The Institut pour la démocratie gives recommendations in the field of political institutions to different countries through a network of experts sharing the same views.
In order to force a state to comply with the right standards, it advocates including the principles of democracy in the preamble of the constitution. As globalization goes on, their recognition at a supranational level will force the member states to comply with these fundamental rules of the game. The first step starts with better respect for the separation between the private sphere and the public domain.
The Institut pour la démocratie organizes seminars in France and abroad on institutional problems, on its own initiative or at the request of local political leaders. Those bring together experts, generally academics, and political decision-makers with the aim of improving the democratic character of institutions and facilitating better decision-making in the countries concerned. It has already intervened in over twenty countries since its foundation.
Among notable seminars is the one on the assessment of fifteen years of constitutional experience in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, organized in partnership with the Venice Commission (Council of Europe). At the request of a state, or on its own initiative, the Institut pour la Democratie carries out a democratic audit of a country with institutional difficulties. As an indication, we present in the French version of the site an example (report on Burma), which has allowed a better understanding of the evolution of the country at that time. It recommends a basic parliamentary regime, whose effectiveness has been widely demonstrated, which can be summarized in a constitution of 30 articles, 10 of which set out the rules of democracy in the preamble.
The Institut pour la démocratie is not indifferent to Western regimes, whose dysfunctions reflect less a crisis of democracy than the misapplication of its rules. It advocates gathering an international club of democrats, in order to boost the cooperation between political thinkers, quite absent today, in order to put pressure on the political deciders, who are too much under that of the mass media and the people in the street, supposedly pledging for the common good. The two activities being incompatible in practice and action being hardly efficient without thinking, the prospect to reconcile the governed with their governments, thanks to an increase of rationality in the decision-making process, will then become possible.
This may require two different types of citizens’ delegates in the long run: those who make the ordinary political decisions and those in charge of the rules of the game applicable to the different types of political actors – about ten of them in practice – with the help of democracy doctors.
Cycles and conferences on the concept of democracy
On request, the Institut pour la démocratie organises conferences and training courses on the following topics :
- What is democracy?
- How to transpose the rights of man into the rights of the citizen
- The capital role of the majority voting system
- Defining the role of the State
- The Upper House as the representation of the citizen’s constituting power
- The competitive arena of political expertise