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Topic Discussion I
Politics of Hard Choices
Political Transition and Economic Restructuring
Room 2
(14 of 14 pages)
I've spent much of the last few years studying how new democracies survive and
hopefully move toward consolidation, which requires building up political legitimacy, building up the belief on
the part of the people that democracy is the best form of government, and obviously, if you can deliver the kind
of rapid developmental progress that Botswana has had and that Namibia has been moving toward, you have a great
advantage in that regard. But if you can't deliver enormously rapid rates of economic growth, if you can deliver
good governance, shared governance, that can be one way of buying legitimacy from the people.
Finally, two comments have been made about equity. One is the very broad resentment that I have heard at this table,
which I'm sure will be reflected in the summary report to our colleagues, is the degree to which the international
community and the international financial institutions have imposed formulas on the basis of general ideas and
assumptions, which may not speak well to the specific problems and needs and potential sequences of reform that
exist in these individual emerging democracies. The question then becomes how can democracies, like the ones at
this table, take back the process and evolve their own reform agenda that they can take with some degree of political
unity back to the international community.
And finally, it's been suggested that the poor women and children have been particularly hurt by many of these
economic reform programs and that there is a need for some sort of social safety net, or some kind of compensatory
programs to begin to help out the most needy in society who've been hurt in general and possibly further hurt by
economic reform.
I am sorry that we don't have more time, I think we've already gone 15 minutes over, but the floor is open if there
are any urgent interventions and there is one from the Prime Minister.
Hon. Hage Geingob: It looks that I am the government present here, the rest of you are opposition, but my
countryman made some statement which should not go unchallenged where he gave the wrong impression.
Firstly, he was in the government before we came to government. Yeah, before independence developed. After independence,
I did the house for which you are staying in. [not available due to technical difficulties]
Larry Diamond: Well, we're going to return to these issues, including the one you have just spoken to, in
various ways in the subsequent three discussion sections. I'd like to thank you for your patience, I'd like to
thank you for your careful listening, I'd like to thank you for your very intriguing, challenging and sometimes
moving interventions, and I know that we all look forward to interacting with one another over the course of the
next two and a half days. Thank you very much.
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