Generating democracy that delivers, working with new actors and encouraging innovative ways of responding to the authoritarian backlash were some of the principal themes emerging from last week’s 6^th assembly of the World Movement for Democracy.

Citizens of the world’s largest democracy often refer to the struggle for BiPaSa – bijli – electricity, pani- water, and sadak – roads, one Indian participant noted. Democracy must address people’s material needs and concerns if it is to retain its legitimacy and citizens’ allegiance, delegates heard.

Democracy assistance too often benefits favored clients, some complained, disproportionately benefiting metropolitan-based NGOs run by well-educated elites, at the expense of rural activists or otherwise marginalized groups. Groups like the American Center for International Labor Solidarity and the Center for International Private Enterprise have gone out of their way to engage with non-traditional democratic actors, including domestic workers and young entrepreneurs, often through multi-stakeholder coalitions that leverage the skills and resources of otherwise disparate groups.

Want to make a point? Ridicule a regime. Governments know how to handle most forms of dissent, but they are less comfortable when citizen activists simply make fun of them, delegates heard.

Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez is reportedly seething over open letters to his daughters imploring them to stop their father being such a jerk, said Consorcio’s Carlos Ponce, urging activists to overcome their “fear of innovation.”

But satire has its drawbacks and dangers too, cautioned Leyla Yunosova of Azerbaijan’s Institute of Peace and Democracy. Delegates watched a film poking fun at the government that landed two pro-democracy activists in jail.

The bloggers were assaulted and arrested after their youth group, Ol, posted a video in which a donkey holds a press conference detailing the wonderful life donkeys have in Azerbaijan. The video was a satire of the government which local media had reported as paying exorbitant prices to import donkeys.

The authoritarian backlash has gone into overdrive since the last assembly, said Doug Rutzen of the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law, listing 14 states which had enacted legislation restricting civil society. Globalization had facilitated authoritarian learning, he suggested, decrying a “new forms of political protectionism” as governments moved “from trade barriers to aid barriers.”

An examination of anti-NGO laws across Central Asia, the Middle East and Latin America reveals “precisely the same provisions” in legislation.

Given this evident mutual learning and assistance amongst authoritarians and, sadly, some democratic states, he said, “it is incumbent upon us to support groups like the World Movement for Democracy and the Community of Democracies.”