(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.

The other day, I came across a White House video about the vast amount of correspondence President Obama receives every day. The number of letters, faxes and e-mail messages the president receives daily is far too much for one person to process. According to Mike Kelleher of the White House Office of Correspondence, Obama receives 65,000 paper letters a week, as well as about 1,000 faxes and 100,000 e-mails a day. Even if the president spent every waking moment reading and writing instead of running the country, he still would not be able to keep up with his correspondence without help.

But Obama has made a point of reading 10 representative letters a day from the public “to stay in tune with America’s issues and concerns,” according to the White House.

“These letters, I think, do more to keep me touch with what’s happening around the country than just about anything else,” Obama says in the video.

Kelleher says the daily letters create “a good dialogue – a direct relationship between constituents who have these concerns and the President who desperately wants to get those messages.”

Do you think these daily letters can have an impact on the president? How do citizens communicate with government leaders in your country?

(I’m listening to “The Logical Song” by Supertramp.)

Sooner or later, every American student learns that the United States isn’t actually a “democracy,” meaning rule by the majority, but rather a “republic.” How significant is that distinction? Is “democracy” described as “the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried” by former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, even desirable when you consider its true meaning?

Democracy is a term that gets thrown around nearly every day by American leaders and others around the world. What they are not advocating, however, is the concept that if 51 percent of the people vote tomorrow to invade the neighbor across the border or dispossess you of your belongings, you have to simply accept the will of the majority. Nope. I think “rule of law” is a more accurate way of putting it, with the important caveat that those laws were written, scrutinized, passed and upheld by your freely and fairly elected representatives.

I don’t know. Perhaps “rule of law” just doesn’t have the same flair or instant recognition as what the term “democracy” connotes.

If you have 10 minutes and adequate bandwidth, check out this video I discovered on American government which argues that there are really only two forms of government in the world: republics and oligarchies. Do you agree?

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.

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 Republic of Macedonia has faced many dire situations in the 18 years of its independent statehood. And yet, remarkably, amazingly, this small republic in the heart of the Balkans has consistently beaten the odds. During the 1990s, the fledgling state faced many serious challenges, such as the Greek embargo, economic decline, ethnic tensions, and the struggle for the international recognition of its constitutional name. The country’s delicate and developing practice of multiethnic ruling coalitions proved sturdy enough to weather each crisis, until the 2001 conflict, when Albanian forces frustrated with the pace of reform launched a six-month insurgency. The Ohrid peace deal that followed led to a more explicit power-sharing arrangement with greater political and cultural rights for the Albanian community. Thus, Macedonia had once again overcome a fundamental state crisis.

There is much to celebrate in Macedonia’s ability to persevere in the face of numerous obstacles. Over the course of its post-communist transition, it has made considerable progress in building the institutions and political habits of a functioning multiethnic, multiparty, parliamentary democracy. While interparty relations in the cabinet and parliament can often become strained, the politics-of-bargaining rather than the politics-of-war mark the discourse of both the Macedonian and Albanian political class. In April of this year, a new president, Gjorge Ivanov, was elected. Previously a professor at the University of Saints Cyril and Methodius, Ivanov has a strong commitment to democracy, diplomacy, and European integration. In short, Macedonia has made noticeable progress in the state-building process. No other better authority than the European Commission supports this conclusion, for it just announced on October 14th that Macedonia has “made convincing progress and substantially addressed the key reform priorities.” Consequently, the Commission formally recommended that Macedonia may begin accession talks with Brussels. It is against the backdrop of these remarkable achievements that Macedonia’s challenges must be assessed.

And those challenges remain frustratingly formidable. In fact, the very basic questions of state identity that first rattled Macedonia in the early 1990s continue unabated. All of Macedonia’s problems — economic hardship, uncertainty over the implications of Kosovo’s independence, continued ethnic irritations and mistrust — will be exacerbated if Greece continues to deny, by the exercise of its veto power, Macedonia’s entry into NATO and the EU. The greatest challenge for Macedonia thus continues to be how to join these coveted western institutions and not compromise its basic right to self-identify.

Learn more about Dr. Robert Hislope.