Democracy & Transparency in Asia
A week after his political party suffered some heavy losses in midterm elections; US President Barak Obama is abroad promoting the merits of democracy in Asia. Though the crux of this “Asia tour” is likely the issue of trade, democracy seems a close second, and really what better time could there be to promote the principles of democracy than right after your political allies were trounced. Given the international tendency for incumbents to stay in power regardless of what elections might say, the presentation of the democratic party’s losses as “a healthy thing” might be a helpful message throughout the region particularly when delivered to college-age students in effort to influence future relationships.
Many things can be said about the years of Obama’s presidency so far, if interested one can catch up on the most recent summaries of his successes and failures as interpreted by political pundits at pretty much any time of the day. Perhaps I’m a bit naïve in thinking this but it seems to me that regardless of what side of the political fence one stands on, the current administration’s efforts toward government transparency have been laudable and something that could leave a lasting impact on our nation regardless of how everything else works out. Thus even more than the promotion of democracy (which unfortunately has become quite the loaded political term) I appreciate the administration’s current promotion of transparency and open government. Regardless of what system of government one lives under, it’s a good thing to have access to credible information about the activities of one’s government.
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I guess. I don’t see much operational difference on transparency compared to the Bush administration, but perhaps I am missing something.
The trip to Asia is an excellent chance to highlight democracy as Indonesia and India are the democracies with the two largest Muslim populations. I haven’t seen him highlight this issue, although I have not been following the trip very closely.
I’m surprised to hear that Barak, while certainly I don’t feel the administration has been perfect on the subject I think the trends of change on transparency have been pretty massive. On an agency level there’s still some issues with claims of FOIA exemptions and typically lagging declassification but I definitely think the trend on the mountain of secrets has been a positive one. Further I’d argue that the issues with lagging change are more of the standard problems of institutional inertia common in government.
As for the trip to Asia, well there’s much of it left to go but so far I do believe democracy has been highlighted as an issue. Note however that this opinion is formed mostly from reading mainstreamish news media.
I have to admit I haven’t been following the issue very closely. The only things I have heard in this area is that the Department of Defense is developing programs to monitor the internet more closely and that the Obama administration is basically following the Bush administration on issues of monitoring communication. Perhaps I am wrong or this is a biased assessment. I would love to be corrected.
[...] the trend from my previous post on President Obama’s Asia trip, I find myself pleasantly surprised that democracy promotion continues to be a public subject of [...]