THE BELIEF THAT THEY WON'T...:

Democratic Vistas: a review of THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World By Larry Diamond (JANINE DI GIOVANNI, 1/20/08, NY Times Book Review)

“By the mid-1990s,” he writes, “it had become clear to me, as it had to many of my colleagues involved in the global struggle for democracy, that if some three-fifths of the world’s states (many of them poor and non-Western) could become democracies, there was no intrinsic reason why the rest of the world could not do as well.” He even throws countries like China and Iran into this equation.

Diamond can be optimistic because he compares the present, with all of its setbacks, to 1974, when he was a student leader during the protests against the Vietnam War. In those days, he reminds us, democracy was not the way of the world. “Barely a quarter of independent states chose their governments through competitive, free and fair elections.” [...]

“The Spirit of Democracy” asks whether democracy is something that can exist only in rich and educated countries, those with a strong middle class. Do all people actually want democracy, or do some — the Chinese perhaps — believe that a form of authoritarianism is the best way to run a country?

To answer this question, Diamond examines the forces that contribute to democracy, from the internal influences that give rise to civil societies to the impact of peaceful outside pressures like diplomatic persuasion or, in some cases, economic sanctions. He highlights the work of the National Endowment for Democracy, founded in 1983 to promote democracy abroad, and the democratic assistance it successfully provided to Poland and Nicaragua. [...]

Oil is a major part of the story of Russia’s democratic retreat, as it is for many other nations. None of the 23 countries whose economies are dominated by what Diamond calls “the exceptional curse of oil” are democracies. From Algeria to Venezuela, he chillingly reminds us, “all of the oil-rich countries of the world remained under or returned to authoritarian rule after 1974 and the third wave of democratization.” When oil revenues surge, he writes, democracy declines.

Diamond’s book is not for everyone. It’s overloaded with comparative statistics, World Bank data and ratings from Freedom House. Reading it takes true commitment. But it offers well-grounded support to anyone who has questioned the long-held theory of Seymour Martin Lipset that the richer the country, the greater the chances of sustaining democracy.

Third world countries are not destined to lurch from dictator to dictator, Diamond insists. Even places like Burundi and Sierra Leone, he points out, became democracies after the brutality and violence of bloody civil wars (although they are vulnerable to risk). Democracy may be a luxury, but it isn’t a question of wealth. It all comes down to the energy and commitment of people. Indeed, the message of Diamond’s book is summed up by its dedication to three icons of democracy: Gandhi, Vaclav Havel and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

Diamond makes the hopeful prediction that even “countries like Iran and China, which now seem so immune to the global democratic trend, stand a very good chance of becoming democratic in the next two to three decades.”

“And if China can democratize,” Diamond asks, “why not the entire world?”

...is about you, not about them.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 19, 2008 11:25 AM