I was introduced to democratic governance through the 1993 Global Human Development Report published by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). This was a time in which many countries were making a transition from totalitarian and/or authoritarian regimes to more democratic ones. From 1990-1996 the number of “electoral democracies” increased from 76 to 118, and that trend continued in the decades that followed. However, as early as these transitions began to happen, experts like Larry Diamond and others, and the very same 1993 UNDP Report, were cautiously warning that elections, new constitutions and toppling non-democratic regimes were but only one dimension of democratic governance.
Read More “Democratic Governance in an Increasingly Complex World: In Retrospect and Prospective”