ABSTRACT
Democracy promotion was Wilton Park’s original raison d’etre. Once that mission was accomplished, other than a series during the 1970s, it was not until the end of the Cold War that Wilton Park began to focus again on strengthening democracy and its promotion. Democracy was widely demanded in many former Communist European and developing countries. While Wilton Park’s EU enlargement series implicitly sought to strengthen democracy in Central Europe, in parallel it explicitly sought to do so in the developing world. A high-level 1992 conference on Good Government in Africa helped develop and progress the UK’s good government policy. More than a decade of annual events on strengthening parliamentary democracy with the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and World Bank Institute followed. The series recognised democracy does not begin and end with free and fair elections. Strengthening parliament, curbing corruption, reforming electoral systems and party financing, ensuring the functioning of an independent judiciary and media, an apolitical civil service, and high standards in public life were among the essential checks and balances needed for any democracy to flourish.
