The Concept
Democratic sustainability, departs from yet revises democratic transition theory. As the pursuit of sustainable democracy, it is grounded in the following thinking:
1. Wide public consent is vital for sustaining processes of democratic transition, regardless of modalities of state formation and modes of institutional design
2. Collaboration with stakeholders in the Arab region, MENA, Africa, Latin America, Asia, the EU, the US to develop a) sustainable democratization goals; and b) a vision for the quality of democratization that speaks to the political, socio-economic, cultural and environmental
3. Democratic learning and un-learning along with domestic democratic knowledge are vital for renewal of norms, discovery of old teachings and values congenial to democracy, reconciling old and now, local with global, traditional and modern, individual and collective values, norms, standards and identities. Whilst possible, neither is inevitable.
4. Democratic learning and unlearning are mediated by the repository (makhzun) of skills and knowing and local imaginary (mikhyal). They are essential social, intellectual and moral drivers of democracy. No nation is a tabula rasa. To learn democracy and un-learn despotism, peoples learn through their own local systems, collective identities, and inherited, revered knowing, morals and values. These are complex processes that defy simple measurement.
5. No nation is an island. The global ‘travel’ of democratic knowledge itself creates openings for
enacting local democratic leaning and un-learning.
Key Mechanisms
1. Sustaining and revising democracy in polity, society, academy and culture;
2. Working towards even, resilient, moral, legal, just, locally sensitive but globally aware, and people-centred, critical democratization;
3. Cultivating a culture of public deliberation;
4. Reproducing processes geared towards enhancing the breadth and depth of democratic empowerment to suit changes in demands, people’s needs, time, and space;
5. Inspiring ethical, professional, plural, and creative commitment to contributing the full advantage of available resources to enhancing the quality of critical democratization;
6. Enhancing and safeguarding the full ecology of citizenship rights, including political, socio-economic, and environmental;
7. Facilitating synergies between institutional and citizens-led processes, efforts, resources, and choices ;
8. Democratizing the processes, practices, cadres, structures, and the substance of socio-political transitions, with an emphasis on renewal through democratic learning and pedagogies of freedom;
9. Sustaining the cause of smooth, realistic but rigorous democratic transition and deliberative democracy ; and
10. Enduring unforeseen setbacks through reflexivity and openness to necessary adjustments and revision