SMH, In 1975, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, by common consent the most intellectually formidable figure in American politics, expressed the view that “liberal democracy on the American model increasingly tends to the condition of monarchy in the 19th century: a holdover form of government … which has simply no relevance to the future”.
Not long after, a leading French political commentator, Jean-Francois Revel, wrote a book, How Democracies Perish, its thesis being that “democracy may, after all, turn out to have been a historical accident, a brief parenthesis that is closing before our eyes”.
Both men were reflecting a pessimism that was widespread at the time.
In reflecting that pessimism, they were demonstrating the danger of what has been aptly called “the parochialism of the present” – the tendency, that is, to exaggerate grossly the historical importance of what is happening now, and to us, and to extrapolate from it. For even as they were writing, things were changing.
What was getting under way was not the decline of democracy but a spectacular expansion on its part. So, in 1975, Moynihan had gloomily concluded that democracy was where the world had been, not where it was going. Just 14 years later, Francis Fukuyama was famously asserting the reverse: all rival ideologies having been discredited and the regimes based on them having failed, the future belonged to liberal democracy.
In the nature of things one cannot do more than speculate about that question. Of more immediate concern are the implications and prospects of the proclaimed American policy of assertively promoting democracy in countries where it does not exist.
How achievable is that goal? The trump cards in the hands of those who favour the policy are the examples of post-World War II Germany and Japan. So how valid and relevant are they to the enterprise of creating new democratic regimes today?
Not very, for three reasons. First, the German and Japanese peoples were utterly defeated and crushed at the end of the war, and there were no surviving institutions or centres of opposition. Presumably those conditions cannot and will not be replicated in pursuit of the present policy.
Second, Germany and Japan in 1945 were genuine nation states with homogenous populations and a strong sense of identity. This is true of few of the possible candidates for democratisation today.
Third, and most important, before falling into the hands of extremist regimes, Germany and Japan had considerable experience of the rule of law and civil society, as well as some significant experience of democratic practice. Again, none of this is true of most of the targeted states today.
On the other hand, there is another American experience which seems much more relevant. Long before the US became a global hegemon, it was a regional hegemon in the Caribbean.
Yet from 1900 to this day the region has not produced one genuine, stable democracy. Neither was the US able to lay the foundations for a viable democracy during the three decades that it ruled the Philippines.
That record must surely raise legitimate questions about the capacity of the US – or any other state for that matter – to engage in successful “nation building” today, in what would be much shorter periods of time.
As they still represent my views, I shall use some words I wrote some years ago, when enthusiasm for exporting democracy was just building up in Washington: “Americans of all political persuasions believe profoundly that it is their right and duty – indeed their destiny – to promote freedom and democracy in the world.
“It is a noble and powerful impulse. But acting on it … is a complicated and delicate business, and the dangers are many. Success requires that this impulse be balanced against, and where necessary, circumscribed by, other interests that the United States must necessarily pursue, more mundane ones like security, order and prosperity. For these represent not merely legitimate competing claims but the preconditions for a lasting extension of democracy.
“Success requires, too, an awareness of the intractability of a world that does not exist merely in order to satisfy American expectations. While determination and purposefulness are important ingredients in any effective policy, the attempt to force history in the direction of democracy by an exercise of will is likely to produce more unintended than intended consequences.
“The successful promotion of democracy calls for restraint and patience, a sense of limits and an appreciation of the wisdom of indirection, a profound understanding of the particularity of circumstances.
“As Thomas Carlyle once put it, 'I don't pretend to understand the universe – it's a great deal bigger than I am … People ought to be modester.' “
Owen Harries is a senior fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies. This is an edited extract of the third of the ABC's 2003 Boyer lectures. The full lecture will be broadcast on ABC Radio National on Sunday at 5pm and repeated on Tuesday at 1pm.
