The Dark Side of Democracy

For the Week of May 26, Memorial Day 2003

Since the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, exactly 200 years after the French Revolution in 1789, the spread of democracy around the world has been one of the most remarkable developments in world history. At the turn of the century, notes Fareed Zakaria, not a single country in the world could boast a democracy in which every adult citizen could vote, whereas today some 119 countries would qualify.¹

To hear some people describe it, free elections coupled with free markets in a global economy are a cure for all the ills of backward countries. Thomas Friedman, for example, espouses this sort of optimism in his book The Lexus and the Olive Tree. The current Bush administration is another example with its preemptive war in Iraq, the purpose of which is to bring freedom to an enslaved people. Similarly, in his book The End of History Francis Fukuyama argued that we are at history’s “end” because capitalism and liberal democracy have triumphed over all other alternatives.²

Having lived four years in a country that imploded after its failed experiment with a socialist economy and political tyranny (Moscow, 1991-1995), I am very grateful to live in the United States. But more recently I’ve become troubled with the rosy optimism about the spread of democracy and capitalism around the world, and our country’s self appointed, messianic mission to be the chief purveyor of a franchised political economy. Having traveled in many of the countries that have been on the receiving end of our efforts, I am convinced that not all of our efforts have the beneficent effects that we imagine. Two books that I have read recently make this very argument, that the spread of free markets and free elections around the world is not an entirely benign development.

Zakaria observes that some versions of democracy that we now see are not liberal at all but horribly illiberal. For example, we know that free and fair elections have led to demagogues and tyrants, not to the rule of law, the separation of powers, the protection of free speech, property rights, and the like. In other words, in the West we understand and have experienced the merger of democracy and freedom or liberty, whereas in many other parts of the word democracy has led to tyrannies of all sorts and not to freedom.

Consider the following examples. In Russia Yeltsin came to power by free elections; he was incredibly popular early on. But by the end of his term he ruled as an autocrat by fiat and presidential decrees, and abolished anything close to a free press. Free elections brought Milosevic to power in Yugoslavia (1990), and Hugo Chavez in Venezuela (1998), both of whom would earn high marks as dictators. Leaders like Arafat in Palestine and Mubarak in Egypt complain that if they liberalize political dissent, human rights and so forth like the West pressures them to do, Muslim extremists would likely come to power. After the war in Iraq, would truly democratic elections lead to a fundamentalist theocracy or, more to the West’s liking, a truly liberal democracy?

Zakaria’s point, then, is that we confuse democracy and free elections with true freedom, and fail to see that there is a tension between the two. In his view there can be too much of a good thing (democracy) if it is not checked by restraints that insure genuine liberties. Democracy is our best political hope, to be sure, but we rightly fear both freely elected dictators and the tyranny of voters who elect them. It is tragic that not one of the twenty-two states of the Arab League is an electoral democracy, but we should recognize that the autocrats who rule these countries might be better than the sorts of leaders that free elections would bring.

The sequence is important, according to Zakharia. We best proceed by helping countries to establish stable economic and political institutions to sustain them, the rule of law, and only after that democracies and free elections. In his view China today is headed in the right direction because it is liberalizing its economy before it liberalizes its politics. Russia, on the other hand, has tried to liberalize both at once and failed miserably.

In sum, Zakaria argues that the West has oversold capitalism and an attenuated version of democracy. We must acknowledge that untrammeled free markets and free elections are not a cure all; if not balanced and restrained by a larger vision they can have disastrous effects.

Amy Chua paints an even darker picture in her recent book World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability (2003). Her argument explores the volatile relationship between three forces---economic free markets, political democracies and free elections, and ethnic identities. What we see when we look around the world, she argues, are what she calls “market-dominant minorities.” These are ethnic minorities who command and control hugely disproportionate sectors of their country’s wealth by exploiting (sometimes legally but also illegally) free markets. There are many examples, but her book reminded me of a comment that I heard from people in the Philippines about the minority Chinese there who were viewed as “the Jews of Asia” because of the disproportionate control they have over the country’s wealth and economy. Market-dominant minorities dominate the ethnic majorities of their countries. But this comes at a huge price, Chua argues, for usually the result is one of three things.

First, there can be a backlash against the entire idea of free markets by those who feel exploited. In Zimbabwe, for example, the democratically-elected President Robert Mugabe has openly encouraged the violent takeover of white-owned farms. In Venezuela free elections brought the anti-market Hugo Chavez to power in 1998. Second, the ethnic minorities who control the disproportionate wealth of a country can jettison democracy to protect themselves from the disenfranchised majority. The result is renewed autocracy and “crony capitalism” where corrupt, ethnically indigenous political leaders cut deals with the market-dominant ethnic minorities. Or third, horrific violence and ethnic hatreds can be unleashed by the beleaguered majorities against the market-dominant ethnic minorities. This happened in Rwanda where in a three month period in 1994 the majority Hutus (about 85% of Rwanda) slaughtered almost a million dominant but ethnic minority Tutsis (about 14% of the population). The important point to note here is that contrary to the views common in the West, the globalization of free markets and free elections can have disastrous effects when the disenfranchised majority uses democratic “freedoms” to destroy free markets and even their fellow citizens.

Like Zakaria, Chua argues that countries must establish free and stable political economies before they embark upon political democracies. Singapore has prospered, some argue, precisely because of the authoritarian measures of Lee Kuan Yew. Others have made similar pleas, notably Robert Kaplan in The Ends of the Earth (1996) and The Coming Anarchy (2000). It’s hard to admit, but in some places free markets and free elections have caused more harm than good. There might be some places where they just won’t work, or will work only with more patience and nuance than many in the West have allowed. I wonder: are the looting hordes and fundamentalist extremists in Iraq a passing blip on the graph, or only a small, virulent harbinger of worse things to come?

¹ Fareed Zakaria, The Future of Freedom (New York: Norton, 2003), p. 13.
² Fukuyama later qualified this view in his book Our Posthuman Future (2002), where he argued that history is not over because the effects of science, intended and unintended, are just beginning.