Washington -- Well-governed
democracies must be able “to deliver for their people”
or they will not be able to sustain momentum for democratic
development, says Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
At an April 16 meeting at the State Department
with members of the Advisory Committee on Democracy Promotion,
she emphasized the link between democracy and economic development.
“If you're really only talking about
job growth, trade, investment, you're not making the connection
to the next level of development,” she said. That
“micro level of development,” Rice explained,
“is making sure that there's an educated population,
making sure that there's a healthy population, making certain
that the benefits of democracy are translating downward
into the population so that when the next term for accountability
comes, which is the next election, those young democracies
are able to point to something that they have delivered.”
Rice convened the first meeting of the Advisory
Committee on Democracy Promotion on November 6, 2006, with
the goal of gleaning insights and advice from a team of
experts inside and outside the State Department to promote
democracy and formulate foreign policy and foreign assistance.
She praised the committee for its work and expressed the
hope of adopting some of the ideas that have been generated.
In addition to Rice, U.S. government officials
serving on the committee include Director of U.S. Foreign
Assistance Randall L. Tobias, Under Secretary of State for
Democracy and Global Affairs Paula J. Dobriansky (the committee’s
executive director) and Assistant Secretary of State for
the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Barry F.
Lowenkron.
The committee also includes former U.S.
government officials and representatives of corporations,
nongovernmental organizations, public-policy organizations
and academic institutions.
Anne-Marie Slaughter, dean of Princeton
University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International
Affairs, chairs the committee.
New members of the committee include Joshua
Muravchik, currently a scholar at the American Enterprise
Institute for Public Policy Research, and Brian Atwood,
formerly the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International
Development.
Atwood also emphasized the links between
economic development and democracy. “You really can’t
achieve full development unless you have democratic governance,”
he told the committee.
He added that he has come to believe that
“poverty is a cancer that affects democracy as well
as development, and that it breaks down social cohesion.
And indeed, I would even go so far as to say that when that
social cohesion is broken down, it contributes to violence,
and it therefore is very, very dangerous.”
Atwood urged the U.S. government to recognize
that poverty is a real threat to national security and should
be addressed more aggressively.
Carl Gershman, of the National Endowment
for Democracy, blamed corruption as a “fundamental
problem,” especially among the newer democracies.
Corruption, he said, “tends to undermine the credibility
of democracy today.”
Rice concluded the meeting with expressions
of hope that the upcoming round of the World Trade Organization
negotiations will be successful. “Nothing could be
better for poverty reduction than a successful Doha round,”
she said.
“It’s extremely important to
recognize that our most important poverty reduction tool
is to open up markets for the good of those countries that
are trying to rise out of poverty,” she said. “[A]ll
of the foreign assistance that we give is going to be augmented
and amplified many times over by strong free trading polices
as well.”
Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) funds,
Rice said, have a very strong emphasis on fighting corruption
and promoting good governance. (See related
article.)
The MCC is a U.S. government corporation
that was established in January 2004 to reduce global poverty
through the promotion of sustainable economic growth. But
before a country can become eligible to receive this assistance,
MCC must review the country’s performance on 16 independent
and transparent policy indicators.
More than 22 million people in 11 partner
countries are benefiting from MCC-funded projects. But some
unexpected problems have now become apparent, Rice said,
citing “the degree to which old-fashioned issues like
roads are absolutely critical to economic development.”
One “screaming” example, Rice
said, is Afghanistan. There, she explained, roads are needed
desperately to give farmers access to markets in order to
sell legitimate products -- such as pomegranates, which
spoil quickly -- instead of poppy, which does not spoil
and is used in narcotics production.
Additional
information on the MCC is available on the corporation’s
Web site.
For more information on U.S. policy, see
Democracy
Dialogues.
Jane Morse
USINFO Staff Writer
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