The Democratic Imperative

The Democratic Imperative

Mini Teaser: The world's democrats have joined forces, to the benefit of all involved.

by Author(s): Adrian Karatnycky

Pressure and isolation are another part of the interventionist tool box of democratic hegemony. The OAS pressed Peru's authoritarian president Alberto Fujimori, encouraging opposition political forces that eventually forced his resignation after a corruption scandal. In recent years, the OAS had withheld aid from the Aristide government for electoral violations and relentless intimidation of opposition parties. This sanction paved the way for efforts by France and the United States to press Aristide to step down from office in March 2004.

Liberal democracies also assertively press new democracies to settle internal conflicts and ensure regional stability. In 2001-02, the EU and the United States demanded that the Macedonian government peacefully settle a violent insurgency involving its Albanian minority, threatening suspension of aid. After forcing a settlement on the Macedonian government, NATO peacekeepers were deployed to disarm Albanian terrorists and were replaced by EU peacekeepers.

The European Union has acted as a progressive democratic hegemon in relations with emerging democratic central and eastern European states that were eager to join its ranks. It successfully pressed post-communist states to eliminate the death penalty, settle unresolved border disputes and improve human rights protections for ethnic and linguistic minorities as a precondition of entry into the EU. And in 2000, the EU imposed diplomatic sanctions on Austria in an effort to exclude the populist nationalist leader Jorg Haider from a governmental leadership post on the grounds that his platform did not comport with the European values.

Foreign aid is another frequent instrument of democratic hegemony. In 2002 President Bush announced his commitment to the creation of a Millennium Challenge Account, which will provide enhanced foreign aid to countries that perform better than their counterparts in ruling justly and protecting basic political and civil liberties. This year, the program will provide $1 billion in new assistance to developing countries that, in the words of President Bush, "rule justly."

While democratic hegemony is at times asserted through military force or economic incentives, often its most effective means of influence is support provided by governments and private sources to non-governmental democratic movements.

In the two decades since President Ronald Reagan delivered his landmark speech at the Houses of Parliament in Westminster calling for an international effort to promote democracy, states have created or encouraged dozens of government-funded foundations to offer training and significant resources to indigenous democratic groups around the world. Such foundations include the U.S. National Endowment for Demo-cracy, Germany's political foundations (the Stiftungen), Australia's Center for Democratic Institutions, Britain's Westminster Foundation, Canada's International Center for Human Rights and Democratic Development, Poland's Freedom Foundation, and the Swedish-based Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance.

At the same time, nearly 20 percent of foreign aid provided by the OECD states is now targeted to support democracy-building programs. The European Commission today funds a broad array of global democracy initiatives, often implemented by non-governmental organizations. Such aid, augmented by state-funded uncensored broadcasts to closed societies, and coupled with private sector support from sources like George Soros's Open Society foundations, means that cumulative international democracy assistance amounts to several billion dollars each year.

Such private and government assistance supported civic-led democratic transitions in Georgia (2003), Peru (2002), Serbia (2000), Croatia (2000) and Slovakia (1998). Democracy assistance also helped facilitate the collapse of communism in Central and Eastern Europe. In South Africa, Chile and the Philip-pines, "people power", augmented by external resources from democracies and non-governmental support originating in the democratic world, assisted civic movements that used a combination of electoral processes and non-violent protests to force democratic openings.

Democracy's "Soft" Hegemony

The force of democratic hegemony extends far beyond financial and military power. It is as much, if not more so, a cultural and political phenomenon-hegemony as the Marxist theoretician Antonio Gramsci expressed it. For Gramsci, hegemony consisted of the consensual dominance of one group in society, attained through moral and intellectual leadership in a society and achieved through cultural and civic institutions. In this Gramscian sense, democracy's hegemony is exerted by the widespread popularity of and support for democratic ideas and values in much of the world. The ideological hegemony of democracy is disseminated by a globally linked intelligentsia, by global media and the Internet, and by like-minded non-governmental democracy activists united in cross-border networks of mutual support. Through such networks, techniques of civic mobilization are taught to activists in closed societies with the aim of achieving democratic openings.

The electoral and protest techniques used by Slovakia's civic advocates in 1998 to build opposition to the authoritarian prime minister Vladimir Meciar were taught to Serbian anti-Milosevic activists in 2000. In 2003, Serbian activists, in turn, helped train civic activists from Georgia, who used these techniques to protest massive election fraud and force the resignation of the country's elected president, Eduard Shevardnadze.

Tactics used in civic struggles in Serbia, South Africa and Chile are shared across borders with activists from a broad array of closed societies. No technique can guarantee success, which depends on indigenous public support. Still, external technical assistance, financial support and international pressure all empower civic movements in closed societies and are crucial to new democratic openings.

Because democracy thrives amid and promotes prosperity, democracies are today the most important powers in most regions of the globe. With the exception of the Arab world, which has no liberal democracies, and east Asia, where China is a major factor, democracies are the most influential regional actors. Populous and powerful democracies exert their own economic, strategic and diplomatic influence in South Asia, the Pacific Islands, the Americas, Europe and Africa, while the United States further tips the balance by playing a global role as a powerful democratic hegemon.

Latin America's two most important states-Brazil and Mexico-are dynamic democracies. Western Europe's powerful established democracies have exerted their hegemonic influence on eastern and central Europe by linking EU integration to democratic reforms and the rule of law. Nigeria's emerging democracy and South Africa's liberal democracy are the most important indigenous powers in sub-Saharan Africa. In the Asia-Pacific region, Indonesia, a restored electoral democracy, and Australia, a stable liberal democracy, are the predominant powers-a role filled by democratic India on the subcontinent.

Not all these powers interpret their responsibilities identically. India's conservative foreign ministry, for example, has been reluctant to support activism on behalf of democratic values and human rights at regional and global institutions. And Brazil under President Ignacio Lula da Silva has thus far refrained from playing an active role as a regional voice for democracy. On a visit last year to Cuba, Brazil's president even declared: "I don't comment on the internal policies of other countries." Among European states, France has been traditionally less interested in supporting a foreign policy based on democracy promotion than other EU states.

Nonetheless, there is a variety of reasons why democracies tend to pursue actively interventionist foreign policies on behalf of basic rights and democratic practice. One factor is a sense of solidarity and shared values that democracies feel with insurgent democratic movements. New democracies in particular, which often are led by revolutionary democrats, tend to be highly active in supporting their counterparts in neighboring states. Moreover, within democratic polities, foreign policy is subject to the pressure and influence of media and non-governmental lobbies, which frequently urge humanitarian intervention, press governments to uphold global human rights and urge support for counterpart civic movements. This is why, although many democratic states prefer to act with the mandate of the United Nations or regional bodies, democratic legitimacy and accountability spurs some of them to unilateral action.

Hegemony and the Non-Democracies

Non-democratic polities cannot today ignore the pressure exerted by liberal states and by the popularity of democratic ideas. Consequently, authoritarian and tyrannical states have adopted a variety of responses to democratic hegemony.

Some traditional monarchies in the Arab world are taking halting steps toward elected legislatures with limited powers. Other countries-referred to as hybrid states-mimic democratic practices with elections and a nominal opposition, while retaining absolute control through patronage, the use of state resources, domination of the media and political repression. Among such pseudo-democracies are Ukraine, Malaysia, Egypt and Russia. Yet in many cases attempts to "manage democracy" carry within them the seeds of fundamental change. A number of such illiberal and pseudo-democracies have fallen in recent years as a result of peaceful transition resulting from civic mobilizations (Slovakia under Meciar and Mexico, formerly ruled for seven decades by the Institutional Revolutionary Party). Sometimes, fraudulent elections in pseudo-democracies spark mass unrest that overthrows corrupt or authoritarian rulers (such as Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines). Of course, many non-democracies resist even a modest liberalization or the introduction of rudimentary imitations of democracy and multi-party politics.

Non-democratic states that are reliant on exports and foreign investment may often engage in a high degree of internal repression, even as they open up to economic, cultural and commercial penetration by the democratic world. But as a rule, many such states tend to pursue generally cooperative foreign policies and do not provoke conflict with the interests of the democracies. By contrast, non-democracies that are self-reliant because they possess energy resources (such as Saudi Arabia, Iran or Libya) are free to support radical political (and in some cases terrorist) movements. Impoverished, autarchic autocracies try to pressure the democratic world by supporting or sheltering terrorist movements and have sought to preserve their systems by trying to obtain weapons of mass destruction to act as deterrents from possible attack or pressure-North Korea being the classic example.

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