Eighth Annual Lipset Lecture
Abdou Filali-Ansary, founding director and now professor at the Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations at the Aga Khan University in London, delivered the eighth annual Seymour Martin Lipset Lecture on Democracy in the World at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, D.C., on October 26. The lecture was also given at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto on October 24. An article based on the lecture, which was entitled “The Arab Revolutions: Democracy and Historical Consciousness,” will be published in the April 2012 issue of the Journal of Democracy.
Ion Ratiu Lecture
On December 1, Nabeel Rajab, president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, received the Ion Ratiu Democracy Award. The award was presented as part of a workshop at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C., consisting of two panels: “Youth, Democratic Change and the Arab Spring” and “The Price of Freedom and Democracy: Defiant Bahrainis and the Arab Spring.” Rajab delivered his lecture as part of the second panel, and comments were offered by Bahraini journalist and Wilson Center visiting scholar Wafa Ali, NED president Carl Gershman, and Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch.
Guillermo O’Donnell (1936–2011)
On November 29, eminent Argentine political scientist Guillermo O’Donnell, professor emeritus at the University of Notre Dame and former director of its Kellogg Institute for International Studies, passed away. A member of the Journal’s Editorial Board and later its International Advisory Committee, he was one of the world’s leading scholars [End Page 185] of democracy and authoritarianism. He is perhaps best known for Transitions from Authoritarian Rule (with Philippe Schmitter and Laurence Whitehead, 1986). A memorial tribute to Guillermo O’Donnell will appear in the April issue of the Journal.
Alliance of Democrats Conference in Rome
On November 11 in Rome, the Alliance of Democrats held an international conference entitled “The Future of Democracy.” The meeting was organized by Italian MP Gianni Vernetti, coordinator of the Alliance, which is a loose partnership of liberal political parties from around the world. Discussions focused on new strategies for democracy promotion and connections between economic development and democracy. Participants included Roland Rich of UNDEF, Belarusian opposition presidential candidate Alaksiej Michalevic, Burhan Ghalioun of the Syrian National Council, Saad Eddin Ibrahim of Egypt’s Ibn Khaldun Center, Cambodian opposition leader Sam Rainsy, François Bayrou of the European Democratic Party, and Carl Gershman of NED.
Corrections
In the article “Poverty, Inequality, and Democracy: ‘Mixed Governance’ and Welfare in South Korea” by Taekyoon Kim et al., which appeared in the July 2011 issue, the Table on p.122 included some figures for South Korea’s Gini coefficient at various points in time that the authors no longer consider accurate. The authors have amended the Table, and the new figures and revised text are available at www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/gratis/KimUpdate.pdf. The corrected figures and text will also appear in Poverty, Inequality, and Democracy, a Journal of Democracy book that will be published by Johns Hopkins University Press early in 2012.
In Soli Özel and Gencer Özcan’s essay “Do New Democracies Support Democracy? Turkey’s Dilemma” in the October 2011 issue, it was reported that Turkey’s 1991 general elections brought to power a coalition government consisting of the True Path and Motherland parties. In fact, that coalition government comprised True Path and the Social Democratic People’s Party. The editors regret the error.
NED’s International Forum
On August 18–19, the Forum’s Network of Democracy Research Institutes (NDRI) and Korea’s East Asia Institute cosponsored a workshop in Seoul entitled “Translating Research into Policy: Successful Experiences, Relevant Lessons.” Funded by the Korea Foundation, the meeting brought together representatives from NDRI member institutes in Ecuador, Ghana, India, Korea, Lebanon, and Romania that have been successful at having their research influence policy. This was the first in a planned series of workshops that will examine how think [End Page 186] tanks can enhance their policy impact in different regional environments.
On August 24–25, the Forum and National Taiwan University cosponsored a conference in Taipei entitled “Democracy in East Asia and Taiwan in Global Perspective.” Leading scholars, including Pippa Norris, Stephan Haggard, Benjamin Reilly, Jih-wen Lin, and Tun-jen Cheng, discussed the current state and future prospects of democracy in East Asia. Revised versions of papers presented at the conference will appear in a Journal of Democracy book to be published early in 2013. Articles by Francis Fukuyama, Minxin Pei, and Yunhan Chu, based on their respective conference papers, appear in this issue on pages 14–56. For more information, please see: www.ned.org/events/democracy-in-east-asia-and-taiwan-in-global-perspective.
On September 15, the Forum organized a half-day conference in Washington, D.C., entitled “Nigeria’s 2011 Elections and the Challenges Ahead.” Speakers included Peter Lewis of Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, Jibrin Ibrahim of the Lagos-based Centre for Democracy and Development, Darren Kew of the University of Massachusetts at Boston, and Ayo Obe of the Lagos-based Ogunsola Shonibare Law Firm. Pauline Baker of the Fund for Peace and Gwendolyn Mikell of Georgetown University offered comments.
In April 2012, the São Paulo–based Fernando Henrique Cardoso Institute and the Rio de Janeiro–based Edelstein Center for Social Research will begin publishing and distributing a Portuguese-language edition of the Journal called the Journal of Democracy: Edicão em Português. This will be an online publication in Portuguese, appearing semi-annually in April and October and composed exclusively of articles translated from the English edition of the Journal.
In October, the Forum welcomed a new group of Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellows: Hikmet Hadjy-zadeh (Azerbaijan), Tamirlan Kurbanov (Russia), Ibrahim Haruna Lipumba (Tanzania), Birtukan Midekssa (Ethiopia), and Hollman Morris (Colombia). They will be in residence through February 2012.
On December 9, Ibrahim Lipumba—a former professor of economics and the current national chairman of the Civic United Front (CUF), a liberal political party in Tanzania with strong support in Zanzibar—gave a presentation entitled “From Ujamaa to Demokrasia: Reflecting on 50 Years of Independence in Tanzania and the Way Forward.” Joel Barkan, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Iowa and senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, offered comments. [End Page 187]