In Depth
The Democracy Project
Captain Firas Al-Timimi of the Iraqi army displays his ink stained finger at Basra Palace in Basra, Iraq, after casting his vote in the country's first post-Saddam Hussein election, in December 2005. (Matt Dunham/Associated Press)
The ballot box and the world today
Last Updated December 20, 2006
by Rick MacInnes-Rae
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I'd like to tell you that Dispatches Democracy Project arose from a profound need to understand the strengths and foibles of the western system of government. But that would be mostly untrue.
You see, one of the things we do at the program is cast about widely in search of the familiar and the different.
In the course of doing that, you get what I call "pings" — just like in the submarine movies — ideas and incidents from one place that echo in others. Then you look for the patterns and themes.
Hamas wins a democratic election in the West Bank and Gaza. Democratic nations shun it. Hmm. What does that mean?
Georgia tussles with big brother Russia next door. An African state rebuilds after a long civil war. Latin America is convulsed by election campaigns.
You begin to hear questions, and if you're lucky, the basis for a broader understanding might even emerge that will anticipate and explain events to our listeners and now, through CBC.ca, to a broader internet audience.
This Democracy Project is something we expect to expand upon, with more reporting, in the months ahead.
Its beginnings sprang from a central paradox: There are currently more people living under democratic governments than at any time in human history. Yet at the same time, many of these democracies are now weaker than they've been the past, and some autocrats are feeling much more secure than they've been in some time.
Is democracy ebbing?
We live in a period the controversial Harvard political scientist Samuel P. Huntington calls, "The Third Wave" of democracy, which began in the late 1970s.
But in the view of those who study democracy around the world, that wave may well be ebbing.
We wanted to know why. The sight of the world's mightiest democracy — the United States — suffering setback after setback at the hands of an insurgent force in Iraq certainly has something to do with this.
But countries that seek to become liberal nation-states also find they are under pressure from any number of sources. Sometimes, as in the case of Georgia, it is from a bigger (Russian) neighbour not eager to see a competing and Western-leaning form of government on its doorstep.
And sometimes, as in Latin America and the Middle East, because there is no long history of democracy in many places, the temptations of revolution and tribalism are just beneath the surface.
For all that, where democratic governments are taking root, they are sometimes not as we in the West would know them. What's more, they are facing pressures we in the West cannot fully comprehend.
We have no warlords in our parliament, as they do in Liberia. We don't have fist fights like they do in the Mexican Congress. We don't have members of provincial legislatures voting in the federal parliament as Britain does.
I don't mean to sound lofty. We who live under entrenched democratic systems sometimes lose sight of their virtues and the fact they can have their own quirks and vices. But on balance they are living, evolving things.
And sometimes we need to be reminded why they're desirable, as I was by Vidar Helgesen, secretary general of the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance in Stockholm.
"There is little doubt that democracy comes with accountability measures that limit the scope for abuse of power by politicians," Helgesen said in one of the interviews you can read or listen to on this site. "There is little doubt," he went on "that democratic systems tend to generate better economic results and better developmental results for people."
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Multimedia
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- Real Audio runs 5:03
- Author Ian Bremmer on the rise and fall of nations
- Real Audio runs 4:55
External Links
- Citizen Lab
- University of Toronto
- Arab Reform Initiative
- The Arab Reform Initiative is a network of independent Arab research and policy institutes, with partners from the United States and Europe.
- International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA)
- Intergovernmental organization with member states from all continents
- Roland Paris
- Associate Professor of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa
- Roland Paris
- Associate Professor of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa
- The Institute for Research on Public Policy
- International Democratic Development project
- The J curve
- by Ian Bremmer
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ABOUT THIS AUTHOR
Rick MacInnes-Rae is the award-winning host of CBC Radio's Dispatches, the documentary program that showcases personal stories from correspondents around the world. He is also among the most-traveled of CBC correspondents himself, having spent much of the past 20 years covering the world's hot spots, from Kosovo, Bosnia, Chechnya, Rwanda, Northern Ireland, to Iraq, Haiti, El Salvador and beyond.