Where Does Democracy Come From?

[dreamshark]

I've been thinking about this question for the last few days. I would love to know what other thoughtful people think about it.

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How does a society move from authoritarian government to democracy? (using the broadest definition of democracy: roughly "of the people, by the people and for the people.")

1) Has any country ever moved directly from totalitarianism to something approximating democracy without going through at least a generation of something else in between? Is there more than one path to democracy? Are there prerequisites for democracy to work, and what are they?

2) Is it ever possible to impose democracy on another country? (leaving aside the question of whether or not it is desirable. The question is: is it possible?)

3) Is it possible for one country to foster democracy in another country, while still leaving it up to them when or if they want to take the step?


These are not rhetorical questions or invitations to a polemic. Surprisingly, the answer to #2 is "yes." There is one obvious example. It took me quite a while to think of it, but Richard got it immediately.

Comments

[sraun]

Is the example for #2 Japan?

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

That's the one I was thinking of.

Quick Sunday answers

[barondave.livejournal.com]

The major answer to #2 is obviously Japan. If you count WWII and the Allied Occupation as a generation, then your answer to #1 is still pretty much no.

And in #1, what counts as "totalitarianism"? The obvious counter-example is the USA, which went from being a member of the British Empire (under a King, but also a parliament) to the Articles of Confederation and thence to the Constitution.

To answer #1, I would quote Winston Churchill, "democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms". The prerequisite to Democracy is a failure of everything else that has been tried. The problem for a lot of countries is that not everything has been tried, and many failures are blamed on a bad leader not a bad system.

#3: "They've got to be protected, all their rights respected, till someone we like can be elected."

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

1) How about Spain? The transition seemed like it went darned quick. And somewhat later, a bunch of the Eastern European countries, most especially East Germany.

Speculatively, it seems like reasonable peace and security help a lot, and there needs to be fairly open communication of some sort -- the "free press" thing is our version of that bit. It also helps if the people leaving office don't feel they'll be assassinated by the people coming in as soon as they step down.

2) Hmmm; Japan, post-WWII?

3) Almost certainly, though I'm not nearly so sure *how*. I suspect that what will help rather than hinder the development of democracy will depends very much on the previous culture and government, it's not a one-size-fits-all sort of problem.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Spain's a puzzle. They tried desperately to get a republic going at least twice (starting in the mid-to-late 19th century) only to fall back into old habits of bloody civil war. Franco was the last of the dictators, ruling the country with an iron fist for, what, 40 years? Then he dies, everybody heaves a sigh of relief, the kindly old doddering monarch comes back from exile, and just like that Spain joins the rest of western Europe in a perfectly civilized constitutional monarchy. Where the heck did that come from?

One route to democracy is the one Dan mentioned in his comment, a gradual evolution over centuries with a larger and larger percentage of the population getting a political voice (along with a continuing extension of basic human rights). England followed this route, as did the Scandinavian countries.

Spain does not follow this pattern. It's Spain that made me ask if there might be more than one set of prerequisites for democracy to take hold. Hypothesis: Franco was the key. He wasn't exactly a nice person, but he wasn't a monster either. He had no qualms about killing anybody that opposed him, but once he solidified his hold on the country he just settled down and ran the place. It might be a stretch to call him a benevolent dictator, but he was at least a non-malevolent one, especially compared to some of Spain's historic monarchs. He lived a long time, helpfully spending the last few years in a coma, which gave the country a chance to transition gradually to life without Franco.

Truly malevelent dictators leave nothing but chaos behind them; the Duvalier family of Haiti being an excellent example of this.

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

0) One route is the one England took: a higher and higher percentage of the population was given a political voice, over centuries (with some backsliding).

1) Note that authoritarian and totalitarian are not synonyms. Totalitarian means the government controls everything: all business enterprises, all labor organizations, religion -- everything.

Italy made the move from a government which claimed to be totalitarian to a more-or-less democratic government in fairly short order.

Prerequisites for democracy to work requires having a viable country -- one which won't fall apart if the government doesn't maintain top-down control. This is not the case in most of sub-Saharan Africa, among other areas. It's not the case in most Middle Eastern countries.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

"Italy made the move from a government which claimed to be totalitarian to a more-or-less democratic government in fairly short order."

I realize that I know very little about Italy. The Romans sort of invented representative democracy, but it lapsed back into hereditary succession and then ... what? I have the vague feeling that Italy was run by a sort of oligarchy throughout the middle ages and Renaissance, but I have no idea what happened between the Renaissance and Mussolini.

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

Nobody ran all of Italy, for a rather long period. There were the city-states in northern Italy (and at least a couple in what's now Croatia); they had governments which were sort of democratic. Until they were taken over by dictators who established dynasties. The pattern was: city-state takes elaborate precautions to prevent a dictatorship; the head of the city government hired for a fixed term from elsewhere so he doesn't have local support from relatives etc., an elaborate system of election at one level, lottery among the surviving candidates, a couple more layers to the choosing. And it doesn't work nearly as well as Prohibition worked in the US. There were also the Papal States, a motley collection of polities ruled from the Vatican. There was feudalism in the northern countryside, except where the cities had good control. Various rulers in the south.

Note that some parts of Italy didn't really have anyone running them. For example, there were parts of Sicily which were too lawless for the Mafia to be established. And Mussolini may have been the first ruler since the Western Roman Empire fell to control the interior of Sardinia.

Very roughly, much of Italy was disputed between Austrian and Papal supporters. Napoleon unified Italy briefly. In the late 19th century, Italy became a united kingdom.

Since the Italian kingdom included what had been the Papal States and (importantly) Rome, the Catholic Church didn't exactly approve of it.

Mussolini made a treaty with the Vatican; Vatican City as a legal entity dates from that treaty. And after WW II, the Christian Democratic Party was set up.

Answers

[joelrosenberg.livejournal.com]

1. Yes. Sure. Definitely.
2. Yes; as it's been done. (Japan isn't the only example, but it's the obvious one.) That does not necessarily mean that it ever can be done again; the sufficient prerequisites for the imposition of Democracy were demonstrably, in retrospect, there, but it's not self-evident what all of them where, or whether substitutes will work in other situations. (Example: is it necessary for as many as two cities to have been destroyed by nuclear weapons prior to the imposition of democracy, or will only one do? None, but a threat? Zero, without a threat? What effect did the possibility of nuclear destruction have on the erstwhile "Werewolves" in just-barely-ex Nazi Germany? Was the nearby presence of the aggressively expansionist Soviet Union helpful, or necessary? Would some other form of government been able to buy US support/ongoing occupation in that context? Would some other form of government been thought to be able to buy US support/ongoing occupation in that context?)

One might as well ask if democracy can ever be imposed from within, and look at the French (among others) for an example that would argue that it can't be, other counterexamples to the contrary.

3. Sure, for some reasonable values of "foster." The US did that for decades through, among other things, Radio Free Europe, frex.