The Foreign Service Journal, September 2022

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | SEPTEMBER 2022 21 SPEAKING OUT Democracy as a Vocation BY JOSÉ M . GARZÓN José M. Garzón is a retired Foreign Service officer who spent three decades working for the U.S. Agency for International Development in democracy, governance and conflict programs. He continues to support USAID democ- racy programs. His publications include “Hispanic Representation at USAID: Why So Low and for So Long?” and “Developing the Next Generation of Followers” ( The Foreign Service Journal , March 2014 and January-February 2017, respec- tively) and “Democracy and Development Reconsidered” ( USAID Frontiers in Development, 2012). He currently serves as a mentor to junior officers through the Payne Fellows Program and USAID Alumni Association. Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards. It takes both passion and per- spective. Certainly, all historical experience confirms the truth that man would not have attained the possible unless time and again he had reached out for the impos- sible. But to do that a person must be a leader, and not only a leader but a hero as well, in a very sober sense of the word. And even those who are neither leaders nor heroes must arm themselves with that steadfastness of heart which can brave even the crumbling of all hopes. This is necessary right now, or else we will not be able to attain even that which is possible today. —Max Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” 1919 T his is a love letter to junior FSOs everywhere, but espe- cially those in democracy and governance (USAID) or politi- cal (State) career tracks. In 1994, a few years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, USAID created the Center for Democracy, Human Rights and Gov- ernance, and a few years later created a specialty cone (“backstop” in USAID- speak) dedicated to the subject (BS 76). When the new bureau’s assistant admin- istrator came to my post, I marched into his office, slapped down my CV, which screamed “political scientist” on the top, and said: “I want to be one, too.” And so I became a democracy and governance (DG) officer. I ran programs Kosovo seem stuck in time; and Afghani- stan’s government crumbled last year with all of our hopes. Elsewhere dicta- torship or populist authoritarianism is on the rise, fromNicaragua to Hungary, while several other governments abuse their citizens with impunity. Democratic reform in Russia is a dis- tant memory, as are the hopes of a more democratic China that greater and freer trade would bring. The “democratic recession” is well documented in the indices and academic research. For example, the 2021 Freedom in the World report from FreedomHouse documents a steady decline in freedom in each of the past 15 years, with the greatest “democracy gap” in 2020. Oh, and on the Mother Ship, the world’s last and best hope, things are not looking so good either. A year ago, the United States narrowly avoided a populist coup. Journalists, school board members and judges have been threatened and even attacked outright. School libraries are removing books from their shelves. The U.S. is starting to have the look of a fragile state. Democracy is in retreat, and authori- tarianism in fashion. Unlike the authori- tarianism of the past, which was often the extension of influence of the superpow- ers, this authoritarianism often, though not always, grows from below: from popu- lar frustrations or anxieties of every sort. It is rooted more in fear and grievance than in ideology. It doesn’t even have an ideology—it defies categorization, yet it is everywhere. A statement that has haunted me for years, from one of my favorite pieces of in Bolivia, Guatemala, Afghanistan, Kosovo and Washington, D.C. And did I have fun. With my colleagues I helped build municipal associations, introduced a new and effective approach to dealing with youth gangs, brought community radio to the farthest reaches of Afghani- stan and broke through barriers between ethnic groups in Kosovo. But now, as I reflect on my career and more recent work in Central America as a contracted adviser, I wonder … what dif- ference did any of it make? b A hostile government kicked USAID out of Bolivia (beginning with its democ- racy office) in 2013; Guatemala and