The Bumpy Road to Democracy

By Nicholas Clarke

At the end of the Cold War, Francis Fukayama infamously claimed political development had reached its zenith – encapsulated in his seminal work ‘The End of History’. With authoritarian regimes toppling across the Eastern Bloc, the argument over political systems was over, and democracy had won the battle of ideas. It would be only a matter of time before western democracy would emerge worldwide.

But since the early 90’s, the world witnessed a variety of political upheavals in the name of democracy. Russia’s perestroika in the early 90’s  inadvertently highlighted the dangers of liberalising a nation’s political system before its economy, culminating in  their current ‘democratic’ elections and beckoning Putinism. Western interventions to promote democracy in the Balkans (Kosovo) and the Middle East (Iraq) endure haphazardly. 2011 sees the spate of democratic uprisings against authoritarian regimes in North Africa and the Middle East, which have been dubbed the ‘Arab Spring’ of pro-democracy upheavals..

All of these events highlight that transitioning to a democracy is a bumpy road. Yet as the ‘democratic peace thesis’ claims, (the theory democracies do not go to war against each other) in the long term this transition arrives at a desirable destination. However, there are many issues at play regarding what a democracy is, how democracy should be promoted and whether or when it is appropriate to do so.

As the primary victor of the Cold War, US foreign policy highlights these issues in their attitudes to democracy.  An important shift occurred when G.W. Bush arguably transformed Woodrow Wilson’s “the world must be made safe for democracy” into making “the world democratic so the US could be safe” by invading Iraq. The desire to prmote and/or enforce democratic norms is seen in the ‘Obama Doctrine,’ enunciated to the Australian parliament among other places, asserting China must “play by the rules”. Aside from commercial rules though, what political-institutional rules should China play by? Since Min Qi’s pioneering social political survey work, The Chinese Political Culture, there has been a plethora of similar surveys conducted in China, from national-representative samples, such as Nathan and Shi’s Cultural Requisites for Democracy in China: Findings from a Survey, to projects like the World Values Survey (WVS) and Asian Barometer Survey (ABS). Several common themes persist that suggest how inappropriate, at least for now, democracy would be in China.

All the surveys paint a picture of the ‘superficial’ democrat being a constant force in China’s political culture.  Although respondents view democracy as ‘good’, this is merely paying lip service. For their view is typically a very misguided understanding of democracy, compared to how liberal-democracy is conceptualised by political scientists. Findings from the WVS illuminate this misconception.

To assess Chinese citizens understanding of democracy in 2007, WVS respondents were presented with 10 different circumstances and asked to what extent each circumstance was an essential characteristic of democracy or not.  Respondents could choose from a scale of 1 – 10, ‘1’ meaning ‘not at all essential’ and 10 ‘absolutely essential’. Circumstances were diverse including easily identifiable characteristics of democracy, ‘people choose their leaders in free elections’, to blatant contradictions ‘the army takes over when the government is incompetent’ and some in between, ‘the economy is prospering’.

In reference to ‘the economy is prospering’, most respondents viewed this as a highly essential characteristic of democracy with 10.7%, 17.6% and 39.6% choosing 8, 9 or 10 respectively. This displays confusion over what democracy entails and perhaps what is indicative of many democracies. Moreover, with regards to ‘the army takes over when the government is incompetent’, 21.5% of respondents chose 10. In fact, 53.4% of respondents chose 7 or above out of 10 – making this, in their eyes, an essential characteristic of democracy .

At present, democracy in China would be a foolhardy development. Although democracy’s complexity is taken for granted, a populace must at least understand its essential characteristics, before it can be instilled.

Findings from the ABS shows that political culture in other East Asian nations paint a similar picture of China’s ‘superficial democrat’. This notion of democracy is radically different to that of the West, and will be of increasing significance as the Asian Century looms large.

What road will many transitional or quasi-democratic nations take?  Among alternative pathways, perhaps there will be a couple of bumpy roads to democracy with Chinese or Islamic signposts. Fukuyama’s claim that the defeat of the Communist alternative to Western democracy would lead to the End of History seems a little premature. If I could paraphrase Sir Winston Churchill; the rise of nations with a radically different notion of democracy means that “ this is not the end... but, it is perhaps, the end of the beginning”. 

Nicholas Clarke has recently completed his Masters of International Relations at the University of Melbourne.