Program in Global Democratization

The wave of democratization that spread throughout Latin American and Southern and Eastern Europe in the past 25 years was one of the 20th century’s most important developments.  It improved the quality of life for tens of millions of people by providing them with new freedoms and liberties, and it laid the groundwork for economic reforms, a higher standard of living, and hope for a brighter future. Recent history, however, shows that this “third wave” of democratization has slowed and that many fledgling democracies failed after only a few years of existence. Thus, hundreds of millions of people in the Middle East, East Asia, and Africa were untouched by democracy’s third wave; tens of millions of others live in fragile democracies.

If the recent wave of democratization has indeed crested and broken, the family of democratic nations faces an important choice.  These nations can attempt to insulate themselves from hostile, authoritarian regimes.  Or they can adopt policies and pursue strategies that foster the spread of democratic values and institutions.  Recent history has demonstrated the futility of isolationism in a highly globalized, interdependent world.  But it has also demonstrated the importance of developing informed strategies for the constructive engagement of unfamiliar cultures.

If democracies choose a strategy of constructive engagement, they must address several challenges in the 21st century.  One is to understand why significant clusters of non-democratic regimes remain in the developing world, as well as how best to ignite a “fourth wave” of democratization within these diverse clusters.  Another is to strengthen democratic norms and institutions after a transition from authoritarianism has occurred.  It does little good to “seed” new democracies if they fail to ripen and blossom. Unless we learn how to strengthen new republics, we will re-live the experiences of the1930s and the 1960s when dozens of new democracies were replaced by authoritarian regimes.

Meeting these challenges will require the concerted efforts of a diverse range of democracy advocates, including both individuals (pro-democracy activists, political leaders, policy makers and policy implementers, ordinary citizens) and institutions (democratic nation-states, the UN, the World Bank, the IMF).  The efforts of these advocates will be aided immeasurably by a refined understanding of how democracies emerge and are consolidated.  Thus, democratization scholars and institutions of higher education can play an important role in helping address the challenges that democracy advocates must meet in the 21st century.  

The academy will aid the efforts of democracy advocates only if it can produce timely and policy relevant insights into democratization and its consolidation. Timely progress requires the creation and implementation of informed and coherent research strategies as well as a concerted effort to create dialogues among diverse scholars.  The generation of policy relevant insights requires dialogues between researchers and practitioners.  These dialogues are essential both to inform practitioners of advances in useful knowledge and to aid in the formulation of research agendas.

To achieve these objectives requires a level of organization and commitment that can be provided only by an institutionalized program of research implemented by talented researchers; they are too important to be left to the serendipitous explorations of individual scholars. Consequently, the mission of the Global Democratization program is to help democracy advocates meet the twin challenges of promoting and consolidating new democracies.  Being situated in one of the world great public research universities, and within a broadly based Center dedicated to “nurture, refine, and extend” democracy, the Global Democratization program is well qualified to help meet these challenges.

The Global Democratization program can maximize its contribution to the work of democracy advocates by doing what institutions of higher learning do best in confronting “real world” challenges: (1) filling discernible “knowledge voids” that hobble efforts of practitioners; and (2) generating on-going dialogues between researchers and practitioners.  To do this the Global Democratization program will oversee a strategically conceived program of research that will be routinely updated.  It will also sponsor a series of conferences and workshops designed to aid in filling knowledge voids, informing practitioners of relevant research findings, and providing democratization researchers with feedback about problems and issues that could benefit from further research and dialogue.