 and the democracy community, there is a recognition that political participation is a human right. There's an element of democracy that has intrinsic value that contributes to human development, independent of any economic development, independent of any direct impact on economic development. Some donors such as the Swedish Sida define poverty in a way that's really about citizens and people having expanding choices, whether that be through greater economic access to greater economic resources, having more options to participate in economic life, but equally recognizing that kind of expanding a person's choice includes having greater political voice and greater political participation. So I think there's, as a starting point, I would say that I think there is a strong feeling by many in the donor community that you shouldn't only look at democracy support for its instrumental value in contributing to economic development, that it is in fact part of human development and that when you look at poverty it's really about constraining choice and alleviating poverty is about expanding choice for people in their daily lives and that includes both economic participation and political participation. But even after that, if you look at it from a more instrumental perspective, I think there are a couple of things. Over the long term, democratic institutions provide a stability and resilience that authoritarian systems lack. I think there are, you know, there is the possibility of having stronger short-term economic growth if the leader can unilaterally make economic reforms without any need for consultation and participation. But I think oftentimes the result is kind of an illusory stability that looks extremely stable until the regime collapses. So I think there's a, in looking at kind of the resilience and the sustainability of economic development over the long term, I think democracy contributes to that stability. And so that's an important point. But I think also in terms of having a vibrant marketplace and an engaged citizenry, I mean, you know, it involves engagement by people in the decisions that affect their lives, that affect the country. I think kind of the type of engaged citizenry that thrives under democracy also is much more productive. There is sometimes an argument that, you know, people will refer to the alternative Chinese model or authoritarian capitalism. You know, I think there are lots of examples of very strong sustained economic development in even relatively new democracies. If you look at what Indonesia has accomplished for its citizens since the Sogarto era, in terms of both expanding political participation and economic participation and economic growth, it's amazing. You know, it may be possible to sustain similar or higher levels of growth in non-democracies, but again, I would question the long-term sustainability. There's also a corruption angle, I think, in systems that lack accountability mechanisms, both vertical and horizontal. I think, you know, the corruption, which impacts the sustainability of foreign investment, which is often a much bigger driver of economic development than actual aid. I mean, I think all of those things also contribute to the business climate and kind of the ability to attract international investment in long-term development. So this is a question that's been debated in the academic literature for a long time, but I think there's increasing evidence to suggest that over the long term the contribution of democracy to economic development exists, but even more importantly, I think if you take the broad view of human development and not just look at a single macroeconomic indicator of human development, there's no question that democracy has to be a big part of that. From the practitioner experience that we've had with respect to parliamentary strengthening, I guess in my presentation I tried to make four kind of main points. The first is just thinking through the dynamics of parliamentary reform. It needs to be treated essentially as a political process rather than as a technocratic exercise. I think sometimes within the donor community there's a tendency to, you know, want a nice development, a log frame, particularly for people that have come perhaps from an economic development kind of background. And the reality is that political reform rarely happens according to a five-year log frame for a project. It has to be domestically driven. There's a political cycle in a country, oftentimes there are political scandals that may create opportunities for reform. So just being very aware that kind of parliamentary reform, whether you're talking about that in the context of the developed West or a transitional democracy, often involves kind of many different actors and involves the media, it involves civil society, competing political parties, and it can sometimes be, you know, a very sometimes messy political process rather than something that proceeds according to a nice donor developed log frame. So that's one point that I make. Secondly, I think it's important to kind of look at the question of parliamentary strengthening within a larger political system. I think sometimes there's a tendency by donors to kind of look at an institution, how can they strengthen it with respect to training and the like. Parliaments around the world play different roles, play different roles in the political system, face different challenges internally and externally. So I think it's important that when a parliamentary development program is designed that you do so in the context of a larger political analysis and that, you know, sometimes a parliamentary strengthening program may involve working with the media on covering parliament, may involve working with civil society group on monitoring parliament, may involve work with parliamentary candidates on a debates program prior to the elections. And so kind of thinking outside a very siloed institutional box, I think, is also very important. I think it's also important to look at how we engage with members of parliament, politicians in any country of the world. It's a very specific audience, and you have to engage with parliamentarians in a respectful way that recognizes their electoral mandates that they don't like to be trained particularly by the donor community. So I think it's important that in designing a parliamentary strengthening project it's really a process of accompanying the partners, a process of, you know, sharing comparative experience from around the world from places that are relevant, but doing so in a way that kind of responds to their political needs, their political timetable, I think sometimes programs that have done, you know, standalone trainings on oversight techniques or, you know, constituency relations in the abstract sometimes have limited impact and even more so, for example, parliamentary strengthening programs that will just do the procurement of a voting system and expect that behavioral automatically changes the results. So I think it's a process of engagement back and forth of accompanying partners. And it really takes kind of an on-the-ground presence to build the relationships of trust and confidence with politicians to actually get at some of the core problems rather than just treating symptoms perhaps. Other lesson learned is kind of the importance of focusing not on a specific rule reform or on a specific institutional reform within the legislature for a couple of reasons. One, I think, you know, specific changes in the parliament's rules, the content of particular laws, all that really has to be driven by kind of domestic political actors and has to emerge from the process. I think it's important to kind of focus on kind of the issues of kind of power relationships and kind of what the political culture is. So instead of simply buying a voting system or doing a standalone training and seeing what can be done to, again, accompany partners as they kind of develop a more democratic culture. So that may be working on issues of cross-party dialogue. And sometimes, you know, again, trusted international actors can be helpful in providing a neutral space for parties that are often engaged in conflict to kind of get access to international best practice and sort out solutions. So kind of sometimes it's as simple as helping convene or inform cross-party dialogue. But I think ultimately the things that contribute to stronger parliaments often involves as much kind of the norms of political behavior, the culture, the way in which kind of parties treat other parties as maybe political adversaries but as colleagues also that respect the institution of the legislature. And so kind of focusing on trying to build over a long-term time horizon a more democratic political culture rather than focusing too narrowly on a specific kind of process change that the international community might, in the abstract, like to see. NBI's model has always been to kind of, you know, recognize that no democracy is perfect, that it's, every country in the world can do things to strengthen their own democratic process. And that it isn't, it's never a question of exporting particular models. But that's that I think, you know, people that are in this journey of democratic development can often learn from experiences. And, you know, sometimes that experience is South-South, sometimes it's North-South, sometimes it's South-North. You know, at NBI we did a study mission that brought together some of the political party leaders in Northern Ireland and brought them to South Africa to learn from South Africa's transition experience. And I think a lot of parties to the Good Friday accorded still cite kind of their discussions with South Africans about their transition, their discussions with President Mandela. I think we're very helpful as they kind of look to resolve some of their conflicts. So it's not a question of, you know, assistance from kind of developed democracies to less developed democracies, but I think it's more kind of what we try and support is a conversation among kind of democratic actors that are trying to deal with common problems, whether that's political finance, certainly an issue in the U.S., whether it's improving parliamentary transparency. We just convened a conference of organizations that are working on more open government to expand that conversation to include more open parliaments. And, you know, it was a situation where the Sunlight Foundation, the U.S. NGO, is pushing very hard on issues of parliamentary transparency or U.S. congressional transparency could share their experiences and also learn from the experiences of parliamentary monitoring organizations that are doing similar work around the world. So it's definitely more facilitating exchange and dialogue than providing assistance. I think that there are more flat platforms that engage kind of what people might call more developed democracies or transitional democracies on a level playing field. For example, there's an intergovernmental organization called the Community of Democracies that includes both transitional democracies, longstanding democracies. And, again, it's designed to kind of show democratic solidarity among democratic countries, regardless of the level of development, and to share that with countries in transition or countries that, you know, where there may be democratic activists in very closed system that need support from the international community. And just that moral support, that kind of democratic solidarity is very important. There's also something called the Open Government Partnership that was an initiative of eight different countries. It's currently chaired by Brazil. But, again, that's a situation where, you know, countries like U.K., which is the next chair, or the U.S. or Mexico or Brazil, kind of collectively work together to advance open government share strategies. So, again, it's not a question of, you know, assistance provider and assistance recipient. It's just all governments have to deal with these challenges. And I think there's an increasing number of fora that allow governments and political actors to share that experience kind of without any distinction between provider and recipient. So, under the Community of Democracies Initiative, there are a number of countries that are a part of the Community of Democracies Initiative that are supporting kind of countries that are in transition through the Community of Democracies mechanism. So there is a certain amount of financial support that's being provided to facilitate that sharing and that learning. But, again, it's kind of on a more flat playing field because I think, again, all countries, you know, even the most long-standing democracies can do a lot to strengthen their own internal democracies. And so just making sure that that, you know, you can have a dialogue that recognizes that and you can all learn from each other. Democracies can learn from each other. It's important that that happen kind of in all sorts of directions. South-South, South-North, North-South. I think a lot of Western democracies developed in a very different historical era. And I think some of the newer innovations in parliamentary development are happening in institutions that have less historical baggage and are less tradition bound. So, you know, there are experiments with, for example, the Parliament in Uganda using SMS as a way of kind of engaging citizens and doing constituency relations. So, you know, I think there are lots of innovations out there that are transferable, the Brazilian experience with citizen participation. There's a lot of excellent examples of citizen engagement by the legislature and engaging citizens, allowing kind of citizen input into the process that can be shared. So, I think there is, there's no doubt that there's a lot of information to be transferred and shared. Of course, it always needs to be adapted to the local context. People have to have the freedom to, you know, adopt the models that work for them. But there's no doubt that we all have a lot to learn from each other. On the scalability question, maybe there I would provide a bit of a contrarian response by questioning whether that should be the right question. I think sometimes donors are looking for a silver bullet that they can magically scale up and solve the world's problems. And sometimes, you know, democracy happens at the small scale. It's not about a huge program. It's about lots of different groups of citizens participating in the process. And so, the goals shouldn't necessarily be, you know, finding an idea that can be scaled up for donors to roll out in lots of countries. It shouldn't be kind of, you know, what works best in a particular context, what responds to the needs of local citizens, you know, where is their buy-in for a project. And sometimes the most effective investments a donor can make are really small scale. Sometimes the small scale interventions are things that are sustainable that can be sustained with local resources in a developing economy much more easily. So, I think the question shouldn't necessarily be what can be scaled up. The question should be what works and how do we learn from what works in more places.