The Houses of Parliament were recently named the most recognizable landmark in all the world. And the merest glimpse of that familiar skyline, silhouetted against the fiery cascades that ushered in the New Year, surely brought a lump to many a British throat. Just now, however, anyone tempted to espouse the evident superiority of the democracy those buildings represent has some explaining — and perhaps some rethinking — to do.
Three former British colonies in different parts of the world offer graphic illustrations of how the democratic process fails. Kenya, regarded as one of the most stable countries in East Africa, is on the brink of civil war, after an election that many voters believe was stolen on the count. Pakistan is in uneasy political limbo, following the assassination of the opposition leader, Benazir Bhutto, and the violence her death precipitated.
Meanwhile, voters in the snowy farmland of Iowa today start the great national pageant that culminates in the election of a new US president. Peaceful and even joyous this feast of politics may be, but also distorted by dollars, dynasties and discriminatory electoral registers. The election of 2000, which hung on a disputed vote in Florida, a politicized Supreme Court, and an electoral college victory that contradicted the popular vote, exposed the flaws for all to see.
If the democratic process is often imperfect, however, few venture to challenge the actual principle of democracy. The clinching argument tends to be Churchill’s well-used quip about democracy being the worst possible form of government — were it not for all the rest. And the presumption, when things go wrong, is that the practice, not the principle, is to blame.
If elections and everything they entail could be brought up, for instance, to Canadian or Scandinavian standards, then good sense and harmony would reign. So in Kenya, you might argue, as many have done in recent days, that everything went admirably until the count. In Pakistan, all would have been well had Bhutto been afforded better protection. And how much fairer US elections might be where the selection process not slanted toward the north-east and so dependent on moneyed lobbyists. Seduced by the spectacle of “ordinary” voters standing in patient queues to exercise their democratic right, everywhere from South Africa through Romania to Hong Kong and post-Soviet Russia, I am as guilty of romanticizing the democratic process as anyone.
Churchill, though, has another much-quoted and rather different quip that also deserves an outing. The best argument against democracy, he said, is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. And perhaps it is time to ask whether it is not electoral practice, but democracy — “people power” — that is the problem.
In many parts of the world elections divide voters, not along political lines — which may foster productive debate — but along ethnic, religious or clan lines. The imposition of a recognizable political process on Iraq, via elections, was supposed to bring democratic government and peace. But the US and British administration had to downgrade its objective from “democracy” to “representational government”, and finally to “security”. However, conscientiously Iraqi voters turned out for successive elections, these only institutionalized old divisions in the new order.
The same happens in much of post-colonial Africa. The parties in Kenya are divided pretty much along tribal lines, which is why resentment of the outcome is so bitter, and potentially so destructive. In Pakistan there was a strong regional and clan element to Benazir Bhutto’s appeal. She recognized that in bequeathing leadership of the People’s Party to her husband and her son. If her party wins a majority in Pakistan’s parliament, is this a manifestation of democracy, or is it dynasty dressed up in democratic clothes?
Where clans, birth and names matter, the circles of power become closed. A seat in parliament, even national leadership, is inherited. And while a ruling caste may produce responsible leaders born and trained to rule, it may equally spawn an effete priviligentsia that sucks the country dry, perpetuating a cycle of penury and popular revolt. It so happens, though, that some of today’s most successful countries — in the narrow economic terms used by today’s number-crunchers to define national success — are neither democracies or dynasties. Some, such as Russia, might fancy themselves to be democracies, or moving in that direction; others, most egregiously China, are nowhere near. What we supporters of democracy have to recognize, however, is that there are governments that would not qualify under any definition as democratic, that are nonetheless doing well by the vast majority of their citizens. And they are doing so by virtue of an essentially technocratic, apolitical approach to nation-management.
If there is, we would not be contemplating the end of history, but we would be watching the end of politics as we know it.
