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# Democracy support - a debate
- URL: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/about-idea-and-opendemocracy/
- Published: 2008-11-19T07:11:52.000Z
- Updated: 2019-02-14T22:44:08.000Z
- Author: openDemocracy Supporters
- Tags: #en, #Migrated, #Import 2026-04-09 18:59

[The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA)](http://www.idea.int/?ref=opendemocracy.net) and [openDemocracy](http://www.opendemocracy.net/) present a major debate on the current state of democracy support in the international arena.

The [debate](https://www.opendemocracy.net/idea) unfolds between November 2008 and June 2009\. It will include articles commissioned by both openDemocracy and IDEA, and a debate forum with contributors from members and associates of both organisations, authors and citizens.

The starting-point of the debate is a sense that the world is in a critical period of questioning about democracy and the prospects of political change. The notion of democracy support has been one of the shaping ideas of the post-1989 world; now it needs to be reconsidered and re-evaluated in light of the leading events in the 2000s - the experience of intervention and war in Afghanistan and Iraq, the rise of powerful authoritarianisms in the non-western world, the problems of populism and alienation in liberal-democratic states, the challenges to democratic ideas from faith-based and ethno-nationalist currents.

These developments have put the problems and prospects of democracy support (indeed of democracy itself) under renewed scrutiny. The heart of the IDEA/openDemocracy project is to consider these issues in a global perspective, with contributions from around the world - by experts in the field, scholars, activists, journalists, advisers - that both attend to the integrity of particular countries and regions and speak to an imagined community of global citizens.

This is an exciting but daunting political era - where the political landscape in the United States is being transformed, yet where the power-relations in the international order are in flux as new voices emerge. There is no better time to ask: what are the lessons of democracy support in the past generation - and where does it go from here?