Retreat of New Democracies

With evangelistic zeal and self-righteousness, G.W. Bush became an aggressive imposer of democracy on the world. And particularly in the least likely and least prepared places. The shared sense of wisdom and prudence of earlier times was repudiated. It was no longer deemed effective enough to patiently allow the invisible hand of global market economics to function as the inevitable agent of change. It was no longer deemed wise and prudent enough to trust that the Western democracies could be effective role models and mentors for those countries who had developed to the point that they were promising candidates for more democratic government and institutions--and themselves sought it. "Regime change" was added to economic coercion as the U.S. means of choice.

And if the folly of all this isn't yet clear, we need only look at the many countries that in earlier decades prematurely took upon themselves, or were coerced by us, to institute more democratic principles of government--and observe their clearly failing condition, their proven lack of readiness for such radical change. But the clearest lesson emerging may be the recurrent affirmation that the sine qua non of stable democracies is the development of an economically and politically stable social middle class. An article from the Boston Globe, "Democracy on the Wane," chronicles the growing pains and failings in many of these struggling new democracies.

After being hailed as a democratic success story in the 1990s, Thailand has only gone backward....The events unfolding in Thailand are part of a gathering global revolt against democracy. In 2007, the number of countries with declining freedoms exceeded those with advancing freedoms by nearly four to one, according to a recent report by Freedom House, an organization that monitors global democracy trends.

And the villains, surprisingly enough, are the same people who supposedly make democracy possible: the middle class. Traditional theories of democratization, such as those of Harvard professor Samuel Huntington, predict a story of middle class heroics: As a country develops a true middle class, these urban, educated citizens insist on more rights in order to protect their economic and social interests. Eventually, as the size of the middle class grows, those demands become so overwhelming that democracy is inevitable. But now, it appears, the middle class in some nations has turned into an antidemocratic force. Young democracy, with weak institutions, often brings to power, at first, elected leaders who actually don't care that much about upholding democracy. As these demagogues tear down the very reforms the middle classes built, those same middle classes turn against the leaders, and then against the system itself, bringing democracy to collapse....

This is a process now being repeated in Africa, Asia, and parts of Latin America, regions that once seemed destined to become the third and fourth waves of global democratization, following the original Western democracies and the second wave in southern Europe and several other regions. The pattern has become so noticeable - repeated in Venezuela, Russia, Bangladesh, and other states - that one must even wonder about democracy's future itself.

What is truly remarkable is the consistent failure of the United States and the mature democracies of Western Europe to recognize in other countries the evolving conditions necessary for stable democracies to develop. You can't just market it, export it, or impose it on countries without these patiently evolved social and economic characteristics. Otherwise, they are unprepared, and under the best of conditions, new democracies are fragile ventures. Even the casual observer could not fail to notice that the resilience and strength of successful, stable democracies have evolved over centuries.

What conditions are necessary? It would seem essential that the society share broadly religious or philosophical values that are compatible with a democratic, representative form of government. The rule of law is also essential: that is, there must be a stable history of accepted law and rule making, enforcement and adjudication based on widely embraced constitutional principles. People must respect and trust the law of the land; they must have confidence in its fair administration. And without an economically healthy, politically stable, emerging middle class that includes a significant majority of the people, there is a failure of popular support. Without all these characteristics, new, fragile democracies lack the necessary foundation on which to develop, strengthen and endure; they will predictably suffer and likely fail.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/09/14/democracy_on_the_wane/?page=full