Topic: Is Democracy an answer on Global Level?

Panel 2: Is Democracy an answer on Global Level?

Ghassan Salamé
Mr. Boutros-Ghali will be speaking in French, and a translation will be available for those who need it.

Boutros Boutros-Ghali
Ladies and gentlemen, my dear friends, I would like first of all to express my pleasure that I am among you today in this beautiful town of Prague, and I would like to thank President Havel and the organizers of Forum 2000. First of all, because the topic deals with the dilemma of global coexistence and the plight of the world, you have given me the honour to respond to a question that touches me particularly: Is democracy an answer to globalization? I will respond without hesitation: yes. Democracy is without doubt an answer. I will also say that this answer is necessary to the globalization of our society. Moreover, I would like to add that it is a fundamental answer for the international community of tomorrow. Why? Very simply because major problems of the planet become international problems. I think, for example, of the protection of the environment, and of the fight against hunger, or AIDS. But I think also of the great advances in technology, or genetics, or of the “number revolution.” It is clear that all of these problems have assumed a global dimension; and therefore we must seek a solution at the international level.

There is another question: does the existence of democracy on a local scale suffice to guarantee a democracy on the global level? If not, how can one gauge the impact of globalization on national democracy? Considering all this, I am convinced that we can no longer content ourselves with a static vision of the manifestations of democracy, and above all that we cannot limit our vision of democracy on the international frontier, where national democracies, even the most solidly created democracies, have entered into a phase of weakening. It is highly necessary to understand one fact in particular: that in order for democracy to exist in a real sense, it must be exercised in all the places where power is concerned. Because democracy is not only a form of state government, or a form of government between states, democracy must be the mode of exercising all power, whatever it may be. In other words, the phenomenon of planetary globalization must go hand-in-hand with a movement of democratic globalization. But global democracy cannot reduce itself to a transposition of the structure of national democracy. Democracy must have a specific architecture as its objective: now on a scale where it is no longer concerned directly with the citizen, but with entities, organizations, and assemblies of people. The democracy of globalization, democracy on a global scale, cannot come from a compilation of national democracies, as all democratic nations would like.

Therefore, it is not necessary to wait for all nations on the planet to adopt democracy individually in order to purport to be establishing a global democracy. And as to the argument that I often quote, which has been presented to me by representatives of a certain power: non-democratic states are well able to participate in global democracy. In fact, they contribute to multilateralism. Global democracy is not the same as multilateralism. But multilateralism is a step toward achieving global democracy.

In addition, I think that the creation of a global democracy will also come about through the participation of non-state actors. Municipalities, parliaments, universities, syndicates, religious groups - although there are ties between religion and politics, but I speak only of movements solely religious in nature - and non-governmental organizations all must play a role in the democratization of international politics. And I will add multinational corporations, which must be included in the expansion of a norm that encapsulates globalization. They do not act based on a “money spree”, nor based on I don’t know which general planning, nor to ignore the law of profits to administer globalization. It is therefore crucial to introduce multinational enterprises into the process of global democratization, so that in the end they will be seen not as the predators in the world’s social order, but, completely to the contrary, as developmental actors, actively implicated in the reduction of the fracture between South and North and in the promotion of the social integration of the planet.

I am convinced in this regard that only with the concept of a new solidarity will globalization be permitted to thrive, or at least to attain the necessary conclusion that is important for global society. Solidarity is, first and foremost, the conviction of belonging to the same family. In this morning’s discussion, another concept of solidarity was mentioned: that of feeling oneself to be responsible for others, of knowing and listening to others. Solidarity is also the desire to base the future upon a new social contract. Therefore, solidarity can only form collective engagement; that is to say, from the plans of states and of non-state actors in contemporary international society.

Finally, I would like to emphasize the importance that I attach to the reform of the United Nations. Let us say that this does not stem from a desire to augment the number of seats in the Security Council, or to reinforce the role of the Economic Council. We have now more than forty projects that are aimed at different reforms of the United Nations. And that seems to me above all to prepare for the dawn of the third generation of international organizations. The League of Nations constituted the first generation. The United Nations constituted the second generation. We must now prepare ourselves for the third generation of international organizations, and these international organizations will begin in a new form to administer the process of globalization democratically.

In responding as I have done to the question that was posed to me at the beginning of this panel, in which there could be a new social and democratic order in global society, I am of course aware that I offered a largely hypothetical reflection. But it may happen that, in a world of change, a world of danger, a world of drama, the imagination will create the important reality - hope instead of resignation, solidarity instead of the law of the strong, the spirit of peace instead of the exercise of power. It can happen against all odds. The people mobilize themselves for a grand design; a utopian project can become the real beginnings of a prodigious advance. A utopian project can still become the motor of history. It is in this very moment that the scales of history will be tipped and that civilization will progress.

Ghassan Salamé
Thank you, Mr. Secretary General, thank you, dear Sir. Well, I think we have put our finger on a very important distinction between democracy on a national level and democracy on a global level. And what the former Secretary General of the United Nations is telling us is quite important, and I hope that the debate will reflect it. First, that to establish democracy on a global level, units do not need to be democratic themselves--I mean democratic and authoritarian units can produce together a democratic global system. Second, they don’t even need to be states, because he calls for the participation in this global democracy of non-state actors. And three, the objective should not be just a small reform of the present multi-lateral system, but establishment of a third generation of international organizations, which is a much more ambitious and interesting and stimulating endeavour indeed. Thank you, Mr. Secretary General, for this speech.

The basic question that the panel has been asked to answer is a question to which the answer is absolutely known in advance. Is democracy an answer? Who would dare to say no? So I can tell you in advance that all the members of the panel will answer the question by saying, including my friend Zogby, “Yes.” Why is it so? Because democracy is now the norm in the international system. It’s very, very daring to come and say, “No, it is not the answer,” especially when the question is asked in such a modest way. The question is not: Is democracy the answer? The question is: Is it an answer? Well, of course it’s an answer. The problem is still open, and that’s why we are waiting for this panel to answer not by “yes” or “no,” but to answer the coming questions that sort of spill from this basic question. First one: why did we witness in the past ten years a stagnation in the number of democracies in the world? Basically, according to Freedom House, the number of democracies in the world has stagnated, after three waves or possibly four waves, at around 115, 116 democracies, and they are not increasing anymore. Second, why are we witnessing, as we did in Thailand last week, cases of regression, and in some large countries I will not cite, but others will certainly do so around this table, regression in democratic practices? And the third question, then, is to ask conceptually, “When everybody becomes democratic, are you still speaking of the same thing?” If, like anything that becomes universal, it does not diversify to the point where we are not talking anymore about the same thing, but rather we are talking about the scope, the level, the depth, the nature, the extension of democracy. That is very different. And I do believe that another question arises then, and the question is the following: Can we still use the Freedom House model? This country is democratic. This country is not democratic. Or should we rather speak of a spectrum? Where along this spectrum, between authoritarianism and democracy, are the 192 countries in the world? Basically, a huge amount of diversification has taken place together with the market economy. The market economy is now a world religion, but from one country to the other, capitalism is not the same. It has diversified, while being universalized, and democracy is the same. Finally, what is the relation between democratization and economic growth? And one thing that comes to mind here is that last year, 2005, among the ten countries that have witnessed the highest level of economic growth, only three are democratic. So this is a very big challenge to democrats like us, that economic growth is not automatically or necessarily linked to democratization, and that democracy needs somehow to be defended in person. So, yes, is democracy an answer? We could guess what the answer is going to be. But all these questions, I hope, will also be addressed by the members of this prestigious panel we have around us. And the first to answer this question will be the former Prime Minister of Slovakia, Mr. Mikuláš Dzurinda.

Mikuláš Dzurinda
Ladies and gentlemen, I belong among those who believe that yes, democracy is the answer at the global level. I am a Slovak and a European; I have no problem in understanding that democracy is the answer. But the problem is that democracy can be set as an example, can be offered as an inspiration, can be supported, but it certainly cannot be imposed. Therefore, I believe that the more universal answer at the global level is represented in the rules -- in the rules and in the instruments by which we are able to enforce compliance with the rules. In my mind, this is substantial. Yet even here I can see certain problems, such as reaching an agreement on the content and the scope of these rules. There are some areas in which it is very easy. It is truly fascinating how the whole world respects the rules of football, for instance. Football has truly become a global game. It is played with the same rules not only in Europe, but also in America, in Asia, in Africa, in Australia; it is played with the same rules in big cities and also in the smallest villages. We have also learned to respect traffic rules. In spite of certain differences in some countries, the rules are more or less the same. A red light everywhere means that we have to stop. But there are other areas where agreement on the rules is much more difficult. We can speak about uranium enrichment or CO2 emissions but not speak about the right to life. On the other hand, overregulation leads to a growing bureaucracy. This is the main reason why administration gains the upper hand over effectiveness inside the European Union. But for all these difficulties, I am still convinced that the answer to globalization should be sought in the rules--rules based on universally recognized values. But I must say that no value should be pursued at the price of destroying other values. No matter how complicated the formulation of global rules may become, adherence to these rules and their enforcement appears to be even more problematic, even more difficult. Although we have created a system of international treaties and various institutions and organizations, we are often unable not only to ensure compliance with these mutually agreed-upon rules, but also to interpret them in a uniform manner. Here I have in mind such issues as the fight against terrorism, the conflict in the Middle East, uranium enrichment in Iran, the military campaign in Iraq, or some environmental issues.

In my opinion, respect for the rules and their enforcement constitute the key problems at the global level. We should have the courage to identify the reason for these big problems. I believe that the reason lies in the growing egoism in the world. It seems that the more affluent a person is, the more egotistic he or she becomes. This is why we say to ourselves, in the best case, that we will not meddle with what is not our business, or we expect our neighbour to take care of our common problem. In the worst case, we say to ourselves that the attempt at putting out the fire should or would or could harm our economic interests. And there are even situations when we are pleased to see our competitor face major difficulties and let him struggle to deal with them on his own. Egoism prevents us from seeing the interest and the needs of the whole. Egoism also prevents us from reforming our systems at the national level, inside of the European Union, but also at the global level, for instance, at the level of the United Nations. It is egoism that drives us. The politicians see as a number one priority winning the next election at any price--at the cost of lying to the citizens, driving our countries into debt, destroying our environment, and even at the price of tolerance of evil. Egoism leads to populism and nationalism, and these are the factors that prevent compliance with the accepted rules that lead to bridging the rules. I therefore believe that the answer to global questions does not lie in the system of organization of public affairs as such, but it lies mainly in people, especially in the leaders who have an ambition to be at the helm of the countries, of the nations, of the international institutions.

So, I believe that globalization needs people who raise universal interests over their particular interests, people who prefer solidarity to egoism, patriotism and respect for other nations to nationalism, and effectiveness to bureaucracy. Globalization needs people who have the courage to call things by their true names, to ask honest questions and to seek straight answers to these questions and, of course, who are ready to do it even at the price of losing their political popularity. It is not easy to be honest, truthful, and fair on one side and on the other side to win elections. This is the big dilemma. And here, democracy suddenly seems to be a limit for the future, for the era of globalization. On the other hand, it is true that nobody ever discovered anything better than democracy. So maybe the final question is: What should we do, what are the means by which we may be able to solve and understand these dilemmas? I am sure that education is such a means. We should do more for education. Donations for farmers are good, but I’m sure that we need more donations and much more money for education. If we are better educated, we are not only able to seek a better job but also can be more responsible, more tolerant, and more able to negotiate these global rules and then to enforce compliance with these rules.

Ghassan Salamé
Thank you, Mr Dzurinda, for many things, including your underlining of the basic organic tensions between ethics and elections, which is every politician’s nightmare.

Our next speaker is Mr. James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute.

James Zogby
I have three observations, all of which are born out of my experiences in this discussion in the United States. The first is that, with regard to the question “Is democracy the answer?”--I want to know what the question is. It seems to presume a question has been asked, but I’m not sure what it is. Too many questions of democracy are actually framed in this way; they are historical and they are non-empirical. Democracy is an appeal. It is not an ideal, but it is a practice; sometimes it’s good and sometimes it’s bad. My own democracy in the United States was, in fact, built on the near-extermination of the indigenous people of my country, and it was built on slavery. It took us almost a hundred years to free slaves, and it was done so in the context of an extraordinarily bloody civil war among two white democracies: the North and the South. A hundred years later, slavery was gone, but institutionalized racism was still in place, and it was democratically imposed institutional racism.

Our democracy was not a solution. It was a process. We are forever redefining it, expanding it, providing for it. When the founding fathers endorsed the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, the vote in Virginia to ratify was 76 to 12. You know that there were more than 88 people in the state of Virginia at the time, but the only ones who voted at that time were white men of enormous wealth and property. Secondly, there are other countries where democracy is real, South Africa, but again it was built on the exploitation of indigenous people. Many of the democracies in Europe were also built on the backs of their colonial empires. We must not forget that.

Secondly, democracy is not a solution. It is a social system. It is a process. It emerges out of and reflects stages of social development. It requires predicates. No one size fits all, and you cannot plant it unless those predicates are there. For example, it has become a near ideology almost like an idol, a golden calf. For example, in my country we talk about democracy as a predicate instead of the predicates for democracy. The president, for example, decided back in 2002 that the peace process would take a secondary place to democracy. So, the Palestinians could have a state, but first there had to be a democracy--as if you could have a democracy without a state. What did you get? Three years later, more settlements, more bitterness, more alienation, more death, and when the elections were held, Hamas was elected, reflecting the bitterness, the alienation, the despair, and the hostility because the will of the people was expressed in that way. And so, too, when you replace democracy with other problems that need to be solved, you end up with Iraq, which is imposing, in fact, a system, or trying to plant a system, in a situation where ethnic and religious tensions are so deep that democracy ends up reflecting that, not solving that.

Having said all of this, my third and final point is: democracy isn’t a solution, but what is? As I said this morning, justice is. If we are to be advocates, it is not for planting in ground not fertile to receive this plant, whatever it is, but it is to move the social development of those troubled places of the world to the next stage, which is working for justice, working for justice between nations and working for justice within nations, which is social justice. We can become advocates for justice, we can become advocates for human rights, and we can find ways to provide and insist on greater access to power and decision-making for people in countries around the world, because at the end of the day, what democracy provides for in our system is some level of structured access to decision-making. But in some countries that are tribally based, for example, that same access is derived in other ways. A measure, for example, provides you with access to power and decision-making. You cannot artificially remove that and replace it with something else and expect some miracle transformation to take place. Instead you create a disruption in the social system.

So, no, democracy is not the answer. It is your right to present any answer, but I still need to know what the question is. And what I do propose instead is that justice, human rights and promotion of advocacy to power and decision-making in societies around the world is a better approach and one that I think would bear more fruit in both the short- and long-term.

Ghassan Salamé
Thank you, Jim, for a speech as stimulating as expected. Our next speaker is Mr. Zygmunt Bauman.

Zygmunt Bauman
Mr Chairman, I am very pleased to agree fully with what James Zogby has just said. While it is absolutely true, as you said before, that people gathered in this particular room would probably unanimously say that democracy is an answer; they would have plenty of problems describing a unified and agreed-upon answer to the question. Okay. It is a solution, but for what? What are the problems which cry for solutions?

There were beautiful examples given by the previous speaker to show how doubtful, from the point of view of all the values which we cherish, is the selection of the solution to which democracy is specialized. I would give just one extra example, taken not from history, but from that time in which we are sitting and debating. I think the peak of the worldwide weapons trade during the Cold War was reached in ‘87 to ’88, and the value of the worldwide weapons trade was then approximately 1 035, 1 034 billion dollars. Last year, this record had been broken; the value of the worldwide weapons trade is already 1 059 billion dollars and still going up. In the introduction to our debate, there was a very nice sentence pronounced some time ago. I think it was in 2000 that in the case of worldwide military conflicts there has been a decline.But what has happened since the early nineties? It is also a fact that killing people became much, much easier. It no longer requires a declaration of war, we don’t need armed conflicts any longer in order to engage in mass killings, and the technology of killing went up so far that we are relieved even from our moral scruples, because we kill at a distance. It is anonymous killing, impartial killing; there is nothing personal about it. We can do it very well just by leaving aside all the natural human ethical constraints. That’s how it is working.

And when I must interpret the question, okay, democracy can be an answer to one thing. I’m selecting just one problem from the very contradictory, controversial problems which could be broached here, and I must speak about whether democracy is a good answer to the question which was raised two hundred years ago by Immanuel Kant: allgemeine Vereinigung der Menschheit (The Universal Unification of Humanity), the possibility of the peaceful coexistence of the globe. The examples which we have just heard are not very optimistic in this respect. Let’s remember that the worldwide weapons trade is contracted mostly by democratic companies. They’re settled in democratic countries, sometimes commissioning the parts abroad in exotic countries like China, Egypt, India, Israel, Turkey and so on. So, without declaring war against each other, democratic countries somehow manage very well to infuse humanity with very powerful means against the allgemeine Vereinigung der Menschheit. That’s the problem.

Reinhard Kosseleck, the great German historian of ideals, coined a very interesting metaphor of a mountain path to describe, to explain the state of confusion, of uncertainty, of scattered fears which we are now in. He coined this concept of the mountain path with relation to what was happening between the 17th and 18th centuries in Europe. The situation was very similar retrospectively. Our historians call it the Age of Reason, but people who were living then were mostly occupied with witch hunting and burning witches at the stake. So, that’s a word of warning. Being inside a particular time, let us not pretend that you are actually going to find out what will in the long run prove to be the real significance of the time. It was a similar situation then as it is now, because then and now it was the time of the ancient regime dismantling, falling apart and not being able to hold together this social order. What is the ancient regime which falls apart today? It is the institution which was dominant throughout the world for the last two hundred years: the institution of the sovereign nation state, of the ultimate sovereignty belonging to the nation state within, and even that’s what Boutros Boutros-Ghali would probably affirm. The United Nations was created explicitly to protect the absolute unquestionable sovereignty of territorial units against aggressors from outside. Now that is collapsing because the sovereignty of the nation state is fast becoming an illusion for very many different reasons. But it becomes illusion in a very curious way. Sovereignty consisted of the unification of power and politics at the level of nation state. What’s happening now is that the powers which really count, maybe the powers which determined our existential conditions, are quickly evaporating upwards from the political state, from the nation state. They occupy the no-man’s land of cyber space, and by “they”, I mean the powers that really count. Why? Because these powers are the only ones which are able to set the rules of the game, or rather, to violate the rules of the game without punishment, while politics, as Boutros Boutros-Ghali told us, politics remained hopelessly local as before. Deprived of the good its power allows, it is also renouncing quite a number of its previous functions by letting them go down, not upwards, but down to the sphere of what’s called life politics--namely, the sphere which ought to be managed by individuals themselves. Individuals must think individually with individual means, solutions to socially-- or rather globally--created problems.

Now, the problem with the mountain path is that you can’t stand still, because when you are climbing a very steep slope, you can’t build houses, you can’t build permanent settlements, because the first gust of wind or the first heavy rainfall will erode what you have done and sweep you away. So the one thing you know is that you have to climb and go on climbing, but we have no inkling of what is on the other side of the mountain path. We don’t know what we’ll find there, but we know we would be able to say that we have arrived there. We’ll have the right and will succeed in recapturing power, which has run away with politics, by politics developed to the global level.

I think there is a misunderstanding when we confuse global politics with international politics. It’s not the same. International politics starts from a round point: namely, the sovereign, independent, untouchable territorial units, and they have to agree--some of them will, some of them won’t--that whatever they agree on is not universally binding. By universal, I mean global politics. One can only understand something equivalent to the institutions which have been developing two hundred years at the level of the nation-state: namely, of complete institutions of universally binding law, universal jurisdiction, universal courthouses, universal instruments of the representation of popular will. Now, how to do it, no one really knows. Aristotle was the first to write about democracy. If he visited any of our contemporary parliaments, he would be perhaps very well entertained, but he would hardly use the word democracy to describe what he would see.

I will end with an anecdote, which I heard from the mouth of Johan Galtung-- you probably know the name--he is a great political scientist, much, much better than I, because he is also a practising politician, which I am not. He was asked this sort of question: What would democratic institutions on a global scale look like? “Why not start,” they said, “with a global parliament? Some parliaments work better and some worse, but somehow they solve our problems in the realm of the global level.” “Ah,” said Johan Galtung. “Right, so let’s assume that we already have this global government, global parliament. There would be 3 Norwegians sitting, about 25 Italians, 40 Germans, 1,000 Indians, 2, 000 Chinese.” He looked around and said: “I don’t see much enthusiasm for a global parliament.” Now it is a cautionary tale. It’s just that we are now at the moment of experimentation and discovery, but we can’t really say for sure what we’ll discover there.

Ghassan Salamé
Thank you very much, Professor Bauman. Our next speaker is the President of the Republic of Latvia, Mrs. Vike-Freiberga.

Vaira Vike-Freiberga
I will respond to the notion that our earlier conversation introduced--that is to say, to the confrontation of the concept of democracy and of multilateralism, and at the same time to my colleague over there who spoke of egoism as a negative principle in relations on a global scale. Ladies and gentlemen, I’ll pick up on earlier speakers in the sense of talking about the architecture of democracy on the world scale. And I think Mr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali introduced that concept: the distinction between democracies, such as that which operates within the nation state and that which operates between them on the international scene. And I agree that we need an architecture of democracy, or of the principles that we hold dear, when we talk about democracy within a nation state, if we are to apply them internationally in the relations between the states, and even more so, not just bilaterally or even multilaterally, between three or four or five or fifteen or twenty, but the whole wide world, and that means on the global scale.

I would like to, for the sake of argument, take issue with the conclusion that an assemblage of nations, which themselves are not democratic, or indeed far from it, could somehow multilaterally establish a world order that would have all the qualities and the requirements and the “desiderata” that we normally associate with democracy. While I think we have to go back to the concept of what democracy is about, and I agree with our speaker who outlined for us that democracy is not an entity, it is not a thing, it is not an object, it is a concept, it is a set of principles. It was not born like Athena from the brow of Zeus from one day to the next, but it has evolved over the centuries and, in fact, millennia, and certainly on the European continent, starting with the concepts of Ancient Greeks coming together in the stoa and deciding together by participation to make the common decision to do more. So, as what you have pointed out is true for the United States, so it was for the Ancient Greeks and so it is for many countries today.

What we now call democracy took an awful long time to develop. It had more exceptions than actual rules and it is a very, very recent creation. For instance, what they call democracy in the Northern hemisphere is also a very recent creature. In the Europe of today, it only was born--and only in part of it--after the collapse of the totalitarian empire of Nazi Germany. For Western Europe, it came in 1945, but for Eastern Europe it didn’t come until the collapse of totalitarian Communism, and that was in 1991, so it’s a very recent thing. We are not talking about something that dates back to pre-history. I would call democracy something that is a work in progress. We still have to work on it. We have to keep working on defining what it means, what it means within the country, what it means between individuals, between groups, between politicians and their electorate, between civil society and the elected officials, etc., etc. But I would dispute the idea that it doesn’t matter what the nature of the governance within the country is, and that it makes it equally successful and acceptable in the multilateral system. I find it difficult to conceive how a country that is governed by a bloody tyrant or possibly even by a psychotic mass murderer, how such a country can contribute to multilateral decisions or a multilateral system about how to make the world better for all of us on a global scale. I think that leaders in countries that wouldn’t know democracy if they met it on the street, wouldn’t have a clue, and would refuse to speak to it if they met it. These leaders are not the ones that we would count on to build a global order, a multinational architecture of international relations that in any shape or form can answer to those needs that, over the decades and centuries, we have been trying to embody, what we now very broadly and loosely call democracy or democratic institutions.

One word about the idea that egotism is something that is peculiar to the prosperous and that it keeps getting worse the more prosperous we get: I would dispute that on the basis of my knowledge as a psychologist, and I would like to offer the idea that egotism is an inherent part of human beings. It is something that is kept under control by socialization. It is completely orthogonal to wealth or prosperity or anything else. It has to do with how you were brought up and how you were socialized. The altruism as such is something of many religions. We go back to our earlier discussion this morning. One of the aims of many religions is to say you shouldn’t just be selfish and think about yourself alone, but you should also think about your neighbour. The problem then is if you haven’t got faith, and if you haven’t got the fear of God put in you, or you don’t actually accede to it, how can the society function? I think this is where Western humanism comes in with its idea of enlightened self-interest.

And I think if we are to build a globalized world where everybody can find their place, in the north and in the south, in the east and in the west, the thin and the fat and the old and the young, all of us, all of us human beings together, then we have to think of a world where there is a chance, a chance that is given to everybody to grow, to evolve, and to develop to their full potential. It’s an ideal-- it may be a very far-away one, but it is one that does not require sacrifices. It does not require us to strap bombs to our bodies and to blow ourselves up, and to become martyrs, and to kill as many other people as possible. It does not require us to slit our throats on some kind of altar and sacrifice ourselves to the sun god. What it does require is an enlightened self-interest--not a brutal self-interest, not an imposed self-interest, not a stupid and short-sighted self-interest--but enlightened self-interest, which comes from an understanding that we live in a world where we are all independent. What the butterfly’s wings do in one part of the world may cause a hurricane in another. The oxygen that we are depriving the world of by cutting down a tree at some point will cause us to be short of breath. The storms that we create will some day also blow away our houses, and so on, and so forth. We are all interconnected, and the day when we are more aware of this interconnectivity, I think, we will be able to dispute among ourselves. Not in terms of, “I will grab something from you,” or, “you will grab something from me” or, “I will call you more egotistic than I am and you are bad and I am good,” and vice-versa; but simply that we do have to think of living on this planet. We need to share it. If we do not share it wisely, we are going to destroy it and ourselves with it. So we have to grow in order to preserve our plane, we have to be sisters and brothers, whether we have faith in a supreme being or not, whether we’re democrats or not. It only makes good sense.

Ghassan Salamé
Thank you, Madam President, for speaking as an experienced politician, as an inspiring diplomat, but also as a professor of psychology all at once. Our next speaker is Vartan Gregorian. Vartan Gregorian is now the President of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, U.S.A., and was directing a number of important educational and cultural institutions before that.

Vartan Gregorian
I was listening to all the speakers and I thought of two things: democracy as content, and democracy as form, democracy as a process of legitimisation, and democracy as a process of de-legitimisation. The best constitution I know, the most perfect constitution, was Stalin’s 1936 constitution. It is one of the great documents that the mind can produce. The Soviet Union was formed, according to it, on the basis of a “voluntary union” of all its component nations and nationalities. The first right of the Soviet nationalities was the right to secede from Soviet Union. The first obligation under the constitution was to be part of the Soviet Union. Only the selfish, bourgeois nationalities would want to secede. So, therefore, it was a Catch-22: by exercising the right, you forfeited that right. The first right of labour unions was the right to exist and the right to strike. However, the moment you exercised the right to strike, as some of you found out in Eastern Europe, you forfeited the right to strike, because you were putting your “selfish” purposes and interests above the proletariat’s interests. So we always have to distinguish between form and content. Many totalitarian and authoritarian states govern under the banner of democracy. Assorted African states also designate themselves as democracies even though they are not. It is fair to say that each one has its own definition of democracy.
As I sat here, I remembered Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Social Contract and Isaiah Berlin’s wonderful essay, Two Concepts of Liberty. As you know, Rousseau’s Social Contract introduced the concept of general Will vs. arithmetic Will. The implication of this theory is that we may be the minority party, but we still know what’s good for you, and even if the majority opposes us, we are going to compel you to accept what we believe is right. So majorities or arithmetic will don’t count: “virtue” triumphs, not necessarily as articulated by the philosopher-king but by the tyrant or authoritarian party. As we’ve seen, then, many parties that have come to power in the past have used democracy as an organizing principle. They mobilized it to get rid of colonialism or imperial rule, to establish national sovereignty. But once national sovereignty is established, sometimes democracy takes the back seat in the name of a nation’s long-term interest, in the interest of stability; and we’ve seen this kind of perversion happen in Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and many other countries where a nationalist regime has used democracy to mobilize—not to emancipate the individual, but in the service of collectivity as its main interest. In thinking of all of this, I am also reminded of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, where it is said by the Great Inquisitor that when the masses are faced with issues of security, law and order, and liberty, it is usually liberty that is sacrificed. In order for security to triumph, you need external enemies. This was well articulated in George Orwell’s 1984. That’s why many totalitarian regimes always have to have the other, the enemy, who requires you to sacrifice some of your rights now for the sake of future generations. And we also see that in practice when, for the sake of national security, democratic processes take the back seat. Within our own country, now, and even in Europe, there are individuals who say, let’s suspend some of our civil rights for the sake of national security.
Let me enumerate the factors that constitute true democracy. If we really want to discuss democracy as an answer, we should ask the question, are you willing to guarantee a nation’s cultural rights? Are you willing to guarantee a minority’s right to become a majority, and then, when defeated, to go back into minority status, all through due process? Are you willing to guarantee universal rights that the state is obligated to honour? Are you willing to guarantee an independent judiciary and the rule of law? In some states, the judges run under a party banner. The party that wins can appoint the same judges. Where, then, does the independent judiciary come from? In the United States, in some states, the judges who run for office solicit funds from lawyers. Can they maintain their independence when these donor lawyers come before their court? According to them, yes, according to others, no. And under such conditions, how can you preserve minorities? In the works of John Stuart Mill and others, the health of democracy was defined by how it treated minorities. Even Bertrand Russell dwelled on the “minority of one.”
Then there is the critical question: how can you tolerate the intolerant? This has been the biggest challenge since the 18th century, the Age of Reason, namely, how do you deal with the intolerant who doesn’t want to tolerate, yet he has the right to be tolerated? Can democracy cope with that? And what about the free press, the right of assembly, the right to travel? Today, there are various individuals missing from this conference-- from Burma, from Belorussia and from Cuba because they could not get a visa to come here. Is the right to travel a universal right or not? Democracy has to deal with that. And finally, we spoke about checks and balances. Should a democracy also serve as a means to separate nations—to separate communities or to unite them?
And I come back to what Boutros mentioned, namely, what are the universal values that are inspiring to us? And then why do we tolerate democracies that are not democracies, but are prosperous totalitarian, authoritarian regimes in which democratic interests take the back seat to international interests, trade interests, and other interests? These are issues we should discuss, because there are instances in history when democracies have become nationalised. But I am not aware of instances where a democracy had nationalised itself for the benefit of mankind. The rights of the individual, the rights of minorities, the right to preserve cultural rights, the rights of the nation’s interest within a democratic context, the right to have a multiparty system—all of these are the ingredients of a true democracy. We have to deal, therefore, with the essence of democracy, not the form of democracy. Constitutions can be ignored. People can be manipulated. That’s where the role of intellectuals, intelligentsia, is very important. That is why our schools are very important. And that is why also, this morning, we touched on but did not deal with how to build reconciliation between nations. How to bring Rumanians and Hungarians together to review their textbooks. How to bring Poles and Germans together to review their textbooks. How to eliminate the other as the external enemy the way the Germans and French did after two World Wars? In order to do these things and to achieve the acceptance of the other as a neighbour rather than as a permanent enemy, we need to promote a democratic process that does not violate individual rights or minority rights because, in the long run, they are part of the sovereign rights of the people.

Ghassan Salamé
Our next speaker will take us East: Mr Hung-Mao Tien, Chairman of the Institute for National Policy Research and former Minister of Foreign Affairs in Taiwan. Mr. Tien, the floor is yours.

Hung-Mao Tien
We have heard many inspiring speeches about the virtues of democracy and why it is desirable. And if we speak of democracies in general terms and treat it as a norm, I don’t think anybody here today can say no to democracy as an answer. We all agree that democracy is a good answer and should be an answer for many more problems to come. But I’ll be speaking somewhat as a sort of devil’s advocate. Indeed, in the last thirty years, there has been somewhere close to sixty countries that joined the family of democracy. Some scholars call it the third wave democracies. Earlier, our chairman talked about democracies that have come to a stage of stagnation, citing that there are already 116 countries listed as democracies in the world, while some 80 others are not yet. But in terms of population, 40% of humanity is not living in democracies, including China. Historically, we can go back to the time of Soviet collapse when democratic transition began in this part of the world and, subsequently, in many other parts of the third world.

During the 1990’s there was a sense of optimism, or you may wish to call it “sense of euphoria”, about democracy being the answer to human problems. Renowned political scientist Francis Fukuyama spoke of the end of history, describing the end of totalitarianism and arrival of the age of a more humane and democratic world. But development of the world has not been that way since. Many young democracies, which have entered transition since the early 1990’s or even earlier, are running into considerable problems in the process of consolidation. The prospect of consolidation for many young democracies may still grow bright indeed. But there are challenges lying ahead that deserve our attention. Those of us who are here no longer need to convince each other of the desirability of democracy. What we need to look at are those who already have experienced democratic transition but are facing problems and those who are yet to enter a democratic transition. What are their problems? We may speak in terms of pathological aspects of many young democracies as follows:

1. Widespread corruption: corruption can be related to election costs. Money politics has become prevalent in many young democracies.
2. Weak institutional building: lack of judicial independence has been particularly evident in countries whereby investigative and judicial institutions have to deal with scandals and corruptions.
3. Frequent resort to mass mobilisation in protest against elected political leaders, leading to vicious cycles.
4. Politicization of mass media contributes to civic disorder and partisan antagonism.
5. And the recent events in Iraq and Afghanistan may be viewed as negative examples of foreign- installed democracy.

The above do not lend comfort to the argument that democracy is indeed the most desirable form of governance. In the third world, scepticism about democracy is rising. There is cynicism in many young democracies.

There are two aspects I would like to call our attention to. One is the argument that democracies, particularly young democracies, do not perform well in economic development. On the other hand, certain autocratic states with developmental inclination and capable elites have been able to perform economically very well. Hence, some argue that this would be what is really needed for the people. China, Vietnam and Singapore, among others, are not democratic but successful in economic development. Secondly, there is also argument over cultural relativism. This is to say that certain cultures are not conducive to having a Western style democracy. Proponents of this view argue that democracy is a product of Western civilization and that it does not work well in non-Western cultures. But the success stories of both economic development and democratization in Taiwan and South Korea as well as Japan, prove that cultural relativism may not be universally true.

So, in conclusion, can we say that when we look at the world today and wonder what may be the solution for such problems as sectarianism, religious and ethnic confrontations, is democracy the answer? If we refer to Europe and North America, we must categorically say yes. Mature democracies have resolved many internal conflicts peacefully and effectively. Yet the problems at hand are in reference to young democracies and those which are yet to be democratized. They constitute the majority. This seems to be the area on which we ought to focus more.

Ghassan Salamé
Thank you, Mr Tien, for a contribution that definitely enriches our discussion this afternoon.
Our next speaker is the Speaker of the Parliament in Tbilisi, Georgia. Madam Nino Burdjanadze, the floor is yours.

Nino Burdjanadze
Yes, I’m from Georgia, the country that became independent just fifteen years ago. And for my people, and I’m sure for most of the people from the former Soviet Union, the question “Is democracy the answer?” has only one reply: yes, democracy is the answer. But the main issue is what kind of democracy we are talking about--working democracy or the limited one? The main problem is that quite often in many countries democracy is limited. It is not rare that the violation of the main aspects and main values which create democracy as a whole restrict the development of democracy. Yes, some constitutions are really democratic on paper; but the main goal of democracy is the implementation of values, which constitute a real democracy.

For my people and for my country, democracy means an independent judiciary, democracy means equality, and respect for human rights. Democracy means the peaceful solution of the conflicts that exist in my own country. I can assure you that we Georgians are determined to build this kind of democracy. However, it is absolutely obvious that democracy can’t be built and strengthened overnight. And in this regard new independent countries and democracy need support. Mr. Speaker, you asked a question: if all countries in the future were democratic, would we discuss the same issue or not? I think yes, we would discuss the same issue, because democracy is a process that is endless. But what is really very important, and what is the main achievement of democracy, is that all real democratic nations solve their own problems by peaceful means and in civilized ways. The proof of it is that there has been no war between real democracies at least since the Second World War.

What is important, from my point of view, is to make our world better, to protect democratic values in internal policy, and to protect democratic values in international policy. And it means that we all have obligations and we all have rights. We can’t speak about human rights only; we should speak also about obligations. Mr. Speaker, you mentioned that there are some rules that we should all respect. Yes, there are some red lines, which we should not cross. But, unfortunately, quite often we see that these red lines or these rules are violated. What is our reaction? I think that the main obligation of the international community and of us, if we want to strengthen democracy, is to have an adequate response to all violations of democratic norms whether these violations are internal, bilateral or international. And it’s really important that the facts of the violation of human rights are not viewed as internal problems of separate countries anymore. These facts should be a matter of bilateral or multilateral agreements and discussion. Why am I speaking about this now? I understand that it is really very important to discuss the roots of democracy and problems of democracy, but it’s very important to look around and just watch what kind of examples we are having now. I saw a very interesting booklet here: Studies without Borders. The booklet concerns Chechen students who need our help. I don’t know who printed this booklet, but I can assure you that other nationalities have similar problems. I believe that for the process of democratization it is of utmost importance to pay special attention to the problem of human rights and facts of xenophobia. The time has come when Georgian students and Georgian children need help. I apologize for stressing one very specific issue, which concerns my country and my citizens, but I think it’s our obligation to discuss such issues when we speak about democracy here in central Europe, in Prague, where in 1968 people rose in rebellion to defend their rights and where the Velvet Revolution took place. We should not close our eyes to the serious examples of xenophobia that we have today, in the 21st century, in the centre of Europe, namely in Russia. Is that a demand of democracy that we should close our eyes to the violation of international rules and democratic obligations in the case of big and influential countries, or we will respond in spite of the fact that this country is one of the biggest exporters of energy resources?

Democracy means equality. Small countries and big countries should be equal in international relations. Only in this case can we consider that democracy is working and is in action. I think that Europe should respond principally to the issues of xenophobia which we are facing in Russia now, not to say anything about the blockade of all kinds of transportation, and postal communication, cases of deportation of people whose only fault is their Georgian origin. The last measure of the Russian government concerning Georgia was the order given to all schools over the Russian Federation territory to make up lists of Georgian schoolchildren for the purpose of their further dismissal. Should the international community react? Yes, of course. If we want to have a predictable and democratic society which geographically is bordering the European community, we should react. If we want to help new democracies in strengthening democracy, in making the democratization process irreversible, we should react. People in Georgia, in 2003, despite many difficulties which we had to live through during ten years of independence, raised their voice when it became obvious that democratic values were in danger and needed protection, because people really believe that democracy is the answer. Democracy provides us with success and democracy will create with every nation a success story. But new democracies and these people need very serious support from the society of the international community.

And we should really create equal possibility for everybody and for every country. We should not be happy only because we have good constitutions, good agreements, good international organizations, but we also need all these instruments in action. And we should react. We should defend democracy and make it work. Moreover, we should do everything to make this process irreversible everywhere in the whole world. In this case, I am more than sure that we’ll be able to avoid double standards and such threats as terrorism and ethnic conflicts which are incompatible with the values of democracy in the 21st century. I believe that we can make our world a better place to live. This is my position, and I am more than sure that most people in my country feel the same about the role and significance of democracy. Let me reiterate once again: Yes, democracy is an answer, but democracy needs constant support and development.

Ghassan Salamé
The last, but certainly not the least, of our speakers on this panel is Mrs. Irina Khakamada, who comes from Russia, who’s a politician in the opposition. Madam Khakamada, the floor is yours.

Irina Khakamada
Thank you very much. I do believe in democracy in the whole world. And I do believe that democracy is a great answer for all calls and threats and challenges in the modern world. And I believe in democracy more and more while it’s getting worse and worse with democracy in Russia. I understand it very well, because I see inside my country that any kind of authoritarian regime--for example, like now in Russia a so-called “sovereign” democracy, a democracy with Russian sovereignty as a priority. This power is not very efficient because we have a huge amount of money from oil and gas, but we didn’t solve the problem of the property of 70% of our population, we didn’t solve the problem of inter-religious conflict and international problems inside Russia. And, as it pointed out in the remarks of my colleague from Georgia, we stimulate many new conflicts between Russia and post-Soviet young democratic countries. That’s why I really believe that the main values of democracy are based on three points: the autonomy of the individual, the property of the individual, and the social treaty between individuals. It is very historical; this has forever been a very effective tool for the process of solving many very actual problems in the modern world--for example, terrorism, environment, poverty in the third world and so on.

But I’m very disappointed, not about democracy, but about democrats, about politicians, not only inside my country, but on the whole -- in European countries, in the United States, in the developed countries across the world -- because if you want to prove that democracy could be the answer on the global level, then we have to have the response. If only democrats could have answers for all problems. For a very long time we tried to be very effective against poverty in the third world, but nothing happened. The result is the same, and now, during this conference; we listen to the same speeches about poverty, about developed countries, and don’t think about the other world, about the environment you know very well. We did not solve the problem of proliferation of nuclear weapons. This experience with North Korea -- we did not stop it, but we have been talking about it for a very long time, and we have been talking about it in the United Nations, and the Security Council, and in the summits of the European Union, in many, many summits and so many conferences concerning the proliferation of nuclear weapons, but nothing! And now we have new problems with Iran, with Iraq, and so on. You declared, for example, you politicians in the United States, about the democratic empire of the United States as a very challenge for the whole world, and what do we see? We see the war in Iraq. The main challenge is to build democracy in Iraq, and as a result there is more terrorism, more victims and so on.

But at the same time, in 1991, the big romantic, Mr. Yeltsin, after the biggest romantic in Russian politics, Mr. Gorbachev, decided to convert the very conservative communist power and totalitarian system into a democracy; and what? During the very long time that all European countries, as well as the United States, had as a priority a stable Russia without any menace to us; at that time, we had only one description from the International Monetary Fund for how to collect our taxes. And so a very young democratic government with Chubais, Nemcov and other people collected taxes. And just after that we had default in 1998. And now we’re so surprised that Russia has become an energetic power. Russia is quite dangerous for European countries and for the whole world. Russia is getting more and more dangerous as a totalitarian system, but what about the past? In Iraq we decided to build democracy. It was absolutely the wrong position. But in Russia, we had a chance, because Russia is a big power in any case, and without Russia you couldn’t build anything in a European context, Russia has a European mentality. It does not have a Chinese mentality, it does not have a Japanese mentality. We are absolutely Europeans, but it is difficult to make the transition between a totalitarian system and a democratic country. But it is too late. Now we have a huge amount of the world’s money inside the country, and we have this aggression from Russia, and what do we have to do in the future? That’s why it is not a question of the political system of democracy as an answer for challenges in the 21st century. But this position is very popular in Russia. All young politicians, including opposition--for example, Motherland, the Kremlin Nationalist Party--they say the priority of international security is higher than democracy and human rights because it is a very comfortable ideology. They say every day: Look please, at the European Union, they cannot pass their constitution. They have so many ethnic conflicts inside their countries, for example in France. They start with their NATO and European Atlantic security organizations. They started the war in Iraq. They close their eyes to the democratic development in Russia. And now they cannot do anything against the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Democracy does not work, but I think that is not the issue. We need to have a very pragmatic dialogue between politicians of all countries instead of a political dialogue. The G8 summit in Moscow did not look like a political summit because they did not speak about democracy in Russia, about human rights in Russia, about mass media, about free mass media in Russia, or how Russia could become a predictable democratic country. We could hope, then, that Russia will be an energetic power, as well as a partner. All the countries spoke about an energetic dialogue, about a pragmatic purpose. It was like a sales transaction between Russia and France, Russia and Great Britain, Russia and Germany. That’s why small democratic countries like Georgia and others could not get support from you, because you think only about your future profits, about your pragmatic profits with Russia, you think only about yourself. You don’t think about the future and peaceful stability of the whole world, because Russia will be a very important player, whether as an authoritarian system or a democratic system. That’s why I speak more and more about politicians, including democratic politicians; they forget about simple people. They don’t want to be a little bit romantic. One very famous writer wrote many years ago: “If you are not pragmatic and certainly romantic, you do not stand a chance to be a great politician.” That’s my dream, my dream that all elites in European countries, in the world, in the democratic world, will remember that, and maybe they will think about the mentality of the people, about the interest of the common people, about romantic democratic values instead of pragmatic profits.

Ghassan Salamé
Thank you, Madam Khakamada, for your thoughts, for your belief in democracy and disappointment with democrats. Unless anybody around this table wants to interject a sentence or two, we will need to leave the floor for the next panel. Mr. Secretary General.

Boutros Boutros-Ghali
I just want to say a few words. First of all, there is an agreement that you have different kinds of democracy. You have limited democracy, you have mature democracy, you have young democracy, and so this is the first idea. The second idea is that the theme of this round table was democracy and globalization, and all the interventions or the majority of interventions were related to democracy as such, democracy at the national level. So here is the danger. The danger is that you are paying attention to democracy at the national level. You have hundreds of institutions that have been created to reinforce or to support democracy at the national level, and there is very little attention to democracy at the international level, democracy among states. And even in this discussion this afternoon, the main discussion was about democracy within the member states. And the problem you were supposed to discuss was the democracy among member states. This is the first one.

The second remark: a philosophy was mentioned about global parliaments. I believe that we have had certain global parliaments. Because when you have an international conference like Environment in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, you have two conferences; you have the conference of the non-governmental organizations and the conference of the member states. So this already exists. In the conference about social development in Copenhagen in 1995, we had a kind of correlation or a kind of contract between the conference at the non-governmental level and the conference at the governmental level. So again, this already exists.

Finally, I want to talk about democracy being a process. You have used the word democracy for the global level, because if you had used the word bilateralism, it would not have the same impact. You are trying to obtain the support of international public opinion. So the only word which will have an impact on international public opinion is the democratization of globalisation--if you would say that you want multilateralism in the international community, or multilateralism of globalization, it would not have the same impact. So, again, please, democracy is not an object as such, democracy is just a process, a process, which can be used in different ways and at different levels, and there is no relation between democracy at the international level, at the national level, and at the global level.Thank you.

Ghassan Salamé
Thank you, Mr. Secretary General. Thirty seconds for Madam Speaker and thirty seconds for Vartan, and we’ll have to stop.

Nino Burdjanadze
Mr. Speaker, you are absolutely right. We need democracy in international relations. However, I think we should pay serious attention to the issues of internal democracy as well, because new democracies are quite fragile and limited. We can’t establish democracy worldwide without developing democratic values in separate states. Thus, European countries, the United States, and the international organizations have really very serious obligations in protecting these new democracies. I would like to thank Madam Khakamada for her speech; it is really fundamental to react to the threats that new democracies are facing, as these threats can turn into problems for the whole international community. When small Georgia is punished only because it wants to become a member of NATO, only because it wants to become really independent and build democracy, it is a threat not only for Georgia, but first of all a threat for Europe. It is a threat for the whole international community. Why did I mention these booklets about Chechen students? Yesterday these were Chechens, today these are Georgians, tomorrow these maybe be Baltics, and the day after tomorrow, Czechs or any other European nationality. So that is why it is so important to respond to any threat to democracy, however small. And maybe we as women in politics are very idealistic, Madam Khakamada, but I really want to believe that politicians will be pragmatic, realistic, really fair, and will defend democracy and democratic values in every, even small,l country. Thank you.

Vartan Gregorian
Yes, I’d like to agree with the Secretary General. He is right. We did not discuss international relations, which was the important element that we were supposed to emphasize about democracy. In my opinion, international order can be used in two ways: one is to bar outside influence. Nations can say, we are a sovereign state, don’t interfere in our internal activities because international law forbids you to meddle in our affairs. The other way is that international order can be used to uplift nations, to act as a mirror of democratic values and principles that may inspire the people of various countries who are deprived of democracy. Hence, international order is a two-edged sword; it can be used to stabilize or destabilize.

Speaking of international law and international relations, today there is also widespread cynicism regarding the idea that international law does not apply to major, powerful countries—only to smaller, weaker ones. Powerful countries advocate international law as long as their interests are not at stake. Smaller nations, on the other hand, have no choice but to be subject to international law. Therefore, it appears that we are often advocating democracy at the expense of smaller nations, meaning they should do what we tell them to do, not what we do. We should make every effort not to legitimize these kinds of values or behaviour.

Ghassan Salamé
Thank you, Vartan. I think we have had a very stimulating and a very informative panel, and I would like you all to join me in thanking the keynote speaker and the various panellists. Thank you very much.