DATE=1/15/2000
TYPE=ON THE LINE
TITLE=ON THE LINE: FREEDOM AROUND THE WORLD
NUMBER=1-00813
EDITOR=OFFICE OF POLICY - 619-0037
CONTENT=
THEME: UP, HOLD UNDER AND FADE
Anncr: On the Line - a discussion of United
States policy and contemporary issues. This week,
"Freedom Around the World." Here is your host,
Robert Reilly.
Host: Hello and welcome to On the Line. Freedom
House, a New York-based international human rights
monitor, recently issued its Annual Survey of
Freedom. Overall, eighty-five of the world's one
hundred ninety-two countries are rated as free.
According to the survey, there were modest gains
for democracy in 1999, in the face of several
setbacks. Democratic transitions took place in
such major countries as Indonesia and Nigeria. But
a military coup in Pakistan and Hugo Chavez's
consolidation of power in Venezuela are seen as
reversals. Meanwhile, questions remain on whether
and how the United States and other established
democracies can advance the cause of freedom in
the world.
Joining me today to discuss the state of freedom
around the world are three experts. Adrian
Karatnycky is president of Freedom House and
coordinator of its Annual Survey of Freedom.
Charles Horner is a senior fellow at the Hudson
Institute. And Ronald McNamara is deputy chief of
staff of the Helsinki Commission, which monitors
human rights in Europe and the former Soviet
Union.
Mr. Karatnycky, why don't you begin with some
broad strokes, fleshing out that very brief
introduction I gave on the state of freedom?
Karatnycky: We have seen over the last twenty
years a gradual expansion of democratic
governance. It started in the Iberian continent;
then it moved on to Latin America; then we saw
some ferment in Central and Eastern Europe, and
eventual collapse of those systems; some rise of
democratic practices in the Far East; and
eventually in many of the African countries, South
Africa and Nigeria most recently being the most
important examples. And really that trend has gone
on, and the momentum has been almost continuous
with a few spikes up and down over the last twenty
years. The expansion of democracy, that's sort of
the leading indicator. Lagging behind are things
like the rule of law, strengthening civil society
and so on, what we would call liberal democracy.
So elections create an opening or, at least, an
opportunity for rooting freedom within societies,
but they are not an absolute guarantee of it. And
here is what we are observing this year: a further
continuation where there has been more of an
expansion of elections and electoral processes,
and lagging behind is the heart of open, free and
democratic practices. But the broad trend is
auspicious, I would say. And the momentum is
continuing, which is really remarkable because we
have had a twenty-year run. It's not quite like
the American stock market, which has had a
spectacular run over the last few years, but it is
steady, slow, incremental.
Host: Is it irreversible?
Karatnycky: Irreversible in many countries and
certainly I would say in the majority of countries
that have turned democratic. But we make a
distinction between the electoral democracies -
there are about a hundred and twenty of those -
and there are only about eighty-five countries
that are free. Most of the free countries are
moving towards a certain kind of stability. And
here, I think, in the vast majority of cases,
democracy is not irreversible, but irreversible in
one sense: that there is not today any compelling
ideology that is on the rise, that is an
international, global ideology that would supplant
or undermine democracy, with the exception perhaps
of nationalism.
Host: Do you agree with that, Charles Horner?
Horner: It is an interesting thing that the run up
in the stock market in the United States and in
the other bourses of the world is not wholly
unrelated to the appearance of peace in the world
after 1989 and 1991, and not unrelated to this
great trend toward democracy which, after all,
promotes a certain kind of openness and a certain
kind of expansiveness of all kinds. It is also by
its very nature an optimistic and forward looking
outlook. So it is not surprising that it
encourages all over the world the marshaling of
resources, technical and economic and so on. I
think that Adrian does make a very important point
that right now there is not any particular
coalition of forces, as the Soviets used to say in
the bad old days, that feels that the advancement
of counter-democratic thought on an international
basis advances its own national power and its own
national interests. I think that maybe the trick
here is in the countries where there are still
open questions, as for example China, for publics
there and for governments especially to realize
that their own interests and the welfare, power
and standing of their own country, which they seek
for themselves for nationalist, patriotic reasons,
is in fact best achieved by becoming part of this
trend, and not attempting to resist it.
Host: Is that true in your experience, Ron
McNamara, in the parts of the world that you watch
closely?
McNamara: Certainly. We are focused primarily on
the European theater, as well as into Central
Asia. And this year marks the twenty-fifth
anniversary since the signing of the Helsinki
Final Act. And certainly that was a seminal
document in terms of the promotion of democracy,
human rights and the rule of law in Europe. When
that document was signed in 1975, obviously there
were significant human rights violations in many
of the countries that singed the Helsinki Final
Act. With the demise of the Soviet Union and the
breakup of the former Yugoslavia we have a
significant expansion in the number of countries.
So we have gone from thirty-five countries in 1975
to fifty-four countries today. The point that I
would like to pick up on that Adrian made is that,
while the holding of free and fair elections is an
important step, there are many other aspects to
the consolidation of democracy in terms of human
rights and the rule of law. And in that regard,
one of the issues that we have identified as
obviously not an ideological one, but nevertheless
a threat to the fundamental threat to the core
principles of the O-S-C-E [Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe], being
democracy human rights and the rule of law, is
corruption. And rampant corruption has really
caused tremendous difficulties and will in the
foreseeable future cause problems in Russia,
Ukraine and other countries that we are focused on
in the O-S-C-E.
Host: It is interesting that you should mention
that issue because I notice in your report, Mr.
Karatnycky, that you have "unbounded corruption"
as one of the five major setbacks for freedom. And
that raises a question to which the Founding
Fathers of the United States paid a great deal of
attention by saying that virtue is indispensable
to the exercise of freedom and only a virtuous
people can live freely.
Karatnycky: I think that is really an important
key ideal: that democracy is not just a certain
set of mechanisms, though it is that; it is also a
certain sort of civic consciousness, a civic
identity, a sense of participation among people.
And I think that in societies that have had a very
long period of arrested development of civic life
and of independent life, it takes a while for
people to begin to feel really comfortable in
their freedoms and even to begin to test some of
them.
Host: Let me ask a little more specifically,
because you say one of the big advances here is in
international democracy standards, and Mr.
McNamara just mentioned that as well as did
Charles Horner, that there is general
acknowledgment throughout the world as to what
these standards are, and there is no universal
competitor to these as a source of legitimacy. But
is there also an agreement on the nature of the
kind of virtues you need to live freely in a
democratic, constitutional order?
Horner: On the issue of corruption specifically,
when you think about it, after all people corrupt
the government and bribe officials precisely to
gain some influence over what they take to be its
arbitrary decision-making process. And so it is a
question fundamentally of confidence. People hide
from the state and try to have a certain relation
to the state based on the history of their
relation with the state over time. And if the
state has been arbitrary and confiscatory and
brutal and unpredictable and not amenable to the
influences of the people who live in the country,
corruption is sure to follow. One of the
advantages of democratization and the rule of law
in dealing precisely with this question is that it
gives people more confidence across the board,
more confidence in their own money, more
confidence in their government.
Karatnycky: One thing about democracy and
corruption is the rotation of elites. I think we
have seen in some of these countries where the old
ex-communist or ex-nomenklaturas have found some
ways to come into power through the electoral
process. In some cases their accession to power
has been accompanied by a high level of
corruption. But the threat of rotation of power
and the threat of new forces coming in, democratic
forces and alternative forces, generally acts over
time as a constraint on this. Typically, we, when
there are regime shifts and regime changes, see
that the new government, not for reasons of
political repression, begins an investigative
process to uproot these things. We saw in the
democratic transition in Indonesia, which is very
fragile, at least the beginning of an
investigation of the elites and some
accountability.
McNamara: And transparency is obviously a key
aspect of that. In the European context or the O-
S-C-E context, the point that I would make is
that, amazingly during the Cold War, the Helsinki
framework was able to secure the first on-site
inspection of military activities in the Soviet
Union at the time. That paved that way for the
type of verification regimes that were
instrumental in I-N-F [Intermediate Nuclear Forces
treaty]. So the irony is that, if during the Cold
War we could promote that kind of transparency in
an area that went to the heart of national
security, then one of the things we are hoping to
do in the O-S-C-E context is to promote
transparency and good governance in those
countries that are emerging from the former Soviet
Union and elsewhere in the O-S-SC-E region. The
main point that I would like to make is the multi-
dimensional nature of corruption. When we think of
corruption, generally we think of the economic
implications, and obviously there are significant
impacts in the economic dimension through
contracts that are lost to U.S. business. So there
is a direct U.S. interest in that sense. But in
terms of the stability of countries in the region
as well, there is the question of human rights. In
some countries, it is not uncommon for an
individual to be picked up by the authorities and
for a follow-up call to be made to family members,
indicating that, if a small satchel with a certain
amount of money were to arrive at the police
station, then their relative would not be subject
to torture, which is a major concern we have as
well.
Host: For instance, where?
McNamara: In Georgia, which is one of the
countries where this practice has been reported.
Host: Are you willing to forecast that, since
the democratic transitions are taking place in
some of the most corrupt countries - certainly
Nigeria, by Transparency International's
standards, was considered the most corrupt country
in the world -- Nigeria, Indonesia and Russia. You
all seem to be suggesting that the exercise of
democracy, the electoral process, has within
itself certain transformative powers that move
things in the right direction.
Horner: We are suggesting that Lord Acton
[nineteenth-century English historian] was right:
that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts
absolutely; that the greater the concentration of
unaccountable power, the more likely you are to
have systematic and not so systematic looting of
any people.
Karatnycky: Democratic practices create the
potentiality for rooting out high level and
massive levels of corruption, but they do not
guarantee it. We even see how electoral systems of
long-time, stable democracies, such as Japan,
Italy and now with some allegations even in
Germany, countries that have had in the post-War
era continuity of democratic practices and deep
rooted civic institutions and an independent
media, grapple with these kinds of problems. So
these problems are part of the human condition.
Democracy creates civilized and good mechanisms
for grappling with them. It does not root them
out.
McNamara: A point I would raise in that regard is
that corruption certainly complicates the
democratic processes. For example, who is
contributing to the leading candidates in various
countries? We have a number of elections coming up
in the O-S-C-E countries, including presidential
elections sometime soon in the Russian Federation.
And this whole question of where is the
transparency there and who is really controlling,
behind the scenes, the levers of power? So this is
a significant issue we are focused on.
Host: We want to make sure that we do not
neglect the major setbacks for freedom this past
year, and you make the interesting observation in
your study that the worst countries listed are
either Communist or Islamic fundamentalist.
Karatnycky: Or countries that are grappling with
the threat of fundamentalist Islam. So the
majority of the countries that have the lowest
ratings have either fundamentalist regimes, or the
ruling elite fears or is making compromises with
fundamentalism, or else they are ex-Communist
countries where the old elite has remained in
power, like Turkmenistan, which has a bizarre cult
of personality and a very dominant state leader
and extreme concentration of power and wealth in
narrow hands. And then we have Cuba, North Korea,
Vietnam, three countries where Marxist-Leninist
regimes still rule.
Host: And you also mentioned that half of the
people living in unfree countries are living in
China.
Karatnycky: Exactly. China is not among the
thirteen worst rated countries, but it is in the
bottom quintile, the bottom twenty percent. But
yes, the number of people living outside of
freedom is, in majority, accounted for by the
citizens of China.
Host: Charles Horner, what about the possibilty
of some kind of democratic evolution in those
instances? Is there a proper role for the United
States and other democarcies in encouraging that?
Horner: In China and in the Chinese world,
generally speaking, we have seen that certain
kinds of political arrangements, democratic ones,
especially on Taiwan, can evolve. And the people
who live there think that those institutions are
perfectly compatible with the great Chinese
political tradition in many essential respects,
though obviously there are adjustments to it that
are made. It seems to me that, if one takes a very
large and ecumenical view of the question of the
great cultures, whether it is an Islamic culture
or especially the Chinese one, and tries to seek
out ways of developing among people and in elites
and governments, a sense, first of all, that they
have a tradition which belongs on the democratic
side of the score, and that the debate about
Asian values and Western values is subsumed within
a larger discussion, that is certainly one thing.
The other thing, of course, there is the question
of the balance of power in the world. As societies
that stand for democracy, principally our own, but
others, have to exercise continually their
influence on behalf of democracy or else their own
somehow comes under greater pressure in the world.
And the United States has decided now to do that
in supporting a resolution in the U-N Commission
on Human Rights critical of Chinese human rights
performance, something the United States
government did not do last year [actually, 1998],
something that the European Union members have
been reluctant to do and which many of them might
now be more willing to do. But I think we have to
take the long view and to say that we are dealing
in the world. And all of these countries and
cultures have taken some time to get to this point
and are going to take some other time to progress
further. So I think the long-term trend is always
easier to project that than the next five years.
But Adrian began very interestingly with the idea
of optimism in the financial markets. And there is
optimism in the political markets as well in
almost all of these countries. There is not all
that much pessimism there, even about the future
of China.
Karatnycky: Islam is an important example. One of
the important facts that we have been tracking is
that this year marks the first time that a
majority of the Islamic world and people of the
Islamic faith live under democratically elected
governments. With the changes in Nigeria, the fact
that there are a hundred and seventy million
Muslims in India, Indonesia which is the largest -
- if you combine all this, and there are one point
two billion Muslims in the world, and about six
hundred and fifty million of them live in
countries where democratic, competitive elections
-- not completely flawless societies -- are now a
standard, which also means that the religious
elites are finding ways to accommodate themselves
to this.
Host: Let's let Mr. McNamara make a point.
McNamara: I think another component of the
democracy spectrum that we need to keep in mind is
the role of the media. And while a number of
countries in our region, one that comes to mind is
Ukraine, while they are fully capable of
conducting generally free and fair elections in
terms of the actual conduct of the balloting, we
do see instances of significant manipulation of
the state-owned media, which in many of these
countries is the main outlet for media that the
people have available to them. So this is also
another issue of big concern.
Karatnycky: Although I do have to say -- not that
I don't agree that there is media manipulation in
Ukraine or Russia or other of these transitional
countries -- the idea that the citizens of these
countries do not identify very concrete and well
known political figure with specific positions,
and after fifty years of Communist propaganda are
not suspicious of the state media even in a
democratic setting is something I would question.
I actually do believe that most people who go to
the ballot in Ukraine or Russia know exactly what
the options are. These are intelligent and
reasonably informed people. Perhaps in the rural
areas it may be a little more complicated. But
these are primarily urban societies, and I think
there is a relatively well informed electorate.
McNamara: But when there are violations that take
place. And when we remain silent or do not
indicate that there is a problem, and again these
problems vary from country to country, then a bit
of our credibility is on the line as well. So we
need to be willing to point out those problems
where they do exist and to provide, as
appropriate, help for those countries to overcome
the problems that they do have.
Host: A quick closing remark, please, from
Charles Horner. This is a striking remark from
Adrian Karatnycky about the fact that the majority
of Islamic peoples live now in democratic orders.
However, that is not true of the Middle East.
There are no democratic Arab regimes. Might that
develop in the future, if the examples of Islamic
democratic states, such as Indonesia and Nigeria,
succeed?
Horner: It seems to me that there are all sorts of
things necessary: if you have the right kind of
balance of power militarily; if you have the right
kind of outlook which says that the issue in the
world is between civilization and something else,
and among civilized peoples as such; and that all
the civilized peoples are on the same side, and
the others are on the other side, whatever that
happens to be. Islam in its various
manifestations, Arabic, Turkish, Persian, and
further east, there is a high political tradition
in all of these countries. There is a high
cultural, philosophical, literary and intellectual
tradition in all of these cultures. And the more
we ourselves are able to focus our attention and
also their own attention on their own history and
their own potential and what they really think
about politics once they learn about it, the
better off we are going to be over the longer
term. So on those grounds, I think we should be
optimistic, even about developments in the Arab
world over time.
I'm afraid that's all the time we have this week.
I would like to thank our guests -- Adrian
Karatnycky from Freedom House; Charles Horner from
the Hudson Institute; and Ronald McNamara from the
Helsinki Commission -- for joining me to discuss
the state of freedom around the world. This is
Robert Reilly for On the Line.
Anncr: You've been listening to "On the Line" - a
discussion of United States policies and
contemporary issues. This is --------.
14-Jan-2000 13:25 PM EDT (14-Jan-2000 1825 UTC)
NNNN
Source: Voice of America
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