Is Democracy Dangerous?

Articles

Craig Chamberlain

Is Democracy Dangerous?
Dec 30, 2003

As with every Christmas season I get books, a lot of books. One of the books I recieved this year was "Future of Freedom:Illeberal Democracy at home and abroad" by Fareed Zakira. He poses a most interesting argument. While I didn't agree with everything he wrote he did make many interesting points.

Which brings me to my article here, is too much democracy or a democracy established too quickly a bad thing? One of the points of the book is that in order for democracy to flourish there needs to be certain rights already established. A free press, an independent judiciary, private property rights, and freedom of religion, and other individual rights.

Look at the African continent. In the late 1950's and early 1960's the colonies were granted their independence by their colonial masters. Most quickly proclaimed themselves republics and held elections immediately. What happened? Very quickly most fell into one party dictatorships, military juntas, or became communist nations. Most have shed totalitarianism and have become legitmate democracies. (like Benin, South Africa,and so on)

What about too much democracy? Look at California.The home of the popular proposition. Everything is done by direct vote. The people have supreme power and there is little in the way of checks and balances. The state is also a mess. (This was one reason I was oppoesd to the recall, too much populism for me)

I will give two more examples. Serbia and russia. Both are nomially democracies.But look what happened in them. Vladimir Putin has destroyed the free press, and so it is really no suprise that his supporters have an absolute majority in the parliment(duma). Why? No checks and balances. The President in Russia is little more than an elected tsar. In Serbia, the democracy is so dysfunctional that ultra nationalists have won the recent elections, and Slobodan Milosevic was elected to a seat in the parliment. That's right an accused war criminal won a seat to their parliment.

Results like this make democracy fragile. Since the foundations for democracy are not there, the elections are a facade. Look at what is going on in Afghanistan. They are debating a constitution to run the nation after 24 years of war. There is little chance that anything resembling a democratic nation will emerge. The rights that are essential for democratic governments to flourish don't exsist in that nation.

A house built on a weak foundation will not stand, a democracy, no matter how many elections it holds, that doesn't give rights to individuals won't last too long.

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