Authoritarian regimes are under siege in many parts of the world. Some have already given way and others are likely to follow. Building democracies in their place will not be easy or quick, and in some cases it will not happen in the medium term. Much has been learned about how to organize free and fair elections, but building the other institutions and the habits of democratic governance inevitably takes time. Some countries in transition face intense divisions that make democracy challenging to achieve. But the historic possibility of decisive movement from exclusionary and repressive rule toward more open, inclusionary and accountable democratic governance beckons in North and sub-Saharan Africa, Western Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Caribbean. Learning how unexpected transitions toward democracy were accomplished should be of great interest to those who want to understand, undertake or support democratic transitions today.

Abraham F. (Abe) Lowenthal has combined two careers: as an analyst of Latin America, US-Latin American relations, comparative democratization and California’s global role, and as the founder and chief executive of three prestigious organizations—the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Latin American Program, the Inter-American Dialogue, and the Pacific Council on International Policy. He has also served as vice-president and as director of studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (New York), and as an official of the Ford Foundation in Latin America. He took his A.B., M.A. and Ph.D. degrees at Harvard University and completed one year at Harvard Law School. He is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and an adjunct research professor at Brown University’s Watson Institute. He is currently preparing a book on “Rethinking US-Latin American Relations in an Age of Transformations,” and has co-edited a symposium volume on “Scholars, Policymakers and International Affairs” to be published by Johns Hopkins in 2014.

This event was chaired by Professor the Hon Gareth Evans AC QC, Chancellor of ANU.