Defending Democracy: Why Democrats Trump Autocrats

ROADS TO DEMOCRACY

Equally fallacious is the claim that democracy develops from some preconceived formula, with one ingredient preceding another. Zakaria's view that the development of constitutional liberalism must come before electoral democracy simply ignores the facts. There are many countries in which representative government predated the protection of civil and political liberties. South Korea and Taiwan are recent examples. The related argument that economic development must precede democracy ignores the fact that many countries, from Costa Rica and Poland to the Philippines and Botswana, have found that the road to democracy also leads to economic prosperity. The successful democratic transitions in African nations such as Benin, Mali, South Africa, and Namibia further demonstrate that neither a tradition of equal opportunity nor widely distributed wealth must come before political freedom. In short, political liberalization, economic development, and the protection of human rights are all tied together. For this reason, U.S. policy addresses them simultaneously, not in sequence.

Finally, Zakaria and others have contended that without constitutional liberalism, electoral democracy invariably leads to ethnic strife. This argument is belied by the effects of electoral pluralism in providing a safety valve for ethnic differences in many central and east European states and the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union. By the same token, some degree of pluralism and more moderate leadership have resulted from the series of elections in Bosnia over the last two years. In fact, in January 1998, Milorad Dodik, an avowed moderate with Western sympathies, was elected prime minister of the Bosnian Serb Republic. Elections have also allowed Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsi,c to stake out more moderate positions, breaking with the Pale leadership. Opposition parties have won as much as 30 percent of the vote in municipal elections, a sign that the extreme hard-line nationalists loyal to wartime Serb leader Radovan Karadzic are losing ground.

Democratization is a long and complex struggle, constantly marked by advances and setbacks. Elections, of course, are only part of the process of developing democratic culture, and they are certainly not a panacea for societies torn by conflict or countries wracked by poverty or economic crisis. But this does not mean that the United States should pull back from efforts to promote elections abroad; rather, it means that it should provide long-term assistance, in a wide variety of ways, to foster the growth of civil society, basic freedoms, the rule of law, and democratic culture wherever they have a reasonable chance of taking hold. Building democratic culture and institutions is worthwhile not because it is easy, but because the long-term rewards-increased stability, prosperity, and enrichment of the human spirit-make it worth the effort.

John Shattuck is Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. J. Brian Atwood is Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development.