The word literally means rule by the people

Definition

The word “democracy” literally means “rule by the people”, taken from the Greek terms, demos (meaning “people”), and kratos (meaning “rule”). It is a political concept and form of government, where all people are supposed to have equal voices in shaping policy (typically expressed through a vote for representatives).

Democracy past and present

The Ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle, the student of Plato and teacher to Alexander the Great, is considered one of the most important founders of what is now described as Western philosophy. In his work, Politics, he offered some comparisons with other forms of government and rule, but also included some warnings,

It is often supposed that there is only one kind of democracy and one of oligarchy. But this is a mistake.

…

We should … say that democracy is the form of government in which the free are rulers, and oligarchy in which the rich; it is only an accident that the free are the many and the rich are the few…. And yet oligarchy and democracy are not sufficiently distinguished merely by these two characteristics of wealth and freedom. Both of them contain many other elements … the government is not a democracy in which the freemen, being few in number, rule over the many who are not free … Neither is it a democracy when the rich have the government because they exceed in number…. But the form of government is a democracy when the free, who are also poor and the majority, govern, and an oligarchy when the rich and the noble govern, they being at the same time few in number.

The following table offers only the briefest overview of democracy throughout the years. Of course, the earlier forms of democracy were not close to what we consider as democracy today, but were often important precursors or “proto-democracies” that laid down important foundations and principles. The examples shown here are also not complete—each and every instance is not mentioned or detailed, but a sampling of the more common or interesting ones to get an idea:

Is Democracy a Western or Universal Value?

Democracy is often described as one of the greatest gifts the West has given to the world. It certainly is one of the greatest gifts to humanity. But is it Western or more universal a principle? The previous table suggests there is some universality.

A common Euro-centric view of world history describes ancient Greek democracy as Western democracy, with ancient Greece as part of that Western/European identity.

Yet, as John Hobson writes in his anti Euro-centric book, The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), ancient Greece and Rome were not considered as part the West until much later; that is, Greece and Rome were part of a whole Middle East center of civilization, in some ways on the edge of it, as more was happening further Eastward.

Western Europe adopted or appropriated ancient Greek achievements in democracy as its own much later when it needed to form a cohesive ideology and identity to battle the then rising Islam and to counter its defeats during the Crusades.

And, as also noted much further below, it was the Middle East in the 9th – 12th centuries that preserved a lot of Ancient Greek and Roman achievements after Rome collapsed (which Europe then thankfully also preserved when the Middle East faced its own invasion and collapse — by the Mongols.

The point here is that democracy is perhaps more universal than acknowledged and that there is a lot of propaganda in how history is told, sometimes highlighting differences amongst people more than the similarities and cross-fertilization of ideas that also features prominently in history. After all, great battles throughout the ages are often celebrated far more than cross cultural fertilization of ideas which require more study and thought and doesn’t make for epic tales!

As discussed further below, there are elements within both Western and non-Western societies that are hostile to democracy for various reasons.

State of democracy around the world today

Wikipedia’s Democracy article collates interesting images from organizations that research democracy issues. Some of these images show what countries claim to be democracies, and to what degree they really are (or not) democratic:

As George Orwell noted, the word democracy can often be overloaded:

In the case of a word like DEMOCRACY, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different.

While most countries claim themselves to be democratic, the degree to which they are varies, according to Freedom House, which surveys political and human rights developments, along with ratings of political rights and civil liberties:

Perhaps it is no wonder Churchill once said,

Democracy is the worst form of government, except all the others that have been tried.

On the one hand then, there has never been as much democracy as present. And yet, many countries suffer from poor representations, election anomalies and corruption, “pseudo democracy”, etc. While these issues will be explored further below, first a look at some of the fundamentals of a democratic system.

Low voter turnouts

There have been numerous cases where democracies have seen leaders elected on low voter turnouts. In the US for example, in recent elections, the President has been elected with roughly 25% (one quarter) of the possible votes because a full 50% did not vote, and the “close” election race saw the remaining 50% of the votes split almost equally between the final Democrat and Republican candidates. Other countries, such as the UK has also seen such phenomenons.

Does an “elected” official represent the people if turnout is too low?

What does it mean for the health of a democracy if 75% of the electorate, for whatever reason, did not actually vote for the “winner”?

Such a low voter turnout however, represents a concern for a genuine democracy as a sufficient percentage of the electorate has either chosen not to vote, or not been able to vote (or had their votes rejected).

Some countries mandate voting into law, for example, Belgium. Others require a clear percentage of votes to be declared a winner which may result in the formation of coalitions (oftentimes fragile) to get enough votes in total.

As far as I can find, there are no countries that entertain the thought of negative votes, or voting for a list of candidates in order of preference that may help provide some further indications as to which parties are really the popular ones.

For example, many accused Ralph Nader for Al Gore’s loss to George Bush in the infamous 2000 US elections—ignoring for the moment accusations that Bush never won in the first place. If there had been the ability to list your preferred candidates in order of preference, would many of Nader’s supporters put Gore as their second option. Many right-wing alternatives may have put George Bush as their alternatives too, but perhaps this would have encouraged those who do not normally vote—such as those believed that their vote for a third candidate would have been pointless—to vote?

Why a low voter turnout?

There are numerous reasons for low voter turnout, including

• Voter apathy
• Disenfranchisement
• Parties not representing people
• Voter intimidation

The common criticism leveled at those who do not vote seems to be to blame them for being apathetic and irresponsible, noting that “with rights come responsibilities.” There is often some truth to this, but not only are those other reasons for not voting lost in this blanket assumption of apathy, but voting itself isn’t the only important task for an electorate.

Being able to make informed decisions is also important. In many nations, including prominent countries, there is often a view that the leading parties are not that different from each other and they do not offer much to the said voter. Is choosing not to vote then apathy or is it an informed decision? In other cases, the media may not help much, or may be partisan making choices harder to make.

In some countries voter intimidation can take on violent forms and discourage people to vote for anyone other than a militia’s favored group. (A recent example is that of Zimbabwe where the leading opposition felt they had to withdraw from the election process as voter intimidation by militias supporting Robert Mugabe was getting too violent. Mugabe’s government decided to carry on with the elections anyway, which seemed pointless to most but not to him; as he obviously would—and did—win.)

These concerns will be explored further later on.

Voting in non-democratic forces

Two examples of this paradox are the following:

Hitler and his party were voted in. He then got rid of democracy and started his gross human rights violations and genocidal campaigns as a dictator.

Hamas was also recently voted in by Palestinians. The “International community” (really the Western countries) withheld funds and aid because Hamas is regarded as a terrorist organization (though most Palestinians would seem to disagree). The lack of aid, upon which the Palestinians have been quite dependent contributed to friction amongst Palestinians who support Hamas and those that do not and this has been amplified by the worsening economic situation there. The Israel/Lebanon conflict also affected the Gaza Strip contributing to the in-fighting between various Palestinian factions.

The Hitler example highlights the importance media and propaganda play and the need for continued open self-criticism to guard against these tendencies.

The Hamas example is complicated by the general Middle East situation and the view on the one hand that American/Israeli power and influence in Palestine is undermining peace between Israel and Palestine, while on the other hand, the terrorist activities of Hamas and other organizations push American and Israel to even more authoritarian reactions.

That the majority of Palestinian people would vote in Hamas suggests that they have not seen the fruit of any recent attempts at a peace process (which has long been regarded by the “international community” – minus the US and Israel – as one-sided) and this has driven people to vote for a more hard line view.

Minorities losing out to majorities

Another criticism of democracy is that sometimes what the majority votes for or prefers, may not necessarily be good for everyone. A common example plaguing many countries which have diversity in race and religion is that a dominant group may prefer policies that undermine others.

Some quick examples include Nigeria which has large Christian and Muslim populations; some Muslims there, and in other countries, want Sharia Law, which not all Muslim necessarily want, let alone people of other faiths. If only a very slight majority can override a very large minority on such an important issue as how one should live, then there is a real chance for tension and conflict.

Another example is India, often help us an example of pluralism throughput the ages, despite all manner of challenges. Yet, unfortunately an Indian government report finds that its claims to religious integration and harmony are on far shakier grounds than previously believed. Muslims in India, for example, a large minority, are also under-represented and seem to be seen as India’s new ‘underclass.’

Wealthier countries also have similar problems, ranging from France with its challenge to integrate/assimilate a large foreign population, to Spain which struggles with a large Basque population wanting independence, to the US where large immigrant populations are struggling to integrate.

To address such potential issues requires more tolerance, understanding, and openness of society, such that people are not insecure due to the presence of others (and so that they do not, as a result, turn to more extreme/fundamental aspects of their own beliefs). This can come through various outlets, including, a diverse mainstream media, institutions such as religious and legal ones, schooling, family upbringings, etc

Equally important are the underlying economic conditions and situations of a country. Generally, it seems, where economically people are generally doing well, where the inequality gap is not excessive, people have less of a reason to opt for more defensive, reactionary or aggressive policies that undermine others.

At the same time, concerns of undesirable social engineering would also need to be addressed, and it is likely that in different countries there will be different “formulas” for this to be successful, for the historical context within which people live, the specific circumstances of the day and various other factors will differ amongst and within nations.

The fear of the public and disdain of democracy from elites (while publicly claiming to supporting it)

People often see democracy as an equalizing factor that should not allow the elite or wealthy in a society to rule in an autocratic, despotic, unaccountable manner. Instead they have to respond to the will of the people, and ultimately be accountable to them. Furthermore and ideally, it should not only be the wealthy or elite that hold the power. There should be some form of equality when representing the nation.

However, this has also meant at least two accompanying phenomena:

• Democracy is seen as a threat to those in power, who worry about the masses, referring to them as a “mob”, or some other derogatory phrase (“tyranny of the majority” is another), and
• To get votes, parties may appeal to populist issues which are often sensational or aim for short-term goals of elections.

Interestingly, leading up to the 2006 US mid-term elections, amidst all sorts of allegations of corruption coming to light, in an interview by Democracy Now!, writer James Moore, provided a classic example of political utility: Karl Rove, the influential, but controversial, advisor and strategist for President George W. Bush, despite actively campaigning to get the “Religious Right” to support Bush was not religious at all (and possibly despised the evangelical Christian extremists that he actively worked to get the votes of) and Bush himself apparently called them “wackos” years earlier:

James Moore: What people do not realize about [Karl Rove] is that everything about him is political utility. When he looked at what was going on with the megachurches … Karl decided he was going to take these gigantic churches on the Christian right and to turn them into a gigantic vote delivery system. And that’s precisely what he has done. This is not a man who has deeply held religious faith. It’s a man who believes that faith can be used to drive voters to the polls. In fact, his own president, in an interview with—or an offhand unguarded moment aboard the press plane with my co-author, Wayne Slater, had referred to the Christian right and the fundamentalists north of Austin as “whackos.” They hold these people in more disdain than these individuals are aware of.

This is just one example, where parties have simply targeted people to get votes for power. And yet, many in the religious right believe that Bush represents them and some even see him as an instrument of God, showing just how effective political utility and manipulation has been.

Noting that different people refer to, and think of democracy in different ways, (even some despots have called themselves democratic!), Bernard Crick concedes that,

We must not leap to the conclusion that there is a “true democracy” which is a natural amalgam of good government as representative government, political justice, equality, liberty, and human rights. For such volatile ingredients can at times be unstable unless in carefully measured and monitored combinations. Is “good government” or “social justice” unequivocally democratic, even in the nicest liberal senses? Probably not. Tocqueville wrote in the 1830s of the inevitability of democracy, but warned against “the dangers of a tyranny of the majority.” Well, perhaps he cared less for democracy than he did for liberty. But even Thomas Jefferson remarked in the old age that “an elective despotism was not what we fought for”; … John Stuart Mill whose Essay on Liberty and Considerations on Representative Government are two of the great books of the modern world, came to believe that every adult (yes, women too) should have the vote, but only after compulsory secondary education had been instituted and had time to take effect.

Democracy requires more propaganda to convince masses

In a democracy, people are generally accustomed to questioning their government, and should be empowered—and encouraged—to do so.

In some countries, healthy cynicism has given way to outright contempt or excessive cynicism at anything a government official promises!

What this does mean, however, is that those with ambitions of power and ulterior agendas have to therefore resort to even more propaganda and media savvy manipulation, as Crick notes:

“Totalitarian” … was a concept unknown and unimaginable in a pre-industrial age and one that would have been impossible but for the invention and spread of democracy as majority power. For both autocrats and despots depend in the main on a passive population; they had no need to mobilize en masse…. Napoleon was to say: “the politics of the future will be the art of mobilizing the masses.” Only industrialization and modern nationalism created such imperatives and possibilities.

Media co-opting is one strategy that may be employed as a result, as Australian journalist, John Pilger notes:

Long before the Soviet Union broke up, a group of Russian writers touring the United States were astonished to find, after reading the newspapers and watching television, that almost all the opinions on all the vital issues were the same. “In our country,” said one of them, “to get that result we have a dictatorship. We imprison people. We tear out their fingernails. Here you have none of that. How do you do it? What’s the secret?”

(This site’s sections on the mainstream media and propaganda looks at these issues in more depth. The buildup to the Iraq invasion is also an example of the lengths that governments of two democracies, the US and UK, would go to to gain support for their cause.)

Limited time in power means going for short term policies

Many democracies have rules that elections must be held regularly, say every 4 or 5 years. The short life span of governments is there for an important reason: it prevents a party becoming entrenched, dictatorial, stagnant or less caring of the population over time. Competition in elections encourages people to stay on their toes; governments knowing they must deliver, and potential candidates/parties knowing they can participate with a chance.

Yet, at the same time, the short-termism that results has its problems too. As Crick also notes, in two of the world’s most prominent countries, democracy has almost become a mockery of what it is meant to be:

Today, the politics of the United States and Great Britain become more and more populist: appeals to public opinion rather than to reasoned concepts of coherent policy. Political leaders can cry ‘education, education, education’, but with their manipulation of the media, sound-bites, and emotive slogans rather than reasoned public debate, [John Stuart] Mill might have had difficulty recognizing them as products of an educated democracy. And our media now muddle or mendaciously confuse what the public happens to be interested in with older concepts of “the public interest.”

[Side note: Noam Chomsky also details many times how the “national interests” have been used as a euphemism for the interests of only certain groups, such as some industry group, the government, a military industrial complex, or some other elitist/influential/powerful group.]

Anti-democratic forces undermine democracy using democratic means

In a number of countries, governments may find themselves facing hostile opposition (verbal and/or physical/military). Some governments find this opposition has foreign support, or, because of their own failures has created a vacuum (either a power vacuum, participation vacuum or some other failure that has allowed people to consider alternatives seriously). When a legitimate government is then deliberating, or taking, stronger actions, that government can easily be criticized for rolling back democracy, acting dictatorially or in some way undermining the rights of their people. This can then strengthen the non-democratic opposition further.

There are unfortunately countless examples of such foreign and domestic interference with potential and actual democracies to be listed here. It is common for example, to hear of say the former Soviet Union doing this. Unfortunately, while less common to hear about it in the mainstream, western governments have also been complicit in overthrowing and undermining democracies in other parts of the world in favor of puppet regimes, be they dictatorships or pseudo democracies. Two useful resources to read more about these include J.W. Smith’s Institute for Economic Democracy and the Noam Chomsky archives.

One recent example worth highlighting here is Venezuela, where Hugo Chavez managed to reverse a coup against him. This coup was aggressively supported by many in the Venezuelan elite media and also by the US. After the coup, news channels that actively supported the coup in 2002 to oust Chavez, were still allowed to remain in operation (which many democracies would not usually tolerate).

The main media outlet, RCTV, aggressively anti Chavez, was denied a renewal license in 2007, not because it was critical of Chavez policies, but because a pre-Chavez government law did not look too kindly on broadcasters encouraging coups (after all, what government would!). RCTV and their supporters tried to insist otherwise; that this was an issue of free speech. The US mainstream media has generally been hostile to Chavez (as has been the Bush administration itself), and this was therefore added to the other mis-characterizations often presented, lending credence to the view that Chavez is a dictator. In essence a law enacted during the previous dictatorial regime (backed by the US and others) is now being turned around and used against Chavez as another example of power-grabbing.

If and when nations such as the US want to further undermine the democratic processes in Venezuela, such incidents will be brought back into the mainstream, without these caveats, and a more favorable/puppet regime may likely be the aim.

Chavez is not helping his own cause by his often vocal and inflammatory antics, but it should not be forgotten how much foreign influence may be contributing to the undermining of democracy tendencies. Venezuela has been through a succession of dictatorships and many supporters of the previous regimes are in the anti-Chavez groups. Regardless of whether one is pro- or anti- Chavez, it certainly seems that democratic participation has increased during his tenure, given all the increased political activity, both pro- and anti-Chavez.

In another example, for a number of years now, in the US, a number of Christian groups in various Southern states have been campaigning hard to get schools to either reject teaching subjects such as the theory of evolution in science classes, or to “balance” them off with things like Creationism stories from the Bible or Intelligent Design ideas, in the name of free speech and academic freedom. In mid 2008, Louisiana became one of the first states to pass a religiously motivated anti-evolution “academic freedom” law that was described by Ars Technica as being remarkably selective in its suggestion of topics that need critical thinking, as it cites scientific subjects including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.

(On this particular issue, the point is not to ban stories on Creationism; they are better taught in religious classes, not science classes. Instead, religious views of the world have been pushed forward arguing that scientific theories are just that, ideas without proof, and so religious-based ones should compete on a level field allowing people to make more “informed” decisions. Yet, often missed from that is that scientific theories are usually based on a well-substantiated explanation that gets tested whenever possible, whereas religious ideas usually are required to be accepted on faith. More generally in the United States, there is however, a growing concern at the rise in an extreme religious right that wants to replace the democratic system with a Christian State.)

Although we are accustomed to hear about Muslim extremists pushing for relgious-based states in various Middle East countries, this example is one in a democracy where despite the principle of a separation of Church and State, Christian religious extremists push forward with their agenda, anyway.)

Those with money are more likely to be candidates

It is a common concern in many democratic countries that those with sufficient funds, or fund-raising capability are the ones who will become the final candidates that voters choose from. Some criticize candidates for “selling out” to mega donor, who then expect favors in return.

Others, who may be more democratic, but are either poor, or lack the finances of the leading contenders, or will not likely support policies that influential mega donors support, will often lose out.

In the US for example, “campaign finance reform” has long been a concern. It has been common to hear leading candidates only wanting themselves to appear on television election “debates” because of concerns about technicalities such as the time needed to accommodate other candidates with no realistic chance of winning. Yet, one would think in a democracy, time should be afforded to make all popular voices hear, not just the leading four from the two main parties, as that just results in the leading four becoming unfairly popular at the expense of the rest, and makes the concern they raise into a self-serving argument.

Understandably, finding time for all candidates might not be practical if there are many, but always limiting it to the four from the two leading parties results in the same choices people have to chose from each time, limiting diversity (especially when many feel the two leading parties are quite similar on many issues).

Attempts to suggest caps on finances of any sort to address this undue influence are met with support from those who have little, but ferocious resistance from those who stand to lose out.

Newspapers and other media outlets are often less than impartial in election campaigns. The high concentrated ownership of major media outlets does not always bode well for democracies as it puts a lot of influence into a handful of owners. For example, Rupert Murdoch’s ownership of the Sun tabloid in the UK and the paper’s switch from being a long time Conservative supporter to Labour supporter was described by many as a key reason that Tony Blair first came into power in 1997.

In the US, it can be argued that the differences between some Democrats and Republicans are quite small in the larger context, and the media owners come from the same elite pool, thus reinforcing the impression of vast differences and debate on major issues. The result is that many get put off and the remaining who do want to vote have access to just a few voices from which to make any notion of informed decisions.

Confusing political ideology with economic Ideology

As discussed on this site’s neoliberalism section, and explored in more depth at the Political Compass web site, the mainstream often mixes concepts such as democracy, authoritarian/totalitarian regimes, with free markets and communist economic ideologies. The terms of “left” and “right” wing politics is a gross oversimplification:

See the neoliberalism section for various other graphs that show how most major political parties and leaders of major countries are more neoliberal/right wing, even if they may be considered left (e.g. the Labour Party in UK).

In summary, democracy does not automatically require free markets and free markets does not automatically require democracy. Many western governments supported dictatorships during the Cold War that practiced free market economics in a dictatorial/fascist manner, for example.

Leading up to World War II, a number of European nations saw their power determined by fascists, often via a democratic process. Today, many European democracies attempt a social model of economic development ranging from socialist to somewhat managed markets.

To the alarm of the US which considers the area its area of political influence, Latin America has been flirting with various socialist/left wing economic policies and direct/radical democracy.

In the Indian state of Kerala, for example, a party was voted in that has put communist practices in place with some reasonable success. Of course, many communist regimes in reality have also been accompanied by dictatorships and despots in an attempt to enforce that economic ideology.

And during the beginnings of free markets, the major European powers promoting it were themselves hardly democratic. Instead they were dominated by imperialist, racist, colonialist and aristocratic views and systems.

The point here is that by not making this distinction, policies can often be highlighted that appear democratic, or even could undermine democracy (depending on how it is carried out) as many African countries have experienced, for example. As a recent example, as South Africa came out of apartheid, it was praised for its move to democracy, its truth and reconciliation approach and other political moves. Less discussed however, were the economic policies and conditions that followed.

A report describing a conference celebrating 10 years of South African independence from Apartheid noted how difficult a democratic system is to establish when combined with factors like regional and international economics (i.e. globalization) which were identified as being “responsible for some of the problems” in the region:

In the conditions of a unipolar world and the development of multinationals, which are highly technologically advanced, it is hard for Africa to find an entry point into this ‘globalised’ context…. The conference examined the implications of the globalisation context for the prosperity of the region’s economic structure and the implications for the consolidation of democracy. The question of how the international world relates to and indeed is responsible for some of the problems was also deliberated at the conference. While the consensus was on Africans … taking responsibility for their own welfare and problems, the conference acknowledged the interconnectivity among local, regional, continental and international economies. Indeed, some of the economic problems of the countries in the region can be traced back to their relationships with former colonial masters. More recently, the structural adjustment programmes of the 1980s continue to affect the economic stability of SADC countries…. provisional relief of debt has been linked to certain conditions, including political conditionality, which is basically a commitment to a narrow form of democracy, and economic policies, which have created deeper disempowerment. Some African scholars have dubbed this phenomenon ‘choiceless democracies’.

The link between globalisation and democratisation was further debated in the economic session of the conference. Suffice to say, democracy is threatened when a state cannot determine its own budget. The conditionality cripples the development of a socially transformative democracy. A number of the debt rescheduling agreements have fostered cutbacks on social spending, and have created conditions of further economic marginalisation and social exclusion of the poor. In the long term, the consolidation of democracy is threatened because the conditions have the effect of fostering social unrest.

One irony noted by John Bunzl of the Simultaneous Policy Organization (Simpol) is that the world’s leading democracies have, through the lobbying by corporate-friendly think-tanks, governments and companies, unleashed a corporate-friendly form of globalization that even they can’t fully control. As a result, even these countries are finding pressures on their democratic systems, resulting in unpopular austerity measures and cutbacks in cherished services and rights, such as health and education (though nowhere near to the level that has happened in the developing world, under the benign phrase “Structural Adjustment”).

How this has happened is detailed by many people. One detailed source to go to might be the Institute for Economic Democracy and the work of J.W. Smith.

Democracies may create a more effective military

It may seem ironic to many, considering that one principle underlying democracy is the desire for freedom, but democracies may create a more effective military.

Unlike a totalitarian regime, or, in the past, systems that used slaves, democracies that do not have forced military service, might create a more effective military because people have to willingly chose to participate in military institutions, and may have sufficient pride in protecting their democracy.

Of course, in reality it is more complex than that and democracy may be one ingredient of many, but potentially an important one that is hard to fully measure quantitatively. For example, sufficient funding, technology, skills and so on, are all required too, to transform an eager and enthusiastic military to an effective one.

Crick, quoted above, noted Plato’s observation that often a democratic system of rule would need to allow the few to govern on behalf of the many. This is what modern democracies typically are. But, as Crick notes, this has historically meant “rule by the few always needed to placate the many, especially for the defense of the state and the conduct of war.” (Democracy, p.17) In other words, propaganda is needed. This occurs today, too, as discussed earlier.

In some countries, the military will offer lots of incentives to join (good salary, subsidized education, etc.) which may appeal to poorer segments of society, so “defending” one’s democracy may not be the prime reason for joining the military; it may be an important way for someone in poverty to overcome their immediate predicament.

People may also be free to chose not to participate in a military, and/or reduce the money spent on it. Hence, a lot of fear politics and propaganda may be employed to gain support for excessive military spending, or to wage war, as the build-up to war against Iraq by some of the world’s most prominent democracies exemplified.

Many political commentators have noted, for example, that since the end of the Cold War, the US has struggled to fully demilitarize and transform its enormous military capacity into private, industrial capacity, and still spends close to Cold War levels. (This has been observed way before the so-called War on Terror.) Many regard the US as a more militarized state than most other industrialized countries.

Fear, scare stories and political opportunism

The use of fear in a democratic society is a well known tactic that undermines democracy.

For example, the US has also been widely criticized for using the War on Terror to cut back on various freedoms in the US, and often undermining democracy and related principles. By raising fears of another terrorist attack it has been easy to pass through harsher policies ranging from more stringent borders, to snooping on citizens in various ways.

Another example is the US military commissions act in 2006 which has increased already formidable presidential powers further, rolling back some key principles of justice such as habeas corpus (the traditional right of detainees to challenge their detention), allowing the President to detain anyone indefinitely while giving US officials immunity from prosecution for torturing detainees that were captured before the end of 2005 by US military and CIA. (It is also an example of how a seemingly non-democratic bill is passed in through a democratic system. The previous link goes into this in a lot more detail.)

Fear, scare stories and political opportunism have also been a useful propaganda tools during election time. For example, A November 6 Democracy Now! interview noted that the US government had long ago predetermined when the sentencing of Saddam Hussein would take place: conveniently just before the 2006 mid-term elections so as to try and get extra votes through the appearance of a successful action coming to a close.

Another example comes from the Iranian hostage crisis where Iranian students held some American hostages for over a year: A documentary that aired on a British cable channel (cannot recall details unfortunately) explained how Reagan, challenging Carter in the US presidential race, used a propaganda stunt that also helped him achieve popular support: Reagan and George H. W. Bush had struck a deal with the Iranian mullahs to provide weapons if they released the hostages the day after he was sworn in as President, rather than before, during Carter’s term.

This would allow Reagan to be sworn in with a very positive and triumphant view, and provide an image of him that could be used again and again in the future to help bolster him and his party, even though, as Robert Parry commented, The American people must never be allowed to think that the Reagan-Bush era began with collusion between Republican operatives and Islamic terrorists, an act that many might view as treason. [Robert Parry, The Bushes & the Truth About Iran, Consortium News, September 21, 2006]

Cynics will note (rightly) that such tactics are not new and they happen all the time. The problem is that many people (often cynics themselves) believe it, or importantly, believe it at that time. Because these things have happened throughout history does not automatically mean it should also happen in the future too.

Supposedly, society becomes more sophisticated and improves its knowledge of how these aspects work. We are supposed to be able to learn from past experiences, and if that were true, knowing that such things can happen, and yet they continue to do so all the time also signals a weakness or problem in the democratic institutions if such actions are not held accountable for they deceive the public into mis-informed decisions.

This is an overly complex situation as it goes to the heart of society and questions whether a society suffering this problem is truly democratic if systemically the mainstream media fails to hold those in power to account, either through fear of criticism that they are not being patriotic or through being part of the same elite establishment that reinforces each others views and perspectives, etc. The point is, perhaps regardless of whether this is easy to address or not, there may be a fundamental problem: not enough democracy, openness, transparency and accountability, thus letting these things happen, repeatedly.

Weak democracies and hostile oppositions

It seems that where democracies are weak (e.g. through government corruption, favoritism, or incompetence, or just because a nation is newly emerging, or only recently moving out of dictatorship and towards democracy) there is a greater risk in the rise of hostile opposition.

Sundeep Waslekar is president of the Strategic Foresight Group, a respectable think tank from India. He captures these concerns describing how this can pave the way for extremism:

Bangladesh has terrorist groups belonging to Islamist as well as leftist ideologies. They gathered strength in the late 1990s in a political vacuum created by constant infighting between the principal leaders of the democratic politics. The situation in Bangladesh is similar to that in Nepal, which had autocratic rule in one form or another until 1991. With the induction of democracy in 1991, it was hoped that the voiceless would now have a space to press for their priorities. However, those in power, in partnership with their capitalist cronies, concentrated on the development of the capital region. They also engaged in such a bitter fight with one another that democracy was discredited as a reliable institution, creating a void that was quickly filled by extremists. In the case of Nepal, the Maoists stepped in. In the case of Bangladesh, it was the extremists of the left and the religious right. Having tested popular support, they have developed a vested interest in their own perpetuation. The result is that the Nepali political parties have had to accept an arrangement with the Maoists while the Bangladeshi political parties are courting Islamic extremists.

As Waslekar also argues, the forces of extremism can be more dangerous than the forces of terrorism:

Terrorism involves committing acts of [criminal] violence…. As they tend to be illegal, it is conceivable for the state machinery to deal with them. Extremism may not involve any illegal acts. In fact, extremism may surface using democratic means.

Waslekar notes that extremism often takes a religious face, and is not just in parts of the Middle East and other Islamic countries (Islamic extremism), but growing in countries and regions such as the United States (Christian extremism), Europe (racism and xenophobia of a small minority of White Europeans, and Islamic extremism by a small minority of Muslim immigrants), India (Hindu extremism), Israel (Jewish extremism), Sri Lanka (Buddhist extremism), Nepal (Maoists), Uganda (Christian extremism) and elsewhere.

Furthermore Waslekar finds that “a closer look at the patterns of terrorism and extremism around the world reveals that there are some common drivers—grievances and greed leading to supply and demand.” There is “clear evidence that young people are drawn to the terrorist or extremist mindset because they feel excluded by the society around them or by the policy framework of the state.”

And it is not necessarily absolute poverty that has the potential to breed new recruits for terrorist organizations, but more likely inequality and relative poverty. People suffering absolute poverty are generally struggling for their daily lives, and less likely to have the leisure to think about their grievances and injustices.

Another issue that Waslekar summarizes well is how terrorism is understood and reported:

Whether it is the mainstream media or the blogs, the analysis of the global security environment revolves around the mutual love-hate relationship between Western and Islamic countries. The fact that there are more serious patterns of terrorism elsewhere in the world is ignored by both sides. The fact that there are issues bigger than the growing mutual hatred between Western and Islamic countries is forgotten. In the eyes of the Western elite and its media, the death of 5000 odd people in terrorist attacks launched by Al Qaeda and its affiliates in the last five years is the ultimate threat to global security. In the eyes of Arab public opinion, the death of 50,000 to 500,000 innocent people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and the Palestine is the real tragedy. Both sides forget that their woes are serious but that some 50 million children lost their lives in the last five years since 9/11 due to policy neglect by a world that is overly obsessed with one issue.

What do these issues have to do with democracy? A functioning, democratic society is ideally one that is able to take inputs from different segments of society and attempt to address them. Issues such as inequality and social/political differences may have a better chance of being resolved without resort to violence in a process that actually is (and is also seen to be) open, accountable and inclusive.

Lack of inclusiveness undermines democracy, strengthens extremism

Democracy by it self is no panacea as the various issues here have shown, but is a crucial part of the overall process. A functioning mainstream media has a democratic duty to inform citizens, but around the world the media repeatedly fails to do so, and often reflects its regional biases or perspectives of an established elite few. If concerns and grievances are not addressed, or if they addressed through violence, Waslekar warns of “an age of competitive fundamentalism” and is worth quoting again, this time at length:

The project of collaborative development of human knowledge and culture that began under the sponsorship of Arab and Islamic rulers a thousand years ago eventually became subject to the West. The Palestinian issue has been a symbol of the continuation of the Western monopoly on power … Iraq has been added as another symbol not only of this Western power and arrogance, but also of Western callousness. The rhetoric about Syria and Iran pose the risk of more such symbols arising.

As the Arab elite have failed to provide an effective response to the Western stratagem, Islamic preachers have come up with an alternative vision … not in harmony with Islam’s core message of peace, learning, and coexistence. On the contrary, it presents an absolutist idea of the society. On the other hand, the Christian Evangelical preachers and European xenophobic politicians present visions of a closed society to their followers. It seems that the world is entering an age of competitive fundamentalism.

While the West is obsessed with the Middle East, forces of extremism and nationalism in Asia and Latin America pose the real challenge to its monopoly and arrogance. Western discourse on terrorism and extremism is focused on the Arab region at its own peril…. The conditions for relative deprivation prevail all over the world, from Muslim migrants in Western Europe, the poor in the American mid-west to farmers in Colombia and the Philippines. The intellectual project to define terrorism only in relation to the groups in the Middle East turns a blind eye to the growth of terrorism and extremism not only outside the Middle East, in Asia and Latin America, but also in the American and European homelands.

In the age of competitive fundamentalisms, human rights and liberties are compromised. The states … may indulge in human rights violations. And at times they may use terrorism as an excuse to punish legitimate opposition. Several people are more afraid of anti terrorist measures than acts of terror. Thus, terrorism abets authoritarianism and undermines freedom. Since many of the states today engaged in counter terrorism campaigns claim to be champions of freedom, terrorist groups defeat them philosophically by forcing them to undermine the freedom of innocent civilians. Terrorism wins when powerful security agencies forbid mothers from freely carrying milk and medicine for their infants on aeroplanes. Terrorism wins when democratically elected representatives cannot allow their constituents to move about freely around them. Terrorism wins when states use it as an excuse to kill their enemies, giving birth to a thousand suicide bombers.

Competitive fundamentalism threatens trust between individuals and societies.

Representative and Direct Democracy

Most democracies are representative democracies, whereby votes are usually for parties who propose candidates for various government positions. By their nature, representative democracies these days require lots of funding to get heard, which opens itself up to corruption. There are usually constitutions to check the power of representatives, but even this can be open to abuse.

One alternative is known as direct democracy where instead of voting for intermediaries, votes should be cast on issues themselves. Direct democracy may help prevent the perversion of democracy by those with power interests through the financing of parties and their various machines to garner votes. On the other hand, a possible risk with direct democracy may be that there is much more emphasis on voting for issues, which may mean minority groups do not get represented fairly, depending on the issues.

There is also the challenge of scale. Direct democracy may be ideal for small organizations and communities, including thousands of participants. But what about tens of millions? Referendums in various countries on all sorts of issues have shown that direct democracy is possible, but how can this be applied to a more “daily” routine on more routine and complex issues? Is it even possible, and how would issues come to the fore? The risk of demagogy is therefore a concern.

For more details, benefits and challenges of each, see for example, the overviews from Wikipedia on representative democracy and direct democracy.

In either case, informed opinion would be paramount, which places importance on news media outlets to be truly impartial and broad in its diversity of issues covered. With globalization today, and the accompanying concentration of media in many countries, often owned by large global companies, the diversity and variety of views are suffering.

Voting

An interesting aside is an Internet-based project called the global vote, to allow direct voting on global issues, which go beyond national boundaries, or allow people to vote on aspects of policies in the countries of others.

This is interesting in a few ways. For example, voting beyond the nation state is something new, ironically perhaps afforded by globalization which some see as undermining democracy. It is also enabled by modern technology (the Internet in this case).

On the issue of technology, attempts to introduce other types of technology into voting, such as e-voting machines have been plagued with problems of insecurity, difficult usability for some people, lack of open access to the underlying source code, and even incorrect recording of votes, or possible manipulation. This is discussed further, below.

What makes voting meaningful?

Voting in a democracy is based on the assumption of a free and informed decision.

Without these you end up with an autocratic system pretending to be a democratic system while people believe they have made a free and informed choice. Over time, as a population becomes accustomed to living in such a system a self-perpetuating belief takes hold where the population believe that the system is democratic, even as informed opinion, political diversity and choices are reduced. Such a system is then able to sustain itself, having grown from the initial illusion of free choice.

The crucial challenge therefore is how to ensure the decision is free (and not influenced unduly by propaganda or some other form of manipulation) and informed (how does one get a full range of information? Is it even possible?).

Evaluative democracy

Ensuring free decisions and informed decisions are of course are clearly interlinked, and political scientist Stephen Garvey thoroughly argues that voting the way it is typically done is so flawed that a more evaluative approach to democracy would be a better way to judge progress, determine leaders, and ultimately achieve a better (and real) democracy. This, he argues, is because an evaluative democracy

• Minimizes the role of political influence and manipulation by making the focus of political determinations on citizen evaluations which are based on the collective interest.
• Minimizes political campaigning.
• Minimizes or eliminates the role of political organizations.
• Minimizes the role of money.
• Establishes accountability of political and governmental decision-making through the standard of collective interest.

In essence, democracy (and the various issues raised for debate) would then driven by the people, not by leading political parties who decide the agendas based on their interests (which also results in a very narrow set of issues being discussed, and often contributes to low voter turnout). This has the potential, then, to be a much more people-driven (i.e. democratic) approach.

For more information see Garvey’s book, Anti-Election:Pro-Determination (Inexpressible Publications, 2007) and the web site, Evaluative Democracy.

Campaign financing

In countries that have representative democracies a problem with election campaigning is that it requires a lot of money, and raising it often means appealing to those who have sufficient money to donate.

In the US, this has led to the criticism that both Democrats and Republicans have had to court big business and do not necessarily represent the majority of the people, as a result.

Such enormous campaign financing has meant that other potentially popular candidates have not been able to get further because they have not been able to spend as much on advertising and marketing.

This means that not only do political parties court big financiers but that these large entities/businesses and wealthy individuals can use the media to push their own agendas and interests which may not necessarily represent majority views.

Numerous calls for limits are welcomed by those without money, but resisted by those with it, for clearly one set of people would gain, while another would lose out.

This very much sounds more like a system of oligarchy, rather than democracy, as Aristotle had long warned of, quoted near the beginning of this article.

In the US, activists have been trying to raise the issue of campaign financing for years, but it recently took on another dimension as limits to campaign financing were removed. Kanya D’Almeida recently summarized this in an article in Inter Press Service:

The richest one percent has hijacked the very foundations of democracy in a country whose constitution of 1787 promised to be by the people, for the people.

…

[A US Supreme Court ruling in January 2010 that Congress cannot limit spending by corporations in elections] struck at the very heart of what many U.S. citizens have felt for years — that despite a careful constitutional separation of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the government, corporate capital had infected the body politic from head to toe.

This has also meant it has been hard to find out specific details about campaign financing:

By ruling that the government cannot curb spending and lobbying by unions, corporations or even powerful individual stakeholders, the Supreme Court green-lit the proliferation of Super PACs (political action committees) that are unfettered by electoral laws or transparency and free to pour unprecedented amounts of money into campaigns of their choosing.

Super PACs can also drag their feet on releasing hard data on how much money actually changes hands during election cycles and, in the new arena of impunity granted by the Supreme Court, can accept donations from registered 501(c) nonprofit entities that are exempt from exposing the identities of those who bankroll elections at will.

Much of this money is funneled directly into TV ads, the bulk of them bordering on smear campaigns against opposing candidates.

In addition to using the media to push their agendas and equally important, the US mainstream media also stands to gain:

According to investment banking and asset management firm Needham and Co., television stations this year will rake in as much as eight billion dollars from political campaigns.

In a country that has a lot of concentrated ownership of media, is there a potential conflict of interest; the mainstream media may not have as much interest in discussing these issues in too much depth for they stand to benefit from it.

In the US, this is just one of many other issues that affect the nation’s democracy, which this site’s section on the media in the US looks at further.

Electronic voting: efficiency or easier for corruption?

In a Democracy Now! broadcast on November 6, 2006 (just before US mid-elections) the issues being discussed were various ways that people were being prevented from voting. New York Times editor, Adam Cohen, who had been following this also talked about the problems with electronic voting machines, summarizing that they “are really not very good at making these machines” because they had all sorts of problems, even registering the wrong vote (e.g. some people put down a Democrat candidate and the summary page asking for confirmation showed it said a Republican candidate).

An HBO documentary Hacking democracy exposed numerous problems with electronic voting software/hardware in the US from a leading company, Diebold.

The documentary described how easy it was to tamper with the software and hardware. The initial question it asked was how do you know if the vote count is correct and accurate? How does America count its vote?

What they found was “secrecy, votes in the trash, and how to change the course of history” through things like extremely easy manipulation of electronic voting.

An example they noted was during the Al Gore/Bush campaign, a computer counted Al Gore’s votes backwards in Volusia County, Florida; he had negative votes. An investigation established that it could not have been through a computer glitch. Instead, it was thought it might have been tampering, but no-one will know for sure; It is against the law to look at the software used in electronic voting systems.

Furthermore, the documentary noted you can’t necessarily rely on the vote produced by the voting machines; As Democracy Now! had discussed above, this documentary had footage showing that when a vote was cast for a certain candidate, another candidate was repeatedly selected!

A concerned citizen-turned-activist discovered the code for “GEMS” the computer software code for some 40% of Diebold’s electronic voting software in use. Passwords, specifications, etc were all available. That was when the “wall of secrecy” around how these systems work, began to fall.

Computer Science PhDs at John Hopkins were shown the software code, and found:

• You could hack into the system without having to know how it works
• Security holes allowed serious manipulations
• It was not a problem limited to just Diebold
• $55 million was supposedly spent on security, accuracy and other critical features, a Diebold representative told Channel 4 News in UK. Yet the computer scientists broke into the system in 10 seconds.

There were countless more examples showing just how problematic electronic voting software has been even though the use of technology usually gives the impression of sophistication and accuracy.

The problem is not limited to the US. The Open Rights Group, a technology organization in the UK that works on civil liberties issues in relation to digital technology reported on e-counting of votes cast in the 2008 London Elections. They found that independent election observers were unable to state reliably whether the results declared in the May 2008 elections for the Mayor of London and the London Assembly are an accurate representation of voters’ intentions.

When the independent observers tried to actually observer the votes being counted, they could not and were hampered by the technology put in place. Furthermore, they found that an audit of the software used to count the vote could not be published because of commercial confidentiality. As they noted, for a public election these are very serious concerns because transparency in the election process is crucial. And yet, the election software company is to be paid some £4.5 million for delivering this “solution” (approximately $9 million).

Media manipulation and ownership

As discussed earlier, a free and impartial media is important for a functioning democracy. However, as also detailed in other parts of this web site, a lot of mainstream media suffers from concentrated ownership by a handful of companies that usually results in less diversity of views being aired, as those owning companies have their own interests to protect and promote.

In the US and UK for example, there have been various cases of media outlet parent companies contributing to election campaigns or candidates/parties. Famously, Tony Blair got support by Ruper Murdoch and the Sun tabloid, usually a right-leaning paper, which helped him come to power in 1997.

In Italy when Silvio Berlusconi became Prime Minister (on more than one occasion), he was a powerful media mogul and was able to use that to good effect to promote his agenda and sometimes controversial views. As one of Italy’s richest men he was also embroiled in various allegations of corruption, including from the influential Economist magazine. Berlusconi has been able to use his influence in business, media and politics to avert much criticism and charges in various ways.

In Venezuela there has been both an intense anti-Chavez mainstream media, but also a state run channel where Chavez has had is own TV program. (As an interesting aside, Chavez’s recent election win—an overwhelming win—has been described by some foreign media as an example of amassing more power. The irony here may be that he may have won a popular democratic vote, but because he is not looked at favorably by nations such as the US, and because many of the mainstream media outlets of those other nations often follow the government/establishment position on such things, the reporting by the mainstream media from there reflected that government position. Had Bush or any other US presidential candidate won US elections with such a majority it is unlikely to be described as amassing more power, but rather an example of democracy and overall success and popularity of that candidate.)

Media Reporting

Danny Schechter, a media expert, wonders out aloud why we see some repeated good quality analysis (after an election) of why election reporting may have been problematic, and yet those problems occur again the next time:

After every election, there are post-mortems and then, after that, come the studies to confirm the presence of many institutional and deep seated flaws in our ritualized electoral-democracy.

Annually, journalists acknowledge their own limits and mistakes. The honest ones admit there was a uniformity of outlook in which the horse race is over-covered and the issues under covered.

They concede that there was a focus on polls without explaining their limits adequately or how polls in turn are affected by the volume and slant of media coverage. There are criticisms of how negative ads and entertainment values infiltrated election coverage, what Time magazine calls «electotainment.» They bemoan the fact that there was more spin and opinionizing than reporting along with less investigative reporting.

And then they do it all over again.

While Schechter is specifically commenting on US elections, these similar concerns often apply to many other countries, rich and poor.

Campaigning on personalities and sound-bites

Schechter above commented on the negative ads in US. This involves a lot of excessive and pointless attacking and degrading of opponents, rather than focusing on issues. It often involves a form of spin and slanting just to make the other candidate look bad, and both Democrats and Republicans get involved in this.

In the UK recent elections have been accompanied hype on populist issues such as immigration which, while the have issues, have been exaggerated and blown out of proportion to the issue itself.

The “image” of the candidate is often paramount, in that they must “appear” to support or not support a particular issue. Some media reports will try to make the most out of some minor issue such as appearance on a particular day and see if they can read any signals from it. The personality of the candidates themselves also become major issues.

Such tactics are arguably a waste of resources, and divert attention away from real issues which then get less time to be debated. Unfortunately these tactics will always be pursued because some of these do affect people’s views and opinions. It is well known that appearance, for example, does affect people’s opinions, regardless of whether it should or should not.

Threats of violence and intimidation

For developing countries in particular, the road to democracy is often fraught with dangers. In some cases militias threaten violence if their supported leaders are not voted for, or if some people choose to vote at all.

In East Timor militias supporting (and some accuse, supported by) the Indonesian ruling regime at the time resorted to enormous levels of violence, killings and intimidation to prevent people voting. Nonetheless in this case, the majority did vote, and achieve independence. Democracy has not automatically solved all the problems since, but it is a start.

In Burma/Myanmar, the military junta simply imprisoned/house-arrested the democratically elected Aung San Suu Kyi.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, as well as inheriting elements of brutal colonial past, the nation’s rich resources have been a curse. Numerous neighboring countries and corporate interests (e.g. diamonds, mineral companies) have interacted into what has became numerous wars. Attempts at meaningful peace have proven largely unsuccessful.

Sierra Leone and many other countries going through conflict have militias that intimidate people to vote a certain way.

Zimbabwe has had similar problems of militias intimidating, even killing opposition supporters leading to the June 2008 elections, as noted much earlier.

It is extremely difficult in countries whose borders have been artificially imposed in recent decades. Countries such as the United Kingdom have had centuries to eventually integrate peacefully (Northern Ireland perhaps being an exception, as it is also a more recent struggle). Poorer countries, that have been around mostly only since a decade or two after the Second World War not only have had a shorter time span to consider, but also have another major factor affecting them: foreign influence and interference in democratic decision-making and election processes.

Disenfranchisement of voters

In a Democracy Now! broadcast on November 6, 2006 (just before the US mid-elections) the issues being discussed were various ways that people were being prevented from voting. The broadcast interviewed New York Times editor, Adam Cohen, who had been following this concern in detail and gave various examples of attempts to try and use rules that appear fair but are actually designed to prevent a certain group of people from voting so that a certain party will win. If parties can do it, they will try, he implies.

Furthermore, if you look back at the history of voting in the United States, there has always been an attempt to use rules of various kinds to stop certain people from voting. It’s always been a partisan thing. One party realizes if it stops a particular ethnic group or racial group from voting, it may win, and they adopt rules that appear to be neutral, but actually aren’t neutral at all.

As shocking and concerning as some of these tactics are, these issues of course are not limited to the US, and in some countries, attempts to prevent groups of people from voting are far worse, including use of violence as noted above. The US was chosen as an example here because of the high regard people have for its democratic process. If democratic principles are easy to violate in the US, then many other countries will have even worse problems.

Election corruption

Elections are typically local and national events. Foreign involvement in a national election, however, does happen, and depending on the circumstances and perspective, it can be seen as anything from providing assistance and support, to political interference and undermining of the democratic process (if it is seen at all).

There are countless examples in recent decades, too many to list here, but some recent ones include the external funding of “democratic” parties often by some Western countries in parts of the developing world.

For instance, in Iran one of the opposition groups to the ruling regime is a monarch descendant and not necessarily democratic as such, but gets Western backing nonetheless.

In Nicaragua leading up to the 2006 elections, the US actually warned Nicaraguans not to vote for for Ortega. (In the mid 1980s, the US had actively supported Contra guerrillas in a war against the Nicaraguan government. Ortega was leader of Nicaragua at that time.) The US went as far as threatening economic sanctions and withdrawal of aid if Ortega won. Even Oliver North and Donald Rumsfeld went there to tell people not to vote for Ortega (though Rumsfeld denied he went for political reasons). North was one of the main people involved in the Iran-Contra scandal, the US deal to sell weapons to Iran and use proceeds to fund the bloody contras against Ortega and the Sandinista movement there, despite a congressional ban to do this (i.e. being against both US and international law).

A scandal caused around 2000 was when there was feared Chinese influence in US elections – at that time the media and politicians were (rightly) outraged at foreign interference, but ignored the immense number of incidents (and sometimes far worse) foreign interference their own country had taken part in, in other countries, before and since.

Recently, Russia has also been accused of interference with some of its former satellites (sometimes unsuccessfully such as with the the Ukraine “velvet revolution”).

By its very nature, it is hard to detect this kind of interference. Sometimes it is visible but accompanied by so much subtle propaganda that it seems benign, while other times it is only years later that the information comes out, by which time the damage has been done (and many people’s lives have been affected).

Yet, nations and organizations doing these things will often feel they have to for their own agendas and “national interests.” Of course the more powerful and influential countries will be able to pull this off far better than poorer ones, and is yet another tool in the arsenal of more powerful countries to try and maintain their position of advantage in the international arena. While it is easy to say and hard to do, transparency in all parts of a democratic process is key to help minimize or avert this kind of perversion of democracy.

(For far more detailed examples, including in particular the history of Western companies and front organizations funding groups to overthrow governments in the name of democracy but really to achieve various foreign policy interests, see the works of J.W. Smith from the Institute for Economic Democracy, and the various writings from Noam Chomsky. Whenever some of these things come to light, the mainstream and politicians of these interfering nations often claim these were mistakes that should not have happened, but Smith, Chomsky and many others show how systemmatic this has often been, implying it is part of a foreign policy agenda to shape the world, where possible, with governments that are friendly to their interests, democratic or not.)

Can democracy be forced upon a country through military means?

One part of the US neo-conservative movement’s ideology was highlighted in the buildup for war on Iraq: the use of military force, if necessary, to extend or maintain is super-power status in the world. The Middle East clearly suffers from ineffective, or no democracy. The American neo-conservative movement felt the US should use its military might selectively to enforce democracy where it wants.

Yet, as experience in Iraq has shown, and what many scholars and activists had long-predicted, democracy cannot be enforced from the outside; it has to be home-grown. Not only must it be home-grown, but must be genuine and seen to be genuine.

(As noted earlier, the US has also funded many supposedly democratic movements in various other countries, often for ulterior motives. In so many of those cases it has turned out that those groups have become puppet regimes or pseudo democracies. In many other cases, the US has actually supported the overthrow of a democratic government. As more and more people around the world have become aware of this, the legitimacy of such overt foreign influence has often been met with suspicion and domestic elections and democratic processes then suffer through the perception of them being tainted and not genuine. In worst cases, the consequences can include political instability and conflict, so it is a dangerous game to play. It is often done unaccountably too, as interference can be justified with that overloaded term “in the national interests.”)

International institutions: democratic or representing those with the most power?

International institutions such as the WTO, IMF, WB, UN (or more specifically the UN Security Council) are themselves far from democratic even though most of them give the impression of being an international forum where nations can be fairly treated. But many of them prescribe policies on poor countries in such a way that it undermines those countries, even if they are democratic ones. Under such conditions, corruption is not uncommon.

The IMF and World Bank have come under criticism lately for their long non-democratic leadership, and are now beginning to address that balance. This has not come about because of democratic tendencies of the leading contributors (all Western democracies), but because a handful of developing nations, such as China, India and Brazil, have now become politically strong enough to gather sufficient backing to demand these Western-backed/influenced institutions open up and let them in and share power more fairly if they are to be truly international organizations that they want/claim to be.

It is very early days to see what will happen; will the emerging nations just become another group leaving the poorer ones still under-represented, or will they be able to fight for better global representation?

The World Trade Organization is another such problematic organization in this regards, while the UN, generally universal, suffers from the problem of the non-democratic UN Security Council with its handful of veto-power nuclear powers.

For example, during various rounds of WTO talks, developing countries frequently complained that rich nations keep circumventing established procedures or just prevent developing countries taking part or even produce documents and drafts so late in the process (e.g. the night before they are discussed) that they do not have time to analyze them sufficiently. Any of these things undermine negotiation processes for countries already limited by resources. The “Green Room” antics whereby rich countries selectively invite a few poor countries to closed door meetings, telling them how things will proceed, smells of divide and conquer. In the meanwhile industrialized country officials will celebrate these talks as being open and transparent, blaming developing countries for some unexplainable reason for being unreasonable when things go wrong.

(And when mainstream media outlets of wealthy countries rarely report these meetings, let alone the concerns and perspectives of poor countries, their officials, who sound like they genuinely want to help the poor but cannot understand why they won’t accept their offer, get away without being held to account as to why their offers to poor countries were actually so harsh and unfair in various ways.)

Although sounding boring for most of the public, these talks are some of the most important in the world, for they affect the lives of all citizens. Promises by wealthy countries of openness, transparency and other democratic like behavior are just that; promises. In reality this is politics, dirty negotiation tactics and doing anything that one can get away with in order to push one’s own interests in the international arena (which, unfortunately is somewhat understandable from the perspective of those individual nations doing it; they are trying to get the best for their own interest, even if they often present it as being best for everyone). [For additional details, see also this site’s page: WTO Meeting in Hong Kong, 2005]

Of these international institutions, the UN is perceived to be far more democratic and inclusive in comparison. However, it too is tainted, this time by the 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council who have veto powers over many decisions, thus giving them more power, regardless of any overwhelming international opinion or even votes by the UN General Assembly.

These 5 are permanent members with excess powers because they have nuclear weapons, helped form the UN (in the case of US, UK and France), or were invited in for Geopolitical balance (in the case of the former Soviet Union, now Russia, and China).

Military power, it appears, is the final arbiter of justice. This is ironic when key democratic principles include an independent judiciary and a military subservient to the people.

But what recourse do poor countries have? To whom can they complain and go to when wealthy countries violate the principles upon which they make grandiose claims of following?

Reality of foreign policy

Of course, as history also shows, any desire for democratic like behavior between nations is wishful thinking, perhaps naïve; powerful nations will always do what they can to preserve or extend their power. Democracy at an international level would reduce their advantage so it would not be in their interest to extend power and privilege to too many others (a few are needed).

Perhaps desire for democracy at the international level should be dismissed as a waste of time. Poorer nations would surely understand this more than people from richer nations who have not had to typically face the full brunt of someone else’s power and influence for a long time.

Yet, they still take part in the international arena. Some of that might be because they hold on to democratic ideals, but there may also be an understanding that as some powerful nations emerge such as Brazil, China, India, and some others, such nations may (for now) be useful allies in international political negotiations.

This may be one reason why the developing world as a whole was able to derail parts of the WTO “Development Round” talks in 2003 when the wealthy countries tried to unfairly impose extra issues and actions onto poorer countries without agreeing to almost anything themselves.

However, the diverse interests of poor nations also meant that at the follow up 2005 WTO round, rich countries were able to manipulate poor nations by appealing to some of the more powerful ones such as Brazil and India and get them to agree to weak drafts on behalf of the rest for a few small concessions of their own, while doing away with any pretense of a democratic, open and transparent process in the way the talks were held.

The other reason they may still be involved is that they have little choice; like it or not, their nations are more vulnerable to the forces of globalization. They almost have to try and get involved, even if it is an unequal system, just in case they can get some concessions or have their voice heard.

Why is democracy at the international level so important?

There may clearly be cases where at all levels a committee/consensus type approach may be inefficient (e.g. to respond to a natural disaster, where some command/control approach may help immediately), but even there, a democratic process can be useful to feed back into the decision making so that the command/control structure does not become close-minded.

Clearly though, a more democratic set of international institutions is one way to try and address inequalities caused by projection of power. Furthermore, understanding our commonalities, not just differences may help solidify humanity, which currently seems on a trajectory of distrust and violence. Sundeep Walsekar, mentioned earlier is worth quoting again to show just one seemingly small, but perhaps significant example:

It is generally believed that much of modern Western thought has its origins in Greek philosophy. In the post-Roman Empire period, many important Greek works were destroyed. It was largely to the credit of the Islamic rulers of the 9th to 12th century that some of these works were recovered, translated and analyzed. The Arab, Persian and Jewish scholars of the time built upon the knowledge they had gathered. Trade with China and India provided access to the knowledge developed in the Eastern societies for centuries. The scholars in the Middle East further created their own ideas and innovations…. In a historical twist, their works were destroyed by Mongol invaders and others but Western universities secured and preserved some of them. Critical and independent inquiry is needed to ascertain to what extent the evolution of knowledge is a result of cross-fertilization of ideas between people from different parts of the world.

Dwelling a bit further on this notion of humanity with more similarities than differences, a common Euro-centric view of world history describes ancient Greek democracy as Western democracy, with ancient Greece as part of that Western/European identity.

Yet, as John Hobson writes in the excellent anti Euro-centric book, The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), ancient Greece and Rome were not considered as part the “West” until much later; that is, Greece and Rome were part of a whole Middle East center of civilization, in some ways on the edge of it, as more was happening further Eastward.

Western Europe adopted or appropriated ancient Greek achievements in democracy as its own much later when it needed to form a cohesive ideology and identity to battle the then rising Islam and to counter its defeats during the Crusades.

The point here is that democracy is perhaps more universal than acknowledged and that there is a lot of propaganda in how history is told, sometimes highlighting differences amongst people more than the similarities and cross-fertilization of ideas that Waslekar alludes to. This better understanding, which would take a long time to permeate into mainstream society, would contribute to creating a more tolerant, hence eventually a more democratic, society.