Democracy building in our region requires an effective political dimension, not just armed intervention.

Date:  26 March 2007

Michael Morgan, Director, International Projects ALP

Despite the ongoing need for Australian troops to be available to quell regional unrest, what is currently lacking in the debate about building democracy is recognition of the need for an effective political dimension.

The Australian Political Parties for Democracy Program (APPDP) has given Labor an unprecedented chance to do this.

Despite close linkages between democracy building and armed intervention in Western policy thinking, the long term prospects for building democracy based solely on military or police interventions are limited.

Police and troops are crucial to the maintenance of stability in Timor Leste as it prepares for forthcoming legislative and presidential elections, but what role can they play in developing sustainable democracy in the still-new nation state?

Identifying the building blocks of successful democratic states has concerned policy planners globally for decades, but the development of effective means of seeding or nurturing democracy abroad remains elusive. The APPDP provides support for the major parties to undertake international activities and provide technical assistance to political parties in the region.

It has given Labor a unique opportunity to rebuild links in the region while simultaneously strengthening regional political parties – fundamental building blocks of democratic states.

Globally, political parties and their allied foundations have driven the democracy building agenda since the 1970s. After the fall of Franco in Spain in the 1970s, the German stiftungen – political party foundations – were among the first to provide training and support to resurgent democratic political parties there.

The National Democratic Institute (NDI) for International Affairs and the International Republican Institute (IRI) from the United States have similarly run democracy building programs around the world since the 1980s.

Australia has lagged significantly behind Europe and the United States in this regard. It is a sensible initiative to make the major parties the primary deliverers of technical assistance to political parties in the region.

Long term

Australia’s political parties are unique repositories of skills and experience. Any other Australian organisation that seeks to train political party officials must rely exclusively on officials from one of the parties for specialist knowledge about campaigning, party discipline and policy-development, for example. You cannot find this kind of knowledge anywhere else.

The political geography of the region requires us to dispense with old assumptions about political party assistance. In our work building democracy in the region, we should not just back the parties we assume to be our ideological counterparts or try to recruit political parties to our international associations. The fact is, there are few prominent political parties in Asia and the Pacific with ideologies that overlap clearly with Labor or Liberal.

Our agenda for building democracy takes a longer-term view. The major challenges faced by political parties in Asia and the Pacific involve improving governance and strengthening political parties as the institutions through which popular opinion is reflected in government decision-making.

In turn, democracy building in our region will best be served by equipping regional political parties to deal with the rigours of competitive elections. This year alone Philippines, Timor Leste and Papua New Guinea will go the polls. Gearing political parties to campaign for office is central to this process. The campaign necessarily draws everyday people into the process of constituting government.

Labor believes that, given a fair go, people can better themselves and the world around them. In our commitments to the APPD scheme, we promote fairness and balance in political party organisation. Empowering our regional counterparts – rather than simple military intervention - is at the very heart of the progressive approach to building democracy.

Labor is leading this process in Australia. Already we have initiated programs in Indonesia, Philippines, Papua New Guinea and Timor Leste.

Strengthening democratic institutions in Asia and the Pacific requires political solutions with a strong focus on providing stakeholders with the tools to govern effectively, not just Australian intervention. Now, as ever, building democracy is about finding an effective political dimension.

The above article was published in the ALP's online journal, Labor eHerald.