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Ministerial Panel IV -- Coordinating Democracy Assistance: Lessons Learned and the Next Steps Forward Toward a Community of Democracies Ministerial Conference, Warsaw, Poland, June 25-27, 2000 U.S. Department of State, June 15, 2000

Warsaw Ministerial Agenda "How can we ensure that mutual assistance programs designed to strengthen democratic governance target critical needs most effectively? What mechanisms can be developed to improve coordination among donors, recipient, and other relevant sectors?" Warsaw Declaration of Democratic Principles ";We will seek to strengthen institutions and processes of democratic governance. We will work with existing donor institutions and organizations, civil society, and recipient governments to coordinate support for new and emerging democratic societies." Background Foreign donor assistance programs to strengthen democratic institutions and processes have proven pivotal to the consolidation of democratic governance in a number of countries. When crafted to take account of local conditions and when designed and implemented in close cooperation with reform-minded indigenous stakeholders, these programs have helped to eliminate the formidable obstacles to the establishment of a society based on the rule of law and democratic principles. Countries such as Poland, Thailand, and the Republic of Korea, once the beneficiaries of programs to nurture democratic institutions, have themselves become donor countries committed to supporting democratic consolidation. There is a strong consensus among practitioners that improved coordination of democracy assistance would greatly enhance the effectiveness of programs to support democratic governance. With foreign assistance resources falling short of required levels, growing attention is increasingly devoted to maximizing the impact of such programs. Harnessing new information technologies both as a tool to facilitate donor coordination and to promote greater transparency of governmental activities may yield new areas for cooperation. Past attempts at more systematic coordination have provided a forum for discussing practical steps, including headway in establishing a common framework for guiding assistance efforts to strengthen democratic rule. The dialogue also gave impetus to attempts to improve assistance coordination at the individual country level. Taken together, these efforts have laid the groundwork for a possible renewed push, one that could take advantage of lessons learned and some promising developments in the broader environment for democracy assistance programming. The most ambitious attempt at coordinating democracy assistance has been undertaken by the OECD's Development Assistance Committee (DAC). In December 1993, the DAC established an Ad Hoc Working Group on Participatory Development and Good Governance. Upon the completion of its 3-year mandate, the Working Group issued its final report in April 1997. The report, which was endorsed by the DAC's High Level Meeting, summarized "best practices" of democracy assistance and called for closer in-country coordination among donors, host government, and indigenous civil society. In cooperation with bilateral and multilateral donor organizations, the DAC then identified eight pilot countries in which the Working Group's recommendations could be applied. The pilot countries were located in Africa and Latin America. As part of the follow-up to the G-8 Denver Summit in 1997, the DAC held a workshop in Bamako, Mali, in May 1998 to assess the progress of the pilot countries. The DAC's partners for this workshop were the Global Coalition for Africa, the UNDP, governmental and civil-society representatives from the eight pilot countries, and the governments of the U.S., the U.K,. and France. Despite these pilot efforts, we are still at a very early stage of forging partnerships among donor institutions, host governments and indigenous civil societies. Attempted cooperation between the United States and the European Union has also been quite circumscribed and has had little longer-term impact. The difficulties of achieving closer coordination in these cases reflect the general problem. Moreover, the international community has yet to tap the rich lessons of those countries that have graduated from donor assistance. Efforts to bolster coordination in the area of democracy assistance historically have been hampered by several factors, including: disparate and sometimes conflicting aims and interests among the donor nations as well as between donors and recipient governments; unrealistic expectations as what democracy program assistance can accomplish given intervening factors such political will and commitment to reform across the government, economic pressures, entrenched authoritarian norms, and/or crony capitalism; absence of agreement among donors and recipient countries on a common framework, akin to what exists in other assistance areas (e.g. family planning, health); and government and civil society actors in the recipient countries not adequately integrated into the discussion about assistance needs. The impediments to more effective coordination of democracy assistance notwithstanding, there have been some noteworthy successes that underscore both the desirability and the possibility of closer coordination. International electoral assistance has been one area where coordination among donors, often in close cooperation with indigenous organizations involved in monitoring the election process, has been especially good. This may be because of the concrete, time-bound nature of the task, and a greater willingness on the part of donors to divide up responsibilities in order to avoid duplication of effort. Both of these factors were present in the recent cases of Indonesia and Nigeria, where national elections have helped advance the still fragile democratic process. Improvements in coordinating democracy assistance have not been limited to the electoral sector. In Nigeria, for example, the UNDP-led Governance Roundtable has been a useful mechanism for discussions among the major donors, while less formal structures have facilitated dialogue with relevant government agencies and non-governmental organizations. Issues for Discussion These and other instances of successful coordination, when taken together with lessons learned from efforts made in OECD and the G-8, suggest a set of conditions and attending guidelines for action to enhance the prospects for democracy assistance coordination: Donors and recipients should operate on the basis of a common framework for guiding democracy assistance programming decisions. Notwithstanding some differences, there does seem to be a consensus among both donors and recipients on the essential features of a genuinely democratic regime including, but not limited to: -- control of the executive and legislative functions of the state is determined by elections contested by political parties and interest groups free to organize and compete for power; -- an effective legislature with substantial independent authority to enact laws and provide general oversight of the government; -- a legitimate, institutionalized and protected role, particularly in the legislature, for opposition parties or groups; -- the rule of law, with equal treatment for all citizens and protection of human rights, enforced by an independent, competent judiciary; -- a vibrant civil society enjoying freedom of speech, press, and association and protection for minority groups and opinions; -- a free and independent press; and -- control by civilians of the state security forces, including both the police and the military. To support transitions to such democratic regimes, assistance providers and recipients should engage in a dialogue aimed at reaching consensus on the nature of the obstacles to democratic consolidation, including factors such as commitment to political reform that will determine the impact of programmatic assistance. This, in turn, will facilitate agreement on appropriate and realistic program interventions. Effective coordination is most likely to occur at the level of individual countries, where donor knowledge of local conditions should be greatest and host government and civil society interlocutors most readily available. This in turn may require devolution of decision-making authority to in-country representatives of donor governments and institutions. Lessons on effectiveness include: -- Assistance providers collaboratively determine their respective areas of comparative advantage and agree on a division of labor in order to avoid redundancy and maximize synergy. -- Key donors undertake joint assessments (to include consultations with array of indigenous stakeholders) in specified countries to pinpoint principal stumbling blocks to democratic consolidation and to offer recommendations to deal with these challenges. -- A multi-lateral or leading bilateral donor takes the lead in organizing regular in-country meetings to keep the array of democracy assistance actors apprised of developments and to monitor progress. Strong leadership by the chairing country/institution and a commitment by donors and key stakeholders to ongoing consultation is indispensable. With an eye toward trends in the economic and security spheres, proponents of democracy assistance coordination might build on regional mechanisms that already exist. This includes regional development banks, most of which have begun to address issues connected with good governance, transparency and accountability. The growth of publicly funded, independent democracy-promotion institutions presents another promising opportunity for closer coordination in the democracy assistance area. As more countries see the benefit of creating such institutions, it will generate incentives for exchanging cross-regional lessons learned, particularly with respect to supporting civil society. Democracy considerations (e.g. transparency, civil society input, anti-corruption tools) should be integrated more systematically across the entire portfolio of longer-term development, post-conflict reconstruction and disaster/humanitarian relief programs. Donors and recipients might agree on a mechanism for identifying, disseminating and implementing lessons learned and best practices. Candidate institutions include the World Bank, UNDP, OECD, and the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA). Regular meetings bringing together donor countries' democracy assistance units could also facilitate closer coordination by developing a common framework and sharing of best practices. New information technologies could be harnessed to facilitate donor coordination and exchange best practices on a timely basis. A final overarching conclusion is that effective coordination requires sustained commitment on the part of key actors. Up-front costs in terms of time and energy can be particularly high since coordination often involves changing the way business is done. Larger donors may be used to operating unilaterally, with minimal input from host government or civil society actors. Donors also may resist coordination out of concern that their national goals and interests could be compromised. But successful examples of coordination, however cumbersome and even contentious in the early going, yield demonstrably greater program impact over the longer run. Improved overall results surely favor both the shared and particular interests of all parties involved. UNDP appears to be increasingly well positioned to play a pivotal role in enhancing coordination in the democracy assistance sphere. The World Bank, OECD and other institutions do offer some distinctive advantages. But UNDP's growing interest in promoting good governance and democracy building as fundamental to sound development and its ability to work with the full panoply of governments, makes it a particularly strong candidate to take on this responsibility. Note: This paper is for informal discussion and does not represent the formal views of any government. [end of document] Official Texts | Community of Democracies Initiative | Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor