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Tim Cavanaugh | February 15, 2005

Julian Sanchez checks in with Immanuel Kant and perpetual democratization.

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|2.15.05 @ 7:34PM|#

Julian:

Are you slipping between two nested theses here?

"Democratization is no guarantor of security" is a weaker assertion than "Democratization does not bolster security."

|2.15.05 @ 7:39PM|#

Well, I don't mean to argue anything as strong as "democratization is useless", but "democratization is no guarantor of security" sounds kind of flaccid, if it's just read as meaning that democatization is not a panacea. I was shooting for somewhere inbetween: "there are these compelling-seeming arguments that the effectiveness of democratization as a security measure is less than is commonly supposed, and there are serious transitional downsides to worry about if 'democratization' doesn't mean the unrealistic goal of moving some of these countries to the U.S.'s level relatively rapidly"

|2.15.05 @ 7:48PM|#

I would also generally avoid taking foreign policy advice from a guy who lived 80 years without leaving K�nigsberg. The symbolic position of America in today's globalized world makes this a situation without a usefully comprable precedent.

It strikes me as a painful oversimplification to say that "democratization" mobilizes nationalistic (or Islamic) elites. These popular movements are extant everywhere, the most virulent anti-American varieties springing up in countries that rate lowest on the Freedom House scale.

"Democratization" generally destabilizes a ruling class that kept these movements muzzled or at least symbiotically contained. That some new democratically chosen regime should pop up its place isn't going to suddenly make them disappear.

After the back-patting and purple finger waving dies down, we're going to have to come to terms with the reality. Civil institutions breed democracy which breeds free and fair trade which breeds peace. Those who think otherwise do not have history on their side, and are blowing on a pair of dice.

I don't know whether its historic amnesia or narcissism. That we think a large part of the world to be a candidate for dipping upside down by the heels into the pool of our own reflection is a dangerous gamble. If it backfires it will not just be a single nation but the entire enterprise of freedom that will suffer.

|2.15.05 @ 7:52PM|#

Not to play 20 Inane Questions with your article or anything, but what about the notion that there is a distinction between 'a move to greater political openness' and 'democratization'? The characterization of life under the tolerant dictator as 'closer to America' may be completely inappropriate, in the same sense that California's energy distribution system wasn't 'closer to a market'.

I agree that the case for democratic peace is overstated, but I do think there is a case for democracy being necessary if not sufficient over the long run. The dilution of the singular interest of the dictator with competing domestic interests that must bear the burden of war is intuitively pretty powerful.

|2.15.05 @ 10:50PM|#

"As one moves from the most authoritarian political systems (China, Cuba, Belarus) to somewhat greater levels of freedom, terrorist threat actually increases, peaking for states where political freedom is roughly at the level found in countries like Yemen, Morocco and Bahrain. Only for states as politically free as, or freer than, Honduras or Bolivia does terror risk fall below that of the most authoritarian states. "

Jason has a very strong point - the "political freedom" scale used here is pretty useless, and conflates some sort of "openess" with democracy (hence all the talk about "democracy" in Bahrain). Probably until a series of elections actually produces government that empowers an electorate, it is premature to say a country is democratic at all, and useless to say one country is more or less democratic than another.

More generally, libertarians might want to be cautious about buying into this line of democracy skepticism...a similar "case" could be made against market reform. It isn't THAT important to be against the war in Iraq, is it?

The contemporary Left has no investment in democracy - they have no problems with any degree of authoritarianism, so long as the policy pursued is sufficiently brother-loving...freedom is not, in itself, a good for them.

A related point, I take little comfort in the thought that Cuban society separate from the state is unlikely to harbor significant anti-American terrorist movements. After all, Cuban society mostly IS the state, and that state is anti-American and at least latently terrorist.

|2.15.05 @ 11:16PM|#

I think Julian's making some good points. I could easily imagine a "democratic" Venice voting to annex, by force if need be, Cypress, or some place that would be a big money maker.

How a nation views human rights in general, would seem a more accurate predictor of their liklihood of starting a war. But I don't recall seeing anyone study it from that angle.

|2.16.05 @ 2:14AM|#

The scale used in the terrorism study (and therefore that referred to when I mention "political openness) is Freedom House's index of "political freedoms" for their annual report. I take it as a rough approximation of the level of "democratization" a country enjoys, though I'll confess I haven't delved very deeply into FH's methodology. If people have reason to believe Freedom House's scale is an inadequate measure, I'm happy to entertain critiques on that score.

|2.16.05 @ 3:29AM|#

Julian

I don't think the Freedom House measure isn't a good measure of what it measures...just that it isn't applicable to THIS issue.

There is a conundrum here. On the "critique" offered, something you commonly hear in the Hit and Run threads - that you should gradually apply democracy to third world societies - would appear not to be so. The "critique" posits that a LITTLE democracy is worse than either none at all, or the whole she-bang...sort of like market reform.

Certainly the goal of the Administration is to bring Iraq to about the level of consensual government found in Bolivia or Honduras...and anything less would be a mis-fire, according to the critique...right? Those who say we should turn Iraq into an Abu Dabai, Bahrein or Qatar would appear to be de-bunked.

Like I said, I am guessing a lot of libertarians will want to think twice about embracing this model.

|2.16.05 @ 8:32AM|#

Freedom House is a good scale, IMO. It's just that it's so often misused. Some good examples were the Globalization Index studies pulished in Foreign Policy (2001, 2002). They implied that countries rating higher on the freemarket scale cause those countries to have more civil liberties and political rights.

If anything, it showed the reverse causal relationship to be true. The "globalized" countries were the ones with long social histories of egalitarianism.

I think the same thing might be at work when comparing "freedom" and "terror" with more than a few complications added.

gaius marius|2.16.05 @ 4:08PM|#

as few today explicitly advocate pure democracy, the distinction isn't especially relevant in this context.

fwiw, mr sanchez, i think you're dead wrong about this. america today functions very much as a democracy and not a republic. republics have meaningful safeguards to prevent populism from seeping into the political process. we have none any longer.

party primaries are plebiscites. the electoral college has been denuded into near-proportional representation of the popular vote. senators are elected, not appointed. and, most egregiously, executives have since fdr very effectively elevated the administration over the other two branches by taking their case directly to the people.

the united states political system is now very much a plebiscitarian democracy, not a republic. and its important to note that when discussing political philosophers of history, the vast majority of whom reviled democracy.