 I'm going to be talking about what democracy is and actually what did we do, what did we do, what did we do? And what is it that's, what is the international or donor dimension of this backlash against democracy? And why do we see this backlash against democracy from the donor side? And I'm going to be arguing in this 15 minutes that part of the reason for that is that we conflated governance with democracy and I'm going to end kind of on a normative note with a plea for all of us as researchers and in the international donor community to actually continue or to beef up democracy assistance for the sake of democracy. So that's what I'm going to be doing. This is where we start. This was 19, Berlin Wall fell in 1989, seems like, well it was a different century, a different millennia and that's what it feels like. Times were extremely optimistic also in the donor community in terms of what democracy assistance could do and could accomplish for democracy at large. I think we have to remember that this was, it was a very, very short period and I think the period is over. And it was very significant, I mean we saw a significant rise in democracy assistance and support to democracy around the world. So of course the European accession policies were the most important but also in Sub-Saharan Africa. And I think, yes, some of it was very naive and this idea that we had sort of reached like the most naive is of course Francis Fukuyama who's long retracted this statement of course but you know, there you go, if you published it, you published it and the world was not, this is not where we ended. And just to sort of exactly as Danielle was saying in terms of our project some years ago, for a long time we've been grappling with this idea that democracy is just going one way. You know, you avoid an erosion, you avoid a coup, you go from a transition period and then at some point it institutionalizes and it becomes consolidated. And this idea that it's going in one direction and that was very, very strong at this time. It's very, very significant and which has really been informing a lot of the theories that we've been working with, which of course now has to change. So before we go into the democratic, the backlash against democracy or democratic erosion, what do we actually know about democracy assistance as such? I think, first of all, I want to say we know quite a bit. There has been a lot of research in the area of the effects of democracy assistance. If I was going to be a little bit coy, I could say that considering the amount of money in terms of the total aid budget, the amount of money that's going to democracy aid, it's amazing how it has been scrutinized and how it has been evaluated and how critically it has been evaluated. And I'm not saying the miniscule part of, you know, economic part it is of the entire aid budget, but actually so we do know a lot and we have worked, we have looked at this a lot. But having said that, it's also hard, it's enormously hard to evaluate the effects of democracy assistance. First of all, you know, it is interchanged with everything else. Even if you try to isolate that, let's say, you know, you evaluate democracy assistance to a country, so okay, parliamentary politics are really going down the drain, the parliament, you know, the parliament is its sideline in every discussion. On the other hand, elections are going forward or the media, support to media is going forward. So how do you evaluate that? I think with democracy, it doesn't move in a straightforward direction, which makes it really difficult to evaluate. And I think that's, you know, the enormous amount of evaluation carried out and the complexity of it is something that I think we maybe haven't considered enough. I would argue that it has worked and it does work. It works when it's long-term, well-designed and owned by the partners. That includes the international donors. So basically, it's really about sticking to the guns. But as Sarah Bush's book, so eloquently put it, it didn't tame dictators. It doesn't tame dictators. I don't think democracy or democracy system necessarily solves corruption. And I think we have to realize that this is the goal, the goal of democracy is the goal that gives when it comes into conflict with something else as development. I think this is one of the key, these are some of the key findings from our book some years back. So then don't think that you need to read this. This is just kind of an illustration of the various terms that we use out there. So is it, you know, deconsolidation? Is it erosion? Is it backsliding? Is it backlash? Is it, what are the terms? There's a lot of argument out there. What is it that we are seeing now? First of all, I think I just want to say that what we're looking at in the world today is a very, very different kind of sort of a democratic backlash because it doesn't really happen as, you know, as a 1974 with a military coup or something. It's a very much of a sort of a slow, slow burning process and where some elements of democracy may thrive and others are sort of systematically undermined. What I'm focusing on and which is the far right corner, which is our, the research that we are focusing on is a little bit more specific because we're looking at specific deliberate attempts to, you know, to actually roll back or reduce democratic rights gained by political elites. So we're not really looking at attitudinal data. We're looking at political elites and how they work to sort of deliberately sort of take away democratic rights gained. And in this game, international donors play both an active and a passive part. So that's what I will be talking a bit about now. So this is, okay, so here's the data. You all know this. You all know the idea of reports, the VDEM data, Freedom House, you know, seven to eight year in a row, you know, showing a democratic decline in the world. Well, I spent the last year looking at this data for Africa, looking at about, what is it, like 38 different data sets on different dimensions of democracy, look, you know, evaluating or measuring democracy. So what I want to say is that in terms of Africa, we actually know surprisingly that the data is surprisingly weak. There are so many gray zones and so many countries, so many African countries that are not part of these global data sets for, and, and there are so many sort of, basically gray areas. And that's one big issue for us working on Africa. The other is that the data is going in many different directions. There are some countries performing better. Some countries are clearly, democracy is eroding and there are serious attempts to, you know, really erode the rights of people from governments. And then we see, but it's also when democracy is decomposed into its sort of various rights dimension, we see it more clearly. So I think elections. I'm not going to talk a lot about that because Nick's coming after me. This is an area that's been clearly maybe the most institutionalized. It's also the area of democracy where international donors have been the most involved. And I think there's a book coming out now, Electoral Politics in Africa since 1990 by Jamie and Nick van der Waal who was also part of this project that actually, so the data book shows that stagnation is probably more the general perspective than a backlash or, you know, a kind of a move forward. But again, that's when you put all of Africa together. I think one of the real issues here is the effects on NGOs and organizational rights. This is an area where we really see a very deliberate attempt to take away rights that have been granted. And it is, I'm just giving examples from four countries, different ways of targeting NGOs, NGOs that were formed in the aftermath and as part of this democracy assistance. What is very noticeable in the data that we've been collecting for this research project is that we're talking about NGOs. We're really not talking about civil society. It's not the churches. It's not necessarily the trade unions, the teachers' unions, economics associations. Sometimes it's the law society, in the case of Zambia. We could talk more about that. But it's very much the NGOs. The civil society entity that was born in the democracy assistance era in the 1990s, these are the organizations attacked by the new laws. And it has a great effect. This new study came from a colleague of mine, Kendra Dupri and Simh Prakash, shows that there is actually, when these laws are implemented, aid is reduced by 32%. And why is that? Because so much of democracy assistance, so much aid is channeled through civil society. And so this becomes game over in many, many instances in terms of development aid. So this is a very conscious strategy. And this is where we really see a democratic backlash. Another element that's not very much talked about and that worries me, and this is where Africa comes out with the most great spots and is as really neglected in global data set is on judicial independence, the role of courts. To me, this is probably where the battle over democracy is going to stand in the next decade. And I really worry that first of all, Africa is not well equipped in this regard. There's so little funding going into the judiciary. There's so weak training, it's politicized. And also, we really lack good data on this one. So moving then to, what is then this international dimension? I think it is fair to say that there is a strong sense of an African democracy fatigue in the international donor community. I'm challenging Marina, and after you've been working on this, if I'm right about that, that's my sense. And my other sense is that the millennium development goals really changed the way we think about democracy. And even aid to governance became very technocratic. And a dialogue of rights and human rights and political reform was replaced by a more sort of efficiency report and the sort of a culture of efficiency and like the Rwandan civic service that had this culture of efficiency, that became a governance and then an argument for giving democracy support. And I think then it is fair to say, and here I'm quoting Rita Abrahamson's book saying, that donors have become complicit in kind of fostering development without democracy. And I think we can say that democracy has become technocratic in a sense. So, why is this happened? Well, I'm putting up, this is my, so I'm doing actually quite a while on time, Daniel, I think this is part of the problem. And I think this is where I want to sort of end my presentation. The problem is, and it goes back to 1990s because it really never was about democracy. It was about governance. And it was about, there was political conditionality and there was economic conditionality and the economic aspect was what dealt with the governance aspect. And the countries we've known from early 90s, countries receiving aid could always play these up against each other. I think that was the biggest problem made, was that democracy was conflated with governance. I don't think that we should expect that democracy, necessarily rule of law, elections, free media and civil society, these are all incredibly important elements for checking government. But democracy has a kind of a mechanism for solving other development issues. I think that's where we went wrong. That democracy didn't become a value in and of itself. It was a means for something else. And when that mean, and we didn't reach that mean, when there wasn't less corruption, then it was the fault of democracy. And I think this is where we need to start a new discussion. And we need to start a new discussion about the value of democracy in and of itself. And we need to do that not only for our development aid, but we need to do it for ourselves. I think Freedom House studied really well last year. When in universal values and international law are cast aside, global affairs are governed by force. Democracy is important in our development work, in our daily lives. And I think we need to start a new debate and a new discussion on the value of democracy in and of itself. And that is where I want to end my talk. I promise I would end on a normative note. Thank you. Thanks for the time.