 Good afternoon. Welcome everyone. I'm Tom Carruthers, Vice President here at the Carnegie Endowment. It's my pleasure to be the moderator of this event. I hardly need, say, to an audience looking around the room and all the people who have a great deal of experience with the topic of democracy and international democracy support. So I hardly need to say it, but this is a difficult time for the subject of democracy and international democracy support. We know, of course, that there hasn't been an increase in the number of democracies in the world for over 10 years. And we look at a number of specific country cases that have been disturbing. Of course, the events in the Arab world, which have been so frustrating and disappointing in many ways over the last five years, even the transition in Myanmar or Burma not going, and at least as some people hoped it might. We still open the newspaper and see news of coups in Africa and elsewhere. And in general, it's been many different parts of the world have been difficult and disappointing. And it isn't just specific cases that have given rise to so much concern. It's the sense that power holders in many countries have become more sophisticated at dealing with states of partial openness, dealing effectively with the international community to fend off efforts to support democracy. And we've also noticed that elements within society, civic activists, although they're often very angry at power holders, they're often angry at all political elites and don't really want to work through existing political structures of opposition and are sometimes unable to channel their energy and impetus towards something more constructive. In addition to these problems, we have an international community which is distracted or preoccupied with a number of very large challenges, which are often seen as not having that much to do with democracy, I think incorrectly, but are seen that way, counterterrorism concerns and other security concerns. And so the overall picture has become, at least here from the Washington viewpoint, but I think as well from other capitals in the West and elsewhere, discouraging. In such a context, it's especially important to connect a bit to history, the recent history of the wave of democracy in the world, first to realize that we are still part of something larger in the world that has been very encouraging over the last generation, and the world today is actually, as democratic or more democratic globally, than it's ever been in its history. It's of course easy to forget that, given all the bad news. And secondly, it's important to look back at this last generation of developments in the world and try to extract some of the core lessons from transitions that did go relatively well and try to learn those. Of course, we've been learning them along the way, but somehow that's an effort which has, I think, not been fully developed over the years. And that's what Eblon Tol and Sergio Bitar took on in the book that we're here to talk about today through a series of conversations with some extremely important political leaders of our last generation. And they've put together a book which you've heard about and you'll hear more about trying to bring some of those lessons forward. Now trying to do that, of course, is not an easy venture. You have first the problem of personalism. It's not hard when I was reading the book, you know, reading about some leaders in Poland, for example, thinking, so how do we take those leaders to Egypt, you know, have them be running a different country? And that's obviously, you can't just transplant a great leader from one place to another. And so in some cases you wonder how individual personalities that did so well in one context, how they might have fared in a very different one. And in addition, you just have the problem of country specificity and the fact that countries all tend to feel they're unique and they don't always are not really that open to lessons from other countries, no matter how promising the experience of the other country is. So that's their challenge in a sense having done the work, the hard work to have these conversations to bring out this material to show us how to take it forward. And that's in a sense this panel is part of their effort to do that. So we're going to start by hearing from Ewe Laughenthal and Sergio Bitar. They're going to talk a bit about some of the core findings of the book. We're then going to turn to Carl Gershman, the National Endowment for Democracy, who's going to reflect from a practitioner's point of view on some of what he's heard from them. At that point, I'm probably going to turn to you in the audience and ask for a bit of reaction. And maybe a few comparative examples from your own experience in some cases. Then we'll still have some time. I'm going to turn to Priscilla Klap, a noted expert on Myanmar. And Moises Naim, known to all of you as an expert on Latin American politics, I'd say global politics more generally, to give some perspective in Priscilla's case, focusing a bit on Myanmar and the experience there, hearing what she's heard from them, how that relates or doesn't to the experiences there. Moises will talk a bit about Venezuela, but some other trends in the world as well. So we have a rich panel. When you have a panel this big, you sometimes worry the panel is going to be more numerous than the audience. But we don't have that problem, fortunately. Lots of people here and a lot of great people. But it's been my pleasure in putting together this event to co-sponsor with the National Endowment for Democracy, Charles Heer, the Inter-American Dialogue, and I'm delighted Michael Schifter, President of the Dialogue is here, and International Idea, Stockholm. And it's a really special pleasure to have the Secretary General of International Idea, Yves LaTam, here with us. And we had a chance to talk before the meeting about how he's taking International Idea forward since becoming Secretary General last year. So it's a special pleasure, and I've asked him to come up and just say a few words of welcome and a bit about this project, Yves. Please come on up. Thank you very much, and thank you, Tom, for the welcoming words. We're very happy to be here on behalf of International Idea. I'm not here alone. I'm accompanied by Massimo Tomassoli, our representative in New York at UN because we are a non-permanent member, observer of the UN General Assembly, Karin Gardes, Director of External Relations and Kurt Boeuf that leads the project of Transitions to Democracy, the book promotion of that book based in Cairo. A couple of words about International Idea and why we took the initiative to sponsor to launch this book together with the two authors. International Idea, we had a commemoration of the 20th anniversary last week, so we were launched logically in 1995 in the aftermath of the breakthrough of democracy, all over the place, I would say, especially in Europe but also in other parts of the world. We are an intergovernmental organization with 28 member states from all over the globe, North, South, the last one joining us now is Brazil. And we basically work on four topics related. We will hear more of that related to the functioning of democracy, democratic governance and transitions to democracy. The number one is what we call the electoral assistance. That's why we are called Idea International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. So electoral assistance is our first domain of activity. Very typically we consider the electoral cycle not only what's happening on elections day, we don't do electoral observation. But we basically do everything else related to the process of organizing elections, of the protection of the safe procedures of elections itself, electoral techniques, the mechanics of elections and so on. The second domain is also very closely related to the subject, is constitution building. But not the logistics of constitution, writing of drafting constitutions. We are more specialized in organizing inclusive processes of constitution building. For that kind of activity we have an office in The Hague. We ourselves are based in headquarters in Stockholm. So electoral assistance constitution building. The third domain is a bit broader. It's called representation and participation. It's so to say everything that relates to not the mechanics of elections, not the constitution, writing and building, but the quality of democracy. How it really functions besides what is written in laws and in constitution, besides the elections, how a democracy functions. The role of political parties, programmatic political parties, the role of money and politics, the quality of political decision making about money and politics we are in the process of organizing some global conferences on that very specific topic. We published recently a handbook on that. So this is the kind of activities related to that third domain, last but not least. And this relates also to a very important activity within our member states, by Norway, Botswana also. It's the interaction between democracy and development, sometimes concentrated on natural resources, the role they play in a country, the benefits of having natural resources. How you put this at the disposal of the whole of a community. And there of course Norway and Botswana have a nice record in that field. But so democracy, development, the mutually reinforcing interaction between the two is the fourth domain of activity. Crosscutting through these three, four activities, domains of activities, we have the gender balance issue, the issue of the diversity of representative democracy and then democracy and conflict and security, how to protect democratic processes in well circumstances or periods of conflict and insecurity and how democracy also can lead to sustainable security. We do basically three kind of activities. The number one, and this is done by our headquarters in Stockholm, we publish sources of knowledge of statistics, we cater for some websites together with other organizations where you can find a lot of evidence, figures on elections, on representation of women in politics for instance. We publish a lot of reports, books, policy papers. So that's the first kind of things we are doing. We work in Stockholm essentially on that with some 60 to 70 people. The second kind of activity is providing platforms for exchange of best practices and debate on a global or regional level about important aspects of the functioning of democracy. We do that together with sometimes very structured international bodies like we are managing what we call the inter-regional dialogue for democracy. That's with the regional organizations we bring together to discuss aspects of democracy. We also already mentioned global conferences on money and politics. So this is kind of the second kind of thing we do as an institution. Last but not least, we're quite active in country assistance. We are currently active in 24 to 26 countries. I would say the best sellers in the list of countries with problems from Peru to Nepal, Myanmar, some African countries. So 24 to 26 were mostly based on programs, as you know, programs sponsored by member states, by international institutions, by European Union, but for instance also US 8, where we have people on the ground that in the four domains of activities, electoral processes, constitution building, the quality of democracy and development of democracy, where we have people that in a non-prescriptive way try to support the effort of the local people. So that's about the international idea. Why this book? To be honest, when I took over the responsibility last year in June, my predecessor said that he had an idea to try to bring together given the Arab Spring and given all kinds of things happening at that moment all over the world, that he wanted to bring together experiences, best practices, but not from a theoretical point of view, but more based on experience and daily practice by leaders of how to bring a country, how to bring a nation to democratic governance. And he asked me to take over the project, and so we did. Now we just published together with John Hopkins the book. That's the reason why we are here today. We will have of this book at least four to five language versions. There will be translations in Spanish and Arabic in French and in Dutch, and we are thinking about other versions in Myanmar, and in Russian maybe. And our intention is to have an impact, have an impact on processes, transitional processes in putting at a disposal of people that are currently struggling to find ways to, well, in a useful way helping their country in the journey to democracy. We are trying to provide them with insight in how it went in other countries. Of course, no one size fits all, and we want to do it in a non-prescriptive way, but we thought that spreading the experiences of 11 countries through interviews by 13 leaders was a good way to at least spark off that kind of activity. My wish would be for my organization and for the global community that in the course of the next years we can build up and position somewhere in the international institutional landscape a capacity in terms of research, of training, facilitation, mediation, a capacity to, based on the good practices, based on experiences, put at a disposal of people, this kind of insights and experience. So that's it about the idea, about the link between idea and the work. Let me just use 10 seconds in front of this audience and thank you for being here. Thank A. Bleuventhal and Sergio Bitar in alphabetical order, Sergio Bitar and A. Bleuventhal for the really tremendous work they have done. I think the book is really, it's very good to read it, it's very easy to read, but it's very attractive also to read it. So I would recommend it. The contract with John Hopkins doesn't provide any rights for us or any source of income for us, so I can freely recommend you the book and I leave it now to Dom to lead the panel. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Tom, for organizing this event and to the co-sponsors in addition to the Carnegie Endowment, International Idea and the Inter-American Dialogue. Thanks to this outstanding dream team panel of people who have such expertise. I want to also express our appreciation to all the people who participated in this complex project, beginning with the 13 leaders who granted time and cooperation to us and many others. I want to single out for a special mention Bakhtiar Effendi, the Dean of Social and Political Sciences at the State Islamic University in Jakarta, who is with us today. He holds the record for the longest trip to come to this session. He is one of the nine first-rate scholars who wrote the context-setting introductions to our respective country chapters, in this case the Indonesia chapter. And if I may say so, these nine context-setting introductions are absolute jewels. They in themselves would be worth a book even without the interviews, though the interviews are of course the heart and soul of the book. This project, as has been explained, has a timely and relevant aim. We have tried to distill and communicate learning and key principles from the experiences of political leaders who played diverse, but in every case important roles in helping achieve transitions from authoritarian and exclusionary rule of various kinds toward effective democratic governance, characterized by regularly scheduled, reasonably open and fair multi-party elections, and rule that is subject to checks and balances of authority with respect for fundamental rights of political organization and expression. The nine cases we studied all made successful and essentially unreversed transitions to democracy thus defined. They are of course uneven in their democratic experience and imperfect, but then what democracy is perfect. The reason we interviewed played different roles. F.W. DeClerc, B.J. Habibi, and Ernesto Cedillo were important leaders in authoritarian regimes of different types who helped move their countries toward democracy. Patricio Elwin, Fernando Enrique Cardoso, Felipe Gonzales, Ricardo Lagos, Therese Macioveschi, and Tavo Embequi were prominent in opposition movements that helped to end authoritarian rule, and they then helped construct democracy in its place. Alexander Kwasniewski, Fidel Ramos, and Jerry Rawlings were bridge figures, straddling the divide between autocracy and democracy. These transitions could not have occurred without significant contributions in most cases from social, civil, and political forces, and in some cases, the important role of mass participation. But the roles of these political leaders were central and worth capturing. Now, we have not produced a book of rigorous modern comparative politics with careful hypotheses, clear theoretically driven criteria for case selection, quantifiable and comparable data all under the light post, and statistically significant findings. What we set out to do was something that in some ways may be even more helpful. To see whether we could learn anything interesting and useful in political and practical terms from reviewing the experiences of key political leaders as they recall them about how they exercised the craft of transition making. We think that probing well-prepared interviews driven by an understanding of political processes and of recurrent issues that are faced in all such transitions is the best, if not the only way, to achieve this kind of learning. Tom made a point in his introductory remarks that he thought, as he was reading about the Polish leaders well, but how to translate them into Egypt. That's, of course, an important question. What can we learn from the experience of these people? In our interview with Philippa Gonzales toward the end of the interview, struck as both of us were by the extraordinary strategic skill with which he discussed not only the political transition in Spain but a number of other cases that he was intimately familiar with. I asked him, by the way, we don't identify in the book who asked which question, but I will admit I asked this question. I said, you know, the qualities of political leadership that you embody and illustrate and you've been illustrating just now. How does one learn that? Is that something that's innate that you just were born with those gifts that you learned them? How did you learn them? Is this something you learned in courses? Talk to us a little about that. He said, well, that's a good question. I've thought about it a lot. You definitely don't learn it in courses. You learn it from experience. But how do you learn it from experience? Well, you learn by the application of general principles to different realities which you analyze in terms of the local situation and you try to get a sense of the local situation and the application of those general principles. But then you will ask me, okay, where do you get the general principles from? And I would say to you, he said, you get the general principles from the narrative of prior experiences. Well, that's the fundamental sort of instinct behind this project that we can get a lot of meaning out of the remembered narratives of important, comparable experiences. That was the idea that Vidar Helgeson, the former Secretary General of the International Idea, had when he proposed the project and commissioned us. The context, as Secretary General LeCherme mentioned, was the Arab Spring, a moment of not euphoria about the possibilities of democratic transitions. Today our book is finished and out. The context, as Tom said, is much less optimistic. The Arab Spring has turned to winter in almost every case. There's talk of democratic recession, regression decline. And there are people who say, well, you know, those third wave transitions, that we looked at in the late 20th century, those were easier or even easy cases and much harder to deal with a lot of situations in the world today. Well, we think that one of the valuable contributions of this book is to remind ourselves that the transitions that we review are not, in fact, easy. They were surprising. They were not expected. They were not quick but took a long time. They had ups and downs, zigzags, reverses. They were complex, uneven and imperfect. And yet they were meaningful. They changed the nature of politics in the respective countries in ways that took hold and have lasted. So we're considering what can we learn from those experiences. The book, it's not a thin book, either substantively or physically. 85% of the book consists of the edited interviews of the 13 leaders. And they are of course not, I mean, they're different but they are absolutely gripping. I predict that any one of you that picks up on one of the interviews will be drawn in to seeing how the mind works and the issues that were faced by these people. There are also two analytic chapters one by Georgina Weyland of the University of Manchester on the role of women in these same nine transitions corresponds to the emphasis on gender that Eva term mentioned. And our own analytic chapter trying to distill what we took away from the cases. I think one of the fundamental things we learned in the project was that there are what we call recurrent issues. Issues that come up slightly different form but different order sometimes but that come up in all of these transitions that seem inherent to the very process even though the starting points are different and the ending points not identical. We tried to look at how the different leaders by preparing ourselves well with the help of our country experts like Professor Effendi for Indonesia we tried to focus in on these recurrent issues how they saw and how they dealt with with the kinds of questions that we saw as recurring. I just throw out some examples without talking about most of them but how to unify oppositions and at the same time marginalize those elements of the opposition to the autocratic regime that might derail the possibility of transition and how at the same time to divide autocratic regimes how to induce forces within the old order to accept change without in doing so discouraging those who have taken great risks to force change how to end violence and foster citizen security while assuring that all intelligent security and police forces will act henceforth within the law and subject to civilian political control how to foster mutual acceptance by forces that have been bitter enemies how to overcome corruption and integrity and impunity the real heart and soul of the book of course the testimony of these presidents about how they understood and faced such questions offered in their own voices and in their own terms and I strongly recommend starting with reading the interviews themselves but we do try to derive some conclusions of our own crystallized in what we call 10 imperatives for democratic transition and I turn now to my colleague and good friend Sergei Bitar to highlight in the time available some of those 10 imperatives thank you thank you thank you for me it's an honor to be here because I am sharing with people that helped us a lot in our transitions in Chile so I first want to appreciate the work by idea and in the term Carl Gershman and Ned inter-american dialogue from whom I've been working all this time I want to recognize also Marc Schneider who was of big help and crisis group Effendi back there Effendi came here and helped us to understand Indonesia as many others each country and of course the hospitality of the Carnegie Endowment so and it's important to perhaps to emphasize that the working together of these institutions for what will come in the future is very important because each one separate it doesn't count the same that if you work together in different countries I just want to say that if we have had this book in Chile at the beginning when we started fighting against Pinochet would have been extremely useful we were thinking of what happened with Argentina that started before and Brazil started before but now with all the experience in Africa and Asia in Europe different stages I think that the experiences described by the leaders will be of great help in the future and will be especially for not only politicians academicians but also for students, social activists and especially for international organizations on how to deal with the issues that are coming we don't know how these reflections in the new world we are living because many of those transitions happened during the Cold War and that changes completely the space for action for social mobilization but how they will apply for cases like we had the case of Burkina Faso last week in Africa we have Myanmar we have an expert in this area and we were discussing that the process started in 1998 as you told us that there are long processes how they will evolve Cuba is quite different situation you have almost compared to the other cases we analyzed almost no opposition from outside so how the changes will come from the inside not only the country but the party to push for that and we have a case of reversal that is a case of Venezuela so probably the next book should be about the new transitions that are coming in all these countries, in all these regions under the new context of the world today so having said that we made a big effort as Abe was saying in trying to understand what are the recurrent issues because each situation is so complex and different that we could have ended with a lot of things a structure without order and finally we said well we see these 10 recurrent issues and just to signal them by their title the first one is moving gradually and taking each opportunity not waiting for a larger one but move the fence second a hopeful vision not just fight against the authoritarian government but you have to attract by showing that you represent winning for the majority of the population and fighting fear that is the main obstacle in those situations third main issue is that we saw in all case building of coalitions between parties and parties and social movements and it's a very decisive factor in adding up workers, students, women that's a major issue and you will see different formulas, ways that those things happened fourth protecting dialogue the spaces for dialogue even if it's interrupted many times because of death, because of conflicts this dialogue is a space for understanding each other develop trust and that appears in most cases that we analyzed then the fifth is how to face the constitution because when you are starting something new constitution in some way defines the society you would like to build so how to build those constitution and we had many examples on how to do it but one rule that was always there is that that has to represent everyone in the country and that the process of building must it's very important not trying to solve all problems but to establish a system by which you can solve the problems then a six main important point is how to enhance, reinforce or even create political parties without political parties that doesn't work in general authoritarian government destroy political parties so all leaders did a larger work on that a seventh point is how establish the civilian control of the armed forces and there are many ways there that are quite interesting to know for new cases and also how in all cases the separation of the police from the armed forces as a critical aspect for the managing transitional justice an eighth point is also crucial and how you manage that with keeping the country together that differs the countries do that in much different ways in some countries there are amnesty laws in other countries there is no in some countries the commissions of truth and reconciliation in other countries have copied that and adapted to their reality a ninth major point is how to manage the political economy of the transition and the crisis you face at the beginning and how to agree on a basic ground in order to have anyone governing because if you don't have basic conditions, economic conditions nobody can govern in the future and a ten important point is the external support how to do external support in a way that converges with internal forces as is required by internal forces but all leaders said those processes are managed from within not from outside and so but the ways of doing that in terms of protecting human rights protecting the life of those who are fighting against those dictatorships strengthening political parties educating in terms of rule of law, independent judiciary freedom of expression and the development of civil society when you don't have enough parties so the debates preparing programs all these areas are quite important for external support that comes out from this and of course that will change in the future with new technologies new international bodies that control some of the dictators through the court the Penal International International Court of Justice and other bodies in the United Nations that put control now on genocides and killing so the world has changed the countries are different but the push for transition the push for democracy will continue and I think this lessons from these leaders are very wise and very rich to be learned and to follow thank you thank you Sir Kim well first my really warmest congratulations to Abe and Sergio for what I think is a really helpful and important contribution I read democratic transitions with its interviews with leaders of transitions from an earlier and more hopeful time I have to admit with a certain nostalgia the lessons of these successful transitions are indeed instructive importance of incrementalism inclusion and compromise using available political space to broaden and unify opposition democratic forces and to force to dialogue with elements in the regime open to democratic change and so forth and frankly they were also a bit self evident when we think about what we do and how it gets done but it's really really good to have this book and this description of transition as a model and a standard at a time when the momentum of the period of the third wave Sam Huntington called it has given way to what is commonly called and others have mentioned this already a democratic recession a recession that has three broad features the first is the failure of democratic transitions in many third wave and Arab Spring countries as well as backsliding countries as diverse as Thailand, Turkey, Hungary, Kenya, Azerbaijan and continuing problems of corruption and poor governance in Burma and that Burma and Venezuela which we'll be talking about later are two of these what the program calls trouble transitions the second is an authoritarian resurgence that is sharply in contrast to the period of the third wave Russia and China and other authoritarian countries are assaulting civil society blocking democracy assistance undermining democratic norms aggressively pushing alternative ideas keeping the world's democracies divided and on the defensive intellectually, politically and strategically and the third is a crisis of confidence and political dysfunction in the world's advanced democracies whose passivity has emboldened the opponents of liberal democracy which are rushing to fill the vacuums created by western paralysis and retreat the news is not all bad there have been some important gains the Nigerian elections last March the transition to Tunisia the defeat of Rajapaksa last January and last August last month in Sri Lanka it's also noteworthy that the number of electoral democracies as measured by Freedom House has really only marginally declined since the high point of 2005 so there's a debate as to whether the third reverse wave anything called that has actually happened I think we can call this current period in my own view a third reverse wave even if it doesn't go not like the first reverse wave with Nazism and so forth but it is a reverse wave in addition China and Russia and other authoritarian countries face their own very serious internal economic and political problems there's a good piece by Jerry Cohn in the Washington Post today about China's problems and not least democracy and civil society movements though they're under attack have remained resilient despite the harsh crackdowns the repressive NGO laws democracy activists today are more experienced and tech savvy than they used to be they're better organized and they're impressively fearless and tenacious there are many things that can and need to be done I could list more than ten but I'll only list five because I have limits of time I was inspired with Moses that's all right it's like Mel Brooks he had fifteen commandments he dropped one of the stones he had ten commandments well I got five the first is to provide sustained support to front-line activists who need to know that they're not alone in addition to financial and political support it's important to provide training and equipment for cyber security to civil society activists who are vulnerable to cyber attacks from autocratic regimes that are not as was once thought technologically challenged dinosaurs opposition civil society activists also need to start thinking now about governance challenges in the event that an unexpected breakthrough requires at least some of them to make the move from opposition activism to assuming government responsibilities and that was obviously a problem in Egypt second it's important to build international coalitions of democratic solidarity which I've withered in recent years and I like Sergio's point about the kind of organizations that have come together here working together but it has to be done on a much more ambitious scale we need to think about rebuilding transatlantic bonds to deal with Russia's trouble making and its weaponization of information and so is strengthening the inter-american democratic solidarity the silence the atmosphere on Venezuela's political repression and reckless international policies needs to end and I just want to note that Felipe Gonzalez has not been silent and that's terrific but he's also not a Latin American I mean you want to see more leaders in Latin America speaking out and they're not and so should the failure to criticize the Cuban dictatorship you said there's no support from outside the failure to criticize the Cuban dictatorship even in the new political context of restored US Cuban diplomatic relations this raises the third priority which is to regain the will to fight the political and intellectual battle for democratic values and ideas raising an intellectual banner does not come naturally to the so-called democracy support community which has become very operational and worried more about grants and evaluation reports than political threats but it's hard to see how an effective response to the authoritarian challenge to democracy can be mounted without the participation of key actors in the community of democracy support organizations many represented here in addition and this is the fourth point the democracy community needs to consider how the prospect for democracy in the world is affected by the weakening of US international leadership and engagement in my view a minimalist US foreign policy and I'm barring a term here from my friend Steve Sustanovich his book maximalism to use the term coined by Steve is not minimalism is not good American minimalism is not good for democracy and finally at a time when democratic gains are hard to come by it's important not to lower the bar and accept hybrid regimes as acceptable alternatives to dictatorship in Burma where the military shows no signs in my view of being ready to relinquish control and the standard for elections in November has been lowered from free and fair to inclusive and transparent and in Cuba where many people seem too ready to embrace what Osvaldo Paya before he was killed called a fraudulent change competitive authoritarianism is arguably marginally better than a full blown dictatorship but it's not democracy and if we appear to embrace it we're going to undermine the moral and political case for the democracy that we all support thank you thank you Carl I think if she would like to turn to the audience to ask if you have any direct experiences that reflect on the lessons Sergio talked about or you'd like to add that but I'd like to actually take the prerogative of the chair to just ask one question of I guess AABOR Sergio I guess you know an age old debate in political science about political change is whether agency or structure is more important the actions of individuals especially leaders versus the underlying structures in a society that seem to do so much to shape the political life your book is a deep dive into one side of that equation if you will and I'm curious as you talk to these leaders did you feel they were kidding themselves about the power of agency as some leaders are want to do or did you find yourself being persuaded that actually it is crucial in some context because keep in mind that one of the differences between the transitions of the 80s and 90s and some of the frustrating context and of course some would argue that the underlying structural conditions from before were better in Central Europe or South America than they are in Egypt or Burma or elsewhere and so that seems to weigh in as well what's your impression of that AABOR good and fundamental question to focus on the role of leaders and therefore of agency is not to deny the relevance of structural conditions but it is to suggest and certainly I think we began with the instinct and came away from the exercise all the more convinced that the qualities and decisions made by people at the apex of political authority make a difference in various kinds of situations now of course to rely on the memory of a political actor as to what he or she did at some point in the past is not a perfect testimony of absolute truth there are all sorts of reasons why one should have some suspicion on the other hand on the whole these statements by these leaders in response to our probing questions struck us as having the ring of authenticity we'll be very interested to see what readers think as they go through the same material I can't in the time available make a convincing statement as to why we were compelled by a lot of this but I think I'll take one example just to make the point or maybe two one certainly was a case that Sergio knows intimately as an actor and which I knew reasonably well as an analyst and there are people in the room who know a lot about that is the case of Chile we had the opportunity to interview both Ilwyn and Lagos people who played different roles in that long history and we did not we interviewed Ilwyn first and Lagos later but we did not repeat to anybody what somebody else said these were one on one situations but it was fascinating to me without the same kind of involvement that Sergio had that Patricio Ilwyn explained to us a significant issue in the Chilean transition and his own view and the fact that that view was not shared by many other important actors and he mentioned Lagos specifically and said Ricardo Lagos didn't accept this point of view and he then explained Lagos' position without interviewed Lagos and without mentioning the Ilwyn interview he went to the same issue and talked about it in terms if not absolutely congruent tremendously overlapping with what Ilwyn had said and he described in terms that Ilwyn would have not what the issue was and why they saw it differently and he basically came to the conclusion which he expressed in so many words that looking back Ilwyn was right about that so this is not a guy kidding himself this is a guy who is saying you know on the issue of accepting the legitimacy of the 1980 constitution for the purposes of contesting the 1988 plebiscite a lot of us in the opposition thought recognizing the legitimacy of the plebiscite meant recognizing the legitimacy of the regime and we weren't going there but Ilwyn stubbornly insisted this is the only way to impose that challenge and of course I don't think the 1980 constitution was legitimate but as he said when the policeman stops a speeder on my street what authority does he have it all goes back to the fact that there is a rule of law and that there is a government and we recognize that in practical terms let's get over it and recognize it for the purpose of this election I took a lot of time to do that one but there are numerous statements made in these interviews that really give you a sense for how and why decisions were made that really do seem to have had consequences and where the alternative to the decisions that were made might very well have led to different consequences and I think that it's worth reflecting and it's not in fashion I made a comment about this when I make my introductory remarks it's not in fashion in contemporary comparative politics where you want such data and comparability that the factor of human decision and agency gets factored out but it's not that way in real life and it's worth learning from the experience Carl, you wanted to add to that then I want to come to that I would like to just say something brief the first thing is that and Huntington anticipated this that we're dealing with much more difficult situations today he said it at the end of the third wave that you're dealing with the remaining Marxist-Leninist governments you're dealing with Islam you're dealing with East Asia it's much more difficult but having said that in difficult circumstances agency can be very interesting and important we'll see how it plays out in Burma with Aung San Suu Kyi but I have to tell you that it would be good for her to read this book in my view because there are no in the NLD coalition today in the elections there's no Muslims there's no minorities there are no people from the 88 generation one other example that's really really interesting Tunisia had better circumstances to work with than any other country in the Arab world small, very oriented to Europe and so forth but I would really look at the role of somebody like Rashid Janoushi the leader of the Nahadah party I mean it's remarkable and read what he said and the role he played is critical in trying to reconcile very very divisive forces and the suspicion between the secularists and the Islamists I've talked to a lot of secularist Tunisians who you know said you can't trust any of them and yet he played an incredibly constructive role and I think that needs to be looked at very carefully as to why so far the Tunisian transition has succeeded I'd like to take one or two questions from the audience before we add some of the case studies to it over here, right here if you could introduce yourself to the group and then go ahead moving forward to the beginning of the book I'm Jim Michael, I'm a consultant these days Hi I wondered about the duration in which the individuals that you interviewed were in influential positions because you've described this as a gradual process with a lot of small steps some of these I know Ricardo Lagos was active for a long time Felipe Gonzales but then Zedillo for the period of the Sextenio and that's all you get in Mexico and I wonder if you had any generalizations about the way individuals can engage over the period of time that is necessary for a transition to occur and at the same time retain values and principles and not get caught up in the level of power Let me take one more I see Mark Schneider here would like to add a comment Tiffany, right there on your right Mark Thank you Mark Schneider International Crisis Group before that other things The discussion really is fascinating I had three questions that came to mind One was the distinction between how do you get to a transition and how do you sustain a transition and here it does seem to me that the issue of institution building is critical in sustaining and particularly the second is Sergio mentioned the issue of transitional justice which we didn't hear a lot about but it does seem to me that in terms of sustaining experiences that when we fail to do that and fail to establish institutions of justice those transitions are very fragile and vulnerable and the third is I heard a difference of opinion between Carl and the and Sergio on the question of gradualism of seeing the opening of space in an authoritarian regime and taking advantage of it and moving but not gaining the full nature of democratic values and institutions that we all want but that may be the only way that you begin to build that process Can you just choose the best bits that you have something to say and you don't feel you have to be systematic because that was a lot of questions because I want to get to Priscilla and Moises Sure and I very much want to hear what they have to say I think Mark you're breaking it down into different stages you'll find that it corresponds with how we develop our argument we talk about four different stages and I very much agree with your point you'll see it made with examples in the last chapter I you know when asked oneself I mean I was trained to do this in my 20s by a mentor ask yourself every day what surprised you and you'll learn a lot by just asking yourself one of the things that surprised me was how convincing I found this argument for gradualism over the course of these various interviews I mean we're all familiar with one case or another where the critique has been made that those who were involved in these transitions gave away too much in not insisting and this I mean this is an issue in Brazil in Chile in Mexico in Poland in Indonesia in Spain it's everywhere and I really was surprised as I went through the preparation for the interviews how that argument for not grasping too far too fast held up and I'll be very interested to see how others react to it just on Mr. Michael's point these people did play very different roles as I said at the outset and some of them were involved in different stages and so on I might take advantage of your questions since you mentioned Cedillo to just mention that one of the contributions of this book is precisely that there is an extended interview with Ernesto Cedillo about his role in the opening of the Mexican political system in fact he has never granted anyone an interview on that subject and it was not easy to get him to agree to this interview but ultimately he did agree and as is characteristic of his approach once he agreed he was totally cooperative and disciplined about it we had a three hour conversation absolutely uninterrupted absolutely focused and very interesting in terms of neither exaggerating nor minimizing the importance of steps he took in that process that made a big difference in Mexican history we need to move on to our other two speakers to bring them in I had the idea on this panel of bringing in two contemporary cases of one attempted transition one sort of back sliding case or case in trouble of Venezuela and I thought very contrasting and so I've asked Priscilla to say in a sense hearing this reading a bit about the work perspective of we're living through this attempted transition right now in Myanmar, Burma and what strikes you well I've thought a lot about this framework even before I read your pieces because I happened to have written a study for the US Institute of Peace that was published in April of this year that comes up with many of the same elements of transition analyzing what has been happening for the last 20 years in Burma, Myanmar it's remarkable to me how much similarity there is between the two models and if you look at Myanmar in the context of the elements that these two authors have brought out in their interviews you can see that it's these are all present in Myanmar but at a much earlier stage the countries that you were looking at are much farther along both economically and politically and intellectually in terms of understanding democratic governance than Burma and I think that we tend to overestimate the capability there and that we have developed outsized expectations of how quickly a society that is so backward has been repressed for so long can move into democratic governance and I think that this framework helps us if we can look at it in this framework it helps us understand what the hurdles are and it's not going to be a straight line forward it's going to zig-zag and it's going to take a long time even for the democracy advocates a long time democracy advocates to develop democratic practices they've never done this before yes they were democracy activists for many many years but they weren't allowed to practice they were repressed so it's the first chance they've had to try and practice democracy and this is an authoritarian society it's a patrimonial state it is run by an oligarchy that is heavily military and military cronies they control the economy they control the political system but they have open space now for political dialogue they have open space for diversities there's enormous ethnic diversity in the country and they have to begin equalizing that they've begun doing that for the first time in 50 years actually more than 50 years because even during the democratic years they shut the ethnic minorities out and it was still a very patrimonial society in those days so they're at a very early stage and I think that we don't fully appreciate how early it is and we have we have projected our expectations because the turnaround was so unexpected in 2011 we developed this idea of how fast it would go forward and how much would be achieved in five years and I think it's unfair to judge where they are now by our expectations I think we need to be much more careful about this especially with the NLD now I just don't agree with Carl there were Muslim candidates put forward but they were disqualified by the Union Election Commission the NLD Muslim candidates they have several members of the 88th generation among their candidates but not the famous ones that Carl's talking about they had an 88th generation member in the parliament who was elected in 2012 and he's a prominent, he's on the Central Executive Committee of the NLD now and they have enormous ethnic diversity in the party because in the ethnic states where they're running in almost all of the constituencies they're running ethnic minorities and I've been around to those states I've met with these people it's all local people so you cannot project the NLD today as as only representing Aung San Suu Kyi and I think many people outside do that she's yes she's authoritarian in many ways but that's the way the society is and the people even expect it but I think that this is an excellent way to analyze where they should be going and how rapidly we can expect them to go now let me just point out the three major challenges I see in your terms in terms of your analysis first is military-civilian relations this is very much in the grip of the military and they're beginning to work on military-civilian relations and they're beginning to debate how soon the military should step back and develop some timelines for that they're beginning to talk about what role, how the civilians can begin to assume some of the roles that the military is doing now it needs to go faster it could benefit a lot from conversations with us and with other other democracies around the world but we've shut them off because of our esteemed congress the economy as I said earlier is in the grips of oligarchs who are either military-former military leaders or military cronies and that has to change they have to open up the economy so that more people can benefit from the wealth that is flowing into the country and finally they need to develop much better inclusiveness for the many, many minority nationalities in the country minority ethnic groups that process is under way they have been negotiating a ceasefire and even before the next governments in place I believe they're going to wind up moving into a political dialogue with them and these are very good that is a very good sign at any rate there's another government coming elections are being held in early November it's going to be a very unstable period for the next few months we'll see where we are in six months thank you Priscilla Tristina Moises turn to you so thank you as I was reading the book I was lamenting how how long it takes to research and write and publish a great book and this is a great book full of insights and smart observations and very useful prescriptions but there is also a book that essentially centers on interviews with leaders that were in charge of transitions in the 90s and early 2000s and it's not that what it says is wrong is that what it doesn't include is too much too much of what has already gone on too much there is a lot of changes if you think about the dynamics that shaped the Spanish transition that Felipe Gonzales talked about and you think about how the world today in terms of connectivity and activism and international setting and the geopolitical rivalries you know it's not that what Felipe Gonzales says is not right is that there is a lot that it's missing if you want to think about the current world so I was very happy when I heard both Sergio and Abe and the president of Idea say that they are thinking about the next book we need the next book that has the same very smart approach about these things as I was thinking about I was asked to think about Venezuela and it's how do we apply that framework to Venezuela and I think it's highly applicable but I also because I did that I applied the 10 imperatives that you mentioned that I found very useful then I said well what else would have to be done in Venezuela today so and I think this is going beyond Venezuela there is such an extreme case in so many ways that I think it's an interesting example interesting case study applies to a broader set of countries one other thing that is happening lately is the growing importance of looking democratic even if you're not so stealthy autocrats stealthy dictatorships are becoming fashionable common and very hard to analyze with the tools that we have I was reminded in the 1970s I think V.S. Naipo a very well-known treated the Indian author went to Argentina and he wrote an essay in which he talked about institutions in inverted commas inverted commas is his very British way of referring to quotation marks he says well I went to Argentina Argentina has everything that an advanced democracy has it has institutions and it has a minister of education and it has courts and it has the military and it has political parties it has everything except that all of these institutions are in quotation marks because they don't really work or they don't really work in the way we expect them to work so the minister of education doesn't really do what a minister of education should do the police doesn't behave in ways that we expect the police in a democracy to work and so the military so as I was thinking about the case of Venezuela Venezuela is a as I said is a great example of this stealthy democracy countries with inverted commas around their institution so Venezuela has elections Venezuela has a division of powers there is an independent national assembly and there is an independent judiciary and there is an independent media there is an independent private sector there is an independent oil industry and independent central back and independent go down the list and then put quotation marks in every one of those because none of those are really independence and they are not independent in a very stealthy way the media for example the government will tell you that there is a bunch of independent television stations privately owned newspapers and radios the small detail is that a lot of those media companies have been recently purchased by investors it so happens that the day after those independent investors bought those properties the editorial line changed and they became completely complacent in favor of the government they are not independent they are essentially appendixes of the government then the same happens with the judiciary and everything else and as you know this is not just happening in Venezuela this is happening around the world you can see it in Russia now when Russia invades a country it doesn't send their armed forces it sends an NGO so now we invade countries and NGOs what I am referring to of course as you know is that Crimea was invaded by nationalists or by militants that in fact were members of the Russian armed forces but except that they disguised that so again the stealthy behavior to look democratic and look respectful of international standard and all that has become a very important priority in a lot of these traditions the second point that I missed there is the growing importance of another invisible power that is shaping these transitions and those as crime we have a growing evidence of the importance of what I once called mafia states you know can you really understand the behavior of Russia and the Kremlin both domestically internationally without incorporating criminal behavior and the criminal activities Burma Myanmar can you really understand the behavior of the oligarchy that is in power and controls the economy without talking about drug trafficking and corruption at a large scale or in the case of Venezuela of course and so on so crime and mafia states and governments that take over mafias not to stamp them out but is essentially to and to run them to their benefits of their friends family and others then there is of course a thorny case of oil in your sample of nine countries the only country that you had that it's more or less an oil exporting country where oil plays an important role is Mexico but oil you know that continues to be a major determinant of dictatorships we don't have a lot of examples an oil exporting country that has transitioned from monarchy or autocracy or dictatorship to a democracy and Venezuela happens to be an oil exporting country so there is that dimension and so I think that's very important in the next book because I think that's about to change I predict that in the next decade or so these oil exporting countries are going to be more vulnerable to regime changes and in the past as you know this is based on some assumptions about oil prices but if the current new normal for oil prices stabilizes around where it is now a lot of these countries are going to undergo very deep adjustments in their economies that are going to have political consequences and perhaps create some of the conditions that you outline in there in the book I ran out of time but I would have mentioned the importance of social media of course which is not that present in the book and plays important roles civil society the growing middle classes that are full of expectations aspirations and are better informed, better connected better educated, better fed and no more about what their rights are and then finally I do think that in all of these cases you mentioned the guys with guns requirement you know the importance of incorporating and dealing with the military, the police and the intelligence services I think those are the three well the problem with that assumption is that you the assumption is that that's a monolith again is the inverted commas situation is that you assume that the military is the military but it so happens in a lot of those countries you don't have a military, you don't have a police you have factions within the military that compete with each other and very rarely are these highly unified cohesive well integrated actors and therefore that's both good and bad but I think it's part of the reality and finally I want to mention that the role of a foreign power is not a very important factor in any of your case studies with a probable example of Poland in your sample of countries all the other countries that you had had a transition that was essentially driven by domestic forces and by domestic realities in the case of Venezuela which is what you asked me to talk about it's impossible to talk about any transition we are talking about Cuba you know you can query and quibble about how important is Cuba in today's Venezuela some will say that no important decision is taken in Venezuela without the Cubans having a role others will just say well no Cuba is very important you know Cuba gets a hundred thousand barrels of oil for free every day so you would assume that the best and the brightest of the Cubans elite and intelligent services are very keen in ensuring that what happens in Venezuela continues to be a regime that guarantees them a hundred thousand barrels of oil for free per day so it doesn't matter but which side you take either Cuba is in charge of Venezuela or Cuba is very important but this is a very good example of what happens when you have a foreign power occupying or playing a very important role and there was very little of that other than that is a great book okay the only problem with asking my sister to speak last is he always you can be sure he's going to raise a number of fundamental issues to keep us going and it's 527 or 528 we're close to the end but I want to give the audience a chance to just pose one or two more thoughts or questions let me take you here this gentleman and then I see here and then we're going to need to finish up we're really and we've got a reception downstairs I have a chance to get at the panel through that yes we go ahead and please be brief very brief yes thank you Marcelo de Jesús from Argentina I was thinking if when you talk about transitions you think in transiting from military governments to civilian governments and this doubt that I have in my mind is because some civilian governments at least in Latin America are elected an exercise power in a very disappointed way they for example believe in the separation of powers as long as congress and the judges rule in their favor so this is a way of cheating in other occasions we think that new elections can bring a new breath for democracies and I was thinking in what Mr. Naim was saying about thinking in militaries in different fractions in my view sometimes we should think in politicians as a whole as a one class so it doesn't matter if you have elections or not because the opposing parties will do exercise power in the same way that the previous government so my first question is should we think in different way transitioning from authoritarian governments to very democratic governments in not just simply militaries civilian governments we're going to have no sorry only one bite of the sample it's so late thank you Marcel sir thank you very much I'm Ronald McLean from Bolivia I was very much involved in the transition from the military to democracy in the early 80s in Bolivia and I am intrigued because many of the interview people that you interview are the champions and the heroes of the transitions but it takes two to tango I wonder you know if you interviewed or you explored what is the other side to because there has to be a willing other side of the Ancien regime willing or to seek power to go through a transition and in the case of Bolivia it was very interesting what happened there because military president actually was very much part involved with it and then he became years later the candidate and president democratic elected president so my question is have you explored what are the actors who were the actors how did they behave from the side of the old Ancien regime so to speak to allow peaceful and successful transition okay maybe I give you one minute to finish the session but like I say there's a reception downstairs right afterwards they'll all be there but go ahead so very rapidly in the spirit of that instruction we do not define this as transition from military to civilian rule the military is an instrument of different kinds of authoritarian regimes so it just is not a correct reading of what we did with respect to your question with exactly the same mentality of your question one of our interviews is FWD Clerk in South Africa one is Jerry Rawlings in Ghana who went from being a military dictator himself to playing an important role in the opening of Ghana's democratic system which as far as I'm concerned made the point that one does not have to be a democrat to play a role in a democratic transition and that might apply in several other places and Kvashnevsky who was with the communist regime and Siddio who is with the pre are also examples so that's part of what we did and Habibi who was the vice president to Suharto Suharto was driven away by the crowds in the street Suharto probably expected Habibi to resign but he didn't resign and in what was to me one of the most fascinating of the situations we looked at he managed in a period of 48 hours to make himself legitimized by the national congress and to secure the absolute loyalty of the head of the armed forces and thus to establish two pillars with which in the course of the next few weeks he changed the rules of Indonesian politics it was really an astonishing story so and finally I've known Moises a long time and always enjoy his intelligence and wit. Except this time and I've also been around panel discussions and have done my share of commenting on papers and it's always tempting to talk about the things that weren't done I do think Moises to suggest that we looked at the armed forces as coherent entities without understanding their factions is a very skimpy reading of the text I began my academic reputation in this city by studying the role of the Dominican armed forces in the 1960s and my point was that it was confusing to talk about them as the armed forces as if they were a coherent military national security institution they were organized competing bands of plunder with uniforms and we certainly understand and that's part of what this is all about is that skillful political leaders facing with different kinds of situations will learn from experiences in places where similar things have come up I think ultimately the test of whether this book is useful is is there a better way from tapping into the experience of people who've actually played important roles in moving a country from an authoritarian to a democratic system and there is a shelf of books some of which I've contributed to the Journal of Democracies contributed a lot there's all sorts of stuff but very little that actually taps into what people who had to make decisions how they thought about it and if it's useful to tap into that experience then this is a book worth consulting alright thank you Abe let's thank our hardworking panelists as I mentioned