One of the questions
that came up this past week following a complaint from a UN official
criticizing freedom of the press in W.Europe, is if
Sharia law is compatible with the UN charter or leads to democracy? In fact
(certainly a simplification) where some have suggested that Christianity is
open for 'love they neighbour', Islam is based on
"justice" according to ‘Sharia law’ (plus, if Muslim’s should
have the right to request that all of the world adheres to ‘their’ Sharia law,
like they currently are certainly doing in case of, a cartoon fury. Several
other issues are more important however, in the case of whether democracies
around the world will be consolidated, and how they will transform themselves
from what they are today.
First, the world is
experiencing an increased importance of human capital relative to land and
physical capital for two reasons: (1) typical citizens of both developed and
developing nations are more educated today than they were fifty years ago; and
(2) technology throughout the twentieth century appears to have relied more on
the skills and the human capital of the workers (or to have been skill-biased),
thus increasing the importance of human capital in the labor market. Although
greater returns to human capital may increase inequality in certain instances
(e.g., as in the U.S. economy during the past thirty years), it generally helps
to close the gap between the elites and the citizens and creates a large middle
class in many less developed nations that are nondemocratic or live in
unconsolidated democracies. As this gap closes and a middle class emerges, we
expect less distributional conflict and more stable democracies not only in
societies where political conflict has been between the rich and the poor but
also where political conflict is along other lines. The recent past has
witnessed many accounts of the ‘end of class warfare’. In fact, maybe with a
greater role for human capital, the conflict will be less charged and intense?
Second, we now live
in a highly globalized world economy. Greater international economic and
financial links may promote and consolidate democracy. Again, conflict between
elites and the majority of citizens will remain in the global world economy,
but globalization may take the most disruptive weapons from both sides' arsenal
in this fight. The citizens do not want to pursue the most populist and
redistributive policies, making the elites more secure in democracy. The elites
are much more averse to coups and disruptions.
Third, the end of the
Cold War implies that the implicit economic and political support that many
nondemocratic regimes received has come to an end, making the transition to
democracy easier and coups against democracy more difficult (although there is
a danger that the war against terrorism might offset the potential benefits of
the end of the Cold War). These are at least three factors, that could imply that
the future of democracy is brighter than we think today.
At least democracy is
pro-majority, even possibly pro-poor, although it is unlikely if free elections
would take place all over the middle East (exemplified most recently by Iraq
and Palestine) most Muslims would vote against, democraty
(Iraq is not a Democraty it’s a Theocratic State).
And also elsewhere in democracy, the elites may be powerful even if democracy
is generally more promajority than nondemocracy.
First, the most important sources of extra power for the elites in democracy
are their control of the party system and, thus, the political agenda and their
ability to form an effective lobby against certain policies. Do we expect the
elites to be able to do so more effectively in the future? There are two
reasons for suspecting that the answer may be yes. With the increased bright
future for democracy, the elites - especially in the current unconsolidated
democracies - have to come to terms with living in democracy. In this case,
they may as well do their best to influence democratic politics. Therefore, the
returns to the elites for increasing their power in democracy may now be
greater.
Perhaps more
important, as democracy matures, there may be a greater opportunity for
organized groups, which potentially include the elites or certain segments
thereof, to become more powerful. The argument that interest groups become
stronger over time in democratic societies was first developed by Mancur Olson in his classic 1982 political economy treatise,
The Rise and Decline of Nations. Olson pointed out that as time goes by,
cooperation and trust form between different members of influential lobbies
and, perhaps more important, these lobbies more effectively capture the major
branches of the government and the political system. In the context of
democratic politics, one of the interest groups that may become stronger and
come to dominate much of politics is the elite. If so, we might expect
democracies to become less pro-majority in time. The fact that new democracies
appear to have been more redistributive than mature democracies throughout the
twentieth century and the observation that conservative parties have become
stronger in many well-established democracies during the past forty years is
consistent with this notion. This relates to the Iron Law of Oligarchy
formulated by the sociologist Robert Michels in his
classic 1911 book, Political Parties. Michels claimed
that all organizations, particularly political parties - even socialist ones -
tended to be captured by whoever ran them; those people then came to be
incorporated into the elites. He argued that this meant democracy had little
chance of radically changing society because, at best, it simply replaced one
elite with another. In no case would this lead to radical majoritarian social
changes. If this law is true, then a natural process of elite capture reduces
the radical threat of democracy.
Second, there is also
a different side to the increased importance of human capital (including skill-biased
technical change) and greater globalization. By reducing distributional
conflict, these economic developments are weakening many of the organizations
that have played an important role in supporting the majority and policies
favoring the majority. The organizations losing strength include traditional
social democratic parties and labor unions. This is most visible in much of the
Anglo-Saxon world, especially the United States and the United Kingdom, where
labor unions today are much weaker and the traditional left parties have become
generally opposed to income redistribution.
If these changes
become more widespread around the world, we may expect the elites and
conservative parties to become more powerful and democracy to become less
redistributive in the future, especially if new forms of representation for the
majority - in both the political sphere and the workplace - do not emerge.
Thus, democracy will become more consolidated; however, for those who expect
democracy to transform society in the same way as British democracy did in the
first half of the twentieth century, it may be a disappointing form of
democracy.
Mentioning already
Britain, I’d like to next (due to lack of space in what is intended as an
introductory article, pick three more countries each of them quite different
and look at how democracy developed there. Arguments have been made suggesting
that Christian countries historically are more open to democracy , and indeed
one could argue that as I will following Britain, proceed in this case
Argentina, with Singapore and S.Africa, that
all of these have been exposed to Christianity to some degree. Yet as we will
see, there nevertheless are differences in each of these countries. Of course
if this were not just an introductory article, and for someone who would like
to write a full length book on this topic, it would be interesting to indeed go
through all countries of the world , with conclusions based on region,
predominant religions, and so on.
Britain
What explains why
Britain followed a path of gradual democratization and why democracy was so
easy to consolidate in Britain? The parameters – in particular, the nature of
political and economic institutions, the structure of the economy, the
collective-action problem, and the costs and benefits of revolution – were such
that there was a sufficient threat of a revolution in predemocratic
Britain and the elites could not defuse those pressures without
democratization. They also did not find it beneficial to use repression to
prevent democratization. However, this answer is incomplete. We also need to
understand how Britain came to have the parameters that it did in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
For example in the
seventeenth century, a series of political conflicts was won by those
interested in introducing political institutions that limited the de jure power
of the monarchy. This change in political institutions greatly improved
economic institutions. By reducing the risk of state predation, property rights
became more stable. De jure political power in the new system was in the hands
of people with commercial and capitalistic interests; this led to large induced
changes – for instance, in capital and financial markets – that were important
for economic expansion.
The reason that these
institutional changes arose in Britain appears to be twofold. First, at the
start of the early modern period, Britain had political institutions that
limited the powers of the monarchs more than in other places. Why this was so
seems to be the outcome of a complex historical process of the building of
dynasties and invasions. Second, significant changes took place in the
structure of the economy that greatly strengthened the interest of various
groups, particularly capitalistic farmers (the so-called gentry) and merchants,
in different economic institutions. Also significant was the early collapse of
feudal institutions in Britain. These changes increased the de facto power of
these same interests, which critically influenced the outcome of the Civil War
and the Glorious Revolution. For example, merchants who became rich from trade
in the colonies were able to play critical roles in both conflicts on the side
of Parliament.
The outcome of the
seventeenth-century conflicts in Britain was a set of economic institutions
that gave property rights to a broad set of people. The result was the ending
of the Malthusian cycle and the beginning of modern economic growth. Yet, the
structural changes that consequently began (e.g., urbanization and the rise of
the factory system) had further implications for the distribution of de facto
political power. In particular, they began to make the exercise of de facto
power by the poor and politically disenfranchised much easier. The rise in the
de facto political power of the poor made the existing regime unsustainable and
necessitated a change in political institutions in their favor to defuse the
threat of revolution. This was to tilt the future allocation of de jure
political power and, consequently, to ensure future economic institutions and
policies consistent with the interests of the poor. This is exactly what the
process of democratization did. Political tensions were also exacerbated by the
rise in inequality, which most scholars believe took place in the first half of
the nineteenth century.
Beginning in 1832,
the British political elites made a series of strategic concessions aimed at
incorporating the previously disenfranchised into politics because the
alternative was seen to be social unrest, chaos, and possibly revolution. The
concessions were gradual because in 1832 social peace could be purchased by buying
off the middle class. Moreover, the effect of the concessions was diluted by
the specific details of political institutions, particularly the continuing
unrepresentative nature of the House of Lords. Although challenged during the
1832 reforms, the House of Lords provided an important bulwark for the wealthy
against the potential of radical reforms emanating from a democratized House of
Commons. Later, as the working classes reorganized through the Chartist
movement and subsequently through trade unions, further concessions had to be
made. The Great War and its fallout sealed the final offer of full democracy.
Why did the elites in
Britain create a democracy? Many other countries faced the same pressures and
the political elites decided to repress the disenfranchised rather than make
concessions to them. The problem with repression is that it is costly: it risks
destroying assets and wealth. In the urbanized environment of
nineteenth-century Europe (Britain was 70 percent urbanized at the time of the
Second Reform Act), the disenfranchised masses were relatively well organized
and therefore difficult to repress. Moreover, industrialization and the policy
of free trade after the 1840s based on Britain’s comparative advantages had led
to an economy based on physical and, increasingly, human capital. Such assets
are easily destroyed by repression and conflict, making repression an
increasingly costly option for the elites. Because capital is more difficult to
redistribute, the elites in Britain found the prospect of democracy less
threatening and were easier to convince to accept it.
Repression is
attractive not just when it is relatively cheap but also when there is much at
stake. Our discussion suggests that the changes in economic and political
institutions that allowed sustained economic growth to emerge also made
democracy much less of a concern to the British elites.
Nevertheless, democracy did bring changes in economic institutions away from
those preferred by the elites. In the nineteenth century, economic institutions
particularly in the labor market – disadvantaged the poor. For example, trade
unions were illegal and as late as 1850, British workers trying to organize a
union could be shipped to the penal colony in Tasmania, Australia. This
practice and many others changed, particularly after 1867 when economic
institutions were altered to cater to the demands of the newly enfranchised. Although
important for the working of the British economy in the nineteenth century, the
implications of these changes were much less damaging to the elites than the
potential of the freeing of rural labor markets or the threat of land reform in
an economy dominated by landed elites. In fact, compared to the changes in
economic institutions faced by the elites in Russia or Austria Hungary in the
nineteenth century or those in Guatemala and El Salvador in the twentieth
century, the changes in Britain were relatively easy for the elites to accept.
What about the
promise of redistribution to prevent democratization? The political elites in
Britain seem not to have seriously considered mass income redistribution as an
alternative to democracy, although they certainly anticipated that democracy
might lead to it. Perhaps, as Stephens understood, promises to redistribute
could not be believed. It is significant, for example, that the Chartists’
petition that gained the most attention from Parliament was presented in 1848
in the midst of the European revolutions. With such a threat of revolution, the
political elites had to be seen as listening; however, as long as they
maintained power, they would only listen as long as the threat was present –
the Chartist movement produced only transitory threats. Consequently, perhaps
it is not surprising that promises of redistribution to defuse the social
unrest were not first on the agenda in Britain.
Finally, why did
democracy in Britain consolidate so easily? Our framework suggests that this
was influenced by many of the same factors discussed in the context of
democratization. It consolidated because coups were too expensive and, in any
case, democracy was not radical enough to pose a sufficient threat to the
traditional elites. Democracy eventually brought major changes in British
society but it took half a century and had to wait until the full effect of
educational reforms were manifested. The elites never faced the type of threats
common in democratizations elsewhere in the world, such as radical asset
redistribution. Under these circumstances, our approach suggests that the
elites should have been less opposed to democracy and, indeed, they were.
Argentina
Many of the same
forces that led to democracy in Britain seem to have been in operation in
Argentina. As in Britain, democracy in Argentina was induced by a series of
revolts stimulated by economic and financial crises. Also as in Britain, the
process of democratization took place in the context of rapidly rising inequality
and economic growth. Yet, Argentina democratized with different underlying
political and economic institutions than in Britain. The economy relied on agricultural
exports and the boom in world trade, rather than decreasing, increased the
value of the assets of the rich elites: land. Moreover, because the economy was
less diversified, it was more susceptible to instability and more volatile,
creating windows of opportunity to induce political change. The landed elites,
although forced to concede democracy, did not like it and were able to
undermine it during the crisis surrounding the onset of The Great Depression.
In addition, political and economic institutions did not facilitate democracy.
Unlike those that
emerged in Britain after 1688, political institutions placed fewer constraints
on the use of political powers, particularly those of the president, as
witnessed by the actions of Yrigoyen in the 1920s and
Peran in the 1940s. With respect to economic institutions, Argentina shared to
some extent the legacy of other Spanish colonies that had been based on the
exploitation of indigenous peoples. Although this legacy was minor relative to
countries such as Bolivia or Guatemala, the underlying set of economic
institutions – particularly with respect to access to land – increased the
stakes from political conflict.
During the 1930s and
1940s, a highly polarized situation arose in which urban working classes, which
dominated democratic politics, aimed to redistribute income toward themselves.
Such a situation was intolerable to the rural elites and increasingly to the
military, which came to adopt a rabid anti-Peronist stance. Given the structure
of the economy, the costs of coups against democracy were institutions; at that
point, the elites and the PAP will not find it profitable to use repression to
prevent democracy.
South Africa
Why was democracy so
long delayed in South Africa and what triggered its final creation? The
historical situation here could not be more different from that in Singapore.
The white elites of South Africa had much to lose from democracy that
historically would surely have led to large demands for land reform, the
redistribution of wealth, and a massive restructuring of economic institutions
away from those that benefited the rich white elites.
The state of South
Africa was founded as a settler colony similar in many ways to those in North
America or Australia. Yet, unlike in the United States, the indigenous peoples
did not die off from imported diseases, which led to a situation in which the
indigenous Africans became the labor force that the rich white elites could
employ cheaply and control with coercive methods. In this environment, the
whites not only made no concessions to the Africans, they also even created a
philosophy (i.e., apartheid) to justify the unequal distribution of resources
in society. Repression was relatively cheap and feasible in South Africa
because of the apartheid philosophy and because it was aimed at one easily
identifiable racial group.
Yet, the apartheid
regime was ultimately unsustainable. As the economy developed, the African
majority became more vital to the sustenance of the white economy. They became
increasingly hostile to their predicament and politically mobilized. In
response, the white regime used intense repression, being prepared to ban,
imprison, torture, and murder to maintain its hegemony. Yet, even this could
not work indefinitely. The profitability of the apartheid economy gradually
declined because of external sanctions and the disruptions caused by
repression. Moreover, as the world changed, not only did apartheid become less
internationally acceptable after the end of the Cold War, a globalized economy
also meant that the rich white elites had less to fear from democracy. As land
became less important and mobile capital more important, the threat of a
radical African majority dissipated. It addition, the concessions that the
white regime made during the 1970s - in particular, the legalization of African
trade unions - reduced many of the economic rents that apartheid had created
for the whites. This reduction meant that the whites had less to lose from the
loss of political control, inequality fell from the mid-1970s onward. Finally,
the whites, in conjunction with the ANC, were able to negotiate a structure of
political institutions that gave the whites sufficient confidence in a
democratic future that they were willing to stop fighting and allow
democratization. Nevertheless, there is always uncertainty about what the
future holds. For instance, the attempt to induce democratic consolidation
through constitutional engineering in Zimbabwe has not been a great success. It
is interesting that in his assessment of the future for democracy in South
Africa, is the lack of a well educated skilled labor
force - the consequence of the abysmal state of education in South Africa, and
may pose a problem in the near future.
As for someone
who would like to write a full length book on this topic with conclusions
based on region, predominant religions (only then one could come to a more
direct conclusion in relationship to Islam), and so on, there are two
additional issues that came to mind while researching this introduction. For
example, mathematical models of the workings of economy and the form of
economic institutions would also be worthwhile to include, plus more important
it would be interesting to discriminate among different mechanisms leading to
democratization.
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