Warning: this is another of my long self-indulgent posts, so if you don’t like that kind of thing, ignore it.
In comments on a recent post, the point was made that there are very few functioning democracies outside Europe and countries with populations of European origin (such as the USA and Australia).
I think this is broadly true. (See Note in the continuation.) On that assumption, it is worth considering why democracy is so rare. Everyone (well, nearly everyone) claims to support democracy in principle, so why is it rare in practice?
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Some readers may be tempted by the hypothesis that people of European ancestry have innate qualities essential to democracy, while other people do not.
This is possible, but I don’t see much reason to believe it. To begin with, evolutionary psychology suggests that the basic capacities for conflict and cooperation are likely to be much the same throughout the human species. It is only in large-scale political organisation that Europeans possibly show some special features, and large-scale political organisation is too recent on an evolutionary time-scale for special adaptations to have evolved to support it. Conceivably some people have genetic traits of behaviour or personality that just happen to ’preadapt’ them to democratic forms of government, but I’m not aware of any evidence for this.
Nothing can safely be inferred from the peculiar history of the last few centuries. Any historian will be suspicious of claims about ’national character’. The pacifist Swedes were once Vikings; the tolerant Dutch were once religious fanatics. If Europeans have any special flair for democracy, they have only discovered it recently. In the garden of civilisation, democracy is a late and delicate bloom. Apart from some short-lived examples in ancient Greece, it is difficult to think of any recognisably democratic system of government anywhere much before the end of the 18th century. Within living memory, most of the peoples of Europe have been governed by dictatorships or one-party states. If we take the ’European race’ as having existed for at least ten thousand years, probably less than 1 percent of its lifespan (averaged across constituent groups) has been passed under democratic government. It would also be historically naïve to suppose that Europeans were usually better at living peacefully together than, say, modern Iraqis or Afghans. Go back to medieval or renaissance Europe, and you will find an environment of violence, feuding, and corruption that a modern Iraqi would feel quite at home in.
It may also be argued that a precondition for democracy is a high level of intelligence in the population, and that nations with mean IQ below, say, 80 are simply too stupid to make democracy work. But this doesn’t explain why democracy is still weak in East Asia, where, according to Richard Lynn and his groupies, IQ is generally higher than in Europe or the USA. And it overlooks the fact that a hundred years ago IQ in western countries was probably below 80 by current (2004) norms (see my post here), yet the USA and some European countries already had successful traditions of democracy.
A more plausible explanation for the rarity of stable democracies is that they require circumstances which are actually quite rare and difficult to achieve.
Democracy (in the modern sense) gives power to a majority of the population. This is better than giving it to a minority, but rule by a minority (or an individual, like the enlightened despots of the 18th century) does have some advantages. A prudent minority ruler will exercise self-restraint in exploiting the majority. In contrast, a government representing the majority of the population feels little need, either on practical or ethical grounds, to restrain itself in dealing with minorities. In turn, the oppressed minorities will feel no loyalty or obligation towards a majority regime which exploits them without giving them effective constitutional means of redress. They may then turn to violent means, leading to a cycle of repression and rebellion, and ultimately to the collapse of democratic institutions.
This suggests the principle: successful democracy is only possible if there are no deep divisions in the population.
Two major qualifications are needed. First, if a minority is small and weak, it may simply acquiesce in its own oppression, migrate out of the country, or (if possible) be assimilated into the majority. Second, if conflict between groups is very prolonged, they may eventually reach a compromise. The result may be a devolution of powers within a federal system, entrenched constitutional rights for minorities, or other limits on the powers of the majority. This in itself is a step away from pure democracy.
In most of the states in the modern world, deep divisions do exist in the population. The boundaries of most non-European states were set arbitrarily in colonial times, and contain mutually hostile ethnic groups, like the Shona and Ndebele in Zimbabwe, Kurds and Arabs in Iraq, or the Sinhalese and Tamils in Sri Lanka. Expecting these groups to get along harmoniously in a single polity is like tying rats up in a bag and then being surprised if they fight.
Another obvious source of division is religion. Today the topical examples are Sunnis versus Shias, or Muslims versus non-Muslims (Sudan, Lebanon, Nigeria, Philippines, Kashmir, etc.) Four hundred years ago the topical example would have been Catholics versus Protestants. Except in Northern Ireland, where the religious division coincides with an ethnic one, Catholic-Protestant conflict has generally died down. This might offer some hope for the future of other religious hostilities, but don’t hold your breath. In most European states, peace between Protestants and Catholics was finally achieved, after a century of so of brutal wars and persecution, by the religious equivalent of ethnic cleansing. By the end of the 17th century most people were so fed up with religious wars that a degree of tolerance did emerge. This was reinforced by the spread of Enlightenment values among elites in the 18th century, as reflected for example in the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights, with its guarantee of freedom of religion and the separation of church and state. Unfortunately much of the world has never had an Enlightenment. (Note also that the constitutional exclusion of the state from religious affairs is a limitation of democracy. In a pure democracy, why shouldn‘t the majority impose its religious beliefs on others?)
Another serious obstacle to democracy is gross inequality of wealth. There is little prospect for unity in a country divided between a small minority of very rich people and a large mass of very poor ones, as is the case in many third-world countries. Assuming that the rich minority is initially in power, it will take any steps necessary to preserve its dominance, because it knows that the impoverished majority will despoil it if they get the chance. Extreme inequality of wealth is also a fertile ground for Communist subversion and terrorism, which is countered by torture and ’disappearance’. These factors are sufficient to explain the general failure of democracy in Latin America until recently, along with US foreign policy, which supported dictatorial regimes so long as they opposed Communism.
In poor countries another problem is kleptocracy – a government of crooks. If the only way for an able man to make a good living, and help his numerous relatives, is to get into government, and then to milk the public through bribes, corrupt contracts, and extortion, then that is what will happen. (This was routine practice in Europe before the 19th Century, and sometimes later.) Once in power, the kleptocrats will do their utmost to keep it.
Perhaps also some religious or cultural traditions are
inherently more favourable to democracy than others. Is there some cultural/religious reason why democracy has survived, despite threats, in India, while it has failed in Pakistan? In East Asia, does the Confucian and Buddhist tradition encourage submission to authority? This is more Razib’s field than mine, so I won’t speculate on it.
All this may sound pessimistic about the prospects for democracy, but there are some positive factors. One is the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. This has created some fairly genuine democracies in Eastern Europe and the former USSR itself, and Soviet-funded subversion has ceased, which in turn reduces the temptation for the US to support authoritarian anti-Communist regimes. Democracy now seems to be getting more firmly established in countries like Brazil, Argentina and South Korea.
The general growth of the world economy and freer trade are also positive factors. Anything that reduces sharp divisions between rich and poor, and helps create a prosperous and moderate middle class, also reduces the obstacles to democracy.
Wider literacy and education might also be expected to reduce religious extremism, a major source of conflict, but as yet there are few signs of this. A little literacy may be a dangerous thing, just extending the influence of demagogues and religious fanatics.
There remains the problem of ethnic divisions within the artificial boundaries of ex-colonial states, especially in Africa. I suggested in an earlier post that wider application of the principle of self-determination would be useful. The main obstacle to this is that there are vested interests in preserving the status quo (e.g. the Russian interest in the oil of Chechnya). One can only hope that the problem will resolve itself in time, either by redrawing of boundaries (the Sudan would be a good case for this), by giving autonomy to regional minorities (e.g. the Kurds in Iraq), or by movements of population. The last of these is not an efficient solution: it should be easier to move boundaries than people.
I have been focussing on obstacles to democracy rather than positive factors that make it possible or have historically led to its emergence. Just one point to note on this: in the English-speaking world stable democracies have emerged by the extension of representative institutions (such as the English House of Commons and the assemblies of colonial-era America) which originally had limited powers and/or electorates. (Most western democracies started out with a limited franchise, based on ownership of property, and extended it in stages to all adults.) It is difficult to go from despotism to full democracy in a single step. When any of the obstacles discussed above apply, it may be impossible.
Note
A useful source of basic information about electoral systems and parties throughout the world is at www.electionworld.org/
I haven’t attempted to define democracy. See this Wikipedia article. I suggest that in practice there are four key requirements:
a) opposition to the government can be freely organised and promoted, and opponents are not subject to arrest, assassination, etc.
b) elections are fairly conducted, without major fraud in counting of votes etc
c) an unpopular government can in practice be voted out of office, and a winning party can take office without facing military coups, etc.
d) democracy in the modern sense requires universal suffrage: all adult citizens have equal voting rights unless disqualified for some good reason.
By these criteria few countries outside Europe and the Anglosphere are indisputably democratic. India and Japan probably qualify, and maybe a few others. Criterion (c) is sometimes difficult to assess, because a single party or coalition may be so dominant (as in Mexico, Singapore, or Japan) that the possibility of a change of government is seldom put to the test.
Posted by David B at 04:14 AM