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

At the same time, the difficulties in reforming Iraq and Afghanistan may well lead democracies to retreat from the ambitious aim of democracy building, especially in the Middle East. Already, U.S. presidential candidate John Kerry has suggested that the aim in Iraq should be stability rather than the more ambitious aim of democratic rule. And while President Bush has elevated rhetoric in behalf of the democratization of the Muslim Middle East, he has refused to challenge the repressive status quo in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the two most important Arab countries.

There are also worrying signs that the broad expansion of democracy has resulted in the emergence of many fragile polities. Freedom House's annual survey of political rights and civil liberties, indicates there are 117 electoral democracies with meaningful, competitive multiparty elections. Of these procedural democracies, only 88 are rated as "free", meaning they have secured a broad array civil liberties and rights amid the strong rule of law. This means that for a variety of reasons, including insurgencies and ethnic strife, 29 elected democratic governments fail to secure for their citizens a number of fundamental rights.

Poverty and poor economic performance by many new democracies are also a growing challenge. Of the world's 88 free and liberal democracies, 38 have a per capita gross national income of $3,500 or less, and 18 have a per capita gni of less than $1,500. A report released in mid-April by the UN Development Program found that a majority of Latin Americans would welcome the replacement of democratic government with authoritarian rule if the trade-off were economic gains, suggesting rising disenchantment with elected governments that fail to achieve growth.

Even long-time democracies face new difficulties. In Italy, for example, under Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, excessive concentration of broadcast media in the hands of the incumbent government has raised serious questions about whether the lack of media diversity is corrosive of pluralism. And all of the established democracies face the challenge posed by the transfer of significant democratically-accountable authority to international organizations that are less directly accountable to the people.

The Democratic Advantage

Established and new democracies will need to confront all these issues if democracy is to continue its ascendancy-yet there are few reasons to think that the force of democratic hegemony will abate in the coming years. Indeed, there are many more factors that favor the further projection of power by democracies and the spread of democratic values. Not only do democracies have a better track record at adapting to difficulties and finding workable solutions, the populations currently living under tyrannies continue to display a powerful will to democracy. This creates forward momentum to open closed societies-and weakens traditional arguments employed in favor of non-intervention.

In 2001 the Independent Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, convened at the request of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, put forward an expansive rationale for wide-ranging international intervention. The Commission asserted:

"Where a population is suffering serious harm, as a result of internal war, insurgency, repression or state failure, and the state in question is unwilling or unable to halt or avert it; the principle of non-intervention yields to the responsibility to protect. "

The statement went on to warn that if the UN Security Council fails to act in such cases, "concerned states may not rule out other means to meet the gravity and urgency of that situation. . . ." Europe's championing of the imperfect International Criminal Court places significant attention on genocide and other mass "crimes against humanity", and it is yet another instrument likely to spur the projection of democratic hegemony as the new court goes after tyrants and mass murderers.

Furthermore, ongoing efforts to defeat global terrorism and reverse the spread of weapons of mass destruction to rogue states will create new opportunities for democratic nation-building. This idea is embodied in its most raw form in the latest incarnation of the doctrine of pre-emption. The corollary of this security-driven agenda is the Administration's growing acceptance of the view that terrorism and the extremist ideologies that propel it thrive in environments in which open democratic discourse is stymied.

Some commentators tend to view a widening chasm between Europe and America, arguing that under the Bush Administration, the United States tends to emphasize security arguments on behalf of democratic hegemony, while the European Union emphasizes the humanitarian argument to support interventions. In the end, both arguments lead in the same direction: increased pressure and more interventions by the world's liberal democracies.

The Future of Democratic Hegemony

Some critics and commentators see in the wide array of cultural, political, military and economic pressures exerted by democracies the expression of a new form of colonialism or imperialism. But the phenomenon of democratic hegemony is distinctly different. The projection of hegemonic power by the democracies is usually exercised not on behalf of specific policies or in support of specific indigenous political actors but on behalf of democratic political processes and market economic systems. As Ronald Reagan observed in his Westminster speech on the promotion of democracy: "This is not cultural imperialism; it is providing the means for genuine self-determination and protection for diversity."

Indeed, democratic choice sometimes empowers insurgent political forces that are deeply critical of established democracies and of the global market system. In recent years a range of electoral victories by insurgent, anti-establishment political movements has occurred in places as diverse as Turkey, Brazil and Ecuador. In each case, leaders came into power that had been critical of the United States.

Despite its immense influence on global affairs, democratic hegemony has emerged almost accidentally and has exerted its immense influence episodically and inconsistently. Frequently, democratic hegemony has often been projected by shifting and unstable coalitions of the willing. Thus, despite their geo-economic and geopolitical global predominance, democracies have rarely acted as a cohesive force. Democracies have tended to respond to emergencies and crises rather than to anticipate and manage conflict and instability or to advance a systematic agenda for global political change.

The present moment of hegemony offers an opportunity for democracies to move toward greater cohesion in expanding and deepening the democratic project. To do so will require new forms of institutional cooperation, including the strengthening of the nascent Community of Democracies, launched in 2000 to improve international coordination on human rights and political reform and currently coordinated by a group including Chile, the United States, Poland, the Czech Republic, Mali, Portugal, India, Mexico, South Africa and the Republic of Korea.

It will require establishing a working caucus of democracies at the United Nations to ensure that the global body works consistently and effectively in support of political rights and civil liberties. It will also require more diligent efforts to enable the World Bank to work more openly and explicitly in pursuit of democratic governance.

At the United Nations and global conferences organized under UN auspices, democracies routinely are outmaneuvered by tyrannies and dictatorships. Last year's election of Libya as chair of the UN Commission on Human Rights, and this year's election to that monitoring body of Sudan-whose government is engaged in the ethnic cleansing of Africans from its Darfur province-are emblematic of the poor coordination among democracies. Such symbolically important political failures make clear that nascent initiatives like the Community of Democracies and a UN Democracy Caucus are weak and have not yet had serious impact.

The power of democracies is predominant for the near future-but continued predominance is not preordained. America's domestic political turmoil engendered by the difficulties encountered in Iraq has led some to question America's commitment to aggressively promoting democracy around the world, particularly if intervention is required. Europe's population is aging, and the continent may soon face major economic challenges to further economic growth.

Weak democracies will need economic aid, foreign investment and access to developed markets. Evidence suggests that disillusionment with liberal institutions can set in if poor democracies are mired in economic stagnation. There already are worrying signs pointing to public disappointment with democratic institutions in countries where long periods of authoritarianism left a legacy of huge disparities in wealth.

In the end, the further expansion of democracy will largely be determined by events in China and the Arab world, which together account for the overwhelming majority of those who live under tyranny. In China, the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square indicated the potential for mass support of democratic principles. More recently, however, there have been few manifestations of mass public opposition to China's one-party system and fewer signs Beijing is headed toward serious political liberalization. In the Arab world, too, there are few signs of momentum toward democratic rule. Although polling data suggests significant sympathy among Arab citizens for democratic governance, tightly controlled one-party states and reform-resistant monarchies predominate, and mass civic protest is rare.

With economically dynamic China exhibiting no signs of serious democratic reform, with Russia tilting toward authoritarianism, and with the defeat of Islamist extremism and terrorism by no means certain, the perpetuation and expansion of democracy is not assured.

All this makes clear that democratic hegemony, in the end, is not some inevitable endpoint of historical development. It may only be an opportunity, an opening in history when there is a chance utterly to vanquish and banish the worst forms of tyranny and autocracy and replace them with an order rooted in the rule of law and democratic accountability before the people. Such an effort to press democracy's expansion clearly is not without peril. Tyrannies will certainly seek weapons of mass destruction to stave off the force of democratic pressure and extremist anti-liberal movements will attack the democratic world with the asymmetrical power of terrorism. But despite these dangers, the failure by democracies to press their advantage would be far more dangerous and would confer on succeeding generations a more terribly violent and tumultuous world.

Adrian Karatnycky is counselor and senior scholar at Freedom House. He serves as the principal analyst for Freedom in the World: The Annual Survey of Political Rights and Civil Liberties.

Essay Types: Essay