While most professors were spending the first week of May in their classrooms, government professor John Carey embarked on a different kind of teaching mission, instructing members of the recently victorious Sudan People's Liberation Movement how to establish an autonomous democratic legislature.
After 20 years of fighting, the Sudanese government has ceded roughly one-third of Africa's largest country to the SPLM, leaving the guerilla army with the arduous task of converting its leadership council into the viable regional government stipulated under the peace agreement.
Carey joined two other political scientists, one from South Africa and another from Nigeria, to put on the five-day workshop organized by the International Republican Institute, a group dedicated to "advancing democracy, freedom, self-government and the rule of law worldwide." According to Carey, the workshop had the same tenor as a Dartmouth classroom.
"It was kind of like a classroom except these guys were even more attentive than Dartmouth students because they have a lot more at stake," Carey said.
While Carey said he believes that the members of the SPLM are committed to developing some form of representative government, he is not overly optimistic about their chances of doing so in the near term.
"The challenges that these guys face are so overwhelming," Carey said. "The situation will be better only because it couldn't get any worse."
The fledgling government will immediately have to face such obstacles as ethnic conflicts, poverty and a war-ridden infrastructure.
In addition to the immediate concerns of the country's contentious situation, a major part of the challenge will lie in developing a democracy in southern Africa, an area with relatively little exposure to democracies. While Kenya and Tanzania do hold regular elections, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Egypt lack true democracies, according to Carey. Uganda holds elections, but even its president is now attempting to amend the constitution to allow himself to run for a third term.
"It would be hard to find another place on earth -- except maybe Iraq -- where democracies are less supported, if you look in the neighborhood." Carey said.
Oil will be another sparring point for the tenuous nation. Despite the establishment of a border, the new southern Sudanese government will still have to negotiate drilling rights over recently discovered oil along the border. Additionally, a court system must be established to handle large-scale movement of refugees returning to their homes -- homes they often find occupied.
Ultimately, Carey said his definition of a fully-democratic state is one in which the SPLM has a realistic chance of losing the next election " a definition he described the SPLM as not "totally committed to." Carey says he finds this hesitancy understandable after the SPLM's 20-year war.
"I wasn't going in there as an American saying 'Here's how democracy works and here's what you've got to do,'" Carey said. "With any luck I'll never know what they've been through. I certainly wouldn't presume to go in with a checklist and tell them what to do."
Carey has previously done work through consulting firms, including the National Endowment for Democracy and Management Systems International. He has also consulted independently, testifying before several foreign legislatures about democracy.
"There's a loose network of people who straddle academia and this democracy promotion stuff," Carey said. "Academics tend to get involved if they've published about these sort of things."
Carey teaches an introduction to comparative politics, an introduction to Latin American politics, and a class on politics around the world. He is one of two directors for government thesis students.
