On Oct. 20, Bolivian President Evo Morales will go to the polls in search of a fourth term. Victory would extend his time in office to almost two decades, and — depending on how the election goes — could place democracy itself at risk in the Andean country, Unlike with Morales’s counterparts in Latin America’s three consolidated dictatorships — Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua — his past elections have been democratic and his governance style autocratic but not authoritarian. Morales has shown a growing willingness to use state institutions and resources to secure his hold in power, they write for the Washington Post:
If he is reelected, he will govern from a position of political and economic weakness, a reality he has yet to confront. A government that is politically vulnerable today might be unelectable by 2024. Morales, who will turn 60 later this month, might have burnished his reputation by quitting while he was ahead. Instead, it is difficult to see him walking away. Having eliminated the formal constraint of term limits, he might find that extending his rule under less accommodating conditions requires a more decisive break with democratic checks and balances. If so, Bolivia risks following the paths of Venezuela and Nicaragua, where authoritarian consolidation became the only alternative to surrendering power.
Popular participation in governance is essential for democratic resilience and to resist state capture, according to Mbongiseni Buthelezi and Tracy Ledger of South Africa’s Public Affairs Research Institute (PARI).
The civil society conference on October 23, organised by the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation and the Public Affairs Research Institute (Pari), is an attempt to offer a view from civil society’s perspective on what needs to be done to overcome state capture and to reform the state in key areas; to build resilient institutions.
The Embassy of Canada and The National Endowment for Democracy invite you to the sixteenth annual
SEYMOUR MARTIN LIPSET LECTURE ON DEMOCRACY IN THE WORLD
Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, Professor of Democracy Studies, Hertie School of Governance
The Rise and Fall of “Good Governance” Promotion
Monday, November 4, 2019. 6:00 p.m. The Embassy of Canada, 501 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC. Reception to follow from 7:30 – 8:30pm. RSVP by October 30
Alina Mungiu-Pippidi is a policy scientist who chairs the European Research Center for Anticorruption and State-Building (ERCAS) at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin, where she holds the chair in Democracy Studies. A Romanian by birth, she created and chaired for many years the Romanian Academic Society, the country’s leading think tank, and the Coalition for a Clean Romania, an anti-corruption alliance. She also served in 1996 as the first anticommunist news director of Romanian public broadcasting.
Her books include The Quest for Good Governance: How Societies Develop Control of Corruption (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and A Tale of Two Villages (CEU Press, 2010). The latter was screened as a documentary by the BBC. She has published articles in Nature, Foreign Policy, the Journal of Democracy, and several public policy journals and has frequently been cited in The Economist and other prominent media. She consults for the World Bank and various European institutions, and also serves as a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Democracy and the research council of the International Forum for Democratic Studies.
Acceptances only
Government issued photo ID required
