Gains and reversals in building democracy

Funding for ‘democracy assistance’ by international donors has risen to an all time high, with recent estimates that some $10 billion are now going into democracy building projects.

Yet it is highly contested what kind of democracy is being built, and what the strategies are for doing so. On the one hand, much democracy assistance focuses on building effective states, and therefore on the institutions necessary for representative democracy - fair elections, strong parliaments, good governance. On the other, work focuses on how to build more substantive or ‘deeper’ forms of democracy, and the role in which citizens can play in building democratic states, not only the other way around.

The work of the DRC’s Deepening Democracy group enters this debate arguing that the democracy project – whether in its representative or ‘deeper’ form – is not only a matter of getting the rules and institutions right, but it is also about action, social mobilisation, regimes of authority andcitizenship. It takes a citizen-centred approach to building democracy, arguing that institutional improvement can only happen effectively in dialogue with citizens and civil society.

DRC researchers also challenge assumptions that greater mobilisation and empowerment of civil society, coupled with ‘participatory governance spaces’ provided from above will automatically lead to greater social inclusion or development. In fact, as previous work by the group has shown, simply opening spaces for engagement may in fact serve to reinforce the status quo. They also argue that there is no clear trajectory towards democracy - there are both democratic reversals and gains which changes citizenship and authority regimes.

Researchers are exploring under what conditions does mobilisation help deepen democracy and foster development? They are asking how and when do people become active agents? Who mobilises and forms alliances?

The Deepening Democracy Working Group is made up of seven participating country teams. These include: Nigeria , Brazil , India , Bangladesh , South Africa , Angola and Kenya . There are fourteen individual projects and four cross-cutting comparative projects comparing case studies from Brazil and India , Bangladesh and Kenya , Nigeria and Kenya , and a cluster of case studies from all the African partners.

 The work of the group points to a number of examples where typically marginalised groups have mobilised to strengthen and maintain democratic spaces, as well as to ensure that democratic governments help deliver developmental gains. In Nigeria , for instance, the ‘2007 Movement’ successfully challenged the assumption of a third term by the then President. In turn, this coalition of citizens and parliamentarians played an important role in monitoring the national elections, and in challenging the widespread corruption which accompanied them.

In Brazil, where a number of participatory institutions are already in place, a series of case studies have focused on how marginalised groups - garbage collectors in Rio Grande do Sul, quilombolas (traditional communities of Afro-Brazilian descendents) in Vale do Ribeira, domestic workers in Bahia and Indigenous people in Acre - mobilise for new regional policies as well as public services.

It emerges here that the trajectories of mobilisation and the styles of activism make a great difference to whether and how citizen engagement contributes to democratic and developmental gains. The research points to the need for much more nuanced understanding that goes beyond the ‘state-civil society’ dichotomy that has characterised much of the thinking in this field.

It also points to the need to understand what is meant by democratic gains, and their relationship to developmental gains, in a much more contextual and historical way. In this view, we cannot see democracy building as a process of transition from authoritarianism to stable democracies, as has often been the case. Rather, it is a process of gains and reversals, of opening and closing of spaces, which can lead to a wide diversity of democratic and developmental outcomes through different paths and at different moments.