Zakaria: How to Spread Democracy -- Newsweek.com
I just came across this piece, from the September 29th issue of Newsweek, and want to applaud:
Valiant efforts are being made every day to end hunger, reduce poverty, save lives. But if we truly want to solve the world's problems, here are five things we need to do.
By Fareed Zakaria | NEWSWEEK
So you want to spread democracy. By now, it's pretty obvious that this is easier said than done. George W. Bush's stirring rhetoric about freedom has suggested a too-simple path: just rid the country of its tyrant and the people will be free. Bush often asserts that people in every country and culture yearn for democracy and are capable of it. To argue otherwise represents cultural condescension. It's not that President Bush is wrong at the abstract level — if Nazi Germany and fascist Japan could become democratic, it can happen most anywhere — but the argument holds at such an elevated plane that it becomes meaningless when applied on the ground. ...
One simple path to democracy is to hold elections. This has an obvious appeal. It legitimizes the political system, broadens participation and provides a simple answer to the question "Who should rule?" Holding elections is a defining feature of any liberal democracy. But it should not be the first step in building a democracy. Western societies went through centuries of modernization before they held elections. ...
But if the simple solutions proposed by the right are not really that effective, neither are those suggested by the left. Foreign aid, for example, is not a panacea. More aid will not produce more democracy, or even better governance. Much of the history of foreign aid is one of good intentions leading to hellish situations — massive corruption and the entrenchment of near feudal elites. ...
If there is a dominant obstacle to building democracy, one that seems to recur in country after country, it is feudalism. In most developing countries, land is the most important asset, and is key to economic and thus political power. And the patterns of land ownership across much of the world are highly unequal. In a country like Pakistan, for example, land ownership has tended to remain concentrated, and as a result, a small group of local elites has wielded power, no matter what the political system. ...
The solution is land reform, an orderly redistribution of assets — most often to the farmers who have worked on the land for generations. ...
Land reform has often been thought of as a socialist project. But it is really the opposite. Properly done, the process for the first time puts land — the largest asset in most societies — into the marketplace. Most feudal elites acquired their land by dubious — and decidedly nonmarket — means, usually coercion or royal grants. These feudals rarely used their thousands of acres efficiently, often leaving them fallow. Land reform has tended to give ownership of the land to its users, who most often farm it efficiently or sell it to someone who can. The reforms are crucial in converting a backward peasant society into a modern capitalist one, which then creates the basis for civil society and democracy.
Americans should understand the link between privately held land and freedom. The 1862 Homestead Act, which gave away 10 percent of the land in the United States, was premised on precisely this connection. And the eminent economist-activist Hernando de Soto has argued that the chief obstacle to development in the Third World is the unwillingness of feudal elites and governments to give full-fledged property rights to their tenants and farmers.
A call for land reform is not as stirring as one for freedom. It is not as easy to televise as elections. But in the end, it is what will actually make democracy take root in foreign soil.
I can't think of much to add, other than we ought to think about it for the US, too. Lead by example! The thesis of the WealthAndWant website is that democracy in the US has not yet led to a society in which all can prosper. What we don't know, we can't teach anyone else. And if we lead by example, the world will surely follow. If Mr. Zakaria has not read Henry George's Progress & Poverty, I hope he will, and I hope, too that his admirers will do so as well.
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