Elections and voting alone do not democracy make

Mark Malloch Brown, Contributor/Budapest

Watching the recent replays of Ronald Reagan in Berlin telling Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall" reminded us not only of how far the world has come in recent years, but also how yesterday's certainties have become today's questions.

Reagan and others once believed that the end of the cold war and the arrival of democracy was a panacea that, combined with free markets, would swiftly bring peace and prosperity to countries that embraced it.

Today we know that is not enough. Building real democracy is a long, hard slog that requires not just strong, transparent civil institutions stretching well beyond elections, but also accountable governments successfully addressing the basic needs of all citizens, especially the poor.

The last two decades have seen an historic shift in the global spread of democracy: 81 countries -- 23 in Europe, 29 in sub- Saharan Africa, 14 in Latin America, 10 in Asia and even 5 in the Arab states -- took steps toward democratization, often by overthrowing an authoritarian one-party regime and introducing multi-party elections.

Today, more than 140 countries, more than ever, hold regular multi-party elections. But democracy's triumph makes it the incumbent; not the anti-establishment vision for change, but the clumsy status quo that often cannot deliver health care, schools or jobs, let alone make the trains run on time.

The result is that increasingly, even in established democracies, citizens are less trustful of government, its institutions and its leaders, as demonstrated by the low turnout in the elections for the European Parliament last month. In countries with weaker democratic traditions, the risks are even more serious.

In Latin America, where the conduct of elections is now broadly free and fair, the distribution of wealth remains the most inequitable in the world. Since democracy returned, no fewer than 12 elected presidents have been unable to finish their constitutional terms, in large part because of their failures to do much better than the generals they replaced in meeting basic needs. In Africa, voting has not yet been followed by a sustained reduction of poverty.

As democracy struggles to deliver, the great exception, China, further complicates matters. Home to a disenfranchised one-fifth of humanity, it is generating extraordinary growth and has lifted some 400 million people out of poverty in the last 20 years.

I was in Shanghai when the Indian election results came in a few weeks ago, and for a moment I doubted the famous dictum of Amartya Sen, the Nobel economic laureate and UNDP human development adviser, that no substantial famine had ever occurred in a democratic country because a government "which has to answer unfriendly questions in Parliament, to face condemnation from the public media, to go to the polls on a regular basis, simply cannot afford not to take prompt action to avert a threatening famine."

In China as late as the 1960s, millions of people died of hunger because an unaccountable government would not listen or did not care, and could cover up the news. Yet the new leadership I met in China was arguably more focused on issues of rural poverty and welfare than their Indian counterparts had been.

Of course China's poverty-consciousness has its limits, as evidenced by a grim human rights record. Attacking poverty and political opponents can be two sides of the same coin: Strategies to preserve a system that does not have the self-adjusting choices integral to democracy. Similarly, UNDP's Arab Human Development Reports have pointed to the unhealthy nexus of the absence of democracy, the exclusion of women and an ossified knowledge culture as reinforcing economic failure and cultural and political conflict.

So how do we fight to preserve and deepen the freedoms won since the fall of the Berlin Wall?

First, we have to escape the initial exuberance of democratic revolutions. Democracy is a long project; it takes time to build democratic systems such as courts, an independent media, civil society, an impartial civil service, and, above all, a democratic culture.

But we must not go to the opposite extreme, believing that democracy needs to take millennia to evolve. Democracy takes time, certainly years, probably decades, but not centuries.

Second, democracy has to be more than simple majority rule. Almost a billion people in the world consider themselves minorities in their own countries.

And third, democracy must be about more than just the ballot box. Free media, fair courts and a vibrant civil society are all critical to building an equitable and dynamic political economy that can provide the security, jobs, housing and services people need.

We cannot proceed on the simple conviction that we only have to help brave leaders introduce the ballot box and choice, rights and prosperity will surely follow.

The democratic path has more twists and false turns than we foresaw. We must recognize that poverty and inequality are as much a threat to democracy as intolerance and lack of freedom. The benefits of democracy cannot be taken for granted; they have to be worked for. And the work is never done.

The writer is administrator of the United Nations Development Program. This article is adapted from a commencement speech to the Central European University in Budapest.