I attended an event at the Carnegie Council in December about democracy which involved some of the leading thinkers in politics and economics. The transcript is not yet available online, but here is a link if you are interested in what the Carnegie Council is doing.
http://www.cceia.org/page.php/prmID/...mocracygateway Check out their PDF to read the full project description. They are doing some important work there. I love attending their lectures because I find out what will happen in the world months before it actually happens.
Last week I attended a lecture by international prosecutor Richard Goldstone. He made some interesting points about establishing democracy. He is from South Africa where a majority of the population was systematically excluded from the vote. When democracy was being established in South Africa, many countries turned their backs on them except the US, particularly African American judges, politicians, and lawyers. It took several years of work, but South Africa had free elections in 1994 and elected Nelson Mandella. Many people believed that it could never happen, but it did.
Goldstone served as the Chief Prosecutor of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. During 1998 he was the chairperson of a high level group of international experts which met in Valencia, Spain, and drafted a Declaration of Human Duties and Responsibilities for the Director General of UNESCO (the Valencia Declaration). He drew some interesting parallels between Bosnia, Kosovo, and Iraq as well as the Nuremberg trials. When a transcript is made available, I will share it.