1 Beyond free and fair elections The past three decades have seen the global expansion of democracy, which has led to

Box 8.1 Beyond free and fair elections The past three decades have seen the global expansion of democracy, which has led to

an extraordinary focus on the institution of elections. In countries around the world, elections have served to help resolve long-standing conflicts and to initiate or consolidate transitions to democracy. For states recovering from recent conflict, elections have often been central to peace agreements. Fair elections have become an increasingly critical requirement if governments hope to have legitimacy in the eyes of the international community and their own citizens. Electoral legitimacy and outcomes, in turn, greatly affect the prospects for effective governance.

DEMOCRACY AND POLITICAL PARTICIPATION

International declarations, agreements and norms unambiguously establish demo- cratic elections as the basis of legitimate government. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides that the ‘will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of govern- ment’ as ‘expressed in periodic and genuine elections’. Incorporating this principle into a binding international treaty, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), provides that ‘Every citizen shall have the right and the opportunity … to vote and to be elected at genuine periodic elections’. Other international agreements and declara- tions, including declarations by regional organizations in Africa, Europe and the Americas, recognize the right to participate in government through elected representatives.

Elections remain central to broader strategies for promoting democracy. First, compet- itive elections can catalyse profound political change in a society. Elections in societies in transition or crisis can be seminal events that, if successful, not only confer legitimacy on governments but can also profoundly influence institutions, power arrangements and citi- zens’ expectations. Second, elections provide significant new opportunities for citizen involvement in public affairs.They are an opportunity to engage civic organizations and citi- zens in democratic politics through voter education, election monitoring, policy research and advocacy. They can provide an avenue for the participation of women, minorities and disadvantaged groups, who traditionally have had less access to politics and governance. Finally, competitive elections offer a means of establishing accountability, channelling polit- ical competition and determining leadership succession.

Genuine democracy, of course, requires substantially more than democratic elections. Even countries that hold reasonably competitive elections may lack constitutional limits on governmental power, deprive citizens of basic rights, or lack tolerance of religious or ethnic minorities. Indeed, in some circumstances, elections can sharpen ethnic differences or exacerbate communal tensions. To build genuine democracy, societies must foster a democratic culture and the rule of law in addition to holding democratic elections. But elections are essential to democracy and to legitimate government.

Extract from Eric Bjornlund ‘Free and Fair Elections’, published on the website of Democracy International at www.democracyinternational.com, and based on his book Beyond Free and Fair Elections: Monitoring Elections and Building Democracy (John Hopkins University Press, 2004).

In development circles, the term ‘democratic governance’ is widely used. The Human Development Report (UNDP, 2002) on ‘Deepening Democracy in a Fragmented World’, defines democratic governance as a ‘set of principles and core values that allow poor people to gain power through participation while protecting them from arbitrary, unaccountable actions in their lives by governments, multinational corporations and other forces’ (2002, pvi). The Report highlights some key institutions of democratic governance, which are reminiscent of Dahl’s classification. These include (UNDP, 2002, p4): a system of representation with well-functioning political parties and interest associations; an electoral system that guarantees free and fair elections, as well as universal suffrage; a system of checks and balances based on the separation of powers, with independent judicial and legislative branches; a vibrant civil society, able to monitor government and private business – and provide

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alternative forms of political participation; a free, independent media; and effective civilian control over the military and other security forces.

Democratic governance contains at its core not only a well-functioning representative democracy but also participatory mechanisms that enable people to voice their concerns outside normal electoral processes, such as

direct protests against a government’s policies. 1 The case of the Mabira forest in Chapter 1 is a good example of political participation beyond elections – the section below relates further examples.

The language of ‘participation’ to refer to the ability of people to be agents of their own lives entered mainstream development discourse in the 1970s through ‘Rapid Rural Appraisal’, a method aimed at enabling outsiders to design agricultural projects that responded to local contexts. Rapid Rural Appraisal became ‘Participatory Rural Appraisal’ in the 1980s, a methodology that enables local people to decide for themselves about what should be done and changed in their lives (Chambers 1998).

This focus on ‘participation’ has come under critical scrutiny in the development literature. In Participation: The New Tyranny, Cooke and Kothari (2001) argue that participatory development inherently implies the danger of tyranny and ‘unjustified exercise of power’. Participation, including political activism, can sometimes reinforce injustices if sufficient attention is not paid to the complexities of power – a point we shall return to in greater detail below. Cooke and Kothari warn against a blanket endorsement of participatory mechanisms of decision-making:

[The fundamental problems of participation] that are most apparent to us are the naïveté of assumptions about the authen- ticity of motivations and behaviour in participatory processes; how the language of empowerment masks a real concern for managerialist effectiveness; the quasi-religious associations of participatory rhetoric and practice; and how an emphasis on the micro-level of intervention can obscure, and indeed sustain, broader macro-level inequalities and injustice. (Cooke and Kothari, 2001, pp13–14)

In Participation: From Tyranny to Transformation? Hickey and Mohan (2004) address the critique that participation can often ignore power relationships. They argue that participation discourses have to be embedded into coherent theories of development and brought beyond the individual and local level to the institutional and structural level. Participatory development is not only about implementing local projects, but is also about people ruling themselves through representation. In other words, political participation is the necessary companion to representative democracy. And this includes addressing the biases of power imbalances.

Before addressing the disruptive effects of power imbalances in participatory and democratic mechanisms, we must address another question:

DEMOCRACY AND POLITICAL PARTICIPATION

why should people be agents of their own development? Why should they be able to rule themselves, either directly through participation or indirectly through representation?