Recommendations to the Secretary of State from the Advisory Committee on Democracy Promotion

Based on Discussions and Deliberations from Meetings in November 2006 and April 2007

Anne-Marie Slaughter, Chair

• Bipartisan Congressional and public support for democracy promotion must be strengthened. This is crucial to ensuring that democracy promotion remains central to American foreign policy. The Committee can and should serve a significant role in helping to foster and sustain a broad, bipartisan domestic coalition for democracy promotion.
  
• "Promoting democracy" is really better understood as "supporting democratic groups working to transform their societies." Support for these indigenous movements and groups, such as labor organizations, is crucial to bringing about positive transformation on the ground and should be increased. The Committee has identified a number of key ways to support democrats in non-democratic countries or in fledgling democracies. These include:
  
  
  • Maximize support for persecuted individuals. Instruct U.S. government officials to name them and raise cases often. Include names (and photos) in annual country reports on human rights. Provide scholarships for their children.
    
  • Find ways to place more democracy-promoters in-country, including specially trained and selected embassy personnel and personnel from both American and non-American NGOs who can serve as resources for local democrats. Work through and with international and regional organizations where helpful.
    
  • Create many more opportunities for foreign students and visitors to come to the United States for study, internships, and participation in programs designed to expose them to the workings of American democracy and to the American people.
    
• Improve public diplomacy strategies, including by: explaining a more complete understanding of democracy and democratization (focusing on the core components of elections, governance and civil society); drawing attention to successful institutions and initiatives that may not be widely known; and making greater use of symbolic speeches and meetings, e.g., referencing specific cases. More specifically, the U.S. Government should acknowledge the importance of the quality of democracy even after successful elections.
  
• Close cooperation with multilateral organizations (UN, CD) and regional organizations, such as the EU, is essential to successful democracy promotion. Building ties between regional organizations, such as the AU and OAS, is also an important component of the development of these organizations' democracy and human rights efforts. The USG must identify comparative advantages among partners and divide labor. It should develop and implement an improved strategy for increasing the effectiveness of multilateral institutions, including international organizations and regional fora, in advancing democracy worldwide.
  
• Encourage other countries such as India to support and take leadership roles in democracy promotion efforts. Identify leverage points that would motivate them. Identify comparative advantages among partners and divide labor, e.g., newer democracies are excellent partners in promoting democracies among nascent or emerging democracies.
  
• Continue to use labor attachés as a means of advancing democracy.
  
• Promulgate and support international standards for elections. E.g., parties and other groups should be required to renounce violence as a "price of admission" for running in elections. Election procedures should promote democratic parties and full representation. (Example of the opposite: the election of Hamas.)
  
• Analyze the possibility of a Helsinki-type process in Northeast Asia.