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The Dangers of Democracy Promotion

Jim Antle is right to challenge the renewed enthusiasm for U.S. democracy promotion, and he also cites Kirkpatrick’s essay as I did the other day. Looking at the Economist Intelligence Unit’s report on democracy in 2010, I would add that Jim’s argument is even stronger than he thought. Their standards measure a broader number of […]

Jim Antle is right to challenge the renewed enthusiasm for U.S. democracy promotion, and he also cites Kirkpatrick’s essay as I did the other day. Looking at the Economist Intelligence Unit’s report on democracy in 2010, I would add that Jim’s argument is even stronger than he thought. Their standards measure a broader number of factors including respect for civil liberties, the functioning of government, political participation, electoral process/pluralism, and political culture when they place countries on a spectrum from “full democracy” to “authoritarian state.” According to their calculations, 52.7% of countries in the world are ruled by “hybrid”* or authoritarian regimes, and this accounts for how 50.5% of the world’s population is governed. In MENA (Middle East/North Africa), 80% of the countries are authoritarian, and 15% are “hybrid” regimes:

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) remains the most repressive region in the world—16 out
of 20 countries in the region are categorised as authoritarian. There are only four exceptions:
Israel is the only democracy in the region, albeit a flawed democracy; and there are three hybrid
regimes (Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian Territories).

So, no, it isn’t 1979. It is the twenty-first century, and most of the world is still governed by authoritarian or semi-authoritarian political systems. Notably, of all the “beneficiaries” of so-called color revolutions, the EIU report classifies just one, Ukraine, as a “flawed democracy,” and the rest are “hybrid” regimes. While the last thirty years have seen remarkable advances in the spread of democratic government and liberal political culture, it cannot be stressed enough that many of these advances are still fragile and reversible in many places, and they are also very recent developments that everyone has to acknowledge to be historically atypical. That doesn’t mean that we should ignore political change, or pretend that democratization always leads to a new form of despotism, but it does mean that we shouldn’t ignore the clear lessons of the dangers that come from democratization-as-shock-therapy when they are clearly relevant. If democratists would like a more up-to-date version of the warning about the potential dangers of rapid democratization and economic liberalization, they can consult World on Fire.

* “Hybrid” regimes are identified by these characteristics:

Elections have substantial irregularities that often prevent them from being both free and fair. Government pressure on opposition parties and candidates may be common. Serious weaknesses are more prevalent than in flawed democracies–in political culture, functioning of government and political participation. Corruption tends to be widespread and the rule of law is weak. Civil society is weak. Typically there is harassment of and pressure on journalists, and the judiciary is not independent.

Update: Jim Antle wrote a follow-up post, in which he says, “So the basic point that creating democracy is difficult remains valid today.” It certainly does. If it weren’t for the odd inversion of the Bush years, in which most mainstream conservatives felt compelled to defend or at least acquiesce in a “freedom agenda” that could have been copied from the Carter or Wilson administrations, there wouldn’t be much of an argument on the right about this.

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