Confronting the Challenges to Democracy in the 21st Century
Second World Assembly
November 12-15, 2000
São Paulo, Brazil
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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
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Press (html, pdf)
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Critical Breakthrough Elections as Opportunities for Democracy Promotion: What are the Best Strategies?
Organizer:
International Republican Institute (U.S.)
Rapporteur:
Jiri Pehe (Czech Republic)
New York University-Prague
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Moderator:
John Anelli (U.S.)
International Republican Institute
Presenters:
Slobodan Homen (Serbia)
Otpor
Martin Lengyel (Slovakia)
TA3 Television
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The workshop heard from democracy activists from Slovakia, Serbia, and Croatia, where breakthrough elections recently took place, as well as from activists from Zimbabwe, where the democratic opposition came close to defeating the Mugabe regime but did not succeed. Participants agreed both on some basic pre-election strategies for changing an authoritarian regime to a democratic one and on some post-election strategies to help ensure the irreversibility of those transitions.
Recommendations of Pre-Election Strategies:
- Unite all opposition forces into a coalition that not only fights for replacing authoritarian rule, but also has an issue-oriented, positive program.
- Get a voice in the media.
- Establish a broad front of civic organizations (NGOs) that mobilizes the public against the regime and promotes voter participation.
- Put in place an effective election monitoring system and an independent vote count.
Recommendations on Post-Election Strategies:
- Build viable political parties and help sustain civic organizations.
- Actively engage the international community and regional neighbors in sustaining democratic gains.
- Sustain the coalitions that were created before the elections to oppose the authoritarian regime.
- With the help of NGOs, keep popular expectations in perspective about the pace of progress.
- Achieve acceptance by the public of the legitimacy of electoral reforms.
General Recommendations to NGOs:
- Foster inter-regional participation of NGOs in monitoring democratic gains.
- Facilitate exchanges among election-monitoring organizations, including sharing experiences in opposing non-democratic regimes and in voter education.
- Initiate means, perhaps using the Internet, to share the stories of successful transitions to democracy.
- NGOs in new democracies should support awareness of democratic movements in authoritarian countries.
- NGOs in new democracies should lobby their own governments to demonstrate solidarity with democratic forces elsewhere.
Recommendations to the World Movement for Democracy:
- The World Movement participants should be vocal in opposition to authoritarian regimes and politicians long before break-through elections. This advocacy should include clearly identifying authoritarian politicians, in effect, producing a "most-wanted list" of authoritarian rulers.
- The World Movement should consider creating mobile advisory groups that would visit authoritarian countries, sharing with local activists their own transition-to-democracy experiences.
- The World Movement (and other organizations and forums) should continue to support civic organizations and democratic political parties after victorious breakthrough elections.
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