Carlos Santiso

The contentious Washington Consensus: reforming the reforms in emerging markets

Pedro Pablo Kuczynski and John Williamson (eds) (2003) After the Washington Consensus: Restarting Growth and Reform in Latin America, Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics. Ben Fine, Costa Lapavitsas and Jonathan Pincus (eds) (2001) Development Policy in the Twenty-First Century: Beyond the Post-Washington Consensus, London and New York: Routledge Studies in Development Economics. Anne O. Krueger (ed.) (2000) Economic Policy Reform: The Second Stage, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

Promoting Democratic Governance and Preventing the Recurrence of Conflict: The Role of the United Nations Development Programme in Post-Conflict Peace-Building

Promoting democracy and strengthening good governance have become core components of post-conflict peace-building initiatives of the United Nations (UN). An often overlooked dimension of the analysis of UN peace support operations has been the crucial role played by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) at the critical juncture linking peacekeeping to sustainable development. UN peace operations in Central America over the last decade have pioneered the organisations involvement in the uncharted territory of post-conflict peace building. UNDPs Central American experience was the first step in the organisations evolution away from providing traditional development assistance, towards playing an active and openly political role in post-conflict democracy building and governance reform. This new role of the UNDP has had dramatic repercussions on its mandate, administrative structures, corporate policies and operational strategies. The current institutional renewal of UNDP has its roots in its endorsement of democratic governance as essential dimensions of its mandate to promote sustainable human development. This article assesses the significance, promises and dilemmas of the governance agenda for UNDP and analyses the scope, nature and institutionalisation of democracy and governance programmes within UNDP, using Central America as a case study. It argues that the future of UNDP democracy assistance will largely depend on how successful it is at resolving the inherent tensions between democracy promotion and national sovereignty, while retaining its multilateral approach to peace and democracy.

Economic reform and judicial governance in Brazil: balancing independence with accountability

Conventional wisdom on judicial governance posits that an independent judiciary is the single most important prerequisite of the rule of law. However the case of Brazil demonstrates that this is not necessarily the case, as there exist tensions and trade-offs between independence and accountability. The democratic constitution of 1988 clearly succeeded in isolating the judiciary from political interference, thus enabling it to perform its role as an institution of horizontal accountability in particular through the judicial review of executive decrees. However, Brazils unrestricted independence has progressively become a hindrance to effective economic governance, a policy area in which the judiciary has especially asserted itself The central question is whether the judiciary is too autonomous, lacking effective mechanisms of democratic accountability and external control. The paradox is that excessive independence makes it particularly difficult to reform the judiciary. This study assesses the governance of the judiciary in Brazil and its impact on economic reform. It argues that the challenge of judicial reform resides in strengthening the countervailing mechanisms of accountability to enhance the judiciarys social responsiveness and political responsibility. Finding the right balance between independence and accountability is the defining challenge of judicial governance in Brazil.

Sisyphus in the castle: Improving European Union strategies for democracy promotion and governance conditionality

This study sets out to assess the thrust, direction and scope of the current reform of European Community (EC) aid policies, strategies and structures, as it pertains to the efforts of the EC to encourage democracy, strengthen good governance and prevent violent conflict in developing countries. It explores the difficult combination of democracy assistance and governance conditionality to prevent democratic decay in developing countries. It argues that recent reforms have a technocratic bias, as they tend to focus on improving the administrative and managerial dimensions of European foreign aid. Less attention is paid to enhancing its political thrust and devising effective operational strategies. The study assesses the conceptual foundations of the ECs new policies for electoral assistance and conflict prevention and underlines their inadequacy to address the contemporary challenges of democratic governance. The strategic challenges of European foreign aid reside not only in designing efficacious strategies to consolidate democracy and strengthen governance in developing countries, but also in devising the right mix of positive and negative measures to respond to democratic decay and crises of governance. The article concludes with a series of proposals for enhancing the European Commissions ability to manage democracy assistance programmes and governance conditionality.

The Gordian Knot of Brazilian Foreign Policy: Promoting democracy while respecting sovereignty

President Cardoso has provided decisive impetus for strengthening Brazils commitment to democracy abroad, both through multilateral diplomacy and foreign policy. However, there exist inherent tensions between the dual principles guiding Brazilian foreign policy, the promotion and protection of democracy abroad and the attachment to national sovereignty and non-interference in internal affairs. This study assesses Brazils response to threats to democracy during the last decade in 10 case studies. It argues that presidential diplomacy has played a key role in furthering the democratic commitment of Brazilian foreign policy. The author thanks Paulo Roberto de Almeida, Juan Fernando London ˜o, Anja Linder, and Riordan Roett and gratefully acknowledges the support of the Democracy Coalition Project (DCP) of the Open Society Institute (OSI) in Washington DC.