The Future of Democracy

Winston Churchill once famously told the House of Commons, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

It was 1947 and the Allies had recently defeated the Axis powers. Today the victory is commonly understood and portrayed in the West as the triumph of democratic allies over authoritarian fascist and nationalist regimes.

This is a mistake, or perhaps a comforting half-truth. The democratic powers faced less than half the German war machine. The very non-democratic Soviet Union destroyed the larger part of it on the Eastern Front, then invaded Manchuria and defeated the largest Japanese fighting force, the Kwantung Army plus auxiliaries totaling well over one million troops, forcing surrender almost simultaneously with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

That the war ended with the unconditional surrender of all Axis powers was the result of an alliance between democracies and a totalitarian system that had industrialized a far-flung agrarian society in a few short decades, then drove the Soviet economy to become the second largest on the planet.

Of course, we would all rather live in a democracy. Or would we? Suppose democracy in practice led to the implosion of the national economy, millions thrown into abject poverty, an elected government of thieves, incompetents, and drunkards—any alternative to democracy at all might then seem irresistible. Because this is what the Russian people experienced after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and its replacement by institutions designed in conformance with what swarms of Western consultants assured Boris Yeltsin and his allies was how democracy worked.

It didn’t work so well.

Nor has it worked out very well in Afghanistan, or in Iraq. In Libya, we threw in the towel practically before we started.

So it’s fair to ask if we really understand how, or why, our own system works. The fact that, 72 years after they were founded, the institutions of American democracy failed utterly and the country broke up—reversed only after the resounding military defeat of the South—indicates an answer.

One of the conclusions to be drawn is how necessary an effective state is, one that has the power to implement and enforce political decisions. Another is how important trial and error is—and with it the circumstances that allow failure to occur without external powers capitalizing on it in any fatal way. There were more than a few in Great Britain who wanted to extend formal recognition to the Confederacy. Had they done so, and other nations followed, the North American continent would very possibly have ended up Balkanized, and today look more like South America.

These principles are true, of course, for any system of government.

How strong should the state be? At least strong enough to enforce its will within its own borders and to protect those borders against other powers.

And how does this allow for the freedom of the individual? This is the core question, but one that you cannot attempt to answer without accepting that the state is the foundation of that answer. An individual who is helpless is not free, and neither is a country with a failed state.

Democracy replaced hereditary monarchy in much of the world, I would argue, in large part because the ferment of parliaments and periodic turnover of competing leadership was far more effective at dealing with the complex and dangerous issues of an industrializing world. The fact that suffrage and freedom became ever more universal followed from the dissolution of landed aristocracy and its rule over armies of illiterate tenants amid the growing need for a fluid and adaptable labor force.

Exactly how democracy is organized matters. The competition is no longer with venial and silly kings and queens. The world is ever smaller, more crowded, more complex. Newer forms of authoritarian and hybrid states have become successful where both sclerotic totalitarianism and chaotic democracy failed before, and it is hard to argue that the freest of these people are less free than many of the inhabitants of western democracies.

Perhaps the question is not so much how democracies can compete as it is how democracy can stay relevant.

Mythologies are apparently an inescapable part of society, especially origin myths. The problem is that mythology blinds us to the fact that we have to work for what we value. In America we have a national religion that tells us our rights are ‘god-given’, that ours is the greatest country on earth and we owe it to those ‘demigods’ who wrote the Constitution in Philadelphia nearly 250 years ago. If only others would follow our example! Yet the Founders were mortal, and their admirable achievement incomplete and faulty. People alive at the time lived long enough to see their country fail as a country, then rescued and set back on its feet, not through its institutions and democratic action, but by raw military force and 600,000 dead.

To stay relevant is to stay vital as well as competitive. To be blunt, it means to deliver. If democracy fails to deliver, populations will turn to whatever succeeds. If democratic states remain dependent on wise and appealing statesmen who are no longer in existence, or unable to win elections, then those states will sink under the weight of demagogues, fools, and con men. This is simple reality.

Myths are dangerous. Useful, no doubt, to some, the more clear-eyed kings and queens, bishops and their ilk. It is said that in the land of the blind the one-eyed  man is king. But if all eyes are closed, or fixed on a mirage, then the ship is without a helm. It may run aground or go down in a storm, or the crew may mutiny. But it is unlikely to simply drift into safe harbor.

The future of democracy, of any democratic state, is not assured. Francis Fukuyama famously proclaimed “The End of History”, as the Soviet Union collapsed. He was dead wrong.

Never take the future for granted.