Your Excellency,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Dear Participants and Guests,

Having the honor to represent the Conrad Adenauer Foundation, let me seize the opportunity to highlight not only the tasks of the Foundation but also the reasons for this workshop and the philosophy behind it.

Having come into existence in the post-war Germany in the 1950s, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation is one out of five political foundations in Germany today, each of them being close to one of the major political parties. The main reason for the creation of these foundations as a unique tool in the field of political education was the devastating experience Germany lived through between 1933-1945. To all politicians and decision makers in post war Germany - across the political parties - it was clear that a lack of knowledge and consciousness about what democracy really meant had strongly contributed to the catastrophy of the so called Third Reich. This was not to happen again. In order to democratize a population that had received a democratic framework without really being democratic themselves, the political foundations accompanied this process of educating democrats truly understanding the meaning of democracy and willing to defend this societal order, more or less new to the country. In the 1960s and 1970s then, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, like the other foundations, opened representative offices all over the world, including the Middle East. Becoming international did not mean a change of direction in our activities. Until today, democracy and democratization remain our main concerns all over the world.

The topic, which will be dealt with today, is clearly related to this main goal of our activities and the activities of our partners. True democracy needs a functioning state, a democratic legal framework and a functioning bureaucracy. It lives and thrives on a relationship of mutual trust between the citizen and the state. On the other hand, a relationship based on a lack of mutual trust and a lack of transparency and accountability is preventing citizens from identifying with and developing a positive attitude towards the state. This relationship of distrust between the state and the citizen seems to be prevalent in most Arab countries today. Citizens, deprived of the chance of participating democratically and at the same time frustrated by the absence, or the malfunctioning of public services have developed a negative attitude towards the state structure they are living in. Low voter turnout in elections and tax evasion are only two symptoms of this deep political dissatisfaction and the disturbed relationship between citizens and the state.

Political scientists doing research on middle eastern countries have reversed the motto of the Boston Tea Party "no taxation without representation" into "no representation without taxation" in order to explain, why many Middle Eastern countries - and they are referring mainly to so called rentier economies - do not seem to be eager to democratize. States that exist due to a high influx of foreign aid, revenues from the oil production or other 'rents' reallocate these rents to inflated Public Sectors and thus buy legitimacy through job creation in bureaucracies or state industries. In turn, citizens owe loyalty to their government, but, since a high proportion of the citizenry does not contribute to the financial survival of the state, as a result and as opposed to western-style democracies, can not claim more civil liberties.

Even though, this theory is applicable to Lebanon only to a small degree, the problem remains, that institutions and services, eight years after the end of the civil war, are still weak and need to be improved as a contribution to the ongoing reconstruction process. Both sides, the citizens and the state, have to make complementary contributions. A functioning and fair tax system is needed as a precondition for better services. Once public administration and public services are financed rather through taxation than through customs and other sources, a better relationship between the public administration and the citizen can be developed.

This renewed social contract will be highly beneficial for both sides. Lebanon, as any other dynamic country, needs functioning, transparent and accountable public institutions and services as a precondition for a higher efficiency of the economy, but also as a precondition for a truly democratic development. Accountability and transparency are basic tenets not only of the classic democratic institutions such as the executive, the legislative and the judiciary but they are also basic tenets of the public administration states. Accountability and transparency in both sectors are interrelated in such a way, one could say, one is hardly conceivable without the other. But, as I have said before, a strong, accountable and transparent public administration is the best mean to strengthen citizens' trust in his or her state. Once this is realized, its performance, based on institutional independence will positively reflect on the society as whole.

Contributing to this ongoing reconstruction of credible and efficient institutions is the goal of this workshop. I would like to express my gratitude to the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies, our reliable and efficient partner without whose conceptual capacities and organizational skills this workshop would not have been realized. I would also like to thank all the experts and participants for contributing to the success of this workshop.