The Cultural Contradictions of Democracy
In the late 1980s, at Cold War’s end, many believed that democracy, as obvious political best practice and key driver of strategic success, would without doubt spread and ultimately become universal. A prominent advocate of this prediction, Francis Fukuyama, stated his view in more careful and conditional terms than the many who did not read his fine print, but nuance aside, the coming global triumph of democracy was in those days a widespread expectation that many prominent observers, not least Samuel Huntington with his earlier “third wave” analysis, played a part in bringing about. It is no longer so widespread a view. The ostensible reasons are many, but let us note the three most common themes.
First, many hold that Western democracy was not the only or the main reason for the West’s victory in the Cold War. To the extent that conclusion is believed, democracy benefits less from association with victory. The weaknesses of the Soviet system, not the strengths of the West, doomed the Soviet Union, many came to believe, and subsequent developments seem to support that verdict. After all, while Soviet authoritarianism collapsed, other forms have prospered, leading to notions like the “Beijing Consensus”, a hybrid arrangement combining expanded market incentives without political liberalization. Democracy, then, is not the only winner’s game in town.
Second, the record shows that in fact liberal democracy did not spread fast or far after the Cold War. Its triumphs were limited largely to the old Soviet sphere in Eastern and Central Europe. Additionally, the fact that Russia itself never found the path to genuine liberal democracy is one of enormous global consequence. In some less influential cases, too, largely in Latin America, populist movements displaced older authoritarianisms using democratic forms and rhetoric, but in most cases avoided genuine liberal democratic reform. Thus there arose the specter of “illiberal” or “imitation” democracy.”1 Even the “color revolutions” of the 1990s, which briefly vied to revive optimism about democracy’s future, did not live up to expectations, neither in Georgia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan nor Lebanon. Most authoritarian regimes in developing countries, too, proved effective at maintaining control. Even in the Arab world, where that control has recently been contested, it is far from clear that democratic forces will prevail over populist and neo-authoritarian ones. Thus many observers have speculated about the “return of history”, with the spotlight trained on the stubborn recrudescence of nationalist and sectarian enthusiasms, and have posited a reconfiguring of the global political map to put non-democratic China into the “First World” as a true leader of the new millennium.2
Third, liberal democracy has acquired obvious problems of its own. After the Cold War ended, Western economies were buoyant and extra-parliamentary protest was scarce to the point of nonexistent. Now economic dislocation reigns from Los Angeles to Latvia, the European Union faces an existential crisis, and the United States appears to have run out of arrows in its economic policy quiver. Protestors populate the streets and parks. The patina of best-practice democracy is not what it was two decades ago.
Very much related, and in reprise of the relationship between democracy and global power, there is a widespread perception that the United States is in general geopolitical retreat, whether because of fiscal austerity or for other reasons. If democracy’s most powerful protector and advocate is losing its taste for global activism on behalf of its ideals, can dark days for democratic outposts in fragile places be far behind? The prevailing optic, then, is that today’s world is more hostile to liberal democracy than it was twenty years ago, and that tomorrow’s is likely to be more hostile still unless the Western democracies can rebound in a big way.