The turn of the millennium marked
both the tenth anniversary of the beginning of post-communist
reforms in Bulgaria and the establishment of the Center for the
Study of Democracy as an independent think and action
tank.
For ten years the Center has been
spearheading the transformation efforts in the country, addressing
critical issues such as constitutional reform, privatization,
commercial law development, building capacity for the
non-governmental sector and, in the last few years, initiating and
leading a comprehensive public-private anti-corruption partnership.
Coalition 2000. Being at the forefront of the adoption of
new institutions and standards of public life and economic
development, necessitated that the Center maintained a substantial
research, advocacy and technical capabilities.
Laying the foundations of its
political and financial independence, these capabilities also
allowed CSD to pioneer innovative approaches to facilitating
transition in Bulgaria. Among these, the promotion of
public-private partnerships as an instrument of sustainable reforms
and working out targeted watchdog methods in the area of
governance, are particularly notable.
The drafting and introduction to
the National Assembly of legislation related to electronic commerce
(Law on Electronic Signature and Electronic Document) and human
rights (The Draft Law on the Ombudsman), the pilot study of the
link between smuggling and corruption, the launch of the Judicial
Reform Initiative for Bulgaria, the international recognition of
CSD's corruption monitoring system, and the start of a regional
anticorruption effort as part of the Southeast European Legal
Development Initiative, are also evidence to the successful
application of these methods in the year 2000.
The most noteworthy development in
the focus of CSD's work in 2000 was the regionalization of its
activities in the field of good governance and legal development.
Taking stock of 10 years of uneven pace of domestic reforms, it has
become increasingly clear to us - as well as to many in the
international community - that the sustainability of the transition
policies in the countries of Southeast Europe and their long term
impact could only be guaranteed if issues were addressed on a truly
regional scale.
The institutionalization of this
new thinking at CSD - the Southeast Europe Legal Development
Initiative (SELDI) - produced its first practical results by the
end of 2000. The preliminary results of the corruption diagnostics,
carried out in seven SEE countries using CSD designed monitoring
methodology, are the first effort to take the corruption
"temperature" of the region on a comparative basis. Produced in
cooperation with a network of partners, these results will serve as
an indispensable background of proposals for joint actions and
policy recommendations to be worked out in the framework of
SELDI.
In a further effort to transfer
its anticorruption experience beyond Bulgaria to other transition
countries, in 2000 CSD started the development of anticorruption
training programs intended to build the skills of NGOs to promote
coalitions with public institutions and exercise as watchdog
function.
Thus, CSD is increasingly seeking
to expand the model of a successful capacity and
institution-building think tank to include the promotion of
regional partnerships aimed at sustaining reforms in the long
term.
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