Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun
On foreign policy, I’m something of a realist/intervention-skeptic, which is why I’m inclined to agree with Daniel Larison when he argues that democratization isn’t terribly compatible with stability:
Egypt and Jordan can remain at peace with Israel despite the profound unpopularity of this arrangement because the governments are unaccountable and authoritarian. Surely the elections in Gaza should tell us that democratization allows people with deep grievances to vent them by empowering the most extreme and radical elements. This has proved to be ruinous for people in Gaza and far from what Israel wants. Democratization and regional stability are incompatible. If you desire one, you cannot have the other.
Andrew Sullivan, democracy booster that he is, disagrees:
I don’t buy the argument that in the long run, autocracies are more stable than democracies, even in the Middle East.
Look at Iran. There are enormous risks to over-speedy democratization, especially in the Arab Middle East, but in the long run, democracies, by giving people the ability to vent and protest through nonviolent means are far stabler than the alternative. It’s how to get from there to here in a minefield full of ancient grievance and weapons of mass destruction that’s the hard part.
I think it’s important here to make a distinction between “democratization” – the process of developing democratic institutions – and “democracy” as a set of institutions and norms. Larison is absolutely correct to say that democratization is a tremendously destabilizing process; democratic transition is often accompanied by a wholesale abandonment of traditions and norms which maintained some semblance of stability. And obviously, when we sweep those away in the name of equality, and absent any tradition of respect for minority rights, we – as Larison explains – empower people “with deep grievances to vent them by empowering the most extreme and radical elements.” It’s not much of a surprise that the collapse of colonialism and subsequent rapid democratization coincided with a terrible epidemic of ethnic violence in the developing world.
I think Sullivan is right to say that in the long-run, democracies (and more importantly, democratic cultures) are far more stable than the alternative, because they do give people the space to protest and resist. That said, I think he’s being a bit overly optimistic: there’s no guarantee that the instability of democratization will calmly segue into something enduring. In every case of democratization, there is the very real chance that those initial “birth pangs” (to borrow a phrase from Secretary Rice) will lead to a long-term period of instability and near-chaos for everyone involved. Trying to build a democracy is, in a lot of ways, like looking down the barrel of a gun.
Well put, though wouldn’t you say there’s a degree of independence between democracy and democratic cultures and liberalism and liberal cultures.
Liberalism, I think, being the more critical cultural import and thus key to the successful development of representative or democratic governments and stable societies. Then again maybe this is a terribly Eurocentric way of looking at politics and government and stable illiberal democracies may be more culturally stable than I give them credit for.Report
Democracy without a foundation of liberalism is likely to be unsustainable and end up with a President-for-Life. The democracy is just a marker of the liberalism in the culture… it’s not the end in itself.
The election isn’t the point. It’s the population and the leadership are inclined to hand over the reigns of power to the folks who won the election every so-many years.
The dictators who say “we’re having an election!” and then stuff the boxes (Iran!) or just don’t put anybody else on the ballot (Saddam’s most recent, I believe) are trying to signal democracy but an election is not, in itself, a signal of a democracy (though, indeed, democracies have elections).
Democracy is an outcome of liberalism. But without liberalism, I would not be in a hurry to see democracy.Report
That is to say: good post.
(Indeed, I don’t say “good post” enough to any and all of y’all.)Report
The dictators who say “we’re having an election!” and then stuff the boxes (Iran!)
Afghanistan!Report
The Iranian example doesn’t take into account the years of building up a middle class. Iran has the most educated, largest middle class in that part of the world. When that crew comes into its own it historically asks first for economic freedoms, then political freedoms, and then only eventually democratic vote (usually in degrees) as the way to actualize its political freedoms. So the vote in Iran helped reveal the lack of political accountability and freedom. But in a place (like say Palestine) where there is no economic freedom and a middle class than people vote in the hardest elements, usually with authoritarian-ish flavors (as Larison is right about Egypt and Jordan).Report
Good point on Iran, though the more I think about this, the more I think it’s difficult to separate a framework for understanding the interactions between culture and government from nation-state exceptionalism. Or rather I’m having difficulty reconciling IR theory with IR reality.
Because to step outside of Asia Minor for a second, you can point to Hong Kong, Singapore, India, Pakistan and Russia as states that don’t fit comfortably on an axis of regional stability, democracy, and/or liberalism charted by either Sullivan or Larison.
If you stay in Asia Minor, I think Turkey and Israel become interesting quasi-outliers.Report
I think Sullivan is taking a country that is the exception to the rule in the Middle East and misinterpreting it as representative. Iran is the only country in the Mideast where increased democracy is likely to bring about decreased Islamism – in every other country over there the population is more supportive of Islamist ideas and more hostile towards Israel than the current government – which is why the US devotes so much money to propping up those dictatorships.
When the population of a dictatorship is asking for anything other than free-market secular liberal democracy, the US finds it much more in its own interests to be on the side of the dictator.Report