what right do we have of imposing a political system, the only system that we have grown up with, on people who are just as accustomed and integrated into their political system as we are in ours? does no one else think that is at least only slightly arrogant? and how can we impose democracy, a system which is fundamentally based on elections, on other countries when so many people in New Zealand don't even care enough about our democracy to walk 5 minutes down the road once every three years to cast their votes?
don't get me wrong, i am in no way against democracy and am a full supporter of encouraging dictatorial regimes to stop breaching human rights and hold elections. but then again, i have the same back ground as most of these 'pro-democracy' political theorists who's articles I've been reading. so the question i put forth is: are we right, or are we just arrogant? or maybe both?
I believe democracy should never be imposed. If the current system is working fine for the people,be it a democracy or a dictatorship, then there really shouldn't be any reason for a change in political system. Most of these scholars assume that democracy is the best form of government and therefore should be adopted by every nation, without taking into account various factors that exist within those nations.
ReplyDeleteWe are definitely arrogant. I always like to turn the situation around. Imagine another form of political system was seen as the best system and democracy was seen as backward or less good, while it is very well possible that we are happy with our democracy. Academics like Fukuyama suggesting that the world has found its ultimate form of government for countries, the end of history.. That scientist were practising 'objective' research, acknowledging that some parts of our democratic system can be very good, but the overall image is just not as much valued as the preferred system.
ReplyDeleteIt is hard at the same too, as you said you are in no way against democracy and you are brought up with it. I am happy too to live in a democracy. In the academic sphere democracy seems to have the reputation of the least worst option of all systems.
And at this specific era of time, democracy does seem to work well.
I quess the arrogance kicks in when we suggest things like the end of history..I mean democracy works well now, but you couldn't call it perfect or forever lasting..
This might sound a bit radical, but I will not be surprised when huge wars brake out when we depleted our most important resources and political systems switch to another preference.
I think that there is something to be said for allowing political systems in countries and cultures to evolve organically. Liberal Democracy has evolved in a European Context for hundreds of years, and the core values of it were learned the right way, through experience. Things are the way they were because they were what the context created. Thus important features that make Liberal Democracies work are the result of the needs of one particular context being satisfied (rule of law, freedom of speech etc.)
ReplyDeleteThe West's economic domination over the globe over the last 200 years and the resulting Globalisation meant that countries now dominated and colonised no longer had a chance to forge their own political futures.
Why would it be arrogance to say a particular technique of government works better than others in most cases?
ReplyDeleteBut you could think of democracy as something like cellphones, or money: a technology of government. Obviously it will work less well in some countries than others (it may need a certain infrastructure, for example), but it is easily adaptable.
Or think of democracy as a relatively equitable distribution of power, not as a set of values. Is it right to say that inequitable distributions of power are fine for some countries but not others?
The question of whether "others" like their system they are living in is pretty fraught. For starters, non-democratic systems do not consult the people about whether they like the government or not; the more dictatorial, the less easy it is to know whether they like the system or not. (Just because you are not revolting does not mean much: it's hard to mount a revolution).
I sense that many of you are concerned that saying that democracy is better (so far) than most other political systems is somehow disrespectful, or would lead to endless attempts to impose it. But is that really true?
Democracies are not exclusively western. They may have originated in the west, but we do not say that money is a Chinese thing because the Chinese were the first to use money (for example - I don't actually know who was the first to use money). They have thrived in many different kinds of cultures. So why the resistance to thinking it may be ok to say that they work better than other systems? (Not that they do, but unless you want to say that whatever system a country has, it is always the system that is appropriate to it, than you want to say something like some systems work better than others - perhaps not forever, as Marloes notes, but there may be good evidence for this system right now).
An issue here is about the actual logistics of 'imposing' democracy. It seems to me that such actions that appear to 'impose' democracy, the U.S invasion of iraq for instance, face an impossibly difficult task. It seems to me that countries or cultures with little recent history of democracy will very rarely embrace it in its' liberal version or illiberal versions, even at gunpoint. The question of arrogance in imposing democracy becomes irrelevant if it is simply impossible to do.
ReplyDeletegabriel, income seems to matter much more than recent history in terms of where democracy would be stable. Countries that are relatively wealthy and with have a long history of dictatorship, when they turn into democracies, seem to have no problem sustaining democracy. (Consider Spain after a long dictatorship under Franco, now one of the most stable democracies in the West; or Japan after WWII).
ReplyDelete