Confronting the Challenges to Democracy in the 21st Century

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Strengthening Democratic Institutions: Generating and Sharing Innovative Solutions to Problems of Transition

• The international community should sustain its attention to democratic transitions, recognizing that a transition to democracy is not linear and that supposedly established democracies can quickly fall backward.
• Donors should not pull out of countries once an initial election is undertaken. The international community should be present well before and well after elections, and should utilize monitors from countries with similar cultures and systems.
  
• Regional-level groups should be utilized more consistently on elections questions.
  
• International development banks should contribute in a more active way to the entrenchment of democratic institutions and should be encouraged to develop standards for assessing democratic as well as economic progress.
  
• Given the importance of outside attention, a democracy/social audit process, based on a set of criteria and standards on which to judge democratic behavior, should be developed.
• With respect to debt relief, the international community should avoid actions that help to sustain corrupt power holders, and special attention should be given to the effectiveness of democracy assistance.
• Social development programs of international financial institutions should encourage extensive participatory processes.

• Consider laws to strengthen transparency of political parties.
• Institute codes of conduct for parliamentarians and civil servants.
• Use trained domestic election monitors for new tasks to promote transparency, such as monitoring parliaments.

• Following elections, international organizations should stay on to support and strengthen political parties and NGOs.

• Institute new measures to promote women's participation, including electoral system reform and more support for women in government.
• Emphasize the electoral process; the strength of democracy lies in how elections are conducted, how clear, free, and fair the process is.
• Mobilize illiterate populations and recognize that they too can provide a pool of effective leadership.
• Inculcate democratic values in the broad population; utilize civil society through such programs as practical law courses for secondary schools and the general population and legal clinics within law schools to represent poor clients.
• Local power holders should be elected, and democratic decision-making methods should be better integrated into local and community traditions; support grass-roots mobilization of power.
• Integrate NGOs into government decision-making processes; create permanent civil society liaisons throughout the executive branch, thereby establishing a partnership between government and civil society based on good communications, transparency, and trust.
• Organize.