Confronting the Challenges to Democracy in the 21st Century

Report Home Message from the Steering Committee (html, pdf) Democracy as a Starting Point (html, pdf) Excerpts from the Keynote Address by Fernando Henrique Cardoso President of Brazil Greetings from Around the World (html, pdf) Democracy Courage Tributes (html, pdf) Workshop Reports Topical (html, pdf) Regional (html, pdf) Functional (html, pdf) Participants (html, pdf) Press (html, pdf) Assembly Support (html) Download Acrobat Reader

Regional Workshops - Central and Eastern Europe

• Organize, organize, organize. NGOs must coordinate activities of a large number of diverse organizations. They must work with political parties, trade unions, and others, but they must also maintain official nonpartisanship and independence. The participants pointed to an important lesson based on experiences in Serbia, Slovakia, and, to a lesser extent, Croatia: When foreign donors coordinate their activities, it helps local NGOs to do likewise.
• Develop affiliates with local leadership and representatives; it is better to have many little-known leaders than a single well-known, but irreplaceable, one.
• Develop a common theme and logo that all member groups can use and incorporate into their own campaigns.
• Keep the message simple, repeat it often, and use as many methods as possible to communicate it to voters.
• Be flexible and creative. Use humor and a light-hearted approach where you can. Always be ready to respond to what your opponents are doing.
• Several participants also recommended that NGOs and other democrats develop concrete plans for what they would do after the election, but others who had recently been through the process said that this would have been impossible; during the campaign, all energy is spent on winning.

• Get over the euphoria and get down to work.
• Switch from a "search-and-destroy" to a "build-and-improve" mode of thinking.
• Learn to appreciate the important differences between NGOs and government. NGO leaders are moralistic and idealistic; government officials are more pragmatic and willing to compromise ("In politics, it is immoral to lose!"). Participants pointed to the following lessons based on experience:
  • NGO leaders who go into government are often disappointed or even repulsed by what goes on there.
  • Government leaders, for their part, are disappointed when their former allies who helped elect them are now critical of their government work.
  • Both the NGO community and the government should appreciate the distinct role that each plays in a democratic society.
• NGOs need to organize and coordinate their efforts as much after a breakthrough election as before. The need for foreign donors to maintain their support also remains as great.
• NGOs have a major responsibility after the breakthrough election to educate citizens about the true conditions of the country and the realistic prospects for reform.
• NGOs will always have a role in promoting the values of a civil society, in working to consolidate democratic gains, and in serving as a watchdog.

• The workshop revealed that while some breakthrough election experiences are unique to the region, or to post-communist transitions, other experiences are more universal. The World Movement should therefore develop mechanisms to promote the sharing of these experiences with NGO activists and other democrats facing similar challenges, both before and after a breakthrough election.
• The World Movement should work with donors to develop long-term strategies that continue after breakthrough elections. In this connection, the participants also strongly recommended that donors should not reduce or withdraw funding immediately after a democratic breakthrough.