[R-G] The United Nations Democracy Fund as Democracy Manipulator

[Anthony Fenton]

The United Nations Democracy Fund as Democracy Manipulator
Polyarchy and Roland Rich (Part 1 of 4)
by Michael Barker
	
November 14, 2007

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=11&ItemID=14284


“The United Nations Democracy Fund (UNDEF) is pleased to announce the  
appointment of Mr. Roland Rich, an Australian national, as its  
Executive Head. Mr. Rich took up his duties on 1 October 2007. He  
brings to the task broad experience in diplomacy and democracy  
promotion.” UN Democracy Fund (October 5, 2007)



For busy progressive activists this important news will not visibly  
effect their lives, accordingly a totally understandable response  
from them may be to simply respond: so what? This is largely due to  
the lack of critical information surrounding the work of Roland Rich  
and the UN Democracy Fund: It follows that most people reading this  
article will be asking themselves a three part question: who is  
Roland Rich, what is the Democracy Fund, and why is it important to  
my activism? This article will answer these fundamental questions. It  
will further demonstrate that the UN Democracy Fund is playing a  
critical role in promoting the global uptake of what has been  
referred to as low-intensity democracy.  It is hoped that an  
awareness of this will help enable activists all over the world to  
work to promote a more progressive world order.



The promotion of low-intensity democracy is “usually accompanied by  
neoliberal economic policies to restore economic growth”, which are  
“designed to promote stability” and not participatory forms of  
democracy. It has been suggested that the adoption of low-intensity  
democracy “may ‘work’ in the short term, primarily as a strategy to  
reduce political tension, but is fragile in the long term, due to its  
inability to redress fundamental political and economic problems.”[1]  
William I. Robinson – who has referred to the strategy of  
facilitating the global spread of such neoliberal forms of democracy  
as Promoting Polyarchy (1996) – observes that the “concept of  
polyarchy is an outgrowth of late nineteenth and early twentieth- 
century elite theories developed by Italian school social scientists  
Gaetano Mosca and Vilfredo Pareto.” Robinson argues that, whereas  
Parento “embrace[d] fascism as the best method” to maintain the elite  
driven status quo, Mosca supported the idea “that ‘democratic’ rather  
than fascist methods are best suited to defend the ruling class and  
preserve the social order”. Indeed, Robinson (2000) points out that:



“Building on this elitism theory, a new polyarchic or institutional  
redefinition of democracy developed within U.S. academic circles  
closely tied to the U.S. policymaking community in the post-World War  
II years of U.S. world power. This redefinition began with Joseph  
Schumpeter’s 1942 classic study, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy,  
in which he rejected the ‘classic theory of democracy’ defined in  
terms of the ‘will of the people’ and the ‘common good.’ Instead,  
Schumpeter advanced ‘another theory’ of democracy as ‘institutional  
arrangements’ for elites to acquire power ‘by means of a competitive  
struggle for the people’s vote.’ ‘Democracy means only that the  
people have the opportunity of accepting or refusing the men who are  
to rule them,’ explained Schumpeter. This redefinition culminated in  
1971 with the publication of Robert Dahl’s study, Polyarchy. By the  
time the United States assumed global leadership after World War II,  
the polyarchic definition of democracy had come to dominate social  
science, political and mass public discourse.”



Awarding Polyarchy

Given that Robert Dahl provided the interpretative framework, which  
was utilised within Robinson’s seminal critique of ‘democracy  
promoting’ organisations, Promoting Polyarchy (1996), it is worth  
briefly pointing out that in 1995 Dahl – a former president of the  
American Political Science Association – was awarded the inaugural  
Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science from the Skytte Foundation at  
Uppsala University. His receipt of the award is not surprising given  
the elitist nature of the prize, it is interesting to note, however,  
that a number of this award’s laureates are linked to key  
‘democracy’ (read: polyarchy) promoting groups. Here it is important  
to observe that one of the key ‘democracy’ promoting (manipulating)  
organizations in the US is the National Endowment for Democracy  
(NED). For those desirous of greater familiarity with this quasi non- 
governmental organization, I provide the following link to a review  
of the group’s antidemocratic activities. In addition, where the  
names of (perhaps) unfamiliar organizations arise, an internet link  
will direct the reader to a summary of that groups relevant  
‘democratic’ activities and ties.



Returning to the Johan Skytte Prize, in 1996, the year after Dahl  
received the prize, Juan J. Linz, “one of the most prominent  
researchers in the study of democracy and its enemies in the 20th  
century” received the award. He is particular famous amongst  
democracy manipulators because in the late 1980s he co-edited the  
influential Democracy in Developing Countries trilogy with Larry  
Diamond (who is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, co- 
director of the NED’s International Forum for Democratic Studies, as  
well as a member of USAID’s Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign  
Aid), and the late Seymour Martin Lipset (who is a former director of  
the US Institute for Peace, the Albert Shanker Institute, and the  
Committee for the Free World). Linz has also co-authored and edited  
The Failure of Presidential Democracy (1994), with ‘democratically’  
connected Arturo Valenzuela, and presently serves as a member of the  
international advisory committee of the NED’s International Forum for  
Democratic Studies’ Journal of Democracy.

Other ‘democratic’ Johan Skytte Prize winners include:

The late Alexander L. George – who has been a distinguished fellow at  
the US Institute for Peace, an emeriti director of the Watson  
Institute for International Studies, and member of the Carnegie  
Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict

Robert O. Keohane – who in 2003 co-edited the book, Humanitarian  
Intervention, a number of whose contributors have well established  
‘democratic’ credentials, i.e. Tom J. Farer, Michael Ignatieff,[2]  
Simon Chesterman,[3] and Thomas M. Franck [4]

Robert D. Putnam – whose highly influential book, Bowling Alone  
(2000), built upon earlier work that first received widespread  
attention after it was published in the NED’s Journal of Democracy in  
1995;[5] Putnam also formerly headed the Weatherhead Center for  
International Affairs, and is an associate of the Center for  
International Development [6] and
  Theda Skocpol – who has been “included in policy discussions with  
President Bill Clinton at the White House and Camp David”, is an  
academic advisor to the Open Society Institute-supported Roosevelt  
Institution.[7]

These, ‘democratic’, Johan Skytte Prize connections demonstrate  
nothing new and merely illustrate how elite democracy manipulating  
groups’ are a central part of mainstream liberal thinking in the US.  
Other, more detailed, examinations of such entwined agendas are  
provided in two of my more recent articles Hijacking Human Rights and  
Operation ‘Peace’ and the Iraq Study Group. Yet, to date, most  
studies have simply focused on links to obvious democracy  
manipulators like the NED and USAID, failing to mention the vital  
role that the United Nation’s provides in supporting the global  
promotion of low-intensity democracy.

The lack of critical analysis of the United Nation’s polyarchal  
function can be understood to some extent as the Democracy Fund,  
which established the dedicated bureaucracy which frames the UN’s  
‘democratic’ work, was only created in 2005. Furthermore, the  
appointment of Roland Rich as the new head of this Fund, which drew  
my attention to the Fund’s work, only occurred this past October,  
2007. The rest of this article will provide the first critical  
investigation of Roland Rich’s and the UN Democracy Fund’s  
international activities. It should be highlighted that, while the  
following is a critique of the ‘democratic’ work of the UN, it does  
not consequentially imply that I would level the same critique  
against all of their activities without further critical  
investigations. In addition, given the exploratory nature of this  
essay, I will be focusing on the ‘democratic’ ties of the UN  
Democracy Fund, and not the people and groups linked to the Fund  
that, for all intents and purposes, appear to be carrying out  
progressive work (that is, promoting participatory forms of  
democracy). It is therefore appropriate to preface my criticisms of  
the UN with a quote from Robinson (2004) who noted that:

“It is important to emphasize that many individuals brought into US  
‘democracy promotion’ programs are not simple puppets of US policy  
and their organizations are not necessarily ‘fronts’ (or in CIA  
jargon, ‘cut-outs’). Very often they involve genuine local leaders  
seeking to further their own interests and projects in the context of  
internal political competition and conflict and of heavy US influence  
over the local scene. Moreover, old and new middle classes,  
professional and bureaucratic strata may identify their interests  
with the integration or reintegration of their countries into global  
capitalism under a US canopy. These classes may be politically  
disorganized or under the sway of counter-elites and of nationalist,  
popular, or radical ideologies. They often become the most immediate  
targets of ‘democracy promotion,’ to be won over and converted into a  
social base for the transnational elite agenda.”


Who is Roland Rich?
Roland Rich is an Australian lawyer who displays extraordinary  
‘democratic’ connections, and, since October 2007, has been heading  
the recently formed UN Democracy Fund. To begin with, his various  
online biographies note that he has “served for more than 20 years as  
an Australian Foreign Service officer”, and that from 1994 to 1997 he  
served as Australia’s Ambassador to Laos: they also mention that he  
has undertaken diplomatic postings in France (1976-9), Burma (1982-4)  
and the Philippines (1987-9), and has “held the position of legal  
adviser to the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and  
Trade” (1997-8). Of most significance to this essay, though, was his  
1998 appointment as the founding director of the Australian Centre  
for Democratic Institutions. This appointment, however, did not occur  
without controversy, as according to Stuart Macintyre (2006), in 1998:

“A selection committee chose Dr John Uhr, a highly qualified  
political scientist, as the director of the centre [for Democratic  
Institutions]. That decision was then put to Minister for Foreign  
Affairs Alexander Downer for approval, and it is alleged that he  
consulted the Prime Minister. In the event a former Australian  
ambassador, Mr Roland Rich, who had no research qualifications, was  
appointed the foundations director.”[8]


Irrespective of this little snippet of political intrigue for all  
intents and purposes the Centre for Democratic Institutions is  
Australia’s version of the American NED. In fact, just before the  
Centre was established, the NED’s program officer for Asia, Louisa  
Coan, commented that they were “pleased to see the establishment of  
such a sister institution in Australia.”[9] The Centre’s ‘democratic’  
credentials were further solidified when their inaugural annual  
address was given by the former president of the Philippines, Fidel  
Ramos, an individual who had directly benefited from the NED’s  
manipulative intervention into the Philippines’ 1986 people’s  
revolution. Ramos’s ‘democratic’ background was obviously considered  
perfect for launching the Australian NED, and with no irony Rich  
waxed lyrical about Ramos at his Centre’s launch, noting that:



“There would not be a more appropriate voice to speak on democracy in  
Asia than President Fidel Ramos. As I well recall from my time  
serving at the Australian Embassy in Manila [from 1987-9], the  
Philippines has an exuberantly free press that loves to employ  
popular sobriquets. President Ramos is known as ‘Steady Eddy’, a term  
often accompanied by a descriptor like ‘cigar-chomping’ or ‘straight- 
shooting’. They are well chosen.”

No critical studies have investigated the ‘democratic’ work of the  
Centre for Democratic Institutions, but Rich himself – during his  
seven year tenure there – was involved in a number of other  
significant ‘democratic’ consultancy projects: in April 1999, Rich  
served as a consultant for the Ford Foundation for whom he organised  
a workshop in Canberra which focused “on managing transition in East  
Timor”; then between 1999 and 2002 he worked in varying capacities  
for the Australian Agency for International Development (AUSAID) on  
‘democracy promoting’ projects in Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand, and  
Vietnam; and in November 2003 he undertook a consultancy for the  
National Democratic Institute (a core NED grantee), which involved a  
“study tour by Timor-Leste National Parliamentary Committee on  
Foreign Affairs, Defence and National Security”.

In 2004, Rich bolstered his ‘democratic’ pedigree by joining the  
editorial board of the International Foundation for Election Systems’  
new magazine Democracy at Large to allegedly “help bring an Asia- 
Pacific focus” to it’s work. As might be expected all the members of  
Democracy at Large’s editorial board have strong ‘democratic’ ties,  
and a few particularly notable members of their board are Carl  
Gershman (who is the president of the NED), Miklos Marschall (who is  
Transparency International’s director for Central and Eastern Europe,  
and is the former executive director of CIVICUS), and Shauna  
Sylvester (who is the founder and executive director of the Institute  
for Media, Policy and Civil Society – whose board of directors  
includes Ed Broadbent, who is the former president of the Canadian  
equivalent to the NED, Rights and Democracy).

As a brief aside, given Shauna Sylvester’s ‘democratic’ connections,  
it is worrying to observe that in 2007 she was also a member of the  
international founding committee of the new progressive media outlet  
The Real News Network. This tie certainly deserves future  
investigation given that one of the directors of The Real News  
Network, Michael Ratner, is also a director of the International  
Endowment for Democracy – a group that vehemently critiques the  
activities of global ‘democracy promoters’ like Rights and Democracy.


Rich stepped down as the executive director of the Centre for  
Democratic Institutions in late 2005, and, not coincidentally, at  
around this time he served as a Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow at  
the NED’s International Forum for Democratic Studies (from August to  
December 2005).[10] His replacement at the helm of the Centre for  
Democratic Institutions was Benjamin Reilly, who in the past has  
“worked for the United Nations Development Program in New York, the  
International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA)  
in Stockholm, and the Australian government in Canberra.” In  
addition, Reilly has undertaken consultancy work for the National  
Democratic Institute and AUSAID, while his “work has been supported  
by” ‘democratic’ groups that include the Carnegie Corporation of New  
York and the US Institute for Peace.



In the time between leaving the Centre for Democratic Institutions  
and joining the UN Democracy Fund, Rich has been working at the  
Australian Defence College “teaching and mentoring senior officers  
studying at the Centre for Defence and Strategic Studies.” However,  
Rich’s recent uptake of the reigns of the UN Democracy Fund should  
not be as unexpected, as in 2004 he co-edited a book with Edward  
Newman titled The UN Role in Promoting Democracy: Between Ideals and  
Reality. Contributors to this book, with ties to the wider ‘democracy  
promoting’ community, include the aforementioned trio Simon  
Chesterman, Tom J. Farer, and Benjamin Reilly, but other ‘democratic’  
writers in the book include Tanja Hohe (who is a former fellow at the  
Watson Institute), Ylber Hysa (who is the director of the Kosova  
Action for Civic Initiatives – a group that received NED funding in  
both 2001 and 2003), and Laurence Whitehead (who works as an expert  
for the Cuba Study Group, and in 2002 edited the book Emerging Market  
Democracies: East Asia and Latin America, which was published by  
Johns Hopkins University Press for the NED’s Journal of Democracy –  
where not coincidentally Whitehead then served (and still serves) on  
their editorial board).


In a recent (2007) interview on ABC radio concerning his appointment  
to the UN Democracy Fund, Rich highlighted that the Fund could “be  
most effectively involved [in promoting democracy by]… using the  
legitimacy that the UN brings to be involved in countries where  
bilateral democracy promotion projects are finding it difficult to be  
effective.” This statement is integral to understanding the  
significance of the role of UN-led ‘democracy promoting’ ventures  
around the globe, and although many activists in the West may still  
be unfamiliar with the democracy manipulating work of groups like the  
NED, civil society activists (and governments) in the rest of the  
world are becoming increasingly aware of insidious anti-democratic  
work of such decidedly anti-democratic interventions. To make such  
‘democratic’ interventions more palatable to the global community,  
democracy manipulators, like Rich, realise that such political  
meddling is best done under the guise of multilateralism, and the UN  
provides an important forum for such practises. Indeed, as Rich noted  
in 2001, when writing for the NED’s Journal of Democracy, the “last  
ten years have witnessed the emergence of a new form of international  
engagement: cooperation in promoting democracy.” [11]

Returning to the ABC radio show, it was nice to see Rich’s  
interviewer take a critical stance towards the Democracy Fund’s work  
by highlighted how democracy may be used “as a political diplomatic  
weapon”, with China arguing “about the danger of the idea of an  
alliance of democracies led by the United States and Japan…  
introducing new divisions into Asia.” However, not too surprisingly  
Rich didn’t seem to be concerned with such, arguably illegitimate,  
interventions into other countries – which, incidentally, “would be  
illegal for foreign groups operating in the United States” – and so  
he noted that: “If countries want to use democracy for those sort of  
polemical and political purposes, well that’s for country governments  
to work with.” The interviewer then asked if Rich thought this was  
what President George W. Bush was doing, “when at the Asia Pacific  
summit he announced that the US wants to setup an Asia Pacific  
partnership of democracies?” Rich responded, oddly, for someone at  
the forefront of attempts to manipulate democracy across Asia, by  
saying: “Actually I’m not quite sure, I had a look at that and there  
was so few details that it was very hard to tell exactly what the  
role of that partnership would be.” This non-answer is disturbing to  
say the least, but is entirely consistent with his ‘democratic’  
background, for, as I will demonstrate in the following section, the  
UN agenda has, for some time now, been linked closely to US led  
efforts to promote neoliberal forms of democracy all over the world.



To be continued… The next part of this article will provide a  
critical examination of the ‘democratic’ background of a key former  
UN staffer, Mark Malloch Brown. Part three of this series will then  
examine the history of the UN Democracy Fund itself, and introduce  
some of the individuals who work with the Fund. And the final part of  
this four part series will examine the ‘democratic’ credentials of  
some of the recipients of the UN Democracy Fund’s first round of  
funding. It will then conclude by offering some suggestions for how  
progressive activists might potentially deal with some of the  
worrying issues that have been raised about the UN’s global role as a  
key democracy manipulator.



Michael Barker is a doctoral candidate at Griffith University,  
Australia. He can be reached at Michael.J.Barker [at]  
griffith.edu.au, and some of his other articles can be found here.



Endnotes

[1] Barry Gills, Joen Rocamora, and Richard Wilson, Low Intensity  
Democracy: Political Power in the New World Order (London: Pluto  
Press, 1993), pp.26-7.

[2] Edward S. Herman and David Peterson (2005) ironically observe  
that Michael Ignatieff belongs to a ‘democratic’ group that they  
refer to as The New Humanitarians.

[3] Simon Chesterman is the former director of UN relations at the  
International Crisis Group, and has published War or Just Peace?  
Humanitarian Intervention and International Law (2001), which was  
awarded the American Society of International Law Certificate of  
Merit, and also co-edited Making States Work: State Failure and the  
Crisis of Governance (2005) with Michael Ignatieff and Ramesh Thakur.

[4] Thomas M. Franck serves on the executive council of the American  
Society of International Law, and is also a director of the  
International Peace Academy (a group that receives funding from the  
US Institute for Peace).

[5] Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social  
Capital, Journal of Democracy 6(1), Jan 1995, pp.65-78.

[6] The Watson Institute points out that “[a]t the heart of the  
concept of civic community is the concept of social capital,  
popularized by Robert Putnam”: they go on to make the significant  
observation by noting how Putnam’s work on social capital “attracted  
the attention of President Clinton, who was looking to reorganize  
foreign aid in the mid-1990s.” In an uncritical assessment of  
Putnam’s scholarly output, Omar G. Encarnacion (2002) suggests that:  
“Putnam’s views are shared by the international aid community, which  
in recent years has embraced the mission of fortifying civil society  
as a programmatic priority in nations that have recently inaugurated  
democratic governance. The United States Agency for International  
Development (AID) and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) have  
taken the lead in boosting the development of groups thought to  
comprise the heart of civil society: grass-roots social movements,  
unions, a free media, and a wide range of nongovernmental  
organizations involved in promoting such causes as human rights,  
governmental transparency, and protection of the environment.” In  
another article written in 2003, Encarnacion group’s Putnam’s works  
as falling within that of “neo-Tocquevillean,” like Larry Diamond,  
and Francis Fukuyama (who is a director of the NED).



In a brilliant critique of Putnam’s work, David Gabbard (2006) writes  
that: “Though he accurately identifies the fact of America’s civic  
disengagement, Putnam’s efforts to identify the factors behind it  
strike us as paradigmatic of what “the lively 19th century working  
class press” called “‘the bought priesthood’” (cited by Chomsky,  
1995) of respectable intellectuals. Putnam, after all, holds the  
position of Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy, at  
Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. In spite  
of all of the recent uproar over the alleged liberal bias of the  
American professoriate, you simply don’t get hired into such  
“prestigious” positions in elite universities (whose elite status is  
largely determined as a factor of how much money students’ parents  
can afford to pay) by discussing structural factors that have  
contributed to civic disengagement.”

[7] Other ‘democratic’ members of the Roosevelt Institution’s  
academic advisory board include Larry Diamond, Richard Celeste (who  
is a former head of the Peace Corps, and has been the co-chair of the  
Century Foundation Homeland Security Project), Elizabeth Coleman (who  
is a former director of the Council for a Community of Democracies),  
James D. Fearon (who works at Michael McFaul’s Center on Democracy,  
Development and the Rule of Law), and Kermit Roosevelt (who is famous  
for masterminding the CIA-led 1953 coup in Iran).

[8] Stuart Macintyre, ‘Universities’, In: S. Maddison and C. Hamilton  
(eds.) Silencing Dissent: How the Australian Government is  
Controlling Public Opinion and Stifling Debate (Sydney: Allen &  
Unwin, 2006), pp.49-50.

[9] Louisa Coan, Promoting Democracy in Asia, Congressional Testimony  
by Federal Document Clearing House, 1997.

[10] “During his fellowship, Mr. Rich wrote a book entitled Pacific  
Asia in Quest of Democracy, forthcoming from Lynne Rienner in 2006.  
Through an examination of institutional, structural, and cultural  
trends in countries ranging from Japan, Korea, and Taiwan to  
Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines, he surveyed the democratic  
strides the region has made thus far and gauged its potential for  
consolidating democracy in the future.”

[11] Rich continues that: “The turning point came with the  
International Conference of Newly Restored Democracies, held in  
Manila in June 1988. I had the privilege of attending this conference  
as an observer from the Australian Embassy. It owed its inspiration  
and intellectual rigor to the late Philippine foreign secretary Raul  
Manglapus; its strength came from its independence from great-power  
politics and the commitment of the 13 participating countries to the  
ideal of democracy. The Manila Declaration adopted by the conference  
spoke of mutual support among the participating countries to  
strengthen their democracies and overcome ‘internal and external  
forces endangering emerging democracies.’ The post-Cold War concept  
of international democracy promotion and cooperation outside the  
domain of the world powers was born.”  Roland Rich, Bringing  
Democracy into International law, Journal of Democracy, 12 (3),  
(2001), pp.20-34.