Liberal vs. illiberal democracy
Plato famously did not like democracy.
He saw the death of his mentor, Socrates, decided
by an ignorant and fearful mob of Athenians,
as the logical consequence of giving power to
the masses. While Plato’s solution to the
problem, his utopia of a state guided by philosophers
(surprise, surprise) depicted in the Republic
obviously wouldn’t cut it neither in theory
nor in practice, he had a point.
Churchill once quipped that democracy
is the worst form of government, except for
all the others, which reflects the attitude
of most in the modern Western world. And yet,
Churchill, unlike Plato, failed to define what
kind of democracy he was referring to. Roughly
speaking, there are two fundamentally distinct
kinds of democratic government: the simple rule
of majority, despised by Plato but simplistically
endorsed by many in the United States; and a
constitutional democracy, in which the decisions
of the majority of the moment are constrained
by a set of rules aimed chiefly at protecting
the rights of minorities, including freedom
of speech and action.
Author Fareed Zakaria, in his
lucidly written The Future of Freedom, labels
the two kinds respectively “illiberal”
and “liberal” democracy. By “liberal”
Zakaria doesn’t mean left-leaning (as he
is quick to point out), but rather constructed
so to insure an open society, encouraging a
healthy liberal exchange of ideas among its
citizens, and tolerant of a wide (though obviously
not boundless) spectrum of beliefs and practices.
This distinction is crucial, and
yet it is rarely drawn by our politicians, who
use the word “democracy” as synonymous
with unquestionable good, despite plenty of
evidence to the contrary. Indeed, Zakaria convincingly
argues that -- under certain temporary circumstances
-- a reformist autocracy may be preferable to
an illiberal democracy. He points out that the
most successful instances of transition to democracy
in the world throughout the 20th century have
developed gradually, beginning with relatively
enlightened autocratic leaders who saw the eventual
inevitability of change. Soviet Russia comes
to mind, and China may represent the next big
example.
On the other hand, democracy has
notoriously failed in many instances in South
America, and especially in Africa. That, claims
Zakaria, has been because the transition was
sudden, with little if any constitutional protections.
The results have been disastrous, leading to
massacres of dissenting ethnic or political
minorities, and often to the raise of a brutal
dictator favored by an urgent need of reestablishing
“order.”
Zakaria’s book was written
before the US-led invasion of Iraq, but his
points apply remarkably well to the current
situation in that country. Of course, nobody
would ever think of Saddam Hussein as an “enlightened”
dictator, but it is also obvious that the Iraqi's
concept of democracy -- if indeed they do have
one -- is of the illiberal type. The Shiite
clerics who are pushing the country to the brink
of civil war want immediate elections, even
though clearly the minimum necessary conditions
are not in place. Why? Because they know they
would easily win a majority of the votes, which
would pave the way to the establishment of a
democratically elected theocracy in that country.
Not exactly what the so-called coalition of
the willing had in mind when they embarked in
one of the most ambitious operations of nation
building ever attempted (and led by a US president
who campaigned against the very idea of nation
building). Then again, dictators have come to
power by (illiberal) democratic means before,
just think of Hitler.
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect
of Zakaria’s argument is that the US itself
may be moving toward an increasingly less liberal
form of democracy. Many of the guarantees put
in place by the Founding Fathers and embedded
in the American Constitution are being eroded,
or are increasingly under attack by a politically
and religiously conservative (slight) majority.
For instance, the US Constitution guarantees
a separation of church and state, and yet Americans
are increasingly undisturbed by the encroaching
of government upon religion (just think of the
popularity of “faith-based” initiatives,
school vouchers, etc.), and stubbornly hold
to clear symbols of breach of the wall of separation
(such as the phrase “under God” in
the pledge of allegiance, or “in God we
trust” on the paper currency).
All of this is done in the name
of democracy, adopting the narrow meaning of
the term according to which if the majority
(even as slight as 51%) wants something, it
should be done. This is precisely what led Plato
to reject the democratic model to begin with,
and what differentiates successful democracies
from abysmal failures. I doubt we will see another
Socrates being put to death anywhere in the
Western world, but it is significant that intellectuals,
or simply independent thinking lay people, are
under increasingly vicious attack in the US
for simply having the guts to voice their dissent
regarding the Bush administration’s foreign
or domestic policy. We have gotten to the point
that being religious, right-wing, pro-war and
patriotic are all seen as synonymous, simply
because a narrow (and narrow-minded) majority
of Americans currently sees it that way.
It is also astounding to see that
the right to marry (i.e., to be legally recognized
as a couple) is being denied to gays and lesbians
by people including those (e.g., some blacks)
who until very recently had been discriminated
against in their turn by a bigoted majority.
The obvious problem with illiberal democracies
is that majorities can change, sometimes dramatically
and over a short period of time. That is why
it is in the long-term interest of every member
of a society to defend the rights of the minorities.
Next time around, you may be the one to need
such protection.
