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Date: Tue Sep 22 2009 - 23:55:17 EDT
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Copyright (c) 2009 The Daily Star
Saturday, September 19, 2009
We're still having trouble addressing democracy's paradoxes
By Dominique Moisi
Commentary by
Recent elections were stolen in Iran, continue to be disputed in
Afghanistan, and became a caricature in Gabon. The ballots in these and
many other countries have not so much marked the global advance of
democracy as demonstrate the absence of the rule of law.
Of course, elections that lead to illiberal outcomes, and even to
despotism, are not a new phenomenon in the world. Adolph Hitler, after all,
came to power in Germany in 1933 through a free, fair and competitive
election. Moreover, problematic elections constitute a specific challenge
for the West, which is simultaneously the bearer of a universal democratic
message and the culprit of an imperialist past that undermines that
message’s persuasiveness and utility.
In a noted essay in 2004, for example, the Indian-born author and editor of
Newsweek International, Fareed Zakaria described the danger of what he
called “illiberal democracy.” For Zakaria, America had to support a
moderate leader like General Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan, despite the fact
that he had not come to power through an election. By contrast, Zakaria
argued, Venezuela’s populist president, Hugo Chavez, though he was
legitimately elected, should be opposed.
In our globalized world, the potential divorce between elections and
democracy has taken on a new dimension. With instantaneous communication
and access to information, the less legitimate a regime is, the greater
will be the temptation for it to manipulate, if not fabricate, the results
of elections. The “trendy” way is to manufacture a significant but not
too massive victory. Today’s despots view near-unanimous Soviet-style
electoral “victories” as both vulgar and old-fashioned.
But another new aspect of this phenomenon is the existence of opposition
forces that are willing to attempt to negate such machinations by the party
in power. Confronted with this dual process of illegitimacy, the West often
finds itself condemned to sit between two chairs, and to face criticism
whatever the outcome. Those in power, as in Iran, accuse Western
governments of supporting the opposition, and those in the opposition
accuse the West of supporting the government. This, for example, is what
happened to France in the case of Gabon recently.
So what lessons should we draw from the inevitably messy nature of
electoral processes in countries where there is either no middle class or
only a rudimentary one, and where a democratic culture is at best in its
infancy? The time has come for the West to reassess its policies in a
fundamental way. It cannot switch from “activism” at one moment to
abstention the next. A refusal to act, after all, is also a political
choice.
Of course, the temptations of isolationism are great, and will only
increase in the months and years ahead. But the West has neither the moral
right nor a strategic possibility of withdrawing into an “ivory tower,”
something which in most cases does not exist. It is impossible to say to
Afghanistan, for example, “You have deeply disappointed us, so, from now
on, you must clean up your own mess.” In Afghanistan, Gabon, Iran,
Pakistan, and many other countries, fundamental Western interests –
though very different depending on the case – are at stake.
In Afghanistan, the danger is that a terrorist haven might be reconstituted
if the Taliban win the conflict there. The risk in Iran is that an ever
more hostile regime might emerge that is armed with nuclear weapons. In
Gabon, the priority for France is to transcend neo-colonialism without
losing its important links to the oil-rich African nation.
But, in pursuit of these difficult objectives, the West must get both its
ambitions and its methods right. Democracy is a legitimate objective, but
it is also a long-term one. In the medium term, the absence of the rule of
law constitutes the most serious problem for the countries in question.
French television, for example, recently aired a terrifying report on an
incident in Haiti, where a local judge, without bothering to hide his
actions, was protecting a narcotics dealer from the country’s own
French-trained anti-drug force. Corruption eats away at a society from
within, destroying citizens’ trust in a future based on a shared sense of
common good.
It is the West’s acceptance of corruption – either open or tacit –
that makes it an accomplice of too many nefarious regimes, and makes its
espousal of democratic principles appear either hypocritical or
contradictory. On the other hand, setting the rule-of-law standard too high
will also misfire. A Singapore-style incorruptible one-party state bent on
modernizing society is probably a far too ambitious goal for most
non-democratic regimes.
The distance that separates the countries of the West from countries that
rely on sham elections is not only geographic, religious, or cultural; it
is also chronological. Their “time” is not, has never been, or is no
longer the same as that of the West. How can they be understood without
being judged, or helped without provoking humiliating paternalism or, still
worse, without an unacceptable “collateral damage,” as in Afghanistan?
The West’s status in tomorrow’s world will largely depend upon how it
answers these questions. It cannot afford to ignore the issue any longer.
Dominique Moisi, a visiting professor of government at Harvard University,
is the author, most recently, of “The Geopolitics of Emotion”. THE
DAILY STAR publishes this commentary in collaboration with Project
Syndicate © (www.project-syndicate.org).
Copyright (c) 2009 The Daily Star