Moderator Bishwapriya Sanyal opens the panel with some reflections on history. He identifies periods when nations acknowledge similarities among different peoples, and equality and democracy seem on the rise, and times when only tribal divisions appear to matter and the clash of civilizations seems inevitable. Conscious of this waxing and waning of democratic impulses, speakers consider practical and pressing matters of international aid and development, conflict resolution, and the rights of the individual in an increasingly connected but contentious planet.  Whether political uprisings in the Middle East represent the “tail end of the decolonization process or the emergence of serious democratization,” says Nazli Choucri, what is happening today can be traced to developments following World War II, as new sovereign nations broke free from European colonizers, and began the process of state building and economic growth — often suppressing “diversity as a value and as a form of political expression.” Over the same period, other dynamics appeared that “contributed to the individual having a voice:” the burgeoning of global communication and information networks; the growth in the “youth segment” and education. Participation in a civil society has increasingly become the norm. In the Middle East and elsewhere, “youth-driven, communication enabled” local movements are pressing for political representation. “Nobody but themselves will be allowed to manage the design for the future,” she says. Traditional development in Latin America has generally failed because of its emphasis on unilateral aid, complex technology transfer, and long distance policy-making that overlooked the interests of diverse communities, says Geoffrey Groesbeck. A case study of such flawed ventures lies in Chiquitos, in eastern Bolivia, where 17th and 18th century Jesuit missions and villages have been the focus of multiple restoration and development projects. Groesbeck describes ...