(I’m listening to “The Dead Heart” by Midnight Oil)

If you are one of the nearly five million American Indians living in the United States, you have a new place to call home in Washington as of November 3. Coinciding with the White House Tribal Nations Conference, the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) announced the opening of an embassy designed to give tribal sovereign nations a permanent base in the nation’s capital from which to monitor and lobby U.S. government activities that collectively affect them.

Most are familiar with the fact that the United States is governed through a federal system, with different powers allotted to the national government in Washington and to the various state governments. But tribal sovereignty is increasingly recognized as a third component of U.S. federalism because each nationally recognized tribe has a certain amount of autonomy from both Washington and the state. There’s a relatively new term out there for this, “tri-federalism,” which appears to be an evolving, if not a de facto description of how things are. (Political science fans might want to also check out this article.)

As a couple of my colleagues described it, American Indians are essentially dual citizens of the United States and their respective Tribal Nation.

NCAI describes the new embassy as “a home away from home for tribal leaders and representatives conducting business in Washington, D.C.,” which will “strengthen our coordination and multiply the positive aspects of advocacy work on critical issues facing Indian Country.”

That’s very important, as people like Alma Ransom of the Mohawk Bear Clan would argue, because there have been “budget cuts from past administrations and damaging inserts to bills on Capitol Hill, placed during ‘midnight meetings,’ that have harmed Native people.”

Want to learn more about Native Americans in the United States? America.gov is offering a special page this month to mark National American Indian Heritage Month.

Carlyn Reichel is the newest member of the By The People blogging team. Carlyn joins America.gov having recently completed a master’s degree in public policy. While writing has long been one of Carlyn’s hobbies, it wasn’t until graduate school that she presumed she had something to say worth sharing – even when she didn’t. She previously worked in public relations and continues to be a political junkie, a history and literature nerd, and a concerned global citizen.

In the United States, there are more than 600,000 elected offices in the United States. Additionally, there are numerous ballot measures and special elections that come up on a regular basis. For some it feels like that on any given Tuesday, someone somewhere in America is probably voting on something. Last week in fact, there was a special election for a federal office, a few states held off-year gubernatorial elections, and several cities including New York City and Atlanta held municipal elections. Atlanta’s ended without a clear winner in the mayoral race, so a run-off will be held in a few weeks. More elections.

But Americans have carried this craze for democracy and elections even further, and it is now a huge part of our entertainment life. Reality television often lets those watching at home vote, online or via phone, for their favorites to continue on the program. From American Idol to Dancing with the Stars, many of these shows rely on democratic fan participation. I am personally a fan of So You Think You Can Dance, and I exercise my right to vote regularly. That show also gets us to vote on Tuesday. At least we’re consistent.

The thing I find interesting though is that these shows sometimes get more voters than off-year Congressional elections in the U.S. It makes me wonder how much is the subject matter and how much is the ease of voting by text message or simply placing a phone call. Would more people vote in political elections if they could do so from the palm of their hand? What about outside the United States – could SMS voting make it easier for people in new democracies to voice their support in elections?

Of course, there are many problems with this – verifying voter eligibility and fraud to name only two – but we are continually looking for ways to make voting easier and more accessible using modern technology. As Stephen Kaufman recently mentioned, “Scantegrity” technology lets voters check online after they have cast their vote to make sure it was recorded accurately. It’s still a paper ballot, but it could help ensure every vote is counted correctly. What do you think about using new technologies to make voting easier?

(I’m listening to “Let the Good Times Roll” by The Cars)

Voting usually involves a sizable time commitment to stand in long lines and get your eligibility checked before finally proceeding to the voting booth. But after it’s over, do you ever get a lingering suspicion that your effort may have been in vain and your vote will not actually be counted?

The recent November 3 election in my town, Takoma Park, Maryland, saw the first-ever use of a voting system that would allow you to verify that, in fact, your vote was counted and your time was not wasted. It also lets you play the role of being your own elections monitor to ensure that your vote went to the candidate of your choice.

The system involves the use of paper ballots and specially designed ink that prints a unique three-letter code once you have marked your choice. The voter writes down the serial number of their ballot and the codes. After the polls close in the evening, they can go online and type the serial number of their ballot and see an image of it. Then they can check that the three-letter codes that were revealed when they made their choice are in fact the same ones on the ballot they see on the computer screen.

Of course, on the technical and transparency side, there is more to it, and I encourage you to check out this article.

Also, in full disclosure, I did not do my civic duty and go to the polls, where our mayor was up for re-election and there were a few contested and uncontested city council representations at stake. Otherwise I would now be able to report on my own test of the new system. Next year I promise to do better.

I’m old enough to remember the euphoria felt around the world with the triumph of Solidarity in Poland, the success of the “Velvet Revolution” in Czechoslovakia, and – most especially – the fall of the Berlin Wall. The images of happy young Germans scrambling over the wall that had divided them for so long were all over television, magazines and newspapers. Some of us at the now-defunct U.S. Information Agency (which found new life as the International Information Programs Bureau at the State Department) wondered what directions our jobs would take, now that communism appeared to have collapsed. And our trustworthy journal – “Problems of Communism” ceased to exist after 40 years of publication.

But the euphoria didn’t last as the countries of the former Soviet Eastern Bloc grappled with the daunting problems of free markets, corruption, ethnic tensions, and the difficulties of creating legitimate governments that would protect what for many of them was a strange new thing called “democracy.” “Problems of Communism” was replaced with a new journal — this time produced by a non-government publisher – called “Problems of Post-Communism.”

While I was working on the America.gov feature “The Evolving Work of Democracy,” I was struck by what, I suppose, is the inevitable generation gap in remembering and thinking about democracy 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. For example: Some of my younger co-workers couldn’t recognize Lech Wałęsa in photos showing him leading the workers of the Solidarity Free Trade Union at the Gdansk ship yards. One twenty-something identified Wałęsa as Stalin! (Must be the mustaches – they both sported bushy ones.)

And when I asked Michelle Austein Brooks, a co-worker (also a twenty-something) who recently visited Serbia, Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina, if young people there are disillusioned with the promise of democracy, she reminded me that young people never lived under communism, so they don’t have the life experiences to make comparisons.

Nonetheless, I wonder if disillusionment and apathy — among young and old alike — are greater threats to freedom and democracy than communism ever was.

For those old enough to remember, President Ronald Reagan deplored communism as “the focus of evil in the modern world” and was confident of its eventual demise. But he also warned: “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.”

More recently, in July 2008, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama went to Berlin and said the fall of the Berlin Wall “brought new hope,” but he also cautioned: “History has led us to a new crossroad, with new promise and new peril.”

What do you – whatever your age — think is the greatest challenge facing democracy today?

Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism, America.gov, as part of its feature “The Unfinished Work of Democracy,” is asking academics and journalists from the United States and elsewhere to comment on the challenges to democracy that still lay ahead for countries of the former Eastern Bloc. What follows are their responses – and yours are welcome as well.

Twenty years after the unexpected and certainly not sought for by the majority in the East or the West unification or, as some prefer to say, the reunification of Germany, the chief problem facing the country is posed by the political name of the country itself: the Bundesrepublik. In what sense is it a “Bund” and how does it bind its members? And perhaps more important, in what sense is it a “republic”?

The constitution of the old Bundesrepublik of West Germany was sometimes referred to as the “oktroyierte Verfassung” imposed on a defeated totalitarian aggressor. But it became, over time, a positive cultural trait that fostered what Jürgen Habermas popularized as “constitutional patriotism.” The crucial moment in this development of Western democracy was the coming together of the activism of the student-led New Left with the changes in the Social Democratic Party that, after having given up its Marxist orthodoxy at Bad Godesberg in 1959, recognized the need, as new Chancellor Willy Brandt put it succinctly, “to dare to accept more democracy” in all aspects of life (mehr Demokratie wagen). The maintenance of the republic, its rule of law, and respect for human rights would be maintained even during the dark days of the Notstandsgesetzen, the laws of exception against the threat of a misguided left-wing terrorism.

Meanwhile, in the East, a “democratic republic” gradually asserted its power after the repression of a genuine working class rebellion in 1953. The legitimacy of this regime was based on its title: The “German Democratic Republic” claimed to stand for true democracy against the representative republic in the West. Its claim was that it spoke for the people whereas the Westerners were simply the voice of capital. It in fact created a kind of kleinbürgerliche society of mediocrity that seemed to guarantee its political power. This seemed to justify the claim of the GDR that its republic was the true one, since it assured not only equality before the law but real social equality.

When the Wall fell, the new Bundesrepublik was supposed to unite a western republican democracy that accepted liberal inequality as long as it was procedurally legitimate with an eastern democratic republic which sought to eliminate inequality by means of state intervention.

Although the party landscape has come to resemble the one that existed in the old West Germany, the content of political debate is no longer the same. The West — be it the Social Democrats (SPD) or the proponents of a “social market economy” (CDU, CSU)¬ — never understood why its Eastern compatriots rejected their democratic socialism. As a result, the “two Germanys” remain apart despite their unification. And this, it seems to me, is one of the reasons that the formerly stable three-party West German party system (CDU-SPD-FDP) has now devolved into a five-party carousel whose ability to form coalitions is increasingly threatened.

To summarize in a word: the West never understood the East, either for what it (misguidedly) pretended to be, and therefore it was unable to integrate its new citizens, or to understand its new status. That is why I prefer to talk about a unification of Germany rather than a reunification.

Learn more about Professor Dick Howard.

Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism, America.gov, as part of its feature “The Unfinished Work of Democracy,” is asking academics and journalists from the United States and elsewhere to comment on the challenges to democracy that still lay ahead for countries of the former Eastern Bloc. What follows are their responses – and yours are welcome as well.

The state of democracy in Poland is good, at least compared to some other countries of Central Europe where xenophobic and anti-Semitic parties are quite strong. In Poland they do not count. The greatest challenge, in my opinion, is the political apathy of Polish voters which leads to a very low turnout in the elections, usually one of the lowest in Europe. As a result, some rather mediocre characters get sometimes elected to the parliament.

The root cause of this apathy is a general distrust of politicians and politics in Poland. There are historical explanations for this phenomenon — the history of partition and foreign occupations of our country — as well as more recent developments, like the pain of market transformations in the last 20 years and disappointment with many prominent political figures, including the ones who get due credit for their past achievements in the fight against communism when they had shown enormous courage. Unfortunately, nobody is perfect, and qualities useful in an era of confrontation with a totalitarian regime do not always serve well in a normal democratic country where politics is a game of compromises, making deals, etc.

I could also draw attention to other weaknesses, like a too-small intellectual base for politics in a form of think tanks — there are still not enough of them and politicians do not use existing ones to a sufficient extent. Besides, media do not play their role as one of the pillars of democracy in a satisfactory way. They are so commercialized that they approach political issues too often in a sensationalized way which undermines their credibility.

That said, I would not assess the situation of Polish democracy as bad. In the U.S. you also have serious problems with the democratic process, as the debate about the health care reform shows.

Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism, America.gov, as part of its feature “The Unfinished Work of Democracy,” is asking academics and journalists from the United States and elsewhere to comment on the challenges to democracy that still lay ahead for countries of the former Eastern Bloc. What follows are their responses – and yours are welcome as well.

Albania’s “transition” from dictatorship to democracy has been difficult and long. Too long, most of its citizens would say. I take some issue with the term “transition” as a start. It is too soft and fails to capture what Albania, and the rest of the post-communist world, had to go through to get from one stage to another. That said, it was a revolutionary period where ordinary people made huge sacrifices. For Albania, which had a delayed start to de-communization, the road from one system to another has been fraught with worrying setbacks. It is worth recalling that Albania did have further to go than any other country. It was the poorest and most isolated. Add to that the extraordinary challenges that Albania faced before then: an almost feudal economic system up until the end of the Second World War, mass illiteracy and the near total absence of any kind of infrastructure — be it roads, canals, bridges or universities. I always remind my students that Albania had its first university in 1957.

When Albania finally started in 1991 to break with the past, it confronted so many obstacles, and the governments that followed the final defeat of the communist rulers in 1992 have not always risen to the challenges. Too often Albania’s leaders chose short-term gains over true national interests. In the intervening years between then and now, we have witnessed massive corruption, creeping authoritarianism, and economic collapse in 1997. Albania has had multiple elections but it has never had a flawless election. Even today, Albania’s electoral losers still challenge the validity of the results. One of the preferred tools of those outside of power is the parliamentary boycott. Hardly helpful for a country that needs a credible opposition.

This is not to say that Albania has not made progress. Indeed, anyone who saw the country in the early 1990s and today can only conclude that for most people, life has indeed improved. However, the price for what can only be called a flawed revolution is being paid by Albania’s citizens. The biggest challenge ahead for Albania is to restore the link between the citizen and the state as so many people now perceive the state and the government as an enemy. This is not surprising to people when they can see with their own eyes that politics still often triumphs law. Thousands of Albanians already “voted with their feet” and left, and the effects of the brain drain in Albania are palpable. The government and civil society need to recognize that Albania’s complete Euro-Atlantic integration means that the government must convince its citizens that it is working for them, not themselves.

Learn more about Professor Robert Austin (PDF, 24KB).

Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism, America.gov, as part of its feature “The Unfinished Work of Democracy,” is asking academics and journalists from the United States and elsewhere to comment on the challenges to democracy that still lay ahead for countries of the former Eastern Bloc. What follows are their responses – and yours are welcome as well.

The challenges that Serbia faces today I don’t see as particularly different from those experienced by other post-socialist countries, or for that matter many other societies around the world. The global nature of the economic and financial crisis has only revealed correlation between Serbia’s internal democratization processes and the ones outside of its borders. (Fewer foreign investments have slowed down privatization of the manufacturing and other industries, for example.) So one set of challenges is simply tied to the current global situation, and the other set of challenges is more of an interior nature and tied to the stage in democratization processes taking place since 2000, the year that ended Milosevic’s rule.

Despite various criticisms, launched at different times by different political factors, NGOs or citizens of Serbia themselves, there is no question that in the past nine years Serbia has advanced in its democratization despite many challenges of moral, political and economic nature that tend to shake up the country, whose democratic institutions are not yet stable. The moral challenges pertain to rebuilding the system of values that was shattered in the wars of Yugoslav disintegration, in which process it is crucial that various religious communities (especially the Serbian Orthodox Church as the most influential) and the civil sector find common agendas and work at the grass root level to reinforce the culture of civility, human dignity and tolerance.

The political challenges are many, most notable being the unilateral declaration of Kosovo’s independence and the awkwardness it created, amplified by the division of the international community itself, in which the status of Serbia’s southern border remains ambiguous. This problem can ultimately be resolved (for I don’t believe it could ever be “solved,” given the radically different views of it) only with full membership in the European Union, which would then help redefine the meaning of the borders for both parties. Further strengthening of the independent judicial system, and better implementation of the anti-corruption laws will bring Serbia greater stability, as will its continued participation in the Partnership for Peace (but not NATO), and integration in the EU. The economic challenges are tied to Serbia’s realistic approach to its resources, natural and human, and careful evaluation of the effects of foreign investments and privatization on its citizens, so that worsening of the economic situation does not threaten political stability in this vulnerable period of transition.

Learn more about Milica Bakic-Hayden, Ph.D.

Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism, America.gov, as part of its feature “The Unfinished Work of Democracy,” is asking academics and journalists from the United States and elsewhere to comment on the challenges to democracy that still lay ahead for countries of the former Eastern Bloc. What follows are their responses – and yours are welcome as well.

In December 1989 Romanians revolted against Nicolae Ceausescu’s decrepit Stalinist dictatorship. Many thought that the upheaval and the bloodshed that cost around 1,400 lives would result in a complete divorce with the past. Instead, the new regime, headed by former propaganda apparatchik Ion Iliescu, tried to maintain authoritarianism under the facade of democratic rhetoric. In 1996, a new president, Emil Constantinescu, was elected as candidate of the umbrella coalition called the Democratic Convention. Reforms were initiated, Romania pursued a decisively pro-Western foreign policy, and many hoped that those changes would result in an unequivocal democratic breakthrough.

In 2000, Iliescu made a political comeback, and the country was governed by his party, the Social Democrats, in fact a corporation with mafia-like business tentacles.

Traian Basescu won the 2004 election with a platform that promised eradication of corruption, modernization of political institutions, economic growth, and strengthening of the rule of law. A former sea captain (during the Ceausescu era), Basescu had served as minister of transportation and mayor of Bucharest. Responding to demands from civil society, he adopted de-communization as a major political goal. In April 2006 he formed a presidential commission to examine the four decades of communist rule, and in December 2006, in spite of rabid opposition from communist nostalgists and extreme nationalists, he delivered an historical speech condemning the communist regime as illegitimate and criminal.

Political factionalism and resistance from oligarchic groups, irritated by Basescu’s innovative initiatives, created a continuous state of tension between the president and his vociferous critics. Presidential elections will take place in November 2009. Belonging to EU and NATO has helped Romania economically, politically, and in terms of security. The main challenges for the future are linked to judiciary reforms, the need to rejuvenate the political elite, to overcome a widespread climate of cynicism, to fight corruption, and to continue the confrontation with the totalitarian traumatic past. The most important challenges deal with the perpetuation of corruption, endless bickering within political parties, and the refusal to allow for a general restructuring of the political system. One of Traian Basescu’s main goals for a second mandate is to organize a national debate to result in the adoption of a new constitution. This challenge is directly linked to the need to ensure thorough judicial reforms that would guarantee the independence of judges from political pressures. Traian Basescu strove to pursue this agenda, but he encountered adamant opposition from political personalities and economic magnates who resented the president’s anti-corruption drive. The courageous Minister of Justice Monica Macovei was forced to resign in 2007. Last but not least, restoring trust in political institutions remains an urgent challenge.

Learn more about Professor Vladimir Tismaneanu (PDF).

Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism, America.gov, as part of its feature “The Unfinished Work of Democracy,” is asking academics and journalists from the United States and elsewhere to comment on the challenges to democracy that still lay ahead for countries of the former Eastern Bloc. What follows are their responses – and yours are welcome as well.

Albanian communists, who revered Stalin until the 1990s, maintained a brutal police state characterized by political murder, forced labor camps, and internal exile. This was accompanied by a state-of-siege mentality which saw the construction of hundreds of thousands of concrete bunkers to ward off innumerable foreign enemies, and a policy of complete isolation from the outside world. What resulted has been described as a collage of fantasies and the type of place that would make surrealists weep with joy. With the collapse of this unique system, Albania was essentially required to build a state from the ground up and it is not surprising, therefore, that its transition to democracy has been difficult and remains incomplete. Albania’s history may have condemned it to be the last state in the Balkans to establish a fully functioning democracy.

Still, there are bright spots. Clearly, significant progress has been made, aided by some natural advantages. Albania is faced with few minority issues and a multi-confessional religious structure, both of which serve to dampen chauvinistic nationalism. This has allowed Albania to play an important stabilizing role in the region. Of course there has also been some internal progress. Personal freedoms have been established, privatization continues apace, a new democratic constitution was adopted, a vibrant civil society established and press freedom furthered. Elections, however flawed, have been held and Albania has experienced a peaceful transfer of power. The international community has recognized these achievements with an EU Stability and Association Agreement in 2006 and the much coveted admission to NATO in 2008.

But some have argued that these rewards may be premature since much more remains to be done. A functioning democracy demands, among other things, an informed electorate, clearly defined political choices, legal recourse and basically, the rule of law. None of these are yet fully functioning in Albania. Many of Albania’s journalists still lack professionalism, education suffers from brain drain, corruption and lack of funding, the courts are politicized and corrupted, no real civil service has been established and politically connected crime and corruption remain a serious problem. Progress has been stalled on these issues in part because of what might be termed a problematic political culture — the nature of the current political elite and the parties they control. The major parties function more as clan-based social interest groups than traditional political parties. They tend to be regional, internally undemocratic, without well-defined programs, and they view the opposition as the enemy which should be destroyed. The result has been a lack of a functioning loyal opposition, intense political polarization, occasional violence, governments without legitimacy, and nearly continual political crisis. The people’s business is often ignored.

While the task of dealing with this political culture may seem daunting, the glass is half full. Younger well-educated politicians and technocrats, whose memory of Albania’s Stalinist past is slight, or at least fading, are becoming increasingly prominent. With their dedicated hard work, and continued international support for Euro-Atlantic integration, Albania’s democratic future will remain secure.

Learn more about Dr. Bernd J. Fischer.