. It is claimed that during elections they sell their votes for small amounts. Women’s additional marginalization is significant in these matters. For instance, in many countries children can not acquire citizenship through their mothers. The central issue of concern under this sub-theme is the general fear or perceptions of threat that ordinary citizens feel from the state and its institutions. Both the army and the police are still seen as a menace to the general public. However, citizens’ rights across all the regions are, by differing degrees, threatened by crime and communal violence. The threat of political violence and its undermining effects on democracy and security came out clearer in the Africa, Latin America and South Asian workshops. The arming of the youth as "boy soldiers" in Africa was lamented as a major threat to democracy. The poor are the main victims of the lack of peace at the community level.

Participation

With the political system still relatively closed and state – society relations less friendly, citizens’ influence on government programs and policies that affect their lives is reported to be limited in most regions. A speaker in the Latin American workshop expressed the general feelings of citizens as follows:

The limitation of elections as a form of participation was constantly cited here.

Three key concerns with participation seem to emerge from the regions: First the general lack of access to state institutions in order to influence them to carry out development programs relevant to the needs of the majority and the poor in particular. This, in the views of workshop participants, has resulted in spending cuts on education, health and the general social welfare program (see the Latin American workshop report). Secondly, the concern with participation has to do with the lack of an enabling environment for peoples’ organizations. This point relates back to the still unfriendly state-society relations in many countries and the consequent lack of facilitative legislation and other mechanisms to synchronize civil society efforts with those of the state and other actors in the economy. Thirdly, related to the first two points is the lack of empowered local institutions in all the regions. As the South Asian report shows the powers of the central government, politicians, political parties and bureaucracy are such that they have made caricature of decentralization and all other local initiatives.

In spite of the odds, civil society organizations, withstanding their own deficiencies, have made significant progress at the level of policy advocacy, organization and service-delivery to the most needy. Some observable progress has been made in improving the status, rights and participation of women and select minority groups in politics and other social and economic spheres. The situation of youth and their incorporation into both civil society efforts and society at large was considered bad and of immediate concern. However, unstable macroeconomic and political environment often undermines the efforts of the civil society.

Finally, the loss of human capital from the developing to developed countries was noted as a main area of concern to the development of self-supporting and democratic societies.

The Role of External Actors

The role of external actors received a lot of attention in all the workshops. In Africa, South Asia and the FSU region the skepticism and criticisms focused on what was claimed to be the impact of negative policies of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In particular, structural adjustment programs, loaning to corrupt governments and policy recommendations on education, health and poverty alleviation programs were seen as ill conceived. Others pointed to the diversity of external actors and the need to encourage them to co-ordinate their efforts and work within the collectively defined national agenda for each country.

The external actors need to help build consensus by better co-ordination and targeting of their assistance. None of the non-choreographed approaches are helping the development of a democratic culture in individual countries. In addition, participants expressed concern that some external actors do not put enough effort to understanding the specific characteristics of each country and region. This is necessary for appropriate interventions.

Finally, under this theme arose the issue of global organizations and their lack of democracy. It was claimed that some of the global organizations undermine democratic institutions because they lack democratic practice themselves.

3. Conclusion

The enclosed reports and the papers informing the discussions at the workshops present a rather gloomy picture of the situation regarding the theme of this forum. There is little doubt that substantial progress has been made on democratization in the past ten years. Attention to poverty reduction and investment at national and international levels has evidently increased since the last World Report on Poverty in 1990. The key message however, is not what has been done but that much more needs to be done and in an improved manner. The choice of this theme by International IDEA and its partners was of course, to increase the focus and attention to the issues but more pertinently to identify the best methods and strategies of removing the still serious hurdles to both democracy consolidation and poverty reduction.

We sincerely hope the discussion at the forum itself will be oriented towards finding an effective strategy and advocating it at all levels. We want to underscore the point that institutions and attitudes are not derived from the leaders’ benevolence but from collective efforts for mutual benefactors.