Global spread of democracy stalled

Christian Science Monitor: Global spread of democracy stalled

Putin and Chávez are using oil money to create other models, while others just step back.

Washington - The spread of democracy has been one of the defining geopolitical trends of the last 25 years. In 1975, 30 nations of the world had popularly elected governments. By 2005 that number had rocketed to 119.

But in recent years the growth of democracy and political freedom has slowed. In a number of countries – such as Venezuela and some of the former Soviet states – it's even begun to slip backward.

And for the first time since the heyday of communism, democracy may be facing competition from an ideology that styles itself as an alternative. Enriched by oil money, autocrats such as Vladimir Putin of Russia and Venezuela's Hugo Chávez are challenging the importance of checks on executive power, the rule of law, and unfettered media.

"They are trying to redefine democracy and dumb it down," says Thomas Melia, deputy executive director of Freedom House, a think tank that promotes democracy and rates the performance of governments around the world.

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What we know as democracy today is really the fusion of two things, notes Mandelbaum: popular sovereignty, or voting; and individual liberty or freedom. It's easy to hold a national referendum, but establishing liberty is much more difficult, as it requires laws, police, legislatures, and other institutional trappings of freedom.

In its most recent annual survey, Freedom House rates 90 countries in the world as fully free, meaning they are democracies with established liberties. Fifty-eight are partly free, and 45 are not free, according to Freedom House.

The percentage of nations rated free has not gone up for a decade. And in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and the territory of the former Soviet Union, once-promising democratic transitions have turned out to be shallowly rooted.

Comments

[Jason Barr]

The United States hasn't exactly helped in a lot of cases, as state support for the interests of American-based businesses through less-savory "diplomatic" as well as military and clandestine internal interventions have subverted the process of democracy in a number of places. And that's not to say it's a bunch of black-and-white issues, not by a long shot, but we have a history of intervening AGAINST popular and democratic movements in so-called "developing" countries with which we have not reckoned, and I view a general lack of knowledge about that history as a big part of the reason we were able to be duped into largely supporting the Iraq invasion and occupation.

Even putting that to the side, though, this is not a promising development.

[Michael W. Kruse]

I think most cases of US involvement are a complex mixture of multiple motives, some quite noble and others not so much. :) The US does make some horrendous decisions. Compared with other world powers of human history I think the US is an improvement but you have to believe that we could be so much better.