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Article Excerpt
The thaw of the Cold War ended the chess game between the superpowers and seemingly gave new momentum to the revival and spread of liberal democracy and its corollary, capitalist Just as missionaries once offered Christianity to "save" colonised peoples, democracy has become the new gospel promising "salvation". Both donor and recipient countries appeal to democracy, hoping that it will reverse decades of misfortune. Donor nations and multilateral financial institutions preach democratic governance. "Bona again democratic" national leaders in the South who are intent on clinging to power attend to their sermons. None appear to have a genuine faith in democracy. While some nations and NGOs do give altruistically, most use foreign aid as another means of pursuing their national interest. Democracy is an elastic concept. Indeed it seems, at least at this point, that the new gospel of democracy is but a convenient tool used by different players for they own selfish reasons.
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The thaw of the Cold War has given new momentum to the revival and spread of liberal democracy and its corollary, capitalism Just as missionaries once preached Christianity to "civilise" the colonial world, democracy has become the new gospel through which non-believers will be saved. (2) Both donor and recipient countries appeal to democracy, hoping that democratisation will reverse several decades of misfortune. In Fieldhouse's words, "economic and social development came to be seen as a moral obligation on the West, very much as the dissemination of Christianity had appeared a century earlier". (3) By prescribing democracy as a prerequisite for the provision of assistance, donor nations and international financial institutions (IFIs) sought to use foreign aid to obtain a closer control over political and economic systems of the so-called developing nations of the Third World of South.
The practices of developing and developed states alike call into question the sincerity of their commitment to democracy. Faith in the new gospel of democracy seems to depend upon what is at stake and on the importance and the loyalty of the player. A careful examination of the actions of states reveals that, while they may preach democracy, they nonetheless continue to pursue their national interests. The pursuit of national interests simultaneous with or in lieu of the pursuit of liberalisation undermines the North's commitment to establishing genuine democracy in Africa and elsewhere. Indeed the economic, political, strategic, and ideological interests of Northern states often take precedence over the promulgation of democracy in the South.
Democracy: An Elusive Concept
The very first problem with the promotion of democracy lies in determining what the term encompasses. Derived from the Greek words demos (people) and kratia (authority), democracy could be equated with "the rule by the people", in contrast with the rule by the few (oligarchy), or the rule by one individual (monarchy or tyranny), or the rule of the gifted (aristocracy). (4) However, because demos referred to a particular social class, it is more appropriate to translate democracy as the rule of the "many". Although any political system can claim to further people's interest, and a monarchy is a good example, only a democracy allows the majority to rule, and not just benefit. (5) Designed originally as a type of government in which the people share in directing the activities of the state, democracy has seen its meaning altered or expanded to describe a philosophy that insists on the right and the capacity of a people, acting directly or through representatives, to control their institutions for their own purposes.
Despite the reverence the concept enjoys today, the reality is that democracy has, since an early stage, been subject to some controversy. Disagreement surrounding the essential elements of democracy can be traced even to the introduction of demokratia around the fifth century BC in several Greek city-states. The fact that slaves and women were not allowed to vote in Ancient Greece raises a fundamental question about who "the people" are. It took several centuries of social movement before universal suffrage was widely adopted in the twentieth century. (6) Another bone of contention concerned how the people should rule. The most dramatic change in the theory and practice of democracy occurred during the transition from direct democracy, as embodied in the institutions of Periclean Athens, (7) to what is described today as liberal, representative, or constitutional democracy. Although modern scholars disagree on how much Athenian direct democracy, instituted by Cleisthenes in the reforms of 508-507 BC, and modern representative democracy have in common, they do agree that Athenian democratic ideals of freedom of statement, rotation of office, and equality before the law should be the goals of modern democracies.
Though the concrete meaning of democracy has varied considerably, consensus has emerged among the advanced, post-industrial powers of the North that democracy is essential to progress on a wide range of issues. It has rekindled attempts by the North to impose its will on the South. It is now clear that the waning of the Cold War has not ended pressures on the South. Rather, the North's desire for alliance has been replaced by a more discreet insistence on the part of the international financial institutions and Western bilateral donors that developing countries should improve their "governance" mechanisms. (8) However, the recent renewal of interest in democratic governance has done little to resolve lingering questions such as whether democracy must be conceived of as liberal democracy; whether democracy can only be applied to "governmental affairs", of to the economic, social and cultural realms as well, and whether the most appropriate locus for democracy is the nation. Although with the end of the Cold War democracy seemed to have scored a historic victory over alternative forms of government, (9) it still remains an essentially contested concept. (10)
Some twentieth century versions of democratic theory imagined that a viable democratic country would be a product of higher levels of modernisation, illustrated by its wealth, a bourgeois class structure, tolerant class values, and economic independence from external actors. (11) However, since the third wave of democratisation, scholarly focus upon necessary preconditions for democracy has made way for focus upon the dynamics of democratic transition. (12) Several scholars have tried to understand how, without fulfilling all the prerequisites, some countries in the South were able to democratise or at least open up their political systems. (13) Like democracy itself, democratisation means different things to different people. Many writers have spent their scholarly lifetimes teasing out the subtleties and nuances associated with conception of democracy (for example, Schumpeter, Dahl, Przeworski, Lipset, and Huntington). Yet, the concept remains elusive, still highly contested in analytical and ideological discourse. (14) The current literature on democratisation deals with how to reach a political system that grants civic and political rights to citizens. Scholars generally agree that transition to democracy is normally a gradual, staged process rather than an abrupt and dramatic one. (15) However, there is no agreement upon the number of stages that the process involves. There...
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