The dangers of democracy

You accepted the idea of spurring democratization in the Middle East as one of the justifications for war with Iraq. In your book, you write, "The Middle East needs one ... homegrown success story," and you say that Iraq is a candidate for this role. Yet you also lay out certain criteria for successful democratization, and in writing about Indonesia, you say, "Indonesia in 1998 was not an ideal candidate for democracy. Of all the East Asian countries it is most reliant on natural resources" -- which you say inhibits other kinds of development -- "Strike one. It was also bereft of legitimate political institutions ... Strike Two. Finally, it attempted democratization at a low level of per capita income, approximately $2,650 in 1998. Strike three. The results have been abysmal."

Yet Iraq also has these three strikes against it -- and its per capita income is even lower than Indonesia's was. Why go to war to bring democracy to Iraq if that goal isn't feasible?

It's difficult. My view on building democracy is not that we should not do it in countries that don't meet the criteria. The reason I point to these criteria is just to emphasize how difficult it is to do. When you get an opportunity to try, absolutely you should take it, but you should learn something from those criteria and from history and ask yourself what should we do to try to minimize the danger of democratic dysfunction and maximize the chances for success.

I recognize, living under a terrible dictatorship, you don't get to choose your moment of freedom. The point, however, is to learn from history and to make the most of your moment for freedom.

You point out that in many developing countries, contrary to Western assumptions, elections wouldn't lead to more freedom. In Pakistan, as you write, General Pervez Musharraf has been able to pursue liberalization "precisely because he did not have to run for office and cater to the interests of feudal bosses, Islamic militants, and regional chieftains ... In Pakistan no elected politician would have acted as boldly, decisively, and effectively as he did."

This suggests that those most concerned about social justice should stop calling for open elections in all countries. What, then, should they be calling for?

They should be pushing for human rights. More than anything else, the ability to protect individual rights is going to lay the groundwork for liberal democracy. How do you protect them? Most effectively through a court system, through laws that guarantee human rights. The other stealth method of political reform is economic reform. Economic reform has the effect over time of producing political reform because it creates the need for the rule of law, a cleaner and more responsive administration, and most importantly a middle class that presses the government for a greater political voice.

In Pakistan, for example, it would help not at all to press Musharraf to hold more elections. The last ones were almost won by Islamic fundamentalists and they have no interest in reform. The best course there is to press Musharraf to engage in the kind of broad structural reform, of the legal, economic and political system that will then be the basis for a genuine democracy.

Does this require a paradigm shift for liberal human rights activists? In the recent past, progressives have condemned efforts by the West to impose our values on others. It's one thing to say people should choose their own leaders, and another to say our governing values and institutions are superior.

It requires a paradigm shift for modern liberalism and the recovery of the older, more muscular liberal internationalism that's pre-Vietnam, pre-postmodern. I don't think Dean Acheson or Harry Truman or Franklin Roosevelt would have had any trouble with the idea that constitutionalism and liberalism were better forms of government than dictatorships or theocracy. This is all part of the recovery of self-confidence that liberalism needs to undergo.

I think many liberals would ask how they can trust this government to export liberty abroad when it seems to undermine liberty at home.

Again, this is part of the problem of liberalism today. The United States has problems, no question, but they are in no way and on no scale comparable to the problems of Nigeria. It's necessary to get some perspective. There is simply no question that getting some form of constitutionalism and some form of democratic governance would be better for the vast majority of non-democracies.

To be hobbled by fears and self-doubt seems silly. What one should do with those concerns is channel them into domestic reform programs rather than losing faith in American democracy. It's entirely possible to be a reformer at home and a universalist abroad. Look at Harry Truman.

You said it's necessary to get some perspective. Can you provide some? How imperiled is our democracy?

American democracy has always been safeguarded by strong institutions that protect liberty and it's also been enriched and ennobled by a whole set of informal institutions that Tocqueville called intermediate institutions -- everything from political parties to rotary clubs to choral societies to bowling leagues. If those intermediate associations wither away, if the sense of the civic culture of America decays and is replaced by a kind of polarized populism in which each side is simply trying to use the political system as an arena where you simply have to capture the government however you can, then American democracy is impoverished and loses some of its vibrancy. It doesn't mean American democracy will become Nigerian democracy. It means it won't live up to its promise.

Am I right to see in your book a defense of the power of elites?

I think I would describe it this way. Every society has elites. That is simply a fact of life. People who run the corporations, who run universities, govern in Washington and the state capitals, who are editors and writers, have a disproportionate influence over the life of the nation. To pretend that you don't have elites only does one thing -- it absolves the elites of any sense of responsibility, any sense of having to consciously adhere to a sense of public spiritedness.

I'm not somebody who sees much value in pointlessly bashing elites whether they're conservative or liberal. One of the more interesting shifts I point to in the book, is the shift from a dispassionate, bipartisan elite that founded so many national institutions to the situation today where it's considered almost banal and boring to try to be bipartisan and solve national problems. The heat is all in trying to be as polarizing as possible.

How much of that shift is a result of the rise of the conservative movement? You write about think tanks like the Council on Foreign Relations and the Brookings Institution "that were designed to serve the country beyond partisanship and party politics." Now the most powerful think tanks are right-wing outfits like the American Enterprise Institute, which are fiercely political.

It's an outgrowth of the fact that many of these national institutions became excessively liberal and lost their sense of being bipartisan. Perhaps that's because liberalism so dominated the culture that it went unnoticed, but the reality is that many of these institutions became lopsidedly liberal. That produced a conservative counteraction that is now producing a liberal counteraction.

Really? Where is that liberal counteraction?

You're beginning to see it in places like the American Prospect magazine. But I agree this is an era of conservative ascendancy. There's no question about it.

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