Washington: the Conference Beginning
I’ve been excited to start my internship with International IDEA–and it’s finally here. I started working remotely for a few days to push back my flight because my boss, Sumit, wanted me and the other intern to attend a conference with IDEA in Washington, DC, before flying to the Netherlands. Since I went to George Washington University in D.C. for college--I was thrilled to return to the city. Plus, the conference topic was “Democratic Backsliding,” which I had studied in my undergraduate international affairs and political science courses.
My remote work started with some zoom-onboarding to make me feel welcome and then reading about the Constitution-creating process as the foundation for my future knowledge. I moved out of my house in Williamsburg that week, too, so it was a bit hectic. But talking to future coworkers about The Hague and starting to study topics like how some countries have added the protection of nature or internet privacy to their constitutions made my future summer abroad easier to picture and increased my excited-anticipation.
My first real project started as helping Sumit write a paper about the only three countries in the world that have changed from a presidential to a parliamentary system: Armenia, Moldova, and Georgia (meaning they changed the presidency from directly elected to chosen by the legislature). Comparing processes, the constitutions themselves, and the different government structures has felt eye-opening already.
I was staying in D.C. at my sister's apartment, and she took me to an open mic night in Shaw, where we got to hear performances by local singers and musicians. Many of the performers performed original songs with a great blend of personal humor and inventive styles.
On a different night, I met up with some of my college friends and had the chance to relive one of my GWU's favorite traditions: “night monument-ing.” Seeing the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial all lit up at night felt special to visit as a now-tourist.
Later that week started the first part of the “Democratic Backsliding” conference which included a dinner of sixteen of us at Le Diplomat. I sat with the other IDEA intern, Anna, who is a rising 2L from the University of Chicago Law School. The other conference attendants, I soon learned, were mostly law professors from around the world and others who work for the United Nations. The intern from last year, Madeleine, a recent Harvard law school graduate and future Ph.D. student at Oxford, was also there to help with the conference and made Anna and I feel very welcome. At dinner, the French food was excellent--I enjoyed the moules frites (mussels with french fries) and crème brûlée. I talked to an NYU law professor from Argentina who told me about his views on how a constitutional switch from a presidential system to a parliamentary system could be significant in some cases or purely theoretical in others. I also talked to a law professor and United Nations worker from South Africa who shared with me how interested she was in how different the cultures of different states in the U.S. are.
After dinner, the group went to an outdoor beer garden together. I could feel the thrill in the air of a group of people who have all spent years studying a similar topic and now get the chance to share their findings and excitement.