Democracy by Design or by Evolution?
The record shows, then, that from the standpoint of promoting democracy, the U.S.
occupation of Germany was extraordinarily inept. Yet, despite the miscues, democracy
emerged in Germany. How do we explain this result? A full answer is beyond the compass
of this article, but I can sketch out the beginnings of an explanation.
There are, it seems, two broad theories about how democracy comes into being.
One is that it is the product of social engineering. In this view, democracy is an elaborate
machine with many parts—constitutions, electoral systems, civic organizations,
and so forth—and experts are needed to craft and assemble these parts. Nation builders
tend to favor this model because it validates their role. They are like the highway
engineers who believe that highways can be built anywhere and that they have the
skills to build them.
Belief in this “design” model of democracy accounts for the misperception about
what happened in postwar Germany. The commentators have reasoned backward,
supposing that because democracy can come about only by design, then skilled, purposeful
nation builders must have been at work on the scene.
An opposing model of political development views democracy as an organic,
natural outgrowth in a society that has reached a certain stage of cultural evolution. It
cannot be imposed from the outside if the society is not “ready” for it. When conditions
are propitious, it will happen more or less naturally, without any experts or social
engineers to create it.
What cultural condition makes a nation “ready” for democracy? The factor I
would propose is a variable that has been strangely neglected in the study of democracy:
moderation of the amount of leadership political violence. Where political leaders are
inclined to use violence against each other—violence in the form of political murders,
gang attacks, and armed revolts—democracy cannot survive. It will tend to collapse into
civil war or a repressive dictatorship.
From this perspective, democracy is not at all complicated. It may take many
complex forms, but the core concept is elementary: leaders have decided not to
employ force against each other. As a result, they necessarily turn to nonviolent
methods, such as counting heads (elections), to settle their disputes. In this “cultural”
model, democracy is simply the default mode of government where leaders
are peaceful, and any group of friends and neighbors can start it up spontaneously.
This sort of development, I suggest, is what happened in Germany. Long before
World War II, Germany had evolved a basically nonviolent politics. Even before 1850,
democratic forms of government were emerging, with elections and legislative bodies,
and participants had long transcended the custom of political murder. By 1871,
the country was a democracy, with universal manhood suffrage and a national parliament.
The Hitler regime of 1933 thus represented a bizarre departure from a long
democratic tradition. It was a regime in which thugs and murderers intimidated and
displaced the normal political class.
After the war, the country reverted to its peaceful political tradition. Hitler’s
ideas were thoroughly discredited, his thugs disappeared, and the nonviolent democratic
leaders of the prewar era came forward. They simply did what came naturally:
started political parties, organized campaigns, drew up constitutions, and staffed the
government. I believe the same interpretation applies to Japan, Austria, and Italy.
Allied policies did not create democracy in these countries. Instead, the deviant, violent
leaders of the prior regime departed the scene, leaving a cadre of leaders who
were not inclined to use force against each other. Given this precondition, democracy
came into being naturally.
It will be some time before we can fully assess this interpretation of how democracy
comes about. Nevertheless, it seems clear, as a number of scholars are now observing,
that we need to broaden our theories to include the cultural dimension of the
process (see, e.g., Carothers 2002). After all, it is clear that the overwhelming majority
of military interventions that have sought to promote democracy have failed.
These many failures suggest that democracy involves cultural factors not amenable to
direct manipulation by policymakers.
The Myth of building Democracy
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Originally Posted by Oleander Ardens
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