Intellectual Framework

The Ronald and Eileen Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies (WCED) is a constituent unit of the Ronald and Eileen Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia (WCEE) at the University of Michigan International Institute. WCED supports the study of how democracies emerge and the conditions necessary for assuring and extending freedom. Advised by a Policy Board and an Advisory Council, WCED is independent of all political forces.

Freedom is not a simple matter, especially when considered across societies, cultural traditions, and institutional sites. Economic freedom, political freedom, social freedom, and other freedoms must be understood in relation to one another and to other values such as security, prosperity, national sovereignty, and justice. This inquiry also requires analysis of the contested meanings of freedom and democracy and how their meanings translate over time and cultural traditions and shape social transformations. Part of WCED's work will be to encourage a richer understanding of freedom in comparative and historical perspective, especially as it affects political change.

Emerging democracies are one of the most important venues for investigating linkages between freedom and political change, and study of historical, contemporary, and prospective democratic transformations will therefore constitute the core of the Center's work. Among issues WCED will explore are the processes by which democracy and democratization become the goal and means of transformation. The Center will also address electoral and governance procedures that might better assure the stabilization and success of these democratic trajectories. More broadly, the Center will support the study of processes and conditions that allow for the public to meaningfully choose their leadership, and the laws that govern them and their elites. By drawing lessons from transformations of authoritarian regimes and dictatorships into more open societies, WCED will support the study of past, ongoing, and future efforts to assure and extend freedom and democracy.

These forms of political organization are not by themselves sufficient for assuring and extending democracy and freedom. Civil society--the development of legal private economic initiatives; voluntary associations that enhance pluralism, social integration, and the public good; and a public sphere where issues of common importance are communicated and discussed--is critical to the Center's mission. The Center will support study of conditions under which civil society flourishes and the relationship of civil society to freedom and democracy.

Although most research on democratic governance is focused on the national level, WCED will also support scholarship on the local, regional, transnational, international, and global dimensions of emerging democracies. For example, in what ways have transnational democratic initiatives by states and from civil society affected these emerging democracies? In what ways does the spread of democracy affect the conditions for peace?

WCED is committed to the value of historical studies, such as those aimed at understanding the development of democracy after familial states and polities, colonial rule, fascism, or communism. WCED is likewise committed to studying variations in the dynamics of democracy emerging from dictatorship depending, e.g., on the level and types of violence within a society, measures of prosperity and well-being and their distribution across regions and social groups, ways for recognizing past injustices, means for assuring the rule of law, the spread of political participation and civic engagement, and forms of artistic and cultural expression.

WCED's intellectual framework is therefore broad and diverse in theoretical, substantive, and contextual references. Initially, WCED will focus on freedom and democracy in Europe and Eurasia, moving farther afield as conditions and resources warrant. Although its principal concerns for democratic governance and civil society in contemporary policy and practice suggest certain disciplinary foci, this framework is intended to be a living document, one that evolves through WCED's engagement with faculty and students from across the University of Michigan and the world whose scholarly focus is on freedom and democracy and the conditions of their extension.