today two of the most respected and revered american figures in the field of democratic transitions. carl gershman. for over 30 years president of the national endowment for democracy. and larry diamond who is flight the second row one of our most eminent scholars based at stanford university and the hoover institute. we are also breezed, very pleased, to have several outstanding younger scholars and practitioners in our two panels. they have been chosen from their fresh perspectives and their often dissending views from traditional policies in the last 30 years. indeed, one of the goals of this conference -- could we have -- if there are guests in the back row, could we have them move up? we don't need to use all the --

the reserve seats can be used, at least for this session. rather than your having to be stuck in the back. so as i started to say, one of the goals of this conference is to engage the younger generation in deciding what we should or should not do. what we should desist from doindoing in the area of support for democracy abroaded in the decades ahead. so it's appropriate the next generation have a major voice in formulating the new consensus, hopefully we'll get to a new consensus you have bios, i've introduced only two speakers by name. in your conference packages you have bio information on all of them. our goal today is to have a really intense focused discussion where people have a chance to engage the panelists

have a chance to engage with each other, they have dissending and differing views and leaving plenty of dim for discussions with you. thomas melia hopes to be here. he's snuck traffic. dissent. here are the three questions i've asked our speakers and you to think about and focus on during this entire day. three questions, three topics, three issues. first, should support for democratic transitions continue

to be a major goal of u.s. foreign policy? particularly in view of the drastically changed circumstances that we face today as compared to the 1990s. what priorities should we give to democracy support when it conflicts with other major u.s. national interests? that's the first cluster of issues. there's room in the front row, you can use the reserve seat for now. please come up. second issue if we should continue policies of active support for democracy abroad, what do we need to do differently to make them work more effectively? where should we focus our efforts in the coming decades and what should future democracy assistance programs look like if we indeed continue them?

if we should no longer continue providing active support for democratization abroad, what should be the alternative to our present policies? it's not you have no say no, no, no, no, no, we haven't done anything right. tell us what we should do differently. for example, should america still work to support human rights and basic freedoms abroad at some level or should we entirely drop this traditional deeply rooted theme of u.s. foreign policy in favor of a more cold-eyed realpolitik? let's say puree -- pure rial poll teak. what we do not mean by democracy support is the the imposition of

democracy through external intervention on the model of investigation, iraq or other places. instead of focus today is on the pros and cons of assisting and four which you aring existing attempts at transition and supporting new locally driven attempts at transition when and if they occur as we did with the rabbit revolution or so many others, round table agreements in poland come to mind powerfully as well. just a quick word about fpri, foreign policy research institute and its project on democratic transitions. are the acoustics all right all the way in the back row? we think of ourselves as an innovative agile think tank in philadelphia and we especially pride ourselves in trying to maintain an independent, outside-the-beltway perspective on global issues.

this is why we dare to tackle so many issues are debated and disagreed on in washington and try to take them from a per different perspective and think we might be able to break a little new ground. your conference folders -- and if you don't have one, i think's still some on the table outside. this is tom melia, you made it through the traffic jam? >> i did. >> i mean looks like you made it safely. so you have a -- in these folders, conference folders, you have a one-page summary of fpri's activity. and we have with us the president alan lux. bu l lux. burg and there are people affiliated on their democratic

transitions. when fpri invited me to start this program, to set up a program on post -- it was on democratic transitions, it was mostly the post-communist transitions we focused on. at that time the leaders of the orange revolution had just come to power as you all recall and the energy and initially positive outcomes that seemed to be happening in the first months and couple of years of that revolutionary movement and more importantly of the many precedents of the 1990s, successful beginnings of transition of that period led many, i would say most analysts and policymakers only the that the prospects for pos post-authoritarian transitions were very promising not only in 2 communist countries, former communist countries but also in other areas of the world.

of course when the soviet federation fell apart'm with were even more optimistic. today by contrast we see authoritarian reglegs many of these countries as well as deeply disappointing results over the past three plus years in the so-called arab spring countries. therefore the background for our conference today is one of significant, i would call it democratic disillusionment and much questioning as to the efficacy of u.s. policies in supporting democracy abroad. my hope is that we'll come away with a clearer sense of whether this current pessimism or discouragement is warranted and whether democratic refrenchment either on the ground in

countries overseas more to the u.s. policies in support of democracy abroad, whether that retrenchment is inevitable or whether there are new rationales and new approaches that might permit us to deal more effectively with these resurgent autocratic trends. those are the three questions and that is the -- and i want to stress once more the desire for real dialogue, not talking past each other, not making speeches but looking for alternatives to the extent that any of our panelists or audience disagree with current policy. so we've asked our speakers to be very brief in their initial presentations. they've all said they will try but will pomerantz, our moderator who has kindly stepped in for ken because of his flu

has promised to be very strict with his gavel and his clock, his watch. so presentations by our four panelists then very brief round where they can respond to each other or add a point two that may have been stimulated by the others' comments and then we will open it. above all, we want to have your comments and questions so think about your questions but please keep them brief. your questions and comments, but please keep them brief when the time comes, i believe we will have a microphone, is that correct, senate when the time comes for questions. so what we are seeking here is real engagement and discussions that really stimulate fresh thinking and help to break new ground. so thanks to our very large turnout. as you can see, we have moved the sessions into this large auditorium in which no food is allowed. the result of that, when we --

after the second panel we have a very short time to move into the wilson dining room in order to permit our luncheon speaker, our keynote speaker larry diamond proper time to proper time to make his presentation. he's agreed to speak as you eat. but when you go into the conference room, very important that you grab your lunch, beverage quickly so that we can get started very promptly. larry will speak. dr. diamond will speak for 30 minutes and we'll have 30 minutes of discussion. immediately after that we will righting in the same room go goo into the final panel you see on your programs and the idea of that is to have four different members of the organizers of their this conference give you their takeaways, they will no doubt be different but we view this conference as a starting point for further discussion and deepening of our understanding

of these issues and what the way forward is. as you probably have noticed from the cameras in the back, the entire -- the c-span is broadcasting all of the proceedings in this auditorium live. unfortunately for technical reasons they can not switch over to the lunch session and the entire conversation will be web cast and available on the cannon institute and the foreign policy research institute web sites. finally, we encourage you to tweet and ask questions using the hashtag "democracy matters." all one word. so thank you, will, for stepping in and i turn it over to you to strictly keep to the agenda. thank you. >> well, thank you very much mr. ambassador and welcome to the first panel on revisiting the

case for democracy assistance we have a group of very distinguished speakers as the ambassador noted their biographies are in the panel but this is a distinguished group that can get to the basic question about how to prioritize democracy promotion and where to allocate different resources. the first speaker is carl gershman, it's a great privilege to me to introduce him. he has not only led the national endowment for democracy for decades but also was my boss for a good seven years. carl, the floor is yours. >> thanks very much. it's a great pleasure to be here. i've been given ten minutes to give you a picture of the whole world. i'll do it as a snapshot and i'll speak in short hand so bear with me. i'll raise a lot of issues, we won't be able to probably talk about all of them. it's a very different period

today than it was 25 years ago when communism fell, when the third wave of democratization crested, communism collapsed and democracy appeared to be triumphant around the entire world. it was a period of a lot of allusions, democracy was thought to be inevitable. all countries were thought to be like poland which were going to welcome the united states. ned was no longer needed in the views of a lot of people. the government could step in and do the jobs because these issues were no longer terribly sensitive there was something called the transition paradigm where democracy would progress in transitional countries according to certain stages. mark and larry published an article in 2002. but it was a period in which i think it was -- charles krauthammer called it a vacation from history and today i think we're wiser, we understand how difficult it is to build democratic societies, especially

countries that lack strong institutions and a middle-class and how strong the resistance is from the old establishment. this doesn't mean people don't want it. they're fighting for in the china and russia and venezuela to saudi arabia, from pakistan to azerbaijan. it doesn't mean there's been some kind of fill your of democracy promotion which in my view trivializes the problem which has five broad dimensions. the first is that there's a growing effort by the world's autocracies to push back against the advance of democracy whose purpose is to control civil society and independent media, to contain democracy, to project their own version of reality into the flow of information around the world and to modify the international norms embodied in the universal declaration by elevating sovereignty above all others, we call that this

pushback. the second is the dismal fate of efforts to achieve successful democratic transitions. most notably the failure of the arab spring uprisings to produce any significant gain for democracy's sake for the very fragile transition in tunisia. they've succumbed to authoritarian backlash and the growth of extremist movements, autocrats have retain powder and where they have faced a concerted challenge they have not hesitated to use savage violence, as we know in syria. the third problem involves backsliding in countries that were once considered stable but which are now experiencing a serge of populism, extreme nationalism and threats to independent media and civic institutions. the coup in thailand, the trend toward a democracy in hungary, the growing centralization of power in turkey, the steady retreat in venezuela and other

alba countries in latin america are examples of such backsliding. the weakness of the response of the world's major democracies to the challenges posed by the new authoritarian assertiveness is the fourth problem. vaclav havel speaking at a conference that we organized five years ago said "politics -- politics where economic interests are put above basic political values are not only immoral, they are suicidal." speaking about ukraine today, the philosophy -- the ukrainian philosopher has said if values are sacrificed for security we will lose both. t the suicidal tendency is stronger than ever in both europe and the united states. havel was speaking about the weakness of europe but the united states is also at faults in the silence in latin america toward the roegs of democratic

freedoms in many countries than deafening. we live in a time when the words of the poet william butler yates have special relevance. the best lack conviction while the worst are filled with passionate intensity. the fifth has been the crisis in the united states and other leading democracies. it's a crisis that has many dimensions, political polarization and governmental paralys paralysis, our failure to rebuild infrastructure or control entitlement spending and the financial crisis of 2008 that undermined the standing of the u.s., the other is the rise of china which claims to be an alternative model of autocratic capitalism. the situation is by no means all bloomy. i'll point to three factors which go in the other direction. while there has been a democracy recession, there has not been a reverse wave and the number of electoral democracy which is peaked at 123 is now according

to freedom house at 116 that's not a reverse wave. there has also been democratic resilience during the economic crisis of 2008 which surprised a lot of people, there weren't massive collapses of democracy with the economic crisis and there were democracy mutuals today with real vigor in hong kong and ukraine and other countries. we must also recognize the fundamental problems that affect the state of democracy had little to do with the success or failure of efforts to aid democracy however effective or ineffective some of them might have been. first and foremost we have to commit ourselves to the restoration of american leadership? the world. this is not an expression of american arrogance or reckless form of overreaching. it's the recognition of a fundamental geopolitical reality. a world without u.s. primacy, sam huntington wrote two decades ago, would be a world with more violence and disorder and less

democracy and economic growth than a world where the united states continues to have more influence than any other country in shaping global affairs. president obama himself acknowledged this point in a speech last year to the u.n. general assembly when he called u.s. disengagement a danger for the world and a mistake since it would create a vacuum of leadership that no other nation is ready to fill. the urgent challenge is for the u.s. to exercise leadership so the vacuum isn't filled by hostile powers or chaos and violence. the problem today is not overreaching as some analysts want to say or trying to impose democracy on other countries which is ridiculous to assert today we need to return to a policy of real engagement. that doesn't mean draining our resources by getting bogged down in distance wars. but it does mean backing up our diplomacy with military power and deterrence in the absence of which we will have little

leverage in negotiations with countries that do not share our commitment to peace and the rule of law. why should they negotiate seriously if they feel we have the option of achieving their methods by the use of force and why should we hold back from providing ukraine with the with all it needs to defend itself and i would call your attention to the article in the "washington post" by senators levin and inhofe. but unless we have the political will and capacity to bring the spiraling u.s. debt under control, over the last decade the gross federal debt nearly tripled to more than $17 trillion and exceeds the total gross domestic product. while there are many reasons for the continuing surge in public debt, including the 2008 fiscal crisis, the wars in iraq and afghanistan, the principle factor has been the growth of entitlement spending which has gone from less than one-third of the federal budget a half century ago to more than

two-thirds today. in the words of robert samuelson, the welfare state is taking over government. our other priorities are steadily being squeezed out from investment and infrastructure and human cap tool international programs and defense spending which is expected to shrink by over 40% in the direction decade. but there are that can be done to -- and i'll in conclusion give a list of these. the effort to push back against the growing autocratic repression must be continued and expanded. a lot has been going on but more needs to be done. president obama's statement on defending civil society in his speesh to the clinton global initiative is a step in the right direction if there's follow through and the effort by the house foreign affairs committee ed royce and elliot engel to reform the governance structure of the surrogate radios like rferl and radio

liberty and radio free asia is an important step to counter the information offensive that is being carried out today by russia and other autocracies. on the difficulty of achieving successful democratic transitions it's important for civil society and protest activists to learn some lessons from past failures. such as the need to prepare, to engage in political action, and take responsibility for governance in the event that protest movements lead to the downfall of autocratic regimes. the movements must start thinking strategically. this is happening in ukraine today with a lot of the protest leaders taking part in the elections that will be held next week. there are many things that need to be done to reverse or retard what i call democratic backsliding. corruption has to be fought with real determination and in addition to conditionality and assistance program, something that larry has talked about and

i aslum raise today i think we need to look for new ways to integrate into development strategies efforts to explicitly build the capacity of independent media which can provide means for economic growth and accountability against corruption. we have to develop strategies for strengthening democratic culture by supporting indigenous groups committed to building tolerant societies and also by helping to connect these groups to civic movements like the new citizens movement in chinator we've had enough movement in senegal so they can learn from each other. obviously we also have to maintain and guild up efforts to support indigenous democratic actors. we have to remember democracy must come from within. it can't be exported or imposed. this has been the ned model and it's worked tailored to each local situation.

the support needs to be comprehensive involving grant support training, networking like the world movement for democracy, research and political solidarity: democracy activists need all of that. they place special emphasis on the need for solidarity at a time when autocratic regimes are cracking down so harshly. finally we must find a way to rebuild the sense of democratic conviction in the u.s. and europe. i'm just back from the chefrom republic and i was surprised that our friends are as concerned with disillusionment and cynicism as some of us are here. we'll soon be celebrated the 25th anniversary of the velvet revolution with a ceremony in the u.s. capital unveiling a bust of vaclav havel. we should remember how strongly he felt about the suicidal character of policies that put narrow and economic security interests so perceived above freedom and human rights and his

concern about sacrificing values to serve interests would end up undermining both. i think the best way to rebuild conviction is to connect americans with people on the front lines of democratic struggles around the world. people who know the dangers and are prepared to sacrifice to defend their dignity. drawing spirit from them and maintaining a lifeline of support for their work is important not just for them but for the security and future of our own democracy. thank you. >> thanks so much, carl. >> thank you very much. it's a pleasure to be here. let me just note since i am affiliated with the naval war college that my comments today are my own opinion and do not reflect any official position of the college or the u.s. navy. those of us that come from the american realist tradition accept the proposition that

american national security in the long run is enhanced by the existence of other well-established stable democracies because on the most part they provide higher standards of living, they're more responsive to their citizens and generally find ways to resolve conflicts without going to war. they are better, they're transparent in how they engage their affairs. where the rub comes in is to two things. first is that in the short term, democratizing states leads to greater incurt. those familiar with the work of ian brehmer and his j-curve that formally closed authoritarian societies have drops in economic prosperity, generally have drops in security, work that snyder and man and mansfield have done, so this creates security problems for the u.s. because we don't like to see disorder, particularly in key parts of the world as we're seeing now in the middle east.

the second reality we face is that often times states that democratize and become democracies may becomeless close partners of the u.s. in security matters. this is particularly the case if the u.s. supported an authoritarian regime that preceded it and a new regime comes in and may seek to distance itself, it may not sook to adopt the full panoply of the u.s. security agenda. so we've had difficulties in being able to reconcile a commitment to the long term which is to have the spread of democracy and then realizing that the short term impacts of democratization may not be supportive of u.s. security interests. we, of course, have seen this in parts of latin america, parts of the middle east and in some parts of asia and across the

eurasian space. then we come back to the question, well, about our model in central and east europe and i think it's important to take a few minutes to look at how and why under what conditions american national security interests and a commitment to democratization went hand in hand because that will help us tease out factors we should look for when we're trying to reconcile in other parts of the world some of the distinctions that are there first thing, of course, is that east european states are clear security threats when they were escapes from the soviet block, we've also been concerned about a resurgent russia, there were concerns in the early 1990s about germany so these states had real security issues that led them to seek partnership with the united states. this is where conditionality played a big role because the united states could make demands and requests of those governments that if they wanted a closer security and political relationship with the united states, if they wanted membership in nato, if they

wanted to be involved in the european union there were standards that they would have to meet. that so that wecht say as a -- we could use that as a very important lever for pursuing and encouraging domestic reform. we also had a certain degree of confidence in the 1990s that we could support a process without having to worry about outcomes. that is, we did not look at many of the central and east european states and say, well, only a few of the political parties here are pro-western and pro-american and the others may be anti-american or maybe opposed to an american agenda. it allowed us to focus on process rather than outcome. we didn't have great worries when the polish communists came in after solidarity's term of government that all of a sudden they were going to rip up everything that had been done, reverse poland's direction. in fact, the ex-communists in poland were as supportive of western integration, membership in nato, membership in the

european union as solidarity and any of the other political movements in poland. that allowed our democracy promotion efforts to avoid the appearance of trying to pick winners and losers in the domestic political process. we had a breakdown of this in russia in 1996 where we very much had a sense that yeltsin's victory, boar wrist ris yeltsin's victory was an american imperative. we had to make sure that zuganev did not win the round of the political election. so it wasn't simply about supporting process, it was about looking at particular outcomes, political outcomes that we wanted and then as we've gone back and looked at what t willingness to compromise the process or allow the democratic process to be compromised in order to ensure president yeltsin would have his second term in office.

and finally one critical part of the central east european experience which may not be replicated in other parts of the world was that the fact that the united states government put its full faith and credit behind the democracy process was very important. local governments looked at that as part of the validation of the reform process that they were doing. the fact that u.s. officials, the ambassadors, that government and functionaries were involved and supporting the process was seen as a positive for the process. so therefore it can be tempting to say well, it worked in east europe and we have this idea that every country is poland and all we have to do is take the polish model and apply it elsewhere and we'll have the same results. i think if we misapply that experience in eurasia today and the middle east it can lead us to contradictions and disappointments on our part. why isn't it working out the way

it's supposed to? why aren't we seeing the emergence of political movements that both support democratic process but also align themselves with the u.s.? we can see different reasons. certainly in the middle east popular opinion is not supportive of the u.s. national security agenda in the region democratization, if we want to have more input, the tradeoff is to accept that there are going to be goths if they're dependent on the will of their citizens for their legitimacy it will constrain what they can do in terms of cooperating with the united states. sometimes political movements seeking internal democratic reform are not seeking security goals that favorite the united states. the green movement in iran was not going to necessarily dismantle iran's nuclear program. it was not going to be a big part of their issue so we could support them or not support them

as the case may be whether or not we should do that because it sports our values is one thing but the argument that somehow supporting that movement was going to lead to a geopolitical change in the middle east, the facts don't seem to point that. we don't have the same sweeteners in terms of european union and nato expansion in other parts of the world. we can't say there's a light at the end of the tunnel and this is what helped to keep the east europeans on the track and the straight and narrow. particularly in the balkans, that the idea that there was an end goal of joining the european union and nato, we don't those tools in other parts of the world and it may be more difficult to encourage that certainly the recognize of china allows for the point that we could use that as conditionality, but it would also flip in the other direction which is that we become so anxious to get allies for china as we did during the cold war

that we will overlook a multitude of democratic sins at home. if it means we're putting people into our camp. finally on the last question in the last 30 seconds or so. i think we need to recognize this tension is here. we can't wish it away between our short-term security interests and our long-term values. some of the things we may want to discuss is does this mean we need to separate some aspects of the democracy promotion agenda from day to day diplomacy and governance? do we want to have more civil society participation, less micromanagement from organs of government, the extent to which democracy mutuals fear u.s. government involvement because that may need lead them to being tagged as u.s. agents. finally just to end on this point we have to recognize as we move forward as the democracy promotion movement regains its initiative, as i think it will, we're going to have to live with the the fact the leaders that are produced, as i like to say,

will be more nehrus than add nowers. they will be democratic but they're not necessarily going sign up on the u.s. agenda. we've had difficulties in the past with leaders like nehru who were democratic but not aligned with us. we prefer they be add nowers and how we're going to interact with the future nehrus in the middle east, asia and hopefully across the eurasian space. >> thanks very much nicholas. >> i'm going to be very brief and they on the democracy assistance hasn't been successful. i think tom or others will probably make a strong case for it. i i agree. i think it has been successful and i'll leave it at that and focus on some of the challenges i should say that i'm coming from the world bank and these are my own view, not of the bank, but not one at the bank

tried to stop me so there is a democratization movement going on within the bank, too. i think ideas matter and i think how we frame problems in the world matter. and i think if we look, if you just watch five or ten minutes of news you get this sense of security crises out of control that we've got. border crisis and we've got terrorism and the long war and we've got drug wars and there's all of these problems we have the ebola panic and we just see that the way we frame the challenges that we have today, there's a very heavy emphasis on the world is a dangerous place and we have to do everything we can to keep ourselves safe and keep these threats from abroad from wreaking havoc at home. this is not the first time that we've seen the world this way. this is a recurrent period. in history you can go back after

world war i and the immigration crises, we've got to close the borders, the communist threats in the 1950s. so in other periods of our history we've been able to rebalance the ship and hopefully get a more balanced focus on the problem we face today but i think it's fair to say that we are in a period where u.s. foreign policy is is heavily influenced by security concerns above all else and i think that matters because it determines policies, it determines the types of programs that we fund and the way we act to protect our national interests. i'll give you a contrast with w the way we frame problems at the world west bank which is about the poorest of the poor and how to ensure inclusive growth. so every time i have a project proposal i need to say "this is going to benefit the poor nest society, this is about an economic conclusion." and you can see how if we had a u.s. foreign policy that was

based on trying to spread prosperity abroad and increasing economic inclusion it might lead us to a different set of policies than we have today where is where i see everything is a security crisis. we've got agricultural food security. water security my favorite new program is fishery security. in west africa, right now navy is helping fishermen in west africa improve the security of their fisheries. now, of course, tischrys security is one way we could talk about the issue but we could also talk about susta sustainability or development. that might lead us to a different set of proposals rather than having the u.s. navy taking the lead in fisheries development and working with fishermen in west africa to increase their economic opportunity opportunities if we frame issues in terms of security challenges -- and there's always of these threats to our security -- then we have too

accept that the military is going to take a lead and we now have an intelligence community of more than a dozen agencies, i stopped count when i was doing some research on what i was going to say today. and it leads us to, well, sort of blending, we've got the national security agency doing spying abroad in here. we're not sure of everything that's going on. it leads us to accept a level of lack of accountability on military affairs because, well, the world is a dangerous place and we have to just sort of accept that this is how things are going to be. and i think in the context of lack of faith in our own democratic institutions, this creates a very serious problem. i think i saw last week the latest pew poll had trust in

government about somewhere around 20% which means that a large core of obama's supporters, including me, don't have a lot of faith in the way things -- and washington is broken, s not just a mieme, it' a reality. we have five months of congress not being in power and you're going around saying we've got perpetual war in syria, this ebola crisis but meanwhile our own congress doesn't seem to feel any need to act. so i think this creates -- just to be clear, i'm not predicting any coups in the united states. i don't think that's going to happen so don't anyone say "this guy from the world bank says there's going to be a coup in the united states. i'm not predicting anything like that. i am saying excessive reliance on the military in a situation where we lack confidence in our own elected officials whom we can control is perhaps not a

great situation and if we want to rethink about this balance between security and democracy and about how we can engage abroad in a more productive way to hopefully bring about a more peaceful world we might want to think about actions we can take on our own to perhaps restore confident and credibility in the way we think our own government functions. so ambassador asked men when we were talking about this, well, you're saying everything is bad and there's nothing good we can do, so give me actual ideas. give me a place to start of things the government can realistically do so i'm come up with a list of ideas that hopefully we can consider. first, we need to end giving surplus military equipment to police departments. giving them tanks they don't need isn't good for police and certainly not good for us i

think maybe people abroad saw what was going on saw what was going on in ferguson, missouri and said "what do you expect of the united states? they start wars against everyone else? why wouldn't they put up arms against their own people." i think more transparency in u.s. military would be a nice thing. we've got drone wars going in somalia and yemen and pakistan. it would be nice if we had a bit more knowledge about what -- who's being killed and what's the source of this, how many innocent people are we killing and not allowing the cia to classify anyone of military age male as a potential combatant. so more transparency in our drone programs and certainly more transparency in our military programs all over the world. i work mainly in africa and i'm very -- i can't say familiar with u.s. military efforts in the sahara because they're vast

sprawling and not very much on the ground soy think it would be nice if we brought more democracy to our security affairs. i think nsa surveillance and the nsa's deliberate attempts to weaken the internet in order to improve its capacity to spy on people, i think that would be something that hopefully we could get a bit of a handle on. and i think it would be nice if we talked a bit about the way we've extended border insecurity into this 100 mile barrier inside the united states which includes everyone in washington, d.c. because we are within 100 miles of the coast. that gives the border patrol a bit of -- how would you call it -- enhanced capacities for interrogation that i think are a bit worrying. so if none of these are possible and if you're going to sit here and tell me well, all of these ideas are far outside the realm

of what's achievable given the security crises we face in the world today then essentially what you're telling me is that efforts to perhaps redo some of the problems in our own democracy are not possible and if that's being the case then we're going to have a very hard time to sell the idea of it incredibly abroad. thank you very much. >> thanks very much. tom? >> well, thanks, will and thanks for the invitation to join this conversation this morning. in n the spirit there n which the ambassador launched us, i've been thinking about making this an interactive kind of event and i've been listening intently to the three previous speakers and it may seem at some level that they presented alternative schools of thought or approach to this question so i'm not sure

i allowed to say this but i agree with all of them. i agree with -- in particular with the way nick framed the tradeoff wes face in government between our understandings of potential short-term benefit or short-term need versus long term. that's the world in which i live everyday in the u.s. government as we sit around tables not usually as pretty as this but trying to talk about how we integrate our interests in strengthening democratic governance and respect for human rights into our policies in various parts of the world. policies that are driven increasingly by the security imperatives. we're long past the cold war that framed the international environment for us so -- but now there's a hot war under way in this global campaign against extremism, violence and terrorism that is in the

ascendancy in some key parts of the world. so that frames a lot of our discussions about what can we do about democracy in egypt or bahrain or in azerbaijan or uzbekistan. the principle parts of our relationships with so many countries are driven by a national security imperative that is not theoretical and absflakt the long term, it's urgent. it's what gets the president of the united states laying awake staring at the ceiling in the middle of the night is who's going to be killed next in the united states or in one of our embassies around the world. i think that has to be appreciated as we think about how we continue to build out democracy -- support and democracy assistance. at a moment -- and here we are 25 years after the velvet revolution when there is this loss of confidence i was at the same meeting carl was at

organized by a lot of friends of democracy in eastern europe and the world and this is the -- thfrs the framing art. you may recall the czech velvet revolution and the czech transition of 25 years ago was framed by some pretty good art. i loved the various posters that emerged in that period but last week at the forum 2000 conference there was a lot of the backdrop on the art and this is the cover of the program for the conferences this a tweet from democracy. "i miss how loved i was 25 years ago." tweets democracy forlornly. nobody thinks democracy succeeding or doable or worth promoting and i think this gloominess has infest add lot of conference rooms like this. i'm troubled because i think we have to appreciate the immensity

of the challenge we have set for ourselves. those of us who have made the world's challenges our own here in the united states need to appreciate that it won't be quickly or easily done carl talked about the illusions of the 1990s when it seemed easy after the fall of the berlin wall and the collapse of ar apartheid. we may have gotten too greedy or mow thinking this was easy, that the transition paradigms were going to implement themselves and all we had to do is go along for the ride and take credit for it sometimes. but with what we're finding is that some countries have governments and military establishments and tribal leaders and others who are much more clearly opposed to this democratization than we encountered in some places and periods in the past. so we are up against much more determined opponents, i think,

than we saw in the '90s in so many parts of the world. they're doubling down on their opposition to our support for civil society, for fair elections, for political

>> they do exist in sole judge of the most unlucky places. we can help them. we can help them with political protection or political pressure. with, you know, engaging them in the world, integrating them into our soets in various ways. i think that we are doing that. i think that we need to duoit in a strategic patient way and be prepared to move countries in a better direction in a way that will be support in ways that there have been when we accept our technical advisor, political assistance. usaid has robust budgets and

very effective in a certain range of country possibilities. my own office at the state department has, through consistent budget, thanks to the congress to support civil societies in a variety of countries. democracy remains the key organization throughout the world to have help from the international community. so let me mention a couple things just to wind up this opening seam setter. i think one of the things in the united states is we appreciate the role that congress plays while disparaging its polarization and its ability to do major things. the congress has been a major

contributor to american democracy program in a lot of ways. the bureau for democracy of human rights and labor was creating 36 years ago at the existence of the state department and executive branch because it has long been seen in the political culture that we need to have some people minding the store. we have an increasing, prominent role inside the u.s. government and being part of the conversations about how we integrate security, prosperity and our support for freedom, as well. and so we do that. and we get increasing support from congress in varying ways. and one of the things that's important for this discussion is something called the leahy law. senator pat leahy put in a provision that says we cannot provide military equipment or training to security forces units that we have credible

evidence or involved in gross human rites violations. this opens up a whole nother engagement with foreign governments and societies with how security forces can be made more rights respecteding and law-abiding. and it works, to some extent. it works in key ways to provide a different kind of pressure on authoritarian governments, particularly those who lied to us. that are not democratic but are friends of ours. we do that, but now we have a rights dimension to that discussion, as well, in many places. so i apriepreciate the role tha congress has played in framing our assistance and also the large budgets that a.i.d. and others get. but, also, these policy discussions about things like the term zone in which we provide security assistance. i'll just end by echoing what

several people have already said. one of the most important things that we can do in the united states is to strengthen democratic systems abroad is to be a better democracy. we theed to be a better democracy, just like europe needs to be better democracies, in order for the example to be persuasive and to carry in the wider world. and so i have think those of us who care about our international profile need to take an interest in domestic politics in a way that i don't think we always do. somebody else is working on that and we're going to solve the rest of the world's problems. those oaf us that are traveling a lot and called onto explain the u.s. system, i think begin to spend more time promoting better government in the united states. >> well, thanks so much, tom. before we open the floor to questions, we're going to give each speaker a brief response to a chance of what they heard, 2-3 minutes. >> thanks. maybe the first point to make is

one that nicholas concluded on which is, you know, the problem, as it were. may i prefer beirut toe tao. we don't expect every country when they become democratic somehow to do our business, you know, do our bidding. but democracies end up being friendlier. they need to deal with that legitimacy problems. i prefer south korea to north korea. korea is not perfect. a lot of people in south korea has had problems with the government. but i assure you that it's better than north korea. it's friendlier to us than north korea.

and those are the choices we face in the wormd. and it's not irrelevant that democracies are not per spekt and a hundred percent allies. second point, yeah, change is not all that difficult. the question is how to manage change. the problem with the mans field argument that you referred to is that he considered malosovich to be a product of democratic change. he was not a democrat. it's a false argument. there isn't stability in the world. what is the division of labor between the nongovernmental entity and the u.s. government. what do we want from the u.s. government. one thing we do want, and i've said this, is that the people

that we support could use the help, the diplomatic and political support of the united states. and of the west. a lot of that is being done to a certain degree. they need it more. you cannot view democracy assistance in a vacuum. we need a strong voice on these issues. we should not call dictatorships democratic. or in the process of a democratic tran sixth as we've basically referred to recently. we may need to work with egypt as a country that shares certain interests with us in the middle east at a time when you have isis. but we don't need to call them democratic. we need to speak about human rights and doesn't necessarily conflict with our interests in these countries. finally, i think we underestimate the extent to which democracy and progress for

democracy depends upon an orderly, international environment. you're much more likely to get democratic progress where there is a certain modicum of world order than you are where there is chaos. one of the things i was arguing for was i don't thrill it helps to remove the pole that holds up the tent of world order. and i consider that pole to be u.s. leadership. u.s. influence. nothing is going to take its place. it's not all the answers we have, but a stable world will depend on that and i think democracy needs that. two last poents. we've to find the balance between what my board member call eed maximalism and minimalism. there is the possibility of a

sol vent, stable mid 8 ground. we have to fight for that. second, we need to start thinking clearly about the relationship of security issues to democracy issues. these are complex questions. and i think it's important to bring people together to start thinking through these complex questions. it's not necessarily friendly tyrants that are not necessarily the source of stability and friendship in the world. we have to some way figureout how to balance the systems. >> certainly, north korea is a worse case than south korea. i think there's no disz agreement there.

for the u.s., with pakistan, i think it's more akin to whatives trying to get at. you can alms have a clear cut case where democracies are always preferable even when they have issues. and then we do have to get, i think, though, and, tom, i think that this point you were bringing up is very critical. how we find these balances and if there were certain lmts of our security agenda that we were willing to give up. we have to find where the balance is going to be willing to see a set of issues, a recession, and then, conversely, when we have security issues, we

might feel that transitions might be problematic in the short run. >> again, having a calculous is better than simply flailing out and saying these issues don't exist or we can do it all. and i think one of the issues we've had in recent years, the krit schisms that are out there, is that we don't seem to be able to strike this balance. we have to a change of government is that change of government is considered elite. change of regime. it's not that we can't do both or that we should give up one or the other, it's just being able to have these conversations about what we're willing to accept.

that's a great example. but, certainly, what i see in the context of imet, the international military education, is that it has an impact. when you say that -- in order to get security assistance from the u.s., you have to meet these standards. when our diplomats can go and say you will have to pass certain smell tests with the u.s. going in order to get certain things. that can be effect ef. that is one of the ways that we can search for the conditionality that we need if we want to pursue these things without having it, again, become this iert or. we can iert pursue security. we can pursr democracy, but not both.

>> i think that's all over the place. and i think that what we're seeing -- take somalia as an example. this is a problem that we've been faced with over two decades now. 1994 is when the u.s. went in the first time there. and it's still broke. and it's still -- and the security threats there are real. and we have to think about what is a way to work more constructively. the more bombs they drop, the more problems they create for themselves.

>> now, on the positive side, and i said that i think the u.s. democracy assistance has been very effective and taking up broad views that most of africa, where i work, there are elections. certainly there are problems in all of these countries with corruption, but i also see that losers are upset, too. and they take steps to try and

make these countries more effective. in that sense, i see a lot of positive change. and i see a lot of countries that are just the competitive role of politics makes people, at times, want to improve the rules of the game so they can increase their chances of winning. so in that sense, two or three decades ago, no one would have predicted that donna would be such a great democracy or even all the problems in kenya or zambia. no one would have predicted that they had challenging problems. i think we should be proud of

the work that we've done there and learned from those lessons and applied them to challenges that we face today. >> the united states remains the most important country in the world and the one that's providing the most important leadership on democracy and human rights, bar none. pick the next ten most active democracy promoters in the democratic world, and they don't add up to half of what the united states is doing. and that's not just in the funding. that's in the dip low matic and political leadership that the united states continues to provide.

it's not always public. but every other government will tell you that when they want to have a discussion about what to do about x country, it starts here. so i'm k. and confidentble that we're managing an effort. the effort, as i said earlier, has some very strong opposition to it in some key governments and some key nongovernmental actors in the world. and we're incuring some costs. our advocacy for activists in russia comes at some cost to our bilateral relationships in most places. we are active in defending those who speak up for values that we share. we do that publicly and

privately. we are engaged with nonhch democratic countries in some ways in other matters. so that's the enduring trade-off. that's the balance we have to sometimes find. where -- how much of a cost in a different part of our relationship can we incur in defense of our values. that's what we wrestle with every day. depending on the circumstance, depending on the threat and various things, we might be more forward leading in some dimension and less so in another dimension. that's what happens on a daily basis. earlier, at the world bank, there's a movement for dee democracy. people that move there, it happens more and more to their work. that's also in the yietsds. during the last 25 years, has become part and parcel of every diplomat's dn aerks to

appreciate that the democratic character of governments that we parter in with affects their international posture and policies, as well. our military establishmented increasingly understands that, as well. it's not a universally held view yet, but hopefully, we'll have a few more successes to talk about when we meet 25 years from now. >> thanks very much, tom. i know this is an issue that a lot of people have opinions on. but i want to restrict the

discussion to questions and answers. so please, focus on discussions and not comments. so we'll take this person right here. and we'll get a microphone to you. >> thank you. i'm from the civil education. we run projects to help civil societies through civic education. one of them is an e-learning institute for iranian civil society. my question is when does u.s. policy harm democratic developmented. it seems like we're focusd on ways that we help it or don't help it, but not focused on ways that we can and do sometimes harm it. one case in point to me, and i was surprised that people don't mention syria. in syria, we had a case where there was a considerable amount of time when there was a

peaceful, liberal, democratic opposition to asset. and president obama,the approach was support that wasn't really support. redlines that weren't really redlines. and now we have a fight that's not really a fight. what the result has been -- and these things right-hand turn good for democratic development. >> question, please? >> your question is when does u.s. policy harm government? >> with a focus on syria. someone who wants to respond to that question? >> all i can say is you're basically putting a little bit of flesh on the bones of the argument i was making. i don't think it was wise not to

support the secular struggle in syria. i don't think that was wisement and i think that was the view that was taken. clinton, i think it was a mistake. and i don't think it was helpful. i think it helped produce the problems that we have. there are a lot of other things, you know? i'd like to see us do much, much more in ukraine. and when we do, we open the way up. we give a green liekt to some very bad actors. we need to be looking at not just providing democracy assistance in ukraine. we need to be able to help them. if we don't, we're not helping demo rack sill.

thank you. the university of wisconsin. i'd like to ask what's the best way to respond to efforts by authoritarian governments, such as in russia and elsewhere, that pass legislation, that tries to isolate local society groups. obviously, you're painting them as somehow unpatriotic and, in other ways, do we atempt to fly umpbd the radar or take a more active response. >> i adleszd that in my remarks. we really need follow up and a lot of this has to do with support political back-up.

let me just say regarding russia, that's the way it goes. the groups in russia have refused to abide by that law. the people who are running away are a lot of the western donors who have withdrawn from the situation, which is a mistake.

an apparent way to seek financial support for their work. there's nothing inconsistent with that. i think we need to push back really, really hard. >> there's an echo of an earlier effort from six or eight years ago to overrate ngos to the international community. we're not as persuasive as we might be with some others. it is our policy to support civil services around the world. so we're couldn'ting to do that. and we're working with other governments and other international organizations to do that.

it shows a wide range of those that want to be part of fupding can do so. including from our embassy. the only thing that's changed is that the russians obliged us to close the u.s. aid mission. that doesn't mean that our support has diminished in any notable way. although, there are russian organizations who have decided to manage their own environment in such a way that they don't want to receive grants from outside or the u.s. or other governments. so they're making their own choices. but when they want our support, they get our support. >> any other comments? no? okay.

>> it's difficult not to hear the discussion of democracy, u.s. support for democracy and hear it synonymous with countries that share u.s. interests, economic interests, i know you've raised specific countries where that's not the case. what do you say to countries that are doing well? like china, comparable to its past. who view these democracy movements as apparently subme e submersive to sub verlt their specific national interests to one of simply u.s.ist e interests.

that's a discussion we can have with democrat ek governments and democratic societies. we do that all of the time. we don't automatically agree with france or canada or australia on every question that comes down the pike: >> and, in china, you know, there's not a real discussion about public policy in china. there's no critical views of the economic system.

sew china is an example of a certain economic system. but it's based, on the large part, repression. we don't know if the chie e chinese people support that system because they're not allowed to be asked or answer that question. over 11,0 0 people have signed that charter. what do i say to she? i don't talk to her. it eets not my job. there are people in those countries that you need to recognize. they are people who are aspiring

a sort of different kind of a life. a life that will giver them a little bit more recognition, dignity and so forth. the only question is whether we're going to recognize those people. we'll have really revolutionary forces in there. we'll see how china is given the middle class is growing with internet communications. it has some very, very severe problems and i think we've published a lot of articles about this in the journal of you

know, when you say russia, which is doing so well, well, yeah compared to stalin's russia, it's doing great. and i really think, frankly, you know, it's enormous progress. but it's actually, in some ways, putin, he took over 15 years ago. it was the fs berks taking over. they felt they were taking over he's a problem. look, a movement e americaned in decemb december, 2011. the snow revolution they called it.

they wanted something different. and then he comes in and he's cracked down on that. we'll see where it goes. he was here and gave a very important speech at freedom house a couple of weeks ago and talked about a strategy for the future. there are alternative voices there. right now, they're not a majority. and i don't suggest that they are. an a lot of people feel, you know, that the putin regime

could collapse. the question really is is it possible for you to be replaced by something better. we don't know. but if that does happen, i think we should hope that the people who offer a better alternative are in a position to exercise some influence in that transitional situation. >> i have a question for dr. hofman and mr. thomas, as well. development versus democracy. is there a time for development? is there a time for democracy? we talked about the die nap ek system that we are in. how do we gds when to focus on

gopment versus demock ra is i. i think many people in here have written about this. i don't think that there's any inherent contra dibs. and certainly the argument that we shouldn't push for democracy because it's going to somehow derail, i don't see that that's -- i can see certain countries may be able to say rue wan da or ethiopia that are developing are not democratic. but, at the same time, i think that you're not going to -- there's no reason not to support it there. and there's no reason not to giver assistance there. and it can be thrown to all sorts of perhaps instability.

africa is the fastest growing region in the world. so some countries have very high levels of instablt. kenya is a chaotic democracy, for example. is growing quite rapidly. i spend a lot of time there and they have an incredibly dynamic sector that comes and election times. and even in nigeria, they have strategies. they leave the country for a few weeks. i mean, they put their money in overseas bank accounts, but it's still a thriving country. the notion that there's some sort of a trade-off there is one that's been forwarded in the past and tested and rejected in most cases. just to point out, world experts agree.

>> i just want to use that to e lab rate on a point that i made briefly in my remarks. >> i think it would be critical for development. without flee media, without the exchange of information, without the accountable ility, you're n going to get real development. >> and that has been a major party of strategy to support independent media. i'm talking about imbedding it in developmental strategies.

not drl or the state 2k79. you're talking about the global gopment agencies. >> it's not there, tom. >> some of you eluded to the decreased u.s. leverage in the world and the adversities. my question is that you are trying to get others to do a better job. my general question is what are the prospects for and what is

the method of getting to where the u.s. would be much more credible. >> that's a good question. let me just tell you, next month, i'm off to korea where we're going to have a meeting on precisely that subject. there's now the creation of oon asia democracy network bringing together asia. the government is looking outward more as we've been sort of withdrawing a little byment they're beginning to become more active. and we're trying to encourage that. they may take an interest in sen asia. but this is bagsed in key ya. it's the secretary created by four korean ngos. they want to see the creation that will provide the institutional resources that they need to really exercise more of a role in asia. there are going to be people

there from your and from democracy. they are from the u.n. democracy fund. we have eve done that with a lot of other countries. >> several hands up. so, as best as i can, i'm going to take three questions and then we might be running out of time. so one, two and three. >> a number of commentators have talked about the trade-off between security and democracy, i'd like to ask about the trade-off between democracy and liberalism.

bring a microphone to this jentle man, please? thank you. can you just stand and identify yourself, as well? >> hi, i guess i wouldn't playoff the trade-offs. carl, you mentioned this in your point about placing other values. on economics, there's a lot of emphasis on global trade. economists have contributed to wealth and economy. to what extent does that conflict with democracy, the levels of wealth. >> good morning. i'm a student with georgetown university. a comment that several of you

made about the home and how we can better promote that as agents of foreign policy, more or less, especially in the state department when we have to maintain the solidarity support and hold up we can come home from our wrork abroad and make ourselves a better democracy and, in turn x turn that around to make that work to our advantage abroad. we'll start with the first question. >> of course. >> i mean, look. ma jortarian democracy is not democracy. when we think of democracy, we think ft individual bill of rights and so fort. that's going to be a long and difficult struggle. i think the middle east is where it's the weakness of liberal

values in, you know, in democratic aspirations. it's probably most dramatic. when we talk about it, it's not just political rights, it's civil rights. and that's very, very central. we teent accept something that's democratic for a majority to use its power. >> i think this is critical in much of the part of the world where i live. and i see this from south africa to egypt.

it was problems of lack of nothing. i think we have it right. i think it's about shared economic growth and, in particular, jobs. when the contradictions between the e lite e leet and regular people got so severe, not so much in other countries, but, ultimately, it was about that. so i think this is critical, i know, that much of sub saharan africa, you've got -- there's a very large youth bulge and most people are -- were under the age of 30. and the growth eras of producing jobs. this is the harbor of a very big crisis. in fact, it's been the biggest crisis in south africa fr a very unstable situation. also, in the middle east, and

also, in syria, that large groups of reasonably well-edge kated but unemployed men of working age is a sure sign of instability. no question about it. >> it's all the social democratic prospect in which he said we put freedom first. if you have levels of inequality, that are so great, it ultimately will undermine the kind of freedoms we cherish. you can say, yes, china has grown the middle class, but that's the only rule of petition to do that.

last point, in democracy, people can organize. if they have the rights to organize and defend their interests and that also can lead to greater protection and greater respect for the economic rights. >> i think we're about out of time. i do want to get nicholas back into the conversation. there haven't been any questions directly, but i do want to get his take as we talk about the role of democracy and development. in templs of how we create long term interests. where does these issues play in terms of these short-term goals. tom also talked about balancing. so from your perspective as we take a more politic view of the world in issues like democracy and development. to what extent do you face the

backlash when the ultimate revolt comes and we are unprepared to deal with that reaction. it comes back to a point where what point of the foreign policy pyramid should it be. is it the apex, is it one of several iesh shoes and syria and ukraine or the middle east or anywhere elsewhere we do struggle with where are we going to put this? and i think that coming back to this question of one of the things i think we found, and this goes back to the korea example, that if the country is tied to us because of the existential security threat, when it becomes democratic, it doesn't usually abandon the relationship be the united states.

there's a reason for south korea to remain tied, even regardless of the values if there's simply a hard security connection as well. so i think understanding those dynamics is important. understanding the dynamics of interest when you have a growing middle class that has economic ties to the united states or business into what we do here. those can help to smooth over when there's been a transition from an authoritarian to a democratic regime about jeopardizing the security interest. and, in the absence of those interests, in the absence of those security and business connections, you can have this sudden reversal if the u.s. is seen as backing on an authoritarian government, you don't have those constituencies in place to continue maintaining a quick relationship with the united states. we also come back, i think we all talked about our internal

democracy. i think ultimately, perhaps in future sessions, we'll get at this further. we also have a question of we are a democracy ourselves. and the american people generally want a low-cost, intervention policy around the world. we're happy to support democratic movements. we're happy to support and give aid up to a certain point. when those costs are hit, political leadership either has the make the case to the american people why this matters and why you have to sacrifice. or political leadership backs away. i don't know the costs to pay that or at least to justify that into a do mes ek audience. given that we are a democracy, our foreign policy ultimately comes back to that question as well.

the american people get the final vote and they'll determine what mix of values, what mix of values and promotional democracy. i think americans would like to do both. but then, again, when they come into conflict, i think that's where we end up with these debates. >> 30 seconds, guys. >> there is something in between there. >> oh, of course there's something in between. >> that's the job of political leadership. >> i think we can thank all of our speakers for a very interesting panel. and thank you all for coming. we're going to take a ten-minute break and will resume here at 11:00. pung chewly. so, please, ten minutes. >> we begin at 8:00 p.m. with medal of honor recipients who spoke at the u.s. naval

institute at the naval academy in annapolis, maryland. and then at 9:40, former nbc nightly news anchor tom bro call on his cover rang of the fall of the berlin wall in 1989. >> this weekend on the c-span networks, more reaction. saturday night at 8:00, a debate. author and television host favis siley. >> tonight, at 8:00, on american

history tv, medal of honor recipients reflect. and saturday at 8:00, the social prejudice immigrants face during the 1800s. and sunday night at 8:00, let us know what you think about the programs that you're watching. call us at 202-626-3 h 00. mplts coming up on sunday, what to expect in the lame duck congress next week and expectations for the new republy kwan majority in the senate come saturday.

with live coverage of the u.s. house on c-span and the senate on c-span2, here, we compliment that cove rang by showing you the most relevant congressional hearings. american artifacts, touring museums and historic sites to discover what artifacts mean about american's past.

>> and we return now to the foreign policy research institute and the cannon institute form on promoting democracy around the world. in this digs cushion, we'll look at whether u.s. policy is working. this is about 1:20. >> hello, everyone. thank you very much for coming. my name is christian. i'm the editor of democracy lab, which is a joint venture between the policy magazine and we cover transitioning democracies of democratic transitions around the world. and because that's my subject, i've been asked to moderate the second panel.

when i was asked to moderate this panel, i found myself thinking about a moment a few weeks ago whenives in rue wan da. and i found myself with a general of the ruling member of rue wan da who was very upset with the flak that they're getting lately. rue wan da has a very tough regime. and this general really wanted to take me to task. he said, you know, you in the west have your own ideas of democracy. we have our own notions of democracy. you can't go on criticizing us forever. the only fascinating thing was perhaps unlike the chinese in

this situation, he was not my enemy and didn't see himself as such. he was quite proud of his country's record on a number of things. he wanted western earns in rue wan da. i thought of him when i was asked to moderate this panel, which is, in some ways, the panel about tactics. in this panel, we'd like to talk about how you get it done. i was talking about how do you go about promoting democracy in a society like that? do you train lawyers? do you promote free media? or do you forget about those

things and hope at some poibt, it will reach the magic threshold when you have a middle class and they will take care of it. it's those sort of questions that we like to focus on this panel. and, for that reason, i don't want to talk anymore. i'd rather give the floor to the experts. so i think the best thing for me to do is hand it over to the esteemed sarah bush who will talk about these issues. so thank you very much and let's have a big welcome for the other members on the panel. >> so thank you for the opportunity of being on this exciting panel. so as our moderator already noted in this panel in contrast to the previous one, cl is focusing on questions like whether the united states should promote democracy, i'm going to be focusing my remarks along

with those sitting behind me on the topic of how the united states should promote democracy. i think this nuts and bolts question of how the united states should promoet democracy is finally important. although it's one that has often been overlooked in the debates that we've been having about democracy promotion in the big picture over the last decade or so. but i do think that the devil is in the details when it comes to democracy promotion as it does with so many things. if we're not promoting democracy effectively, then we probably need to assess whether we should promote democracy at all. on the flip side, i think it's really hard to argue that. it shouldn't be bart of the

picture. i'm approaching this from the perspective of a university professor and someone who follows the large and growing research on the body of topic. i'm glad that other people on the panel can speak from experience in this rich field. so from where i stand, from the perspective on the research of dwell mock ra sill assistance's effectiveness is mixed. so from what i see, american democracy assistance works on average at aiding countries to democratize. about ten years ago, usid funded an academic study conducted by highly-respected and inpendent iminstructors to investigate the subt of usid's program effectiveness. they found in their report that they were commissioned to write as well as in the peer review study by a university that on

average, usaid programs do have a causal impact, a positive impact on democracy. but they also noticed a lot of challenges to identify in this kind of effect. challenges, so one of challenges they noted is that the countries that get targeted to receive democracy aid are not selected at random and they tepid not to be like the countries that don't receive aid, so that a makes it hard to receive a good compare san. they also noted it can be hard to agree on how to define and measure democracy and although we have a number of indicators from freedom house and from the project among others, that do give us excellent measures of democracy, we worry that the indicators may be at such a high level of aggregation that it's difficult to assess the programs in a fine grain way we need to do to know under what conditions they're effective.

another problem that was noted by this study is that some of our historical records on u.s. democracy and governance problems are poor, okay, there are a lot of challenges to identifying their impact, but no matter how they sliced and diced the data, they found a good, strong, positive relationship between democracy aid. i think the news gets better because it wasn't just this group of people that found this kind of relationship. numerous other independent scholars have replicated the findings. people like james scott and harry steel, scott and teron and not only do they find it seems to be positively associated with dmokization, it seems to help countries emerging from civil conflict, maintain a fragile peace and i think this speaks to some of the debates from the previous panel.

although there's this good nes,s there's also bad news. from where i sit, although the studies seem to demonstrate that democracy promotion works on average, i think we don't have a full understanding of how it works. with that knowledge, it's hard to figure out how to avoid some of the headline grabbing worst case scenarios of the past and it's hard to know how to better programs of the future. i wanted to offer tentative ideas under which democracy promotion seems most likely to succeed and i'm sure some of you on the panel can and will disagree with me, which is fine, but ooitd like to propose the three ds of democracy effectiveness. the first d is donor interests. this is already something we've talked about in the previous panel, that donor's interests

matter a lot for democracy aid. one of the emerging consensus finding, that conditionality, the linking of punishment and rewards for improved democratic conduct, it can really work. an excellent recent book has been published by a woman on a subject of democracy promotion in election and here, i'm quoting from her in saying that she said it's rare that normative shame or criticize m alone can influence a leader with a track record of electoral misconduct. likewise, aid alone is is inefficient. other western countries bring out the carrots and sticks, so although this is an obvious point, it is worth repeating that democracy promotion activities face a much more uphill battle in the countries where the united states doesn't want democracy and from my point of view, it makes sense for u.s.

government agencies to concentrate their time and money and other resources in the countries where the u.s. is willing to back up democracy assistance with with other tools of pressure, be that conditionality or diplomacy, otherwise, i worry that democracy promotion can end up playing into the hands of undemocratic leaders, the very people who want it to be challenging. my second d is delivery. to have a shot at supporting democratic change in countries where the united states has competing interests, initiatives that have insulation from the u.s. government, like the national endowment for democracy had to be an essential part of the formula. although and i'm sure many have ek appearance with with this, that american ngos that receive government funding to work on democracy in a developmenting world, although they may have some suspicions they have to

face, i think it's important to use strategies in this way from the u.s. government because doing so prevents competing foreign policy objectives from overwhelming the program's good intentions of promoting democracy. funding democracy outside of the u.s. government is often the best strategy because doing so ties the u.s. government's hands and prevents it from interfering program decisions. otherwise and here i return to my first d of donor's interest, it's too easy for donor's interest to swamp dmok ratizing good intentions. i think there are a couple of other aspects to delivery that are important for efficacy and i'll just mention one here. one of the things i've looked at is how difficult it can to -- overseas. to focus a lot of energy on programs that seem likely to

produce quick, quantitative outcomes, which may not be the same programs likely to -- countries. i think it's important for democracy aid to be delivered in ways that can help donors monitor success overseas so they don't end up having to encourage organizations and let a former speaker has turned the bureaucracy to teach to the test instead of innovate. and my fellow panelist has written persuasively about the important role competition can play in helping officials keep track of results overseas. my third d is designed. which is the reason i'm interested in as well as other regions of the world is that sometimes, the u.s. government, whether for conditions at home or in a country where the

programs are taking place, u.s. government is simply not in a position to support activities that are generally to promote democracy. they're not very confrontational towards the status quo. they may take on issues like promoting women's inclusion or local government in their undemocratic environment. and i think these types of programs may be good and right. in my own research, actually, in jordan, i find that these programs can have very positive effects. however, i think that these kinds of programs are more questionably more dmoktizing and although it leads to a case they plant the seeds for democratic change in the future, i think the jury is still out on whether or not that's the case, and so, in my view, democracy assistance seems most poised to have an

effect in the countries with the most genuine movement. to wrap up my comment, you can use a core component of u.s. democracy from a glass half full or empty perspective and i'm going with glass half full for today, at least, and i think one of the things that -- is the recent push toward aid transparen transparency. one i'll highlight is aid data, gathering and geocoding micro level data. and aid data is leading new details case studies of assistance and foreign assistance, many of which are modelled on the research of esther -- out of the poverty action lab at m.i.t.

and i think this movement towardses looking at the micro level has more transparency and looking at the ground. of course it's not a -- for any of the political problems identified in the previous channel, however, it's democracy promotion, it's here to stay and i imagine that it is. i think this kind of detailed knowledge to understand what conditions and until we're finished looking through these case studies, i will leave you with my own speculation. >> thanks very much. so, over to -- >> thank you so much for including me in this conversation. so, for that, again, i'm especially grateful to be here.

since sometimes, it feels that there are fewer optimists nowadays than i guess there were some time before. my own work is on the democracy promotion efforts of the center and eastern european countries, so those would be czech republic, slovakia, the baltic countries and this work has provided me with an unintended, but i still think a valuable perspective on the u.s. democracy assistance. so, what i'd like to do my presentation today is give you a quick sense of how the europeans are promoting democracy and what that teaches us about the effectiveness of the u.s. stance. and then what are the potential opportunities i see between eastern europe and the u.s. in the field of democracy promotion.