|
|
| |
BOOK
REVIEW
Democracy and mobocracy
The Future of
Freedom by Fareed
Zakaria
Reviewed by Sreeram Chaulia
 A panoply of political
philosophers, from Aristotle, Montesquieu, De
Tocqueville and Edmund Burke to Francis Fukuyama, have
worried about the excesses of democracy that can
degenerate into mobocracy. Newsweek International editor
and former editor of the influential Foreign Affairs
journal, Fareed Zakaria joins this brotherhood with an
ambitious conservative critique of illiberal democracy.
A rising star in the American foreign policy horizon,
Zakaria has been tapped as a future secretary of state,
the first Muslim to occupy the office. His columns and
books enjoy enormous reach and impact in the United
States and around the world. This new work cements his
place as an original thinker on global systems, however
much one may resent the elitism that runs amok from
cover to cover.
We are living in a democratic
age where 119 countries are governed through universal
adult franchise. Pressures from the masses are the
primary engines of social change. Capitalism itself has
been democratized, as consumption, saving and investing
are now mass phenomena. Culture has been democratized
thanks to popular music, blockbuster films and
prime-time television. Technology and information have
been democratized. Zakaria asks if this shift of power
has not overreached itself to the detriment of liberty.
"Democracy is flourishing, liberty is not." (p 17)
Liberty is secured through "constitutional
liberalism", ie rule of law, separation of powers,
protection of private property, freedom of speech,
assembly and religion. In Yugoslavia, Indonesia, Iran,
Peru, Palestine, Zimbabwe etc, democratization is
antagonistic to constitutional liberalism and is
imposing new forms of tyranny. In the US, too, slavery
and segregation were entrenched in the South by the
democratic system. The American Congress is today
"utterly open to its constituents' views and pressures
more responsive, more democratic and more
dysfunctional". (p 23)
Political parties and
professionals are engaged in a spiraling search for the
"pulse of the people", a race to "be the first to
genuflect before the people". Zakaria alleges that
Western democracy's pandering to populism, special
interests and lobbies has taken the inner stuffing out
of liberty. Just as Ulysses, the Greek mythological
hero, imposed limits on himself and took the advice of
Circe while crossing the Island of Sirens, "democratic
societies need new buffers and guides", unelected
institutions that can temper and tame public passions,
educate citizens and preserve liberty.
The first
fires of liberty were lit by strife between church and
state in Europe from the time of Constantine.
Catholicism's independence from the state and
countervailing authority limited government. European
landed aristocracy's near equal relationship with kings
in the Middle Ages gradually allowed for separation of
powers. Dukes, barons and counts forced monarchs to
concede freedoms, thereby limiting the arbitrariness of
the state. The Reformation rejected the now-oppressive
authority of the papacy from the 16th century and opened
space for religious liberty. Capitalism created an
independent class of businesspeople who pushed the
envelope for free trade, free markets and individual
rights. Zakaria maintains, "capitalist growth is the
single best way to create an effective and limited
state". (p 76)
If capitalism and
constitutionalism come first, followed by democracy, the
sequence is liberty-enhancing. South Korea, Taiwan,
Thailand and Malaysia liberalized their economies, legal
systems and rights of worship and travel before
transiting toward democracy. "Premature democratization"
must be avoided. Taking more leafs out of history,
Germany, Austria-Hungary and France had bourgeoisie and
civil societies that were weak, divided and subservient
to the state. Their democratization had to undergo
violent shocks. Oil-rich Persian Gulf sheikdoms, Nigeria
and Venezuela have business classes deeply dependent on
the state. They are immature for full-scale democracy.
Endowed with independent economic institutions,
countries like Belarus, Bulgaria, Malaysia, Turkey,
Morocco and Tunisia are ideally placed for liberal
democracy to flourish. Singapore, the apotheosis of
economic freedom, "will be a fully functioning liberal
democracy within a generation". (p 86) China's
administrative and legal reforms and its truncation of
state power in the economy are also conducive to
Zakaria's preferred form of democracy.
Having
missed liberty-friendly sequencing, many countries are
afflicted by "elected autocrats" and illiberal
democracy. Zakaria claims that half of the democratizing
nations in the world are illiberal democracies. Boris
Yeltsin emasculated competing centers of power in Russia
- legislatures, courts and regional governors. Vladimir
Putin has taken the cue and left absolutely none to
check the Kremlin. African states "overemphasized
multi-party elections and correspondingly neglected
basic tenets of liberal governance". (p 98) Pakistan had
a system in the 90s best described as "fascist
democracy", which a "liberal autocrat" like Pervez
Musharraf is trying to change. India's "semi-liberal
democracy" has in recent decades grown less tolerant,
less secular, less law-abiding, less liberal. Its court
system is a corrupt handmaiden of politicians, who are
also polarizing the population on the basis of factional
solidarity in opposition to some other group.
Introduction of unregulated democracy in Bosnia,
Azerbaijan and Georgia has ended in war. Echoing
Immanuel Kant, Zakaria opines, "without constitutional
liberalism, democracy itself has no peace-inducing
qualities". (p 116)
Elections in the Arab world
would produce demagogues closer in mentality to Osama
bin Laden than King Abdullah of Jordan. It would be "one
man, one vote, one time" and an endless night of
theocracy thereafter. Arab politics is not culturally
unique but has been caught in a time warp since European
inspired liberal thought flourished in the Middle East
two centuries ago. Fundamentalism is on the upswing
owing to the total failure of Arab political
institutions. Zakaria calls the mineral-laden kingdoms
"trust-fund states" that have too much unearned income,
don't need to tax the population and provide
accountability, transparency and liberty in return. What
the US should pursue prior to free and fair elections in
west Asia is capitalism, a genuine middle class, rule of
law, civic institutions, courts and political parties.
Moving to the US domestic arena, Zakaria thinks
too much democracy is shortening liberties. Pursuit of
public opinion has gone out of control in Washington, so
much that the hyper-responsive poll-driven American
system has booted out institutions that guarded
liberalism. Congress is dictated by each individual
member's whim, which in turn is the mouthpiece of a
fanatically self-interested lobby. Political parties are
so open and decentralized that nobody controls them.
Presidential primaries have been snatched from party
organizations and handed over to the voters.
Democratization of campaign finance has converted
fundraisers into king makers. Politicos are
single-mindedly focussed on winning the next election to
the exclusion of all else. States like California have
gone overboard with direct democratic procedures like
referendums and initiatives, rendering centuries of
liberal governance chaotic. "Politics did not work when
kings ruled by fiat and it does not work when the people
do the same". (p 196)
Zakaria's agenda is to
resurrect institutions and elites injured by mobocracy.
American democracy's halcyon era was served eminently by
public-spirited elites who acted as "social
stabilizers". From independence until 1960, the WASP
elites (White, Anglo-Saxon Protestants) performed public
service as a responsibility that came with power. They
adhered to an unwritten code of honor and took charge of
local and national-level public policy, showing the
masses the way. "Without guidance or reference to
authority, people can make bad choices." (p 220) Zakaria
argues for delegation of governance to citizens
experienced in public affairs, nonpartisan specialists
who are unfazed by short-term interests. Key
decision-makers must be insulated from the intense
jockeying of politics so that deliberative and
unemotional policies are implemented. Central banks, the
European Union and the World Trade Organization work
well due to their insularity from vote-bank
considerations. Those with immense power should lead and
set legal and moral standards or else illiberal
democracy will take the world into a race to the bottom.
Zakaria's sophisticated and complex theory
deserves the attention of everyone worried about
democracy's inadequacies. However, his unabashed
admiration for elites and "liberal autocrats" is
worrisome. The notion that a handful of aristocratic
know-alls can decide better on behalf of the unlettered
and underfed poor shocks sensibilities and goes against
the notion of self-determination and decentralization.
For a scholastic work of this order, there is no mention
or concern for equality. Inequality of status, wealth
and power is a far greater world problem than lack of
"liberties", as Zakaria defines them. Readers would do
well to consult Amartya Sen's Development as
Freedom to counter Zakaria's fusillade against
mobocracy.
The Future of Freedom. Illiberal
Democracy at Home and Abroad, by Fareed Zakaria.
Penguin Books India, New Delhi, June 2003. ISBN:
0-67-004993-X. Price: US$24.95, 286 pages.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication
policies.)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
| |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
