I take your question to mean, assuming a situation like the present in the Arab world. Try studying with special attention the experience of Turkey since 1980 and that of Tunisia in the last decade. Also study transitions to democracy from autocracy in relatively recent years in countries like South Africa, Spain, Portugal, South Korea. Putting religion in a more limited role seems to be the key issue for the Arab world. That would be a long-term project, over generations, with children’s education at the center.k
Thanks Dr. Olav Fagelund Knudsen On your follow-up and your interest in the subject
It's true what Dr. Fagelund Knudsen has said. It has to be slow enlightment achieved over decades. It is also true that people need to be taught more culture and tolerance.
For modernity and democracy to take root, there must be mass civic education and public enlightenment.
There is a big democratisation literature. Dankwart Rustow was its guru. one of sHe studied intesively Turkey and Swedennthe transitions in . He thought there were four ingredients:
1. A background sense of national unity fostered by administration and literati.
2. Struggle, being serious and entrenched conflict involving mass movement
3. The elites fight to a stalemate, probably polarised into two sides, where neither can get the upper hand. They resolve it by consciously adopting democratic rules, negotiated by skilled politicians.
4. Habituation to the new rules by elites and by the populace.
I think there is one more factor. Democratisation is the moment to choose between presidential and parliamentary. If presidential (Turkey, Poland, Ukraine and most other former Soviet states) it will oscillate between corrupt democracy and outright autocracy like the South American countries, depending on the president's personality and the economic situation.
Thank you all for your wonderful answers and for you all my love and respect
The starting point should be to identify relevant stakeholders- religious leaders, nation builders, community builders, opinion leaders, media that have capacity to influence citizens' behavioural change towards modernity and democratic principles and practices. Also, it is important to engage with relevant government ministries, departments and agencies and in particular, National Orientation Agencies that would promote modernity and democracy at the grassroots level. Donor agencies should develop interventions to support the project.
The project should focus on social orientation/ re-engineering of the citizens' perception, norms, attitude, behaviour, idiosyncrasy and nurture them toward civic and democratic principles and culture. Behavioural change initiative requires gradual transformation.Targeting the next generation- youth and children in educational institutions, using civic education curricula as well as mass civic/political education for the citizenry are vital strategic approaches.
“Problems of modernization and democracy” is not only found in the “Arab world,” look what has happened to the governance in Venezuela, and the decline in other forms of governance throughout the world. The following science may help the modernization in the evolution of civil globalism:
http://www.bookdaily.com/book/3341166/scientific-proof-of-our-unalienable-rights-a-road-to-utopia
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