Zakaria makes several compelling observations about democracy:
- Democracy has certainly shaped the new generation of nations during the post World war era. Why has this been the case? Today, 119 countries, that constitute 62% of the world nations, are democratic. Democracy should not imply the power of the electorate. Dictators like Egypt's Hosni Mubarak & Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe organize national elections, and win regularly. But this is mere rhetoric and forces such as these are merely
wrongly apeing the fundamental notions of democracy. - Democracy has affected large facets of our lives today. Capitalism, information, technology - all these have become democratic. Social structures have adapted, with economic power shifting downwards in the social strata. Information has been democratized, with the internet revolution. This has also led to the democratization of technology, and subsequently to the ease with which anyone can get recipies of developing weapons of mass destruction online.
Liberal democracy, by definition, refers to a political system marked not only by free and fair elections but also by the rule of law, a separation of powers, and the protection of basic liberties of speech, assembly, religion and property. Interestingly, this bundle of freedoms - termed "constitutional liberalism" has often not gone together with democracy, even in the West. Some examples of this - Hitler came to power through free and fair elections, elections have paved the way to dictatorships in parts of Central Asia; both Yugoslavia and Indonesia were far more tolerant and secular when they were ruled by Tito & Suharto than now, when they are democracies. Constitutional liberalism ties two idealogies - it is liberal because it emphasizes individual liberty. It is constitutional because it places the rule of the law at the center of politics.
America itself has large examples of undemocratic governance - the US Supreme Court is headed by nine unelected men & women with life tenure. The US Senate is one of the most unrepresentative upper houses, with each US state sending two representatives to Wash DC, regardless of its population. This has had its effects, with small states with tiny populations huge political influence.
Looking at the non-western transitions to liberal democracy (or as close as it gets to liberal democracies), it is interesting to note that South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, etc. all started off as countries ruled by military juntas or single party systems. These regimes liberalized the economy, the legal system, rights, and decades later, held free elections. India is a unique exception, more on this later. This clearly mocks Western foreign policies (particularly the US), which has embraced popular leaders in Asia & Africa who were holding free elections (Ghana, Tanzania, Kenya), but later turned into dictators after the elections. East Asia has its problems - most countries are rife with corruption, nepotism, voter fraud - but so were most Western democracies, even 50 years ago.
The Economics of Democracy
This chapter on the relationship between economics, wealth of nations, and democracies was most interesting to me. A few key observations from here:
- High per capita income is key to the success of democracy. There are exceptions, India being the biggest one. But a comprehensive statistical study of every country between 1950 and 1990 reveals that countries with a per capita income of under $1500 will not survive for too long. Between $1500 and $3000, it has survived for a couple of decades. Above $6000, democracy is highly resilient. Thus economists, and perhaps Zakaria also,
tend to conclude that a country must attempt a transition to democracy when its per capita income is between $3000 and $6000. The idea here is that as countries develop economically, their societies also develop strengths and skills to sustain liberal democratic governance. - Money by itself does not produce democray. It must be earned wealth. Economies such as the Persian Gulf sheikdoms, for example, are oil-rich states that have a lot of wealth. This kind of wealth (from abundance of natural resources, you could say) does not produce positive political change because their economic development is fundamentally different - it is not along capitalistic lines, where there is a natural transition from agriculture to industry to high level services. In most of these countries, the wealth from vast oil or mineral resources were used to buy modernity, thus leaving the middle class still unskilled. Adult literacy rates are low in all such countries.
- What is the problem with unearned wealth? This is a key point about countries that have abundant natural resources and those that do not. In a country with no resources, for the state to get rich, the society has to get rich so that the government can then tax this wealth. East Asian regimes had to work hard to do this. Governments that are rich have this too easy - they dont tax their people, they get fat on revenues and dont have to tackle the tasks of creating frameworks of laws to protect the liberties of the people. More importantly, since they dont tax their people, there is no accountability, responsibility or transparency of the governing bodies/people.
Indian Democracy - An Experiment in History
On reading this book and some others (notably, Shashi Tharoor's India: From Midnight to the Millenium, and Sunil Khilnani's The Idea of India), I am all the more convinced about India's unique place in the history of democracy. Contrary to economic theories about democracy, or any other trends that the world has seen, India has been a democracy since its freedom from British colonialism. It has developed economically in the last decade or so in spite of a poor economy since its freedom (India saw its worst decades in terms of economy during the 1960s and 1970s under Indira Gandhi, with what has been termed the Hindu rate of growth - a paltry 3%), it has been tolerant and secular for the most part (except for recent trends of Hindu fundamentalism), and it has always had free and fair elections (I think statistically we can ignore the booth capturing and voter frauds that happen in isolated pockets of the country). No other nation has had such an immense challenge in terms of diversity. As Shashi Tharoor says, it is "a
country that’s divided by caste, creed, color, culture, costume, custom, cuisine, conviction and consonant and still have a consensus on the basic democratic principle that you don’t have to agree all the time, as long as you can agree on the ground rules of how you can disagree". In my opinion, Tharoor is being merely hopeful rather than see what reality has to say, especially about the agreement part, but this gives an idea nevertheless, about how amazing it is that India has remained a democracy, albeit an inefficient one. A multi party electoral system, although not entirely efficient, has ensured that all ethnic, linguistic and religious sections of the society are represented, and also helps to keep the government or ruling party (which has, in the recent past, been more of a coalition of sorts than pure majority) in check from pursuing its own agendas (thanks to my friend S. for pointing this out to me recently).
I really would like to know how we could reform our electoral system to make things more efficient for India, at least in theory - I have read some comments about how we could move to a presidential form of governance (which I dont agree with really considering our diversity - two party systems would never work), or empower the Rajya Sabha and make it more effective than what it is now (here on The Acorn for example). But I am not sure what the solution is, even in theory. I would appreciate any comments on this.
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