The Challenge of Democracy: Transforming People
By Kenneth A. Brown
A Cure-All Tablet
When democracy finally returned to Nigeria in 1999 after nearly a decade of often bloody military rule, expectations were high. The prevailing attitude, said Bike Akinduro, with the Upline Resources Foundation, was, “Now we have a cure-all tablet which is democracy. Now that we have swallowed it, all of our problems are over.”
For some, she said, the feeling was simply, “Hurray! We are free! We can do what we like.” Many believed it meant that the government would provide everything. Others thought it meant that the country’s struggling economy would finally improve.
Disappointment soon followed. “They waited the first year, second year, third year, fourth year,” Akinduro said. “Now people are disillusioned because it seems as if democracy has not solved these problems after all. There’s still unemployment. There’s still poverty. Corruption is still there.” By early 2005 the public’s patience had worn so thin that tribal leaders were calling for a national conference to discuss the country’s possible dissolution.
Getting democracy to work in Nigeria, however, will require more than just reforming elections or government institutions, Akinduro believes. “A problem that has mounted over 33 or 35 years will not go away in one day. But the people are not patient. They are not satisfied with government.”
Instead, Akinduro insists, solving the problem of democracy in Nigeria depends far more on transforming citizens than reforming political leaders or government institutions. Corruption, she explained, is a case in point—and as a former government official in her native Ondo state it is something she is intimately familiar with. People inside and outside of Nigeria, she explained, often blame the problem on the country’s leaders, but they overlook the fact that those in power are a product of the system and the society in which they live.
“The common man in the street has not looked at himself as being part of the corruption problem,” she explained. “Whereas he is part of it because, indirectly, those who occupy political positions are goaded into corruption by their relations and friends,” she said. “They tell them, ‘This is your opportunity to make money. If you come back empty-handed you are a fool.’”
Nigeria is hardly alone in its struggles among the world’s emerging democracies. In 1900 just 15 percent of the world’s population lived in democracy. Today it is the world’s most prevalent form of government and most of those governments are relatively new—part of the so-called “Third Wave” of democratic reform that swept across Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe in the 1970s and 1980s. There was no plan to all of this, and for many the triumph of democracy seemed all but inevitable. By the 1990s, in country after country, that early euphoria was soon replaced by a growing sense of despair as old ethnic conflicts and new economic problems mounted.
While outside experts and observers stress the importance of changing systems and laws in emerging democracies—guaranteeing free and fair election and reforming institutions—those working on the ground believe that the real key to building a vibrant and stable democracy is engaging and empowering its citizens. Before one can transform a government they say, one has to transform its people. Empowering citizens is not the end point of political reform, but its starting point.
The insights and beliefs of these international workers in democracy offer food for thought—not just when it comes to addressing the concerns of emerging democracies, but also when it comes to addressing the concerns of established democracies like our own in the United States. Because their problems are so strong and their struggle with democracy is so new, they are more ready to consider new approaches and question old assumptions.
Russia: Changing Citizen Mentality
“I was a product of my system and my country. I didn’t think I would ever be interested in politics because for people of my generation politics was like a swear word, sort of like trash,” explained Svetlana Gorokhova with the Russian Library for Foreign Literature and a former international fellow with the Kettering Foundation.
In the early 1990s jubilant crowds took to the streets of Moscow to celebrate when the newly elected government of Boris Yeltsin withstood a takeover attempt by Communist hardliners. Little more than a decade later, that early enthusiasm for the possibilities of democracy has worn thin in the face of continued economic difficulties and an increasingly violent ethnic struggle with Chechen rebels.
Above all, however, the implications of Russia’s new democracy are still sorting themselves out. “People are very disillusioned because they cannot find their place in the political system,” Gorokhova said.
In her work with the library’s substantial community outreach and education program, she has made extensive use of deliberative forums to address issues like race relations and Russian-American relations. Those forums are useful, she explained, not just for understanding the public’s values, but also in getting people to work through their differences together and think about politics in a new way.
“This is what we are always trying to explain to people—that this is politics. This is politics,” Gorokhova said. “Politics is not the elite sitting somewhere making decisions for you. You can make a difference. People at first say, ‘Oh no, no, no.’ Then they start changing. This is one of the highest challenges in Russia: to change the mentality. It’s not enough just to change the system. The system should be changed. But, again, it’s all inside us. It’s inside our heads and hearts.
Argentina: Who Frames the Issues?
Like Nigeria and Russia, Argentina has also had its own struggles with democracy. Once the most prosperous nation in Latin America, since the early 1980s the country has been hammered by a series of economic and political crises that began during military rule in the 1970s and grew steadily worse during its transition to democratic rule in the 1980s and 1990s.
Citizens, however, are still determined to give democracy a chance, says Roberto Saba, one of the Kettering Foundation’s first international fellows, but they are still struggling to define just what that idea of democracy means. “Much of our work in the community takes the experiences and ideas that underlie deliberative democracy,” said Saba, now head of a civil society group in Buenos Aires.
“The political system and the party system are totally discredited, but they are still hanging on to power,” Saba said. “I feel that the community has begun to understand that it cannot leave everything in the hands of the politicians—and that real change is possible if they get involved.”
Defining just how and when citizens should be involved with government, however, is not an easy task, nor an exact science. Citizen participation does not necessarily mean a public takeover of the legislature or presidency, nor sitting in on every policy decision.
A good place to start, Saba believes, is finding ways for citizens to be the ones who set the political agenda for their communities and their country.
“I think part of the frustration in all our democratic systems is related to the fact that citizens feel alienated from the agenda—an agenda set by somebody else. By the media, by the government, or by the political parties” Saba said.
He explained: “The problem is that we, as citizens, do not pay much attention [to] who names and frames the issues. And I think that the naming and framing of issues is half of the political struggle. It is the first step in making citizens more powerful in democracy.”
Kenneth A. Brown is an associate with the Kettering Foundation.