COMMENTARY / EXCERPTS : Democracy Triumphs--What Went Right?

The idea of democracy is at the heart of what America means to the world. But some of America’s worst blunders have been committed in the name of democracy, and millions of people have paid a terrible price as a result.

The democratic ideal means different things in different contexts. If we truly care about it, we should take care in the way we apply it. It’s too precious to be squandered and too fragile to be handled carelessly.

One key reason events unfolded as they did in the Philippines is that democratic ideals were firmly instilled in the country, however imperfectly they were practiced.

Haiti, by contrast, has no such democratic tradition, and it would be the height of folly for the United States to behave as if it did. What Haiti needs at this stage of its evolution is not a popular vote, but rather an effective government that will serve, rather than exploit, the people--a government with the strength and sophistication to head the nation toward sustained social and political development that will eventually make electoral democracy feasible.

It’s fashionable today to equate democracy with U.S.-style elections and to insist that “one man, one vote” is the only acceptable form. This is mischievous nonsense. Electoral democracy developed through centuries of Western political and cultural evolution. Propagating it requires that it be set out under the right conditions, and then carefully tended during its growing years. Except where firmly rooted, it’s extremely vulnerable. It is still vulnerable in the Philippines, but its roots have had time to strengthen. Not so in Haiti. Not so in most of Africa or in many other parts of the world.

Service to the democratic ideal does not require any particular form of political organization. It means that the government belongs ultimately to the people, however that popular sovereignty is expressed. Popular sovereignty is not necessarily the same as popular will. Men are not angels. Under pure majority rule, 60% of a population could (and, in some cases, probably would) make slaves of the other 40%. Even in ancient Athens, which gave us our concept of “pure” democracy, only a minority participated. The rest of the people were either slaves or otherwise non-”citizens.”

It’s the height of Western arrogance to assume that the particular political forms our own democracy has taken ought to be imposed willy-nilly on the people of all other civilizations. The point of democracy is to make the government, on balance, responsive to the people it governs. We stand for a democratic ideal, but we best serve that ideal by encouraging others to be realistic in adapting it to their own conditions.