Report 2nd EADI Summer School
Constructing Democracy? Challenges for the European Development Agenda
Each year since 2003, one of EADI's member institutes has organised an International EADI Summer School. The first Summer School, in 2003, was hosted and organised by the IUED in Geneva. The second Summer School took place between 29 August and 8 September 2004 at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. The theme "Constructing Democracy? Challenges for the European Development Agenda" was well chosen and attracted PhD and MA students, as well as professionals from Switzerland, the Netherlands, Austria, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Argentina, Cameroon and Nigeria.
The Summer School was organised by Irna van der Molen, with support from Jaap de Wilde (University of Twente) and valuable suggestions from several others (Joy Clancy, University of Twente; Michel Carton, IUED Geneva; Isa Baud, University of Amsterdam; and the EADI Secretariat). The Summer School was externally supported by the Dutch National Commission for International Co-operation and Sustainable Development (NCDO), the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NOW) and EADI. However, the success of this year's Summer School would not have been possible without the interesting contributions of a wide variety of speakers and the lively discussions among the participants.
Democratisation and the role of the EU were related to political development both within the EU and on local level, where fragmentation of society, economic and political interests, polarisation and rising nationalism sometimes has resulted in fierce conflicts. The thematic focus during the Summer School started with an overview of different models of democracy, and changes in thinking about democracy, and the translation of this into European and bilateral policy. During the first week, attention gradually shifted towards democratisation processes in Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Balkans. At the end of the Summer School, attention was drawn to democratisation processes in conflict and post-conflict areas, such as Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan.
EADI President Louk de la Rive Box opened the Summer School by asking which notions of democracy we follow and why, and what had happened to good governance, referring to the case of Zimbabwe, which showed a breakdown of communication between the respective government and the EU.
Jos van Gennip, Senator and President of SID Europe, gave an overview of recent European history in supporting political parties and pointed out that, although political parties were initially overlooked as actors in the debate, the mid-1990s had witnessed the introduction of the concept of good governance as well as a considerable increase in organisations and agencies promoting democracy. He continued by outlining a number of dilemmas and problems as experienced by donors and beneficiaries, and listed a number of solutions to these problems.
Dr Ron Holzhäcker from the Department of Political Science at Twente University gave a basic overview of models of democracy, concentrating on the theory of democracy and some of its main contributors, like Robert Dahl, Joseph Schumpeter and Jürgen Habermas. He concluded by identifying two main questions to be asked in future discussions: (a) How can democratic institutions be created above the nation-state? (e.g. pollution in rivers in Europe; i.e. problems which affect not just one society; or the African Union's new parliament which has weaker links to citizens); and (b) How do these ideas apply to developing countries?
In the following session Prof. Dr Jaap de Wilde, Professor in the same Department, presented the main ideas of his paper Flagging Democracy1, denouncing the lack of democratic structures in international organisations and supranational bodies. His presentation was oriented to two questions: (1) Is democracy always effective? (2) What are we talking about when we talk about democratisation processes? During the presentation he referred to preconditions for democracy, globalisation processes and to democracy as ideology or myth and to indicators of democracy.
Dr Sven Grimm from the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) in London informed listeners about the European Democratisation Agenda towards Africa, focusing on the relation between the EU and the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) states.
Jan Tuit, from the Institute for Multiparty Democracy, talked about his experience of Dutch democratisation assistance in Mozambique, Ghana, Mali and Indonesia, which led him to conclude that democracy assistance is far more than political party assistance.
Zoran Nikolic, leader of the 1997-1998 student movement in Serbia, opened up the more practical part of the Summer School on Thursday morning. He told participants about the evolution and the conflict's socio-economic, historical and ethnic dimension on the Balkans. Details about Nikolic's personal involvement and commitment to the struggle against the Serb authorities gave the audience a thorough insight into the resistance movement in Serbia.
Amin Kamete from the Nordic Africa Institute, Sweden outlined the realities of democratisation processes in Africa and provided an in-depth insight into the political situation in Zimbabwe.
Continuing with Africa, Jeroen Cuvelier from the Institute for Peace Information Services in Antwerp presented a brief overview of the main theories of civil wars in sub-Saharan Africa, which he classified as the "ancient hatred argument", the "new barbarism argument", the "bad government argument" and the "greed argument", before concentrating on the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Dr Gordon Crawford from the Institute for Politics and International Studies, University of Leeds elaborated on the relation and interlinkage between democratisation and decentralisation in Ghana, especially from the point of view of poverty reduction.
Prof. Isa Baud from the Institute for Global Issues and Development Studies, University of Amsterdam concentrated on new ways of managing cities, focusing on aspects like decentralisation, privatisation and democratisation.
Dr Marcus Klein, research fellow at the Centre for Latin American Research and Documentation (CEDLA), gave an introductory lecture on democratisation processes in general in Latin America from the 1970s up to now, emphasising the factors that led to an almost complete democratisation of the continent (except for Cuba) in contrast to the seventies, when only Columbia, Costa Rica and Venezuela could be considered as democratic.
Hugo Estrella, Secretary of Justice of Cordoba state at the Centre for Crime Victims' Support, presented the democratic evolution in Argentina, which still lacks a participatory approach.
Moving to post-conflict societies in Iraq and Afghanistan, Dick Leurdijk, policy advisor at the Netherlands Institute of International Relations Clingendael, and Mient-Jan Faber, Professor at the Free University in Amsterdam and former General Secretary of the Interchurch Peace Council IKV, shared their tremendous experience in the field. Leurdijk focused on the role the United Nations plays in the democratic transition in post-conflict societies, specifically on the Security Council and its resolutions; Faber concentrated on citizen involvement in war situations, based on examples from the Balkans, Israel/Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq. A discussion moderated by Witho Oost, a radio journalist from the Netherlands Interchurch Radio IKON, concluded the day.
The speaker of the last session, Dr Göran Sluiter, discussed the role of international law and the international criminal tribunals, such as the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the International Criminal Court. The Summer School was rounded off by a visit to the ICTY, where students attended court sessions in the trials against Milosevic, Dragan Nikolic and Strugar. Throughout the entire Summer School, participants were busy working on a case study on Zimbabwe, which turned into a lively negotiation round on the last day. A final statement drawn up by the experts in this role play and other documents can be visited on the EADI website.
Report written by Franziska Sigrist and Irna van der Molen
1 De Wilde, Jaap 2004: Flagging Democracy. In: International Journal for the Semiotics of Law. Revue Internationale de Sémiotique Juridique 17: 211-227.
