The U.S. Agency for International Development's new strategy to promote democracy, rights, and governance (DRG) is a welcome addition to the agency's guidance and reflects decades of learning about how to do this kind of work.
Several aspects are worth noting. First, the strategy elevates human rights as a key development objective and emphasises inclusion and the dignity of all people.
Second, it stresses the importance of political context rather than proposing rigid approaches or one-size-fits-all solutions to complex challenges. The recommendation to do political economy analysis before programming is a sound one.
Third, it adopts new objectives. Moving beyond a framework built on western notions of democracy, governance, and a sometimes narrow focus on institutions, the new strategy focuses on outcomes measured through greater citizen participation and demonstrated accountability of institutions and leaders.
The strategy should set the agency's programming up for success and reinvigorate USAid's leadership in a field it had helped to define during the Clinton administration.
Questions remain, however, within the DRG community - including within USAid's DRG professionals - about the availability of resources to implement this important work in a budget-constrained environment.
While much progress has been made in the development of formal democratic systems, citizens in various countries face the effective roll-back of rights, with government rules or actions designed to narrow the space for civil society organisations or citizen advocacy. There must be continual and robust international support for local actors struggling to maintain democratic and rights-based systems in both their form and function.
President Barack Obama spoke eloquently of the importance of democracy, rights, and governance to the American people and to our foreign policy in 2009 in Egypt, one of many countries now in turmoil as citizens and government navigate democratic change.
Obama said: "America does not presume to know what is best for everyone, just as we would not presume to pick the outcome of a peaceful election. But I do have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn't steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose. These are not just American ideas; they are human rights. And that is why we will support them everywhere."
But in the context of fiscal constraint and finite agency budgets, we will be hard pressed to support them everywhere. USAid DRG staff are understandably reluctant to "beg, borrow, or steal" from their colleagues working on pressing priorities such as Feed the Future or climate change. Rather than robbing Peter to pay Paul in this zero sum game, we should indeed - as the new strategy encourages us - "integrate governance" into sectoral programs, thereby improving those programs (because governance issues pervade the development agenda) and accessing more resources.
But will that welcome embrace of integration be enough to implement a serious DRG strategy globally?
Concern is warranted, as integration will continue to be a challenge for some time to come—both bureaucratically, and technically. We in the democratic governance community must do more to support the integration agenda, while at the same time making the case for expanding USAid's overall funding to accommodate the revitalised DRG mandate. Domestically, implementers from the democracy community have lacked in building a strong advocacy base to preserve the funding that allows good work to continue, as reflected in congressional budget and political priorities.
In short, if USAid is to realise the full potential of its powerful new strategy, it needs more resources to both bolster and parallel the integration agenda. Without them, we put at risk our credibility abroad at a moment when so many people in challenging political environments look to America for support as they undertake democratic transformations.
In our own interest and theirs, we should not let them down.
Ann Hudock leads DAI's voice and accountability work and previously worked at the U.S. Department of State. She worked at USAid as a Democracy Fellow in the Center for Democracy and Governance (as it was previously known).
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