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By Marisa Stone

He has been investigated for criminal activities, corruption and being in the pocket of billionaires. And yet he survives. Donald Trump? No, an even more unpopular leader, President Jacob Zuma of South Africa. On Aug. 8, a constitutional motion of no confidence in Zuma was defeated in the Parliament 198-177, with nine abstentions. Zuma will stay in office for another year.

The election of Nelson Mandela, and the abolition of apartheid in 1994, was a cause for euphoria in South Africa, after decades of harsh repression and a litany of injustices against the vast majority of the population. But that euphoria has become crushing disappointment, as black South Africans realize that one of their own, a leader of the once beloved African National Congress (ANC), has enriched himself and his family, while a third of his fellow citizens live in tin shacks without benefit of sanitation services or running water.

Our driver throughout most of our Southern Oregon University Democracy Project trip in South Africa, was Nick, a 50-year-old black man who lives in Alexandra Township near Johannesburg. I asked him if he liked living there. No, it is chaos, he said, but I was able to get my daughter out to go to school.

Nick was an articulate and hardworking man, but because of a lack of education as a result of apartheids residual effects he has never been able to develop the skills to find a better job.

During our tour of Soweto (an abbreviation for Johannesburgs Southwest Townships), Queen, our guide, told us that many of the girls in the townships drop out of school before graduating. When pressed for the reason, she said that many of them could not afford sanitary pads during menstruation. To avoid embarrassment at school, they stay home, get too far behind in their studies, and often never return.

Hearing that, one of our Democracy Project group members suggested we all chip in and buy some feminine-hygiene supplies. So we did, several bags full, that we gave to Queen to distribute to those young women in Soweto, who could not afford something so basic. Of course, this was a bit of charity that made us feel good, but was such a trivial thing when compared to the misery these people suffer through every day.

What surprised many of us was how isolated people were in their homes. In Johannesburg and Pretoria, beautiful homes were surrounded by high walls topped with barbed wire, sharp pointed poles, and glass. South Africans, black as well as white, often fall prey to Afrophobia, in which they stereotype immigrants coming to South Africa from other African nations, in search of economic opportunity. The similarity to current American politics was unnerving.

The hope for the future of South Africa lies with the young people born since 1994, for whom apartheid is ancient history. We met some of these young people at the University of Johannesburg, when we visited the Universitys Political Science and International Relations Department. These young graduate students were united in their contempt for President Zuma, but did not always agree about the future of South Africa, and the best path forward.

Some opined that South Africa was not yet ready for democracy and perhaps they should model their government on that of China. The ANC has retained power for over 25 years, and in some ways already resembles Chinas one-party state.

Others saw the education of young girls, the countrys future mothers, as the key to economic recovery. Research conducted by the United Nations and various universities around the world, demonstrates that educating girls and women leads to a reduction in child mortality, growth in jobs, and greater democratic participation. See http://en.unesco.org/themes/women-s-and-girls-education.

Most the students were cautiously optimistic because of the strengths South Africa possesses, such as a diverse economy, well-developed transportation network, literate and skilled workforce, healthy financial institutions, advanced medical facilities (in some locations) and a vibrant system of higher education. Whatever their beliefs about South Africas future, these smart, articulate young graduate students left us all with a sense of hope that one day soon, it would be they who would finally realize Mandelas dream of delivering economic equality and justice to all their citizens.

From a distance, it is easy to criticize the rocky and uneven path to democracy that South Africa has taken since 1994. What we need to remember is that it is a young democracy; consider the first tenuous quarter century of Americas history. Democracy is not easy, but it is worth it. Perhaps the quote attributed to Winston Churchill articulates it best, Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.

Marisa Stone is a participant in Southern Oregon University's Democracy Project.

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South Africa's uneven path to democracy - Ashland Daily Tidings

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rices book, Democracy: Stories From the Long Road to Freedom, published in May, focuses on the merits of democratic systems of government and the need for the United States to remain active in promoting democracy around the world. It could not have come at a better time.

It is the most readable book on U.S. and Western democracy promotion since Natan Sharansky published The Case for Democracy more than ten years ago. Rice makes the case that the United States must continue to leverage its national example, diplomatic power, and international foreign assistance budget to strengthen and spread democracy. I do not know Rice, although I served in the George W. Bush administration, but I strongly support her focus on democracy promotion. I have voted with my feet on this issue by sitting on the bipartisan board of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems a democracy promotion organization funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and other bilateral aid donors.

Rices book comes after more than a decade of limited success for the democracy project. The folks in the business call this limited progress the democracy recession. One can count on one hand the big wins for democracy in recent years. Myanmar is the country that comes to mind. At the same time, she reminds the reader that although democracy has been in recession for the last 15 years, we should recognize the great progress that has taken place over the last 50, 100, or 200 years. She includes a number of maps of the world to make that point. She also rightly references that, according to Freedom House, there are around 150 free and partly free countries out of about 200 countries in the world. This is a sign of major progress.

The book is thoroughly researched and includes country case studies that provide snapshots of various stages of democratic development. Rice covers Poland, Kenya, Colombia, Ukraine, Russia, and various countries in the Middle East and North Africa, including Iraq, Tunisia, and Egypt. In each of the case study, Rice brings personal anecdotes from her time as national security adviser or secretary of state. The studies of Russia and Ukraine benefit from her decades of exposure to that part of the world. The fact that she speaks fluent Russian and was a Sovietologist (my Microsoft Word does not recognize this as an actual word, which says something) provides even greater insight.

Perhaps what makes the book most interesting is its constant return to the American experience. She includes a chapter about American democratic development, and reminds readers that women did not get the vote in the United States until 1920 and that African Americans were not fully given the right to vote until the 1960s. Her experiences as an African American woman in various parts of the world including in Alabama provide some important insights and perspective. Strikingly, she mentions that she has never missed an opportunity to vote because it would be an insult to her ancestors who did not have the chance to vote. Why does she use the American experience? One of the key messages of the book, and an observation that she tries to drive home, is that democracy takes a long time to build and that progress is not linear.

The book offers an implicit defense of the Bush administrations Freedom Agenda, outlined in Bushs second inaugural address in 2005. She discusses the halting progress in Afghanistan and Iraq, but notes that both countries have held multiple elections and have a variety of functioning, albeit weak, institutions. She remains optimistic that, in the long term, these countries will become democracies. Rice also takes on one of the usual critiques of the democracy agenda, which points to the successes of places such as Singapore and China. She spends significant time looking at China and ultimately concludes that China will also become more democratic over time.

What about the upheavals in 2016, such as Brexit and the surprise election of President Donald Trump? She gently disagrees with those who say these outcomes put the system at risk. She says that these events represent voters seeking to make change peacefully. She defends the rule-based international order set up after World War II, but also signals that many people have either not benefited from globalization or see many of the changes ushered in by globalization as threats to traditional ways of life or traditional values. Those who seek to promote globalization need to account for those threatened by it. She also makes the case that we need to be brought together and not be sliced and diced into ever smaller groups, each with their own interests. In summary, she suggests that the voters have given policymakers and politicians a series of strong messages, and that they should listen to the voters.

Rice makes the case that democracy promotion is unambiguously in Americas interest. Democracies are much less likely to go to war, much less likely to participate in terrorist attacks, and much less likely to tolerate human trafficking than nondemocratic countries. Many global problems are caused by authoritarian regimes (often weak and failed states, I would add). So democracy promotion is not only a values proposition, but also in our enlightened self interest over the long term.

In some ways, Rices book is welcome not only because of the democracy recession, but also because of the perceived reluctance of the Obama and Trump administrations to prioritize democracy promotion. Presidents Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush each supported different dimensions of the democracy promotion agenda. Giving credit where credit is due, Myanmars opening happened under the Obama administrations watch, and the United States played a critical role in helping birth its young democracy.

Rice likely wrote this book in part to prepare current and future policymakers for the long slog ahead. The bad guys have gotten a lot better at countering the use of social media (for example, the Great Firewall of China). Russia and its partners are very aggressive about closing civil societys space. In addition, a number of the unfree countries look like pretty hard dictatorships to crack from the outside. Rice and Sharansky would argue that we cannot know for sure if change is coming to these societies. Sharansky argues that dictatorships are actually quite brittle because of the way those societies are organized. Who, for example, would have said the Soviet Union was going to collapse less than ten years after 1982?

Finally, one of the last chapters in the book is titled, They will look to America. Will we be ready? Many observers worry that the Trump administration has already deemphasized the democracy agenda. They point to Trumps so-called skinny budget, which decreases funding for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, and zeroes out the Democracy Fund. At the same time, the skinny budget does not reflect what Congress will appropriate and Congress has a large number of democracy promotion champions on both sides of the aisle. Critics also point to Secretary of State Rex Tillersons unusual absence from the release of the annual Human Rights Report by the State Department, a report that is traditionally presented by the secretary of state. All of the above makes democracy advocates around the world nervous.

On the other hand, Mark Green is the new administrator of USAID, which is a major funder of democracy promotion activities by the U.S. government. Green is a former member of Congress and the former head of the International Republican Institute, one of the four National Endowment for Democracy institutes. Also, the Trump administration has rightly raised concerns about democracy and human rights in Cuba, Syria, and Venezuela, among other countries. I recently asked a prominent democracy promotion advocate if he was worried about whether the United States would engage in democracy promotion under Trump. He told me, I am not worried because of Article One of the U.S. Constitution and the naming of Mark Green as USAID administrator.

Photo credit:ROB KIM/Getty Images

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Condoleezza Rice's Book on Democracy Could Not Have Come at a ... - Foreign Policy (blog)

America has two democracies, one political and the other free market. The concept of a political democracy dates back to Plato and his Republic.

Ludwig von Mises and my mentor Dr. Bill Peterson (a student and colleague of Mises) wrote extensively about our market democracy. Both of these great men are now just a memory but their legacy defines America. The political class dominates the news, while the market provides the solutions chosen by our citizens.

Plato described the political democracy as full of disorder. Today, the political democracy provides a spectacle of unpleasant news and often nastiness. Fights endure about historic statues, taxes, wars, foreign influences, and the size and reach of government. Politicians are often brutish, unpleasant, and uninformed individuals who ignore history, cater to special interests, and place selfish motives as their highest values. Only on rare occasions do these politicians reflect the heart of so many great Americans, who are kind, generous, fair, and God fearing.

Thankfully, in spite of the daily circus, our political democracy has largely achieved freedom, order, and the opportunity for our market democracy to prosper, as envisioned by our founders. We all owe an extreme debt of gratitude to our founders for their extraordinary vision, understanding of human nature, and willingness to sacrifice their lives for this amazing country. The United States of America was divinely inspired and our freedoms are embedded into the greatest constitution in the history of the world.

Americas other democracy, as Dr. Peterson liked to call our market democracy, is a continuous plebiscite of every citizen. It is supremely fair and must please the users or fail. Bad actors are weeded out in real time, quickly and adroitly. New ideas and companies are constantly entering the market with their only goal the desire to please the voter (buyer).

Our modern democratic market is a marvel catering to every need and whim of the citizens. Government has a measure of control over business, but the ultimate control and outcome is determined by the minute-to-minute decisions of the buyers, users, and customers.

The market also reflects the values of our citizens including fairness, equal opportunities, and the widest range of choice as companies compete. Citizens hold the fate of every business in their hands (iPhones) with a plethora of buying prerogatives. Buying habits, and thus the market, are rapidly changing as users abandon department stores in favor of online ordering and delivery without ever leaving the home. Even food and grocery providers now participate in this new landscape with cooked meals delivered at the precise location and time desired, as dictated by the buyer.

America continues to demonstrate the wisdom of our Founders, exhibiting an extraordinarily high standard of living and decency in our society. Our private institutions and businesses solve most of the challenges that our political democracy fails to resolve.

Private education and homeschooling are blossoming, creating a wide variety of choices for families and students. Private boards lead and manage public charter schools. Private companies provide drugs and health care technologies that save lives and solve complex medical challenges. MOOCs and distance learning (online universities) are becoming the norm, disrupting the expensive and lethargic colleges and universities.

Our political democracy will always be chaotic, but thankfully we have Silicon Valley (a proxy for American ingenuity) and our market democracy transforming every industry from information technology, transportation, and education to communication and manufacturing. This process is disruptive and challenging but it continually improves the standard of living and quality of life of every American.

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America's Two Democracies - American Spectator

Dr. Martina Klicperova-Baker, a senior researcher from the Institute of Psychology & Academy of Sciences in the Czech Republic, spoke at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln on Tuesday, Aug. 22.

She opened her presentation on the state of democracy in Europe by referencing her own experience of living with, and losing, democracy in her own country.

Thank you for sharing with me your solar eclipse, Klicperova-Baker said. The day of the Soviet invasion [of the Czech Republic] in 1968 was the day of the eclipse. It is a day ingrained in our memory. It began an age of totality that lasted 20 years.

Klicperova-Baker was invited by the universitys Czech and Global Studies programs to utilize her specialties in the psychology of democracy, the transition to democracy and political psychology to discuss democracy in Europe.

She began the program by discussing the institution of democracy.

Quoting Madeleine Albright, Klicperova-Baker said, While democracy in the long run is the most stable form of government, in the short run it is the most fragile.

Despite the permanent tension of democracy, Klicperova-Baker said its the regime that best secures the rights and self-actualization of its citizens.

Democracies are killing fewer of their own citizens than other regimes, Klicperova-Baker said. And real democracies do not wage war with each other.

Klicperova-Baker pointed to democracies around the world, such as Canada and Australia, as examples of secular democratic systems in which citizens enjoy a high quality of life, yet conceded that, while democracy is imperfect, we dont have anything better.

The more we approach [an ideal democracy], the more it is running away from us, Klicperova-Baker said. It is always on the horizon.

Klicperova-Baker said the number of people living in democratic institutions around the world is growing, but the number of those in autocracies remains stable.

She attributed the difficulty of maintaining a healthy democracy as a reason autocracies remain prominent.

Humans are not necessarily naturally predisposed to a positive democratic coexistence, Klicperova-Baker said. The human psyche is, to a great degree, selfish and self-serving.

Klicperova-Baker then moved to the structure of democracy, breaking it down to its simplest values by alluding to the French Revolutions motto of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.

Liberty, or freedom, is exemplified by less frustration and, in turn, less aggression, Klicperova-Baker said. Equality, or vertical closeness, appears when the gap between the law and popular sovereignty is small. Fraternity, or horizontal closeness, is apparent in humanism, civic culture and civility.

Expanding on her final point of civility, Klicperova-Baker said, Civility is the most important aspect of democracy. Benevolence and respect: that is the cushion, that is the buffer to the permanent conflicts.

According to Klicperova-Baker, the Velvet Revolution and the Velvet Divorce are two events in Czech history that feature the importance of civility.

They were not even stepping on the grass, Klicperova-Baker said. It was a moral revolution, more like a cultural festival.

The Velvet Revolution was a number of peaceful protests in the late 1980s that ultimately led to the split that created the Czech Republic and Slovakia, also known as the Velvet Divorce.

Klicperova-Baker closed by examining the state of democracy in Europe, stressing the importance of looking at specific groups of people rather than entire nations.

To summarize her speech, Klicperova-Baker said, What is important? We found democrats, whether religious or secular, in every country. We cannot forget about the minority, the people who have it very tough in those countries.

How does one remember the minority? According to Klicperova-Baker, The democrats have to stand their ground; they have to fight for free and honest media.

To call this era post-factual or post-truth we must not accept that, Klicperova-Baker said. We cannot let that kind of language win.

news@dailynebraskan.com

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Czech researcher speaks at UNL on Europe's state of democracy - Daily Nebraskan

Polish prosecutors on Tuesday said they were looking into whether freedom icon Lech Walesa gave false testimony regarding allegations he collaborated with the communist secret police in the early 1970s.

Walesa, who co-founded the independent Solidarity trade union and then negotiated a bloodless end to communism in Poland in 1989, is a vocal opponent of the governing right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party, which he says is harming Poland.

The state-run Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), which prosecutes crimes from the Nazi and communist eras, said in a statement that it has been probing the Nobel Peace laureates testimony since June 29.

The new proceedings concern statements by Lech Walesa, who notably... described as inauthentic secret police documents that suggest he had collaborated, the IPN said.

The IPN said earlier this year that handwriting analysis proved the 73-year-old former president had signed a collaboration agreement and receipts for payment from the secret police using the code-name Bolek.

Walesa has always denied the allegations, which have dogged him for years.

The president stands by his statement that the documents are fake and werent authored by him, Walesa associate Adam Dominski told the Polish news agency PAP on Tuesday in response to the IPN statement.

He added that the handwriting analysis was expert analysis, not proof.

A special vetting court ruled in 2000 that there was no basis to suspicions that Walesa had been a paid regime agent.

But the allegations resurfaced last year after the IPN seized previously unknown secret police files from the widow of a communist-era interior minister.

Walesa enigmatically admitted last year to having made a mistake and in the past said he signed a paper for the secret police during one of his many interrogations.

A book published by the IPN in 2008 alleged that while the regime registered Walesa as a secret agent in 1970, he was cut loose in 1976 due to his unwillingness to co-operate.

Poles in general have mixed feelings about Walesa. His boldness in standing up to the communist regime is still widely respected, but the combative and divisive tone of his later presidency earned him scorn in many quarters.

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Polish prosecutors probe whether democracy icon Lech Walesa gave false testimony in spy case - South China Morning Post