World View : Poverty’s Shadow Haunting New Democracies : * Can you be too poor to be free? Recent data says yes. And the West may lack resources to keep freedom’s torch burning.

After 40 years of vigorously championing democracy with overt policy and covert action, the United States may soon face a tragic irony of history: At the very moment in 1992 that more than half the world’s countries are considered democratic--a historic first--America and its Western allies do not have the resources that many observers believe will be needed to keep those democracies alive into the next century.

As a result, the trend toward democracy not only may have peaked but may soon be in for major setbacks.

“Will this wave continue? I tend to think that it’s losing its force. I expect reversals, particularly among poorer countries,” predicted Samuel P. Huntington, director of Harvard’s Institute for Strategic Studies, in an interview.

Although some countries can prosper economically without democracy, democracy usually can’t prosper, and therefore survive, without economic health, according to many U.S. analysts.

Poverty is “probably the principal obstacle to democratic development. The future of democracy depends on the future of economic development,” Huntington claims in his recent book, “The Third Wave,” which traces the patterns of democratic change.

The correlation between poverty and democracy is at least partially substantiated by recent global surveys. Among the 42 countries classified as poor by the World Bank in 1989, only two--India and Sri Lanka--were democracies. Conversely, of the 24 countries classified as high-income, all but three were democracies. The exceptions--Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates--are all oil-rich welfare states.

The economic threat to poor democracies was visible in Venezuela’s crisis earlier this month.

Since it ended military rule in 1958, Venezuela has become one of Latin America’s oldest and most stable democracies. But its economy has deteriorated rapidly over the past three years, largely because of the plummeting price of oil, from which Caracas earns more than 80% of both its tax revenues and its foreign exchange. Over that period, middle-class income is estimated to have dropped by 30%. And the government recently acknowledged that more than 40% of the 20 million inhabitants can now afford only one meal a day.

The setbacks have forced President Carlos Andres Perez to introduce austerity measures, including an end to food subsidies. The first steps in 1989 triggered food riots, in which 300 people were killed. At the end of 1991, growing public frustration triggered a three-month wave of protests, labor unrest and violent strikes, in which 10 died and more than 100 were injured, as well as the cancellation of the school year.

The crisis reached the breaking point on Feb. 4, when a band of military officers surrounded the presidential palace in Caracas and tried to seize government facilities in several major cities. Col. Francisco Arias, one of the coup leaders, announced that the rebels were seeking to install “a junta of national reconstruction” to deal with Venezuela’s escalating economic crisis and the growing disparity between rich and poor.

The coup failed. But the attempt left 70 dead and a nation shaken. Within hours, Venezuela’s Congress voted to temporarily suspend constitutional guarantees and later introduced press censorship. Subsequent informal polls have indicated significant public support for the attempted coup’s goals.

Yet, in economic terms, Venezuela is still one of the more prosperous developing countries. Dozens of democratizing nations face graver challenges.

“Despite the vast opportunities created by the technological revolutions of the 20th Century, more than 1 billion people, one-fifth of the world’s population, live on less than one dollar a day--a standard of living that Western Europe and the United States attained 200 years ago,” the World Bank has reported.

And for many new democracies or societies now aspiring to democratic change, the World Bank prognosis for the future is far from promising. “For many of the world’s poorest countries, decades of rapid growth will be needed to make inroads on poverty,” it has said.

Further exacerbating economic problems is the high birthrate in many new democracies--adding demands for education, health and social services, and housing that impoverished nations are unable to provide their current populations.

The World Bank also predicts that almost 95% of the increase in the world’s labor force over the next 25 years will occur in the developing world, which lacks the jobs to employ the new workers. The result is likely to be widespread discontent and social unrest.

Meanwhile, the United States, the world’s largest debtor nation with its own recession problems, has limited resources with which to assist the new democracies it helped promote in the former East Bloc, Latin America, Africa and Asia.

Western Europe is hard pressed to find sufficient funds just to bail out Eastern Europe. And Japan, now the world’s largest aid donor, is a small country.

The grim reality is that many--maybe even most--of the new democracies in which the majority live at or below the poverty line have little recourse to reverse the cycle.

The threat to poor democracies comes at a historic juncture. In its 1992 “Survey of Freedom in the World,” the New York-based monitoring organization Freedom House found that for the first time in history, the majority of countries on earth are now democratic. Of the 171 nations surveyed, 89 were declared democratic and another 32 were at various stages of transition to democracy.

But Freedom House Executive Director R. Bruce McColm warned against excessive optimism. “These significant gains are fragile,” he cautioned. “The 21st Century will again challenge liberal democracy with questions concerning its ability to produce prosperity and a just social system.”

While acknowledging that “democratic values are clearly resurgent today,” McColm added, “Viewed over the long course of human history, however, most democracies have been short-lived.”

The potential for rapid reversals is evident in Haiti, which held its first free elections in late 1990, ending 186 years of corrupt and ignominious rule. Nine months later, a military coup ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and Haiti’s newly won status as a “free” nation dropped to “not free” virtually overnight. Since the coup, more than 1,500 Haitians have been killed in a campaign of political repression, according to Amnesty International.

The failure to reverse economic deterioration is already spawning frustration or disillusionment in several new democracies. A recent 10-nation Gallup poll commissioned by the European Community revealed that the majority of people in Eastern and Central Europe are dissatisfied with democracy. “For these people, democracy has become almost a chore or a bore,” commented Gordon Heald, the poll’s managing director.

Only in Lithuania did a majority of respondents--a slim 52%--say they are satisfied with democracy. In European Russia, only 15% said they are satisfied, well below the regional average. In Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland, the poll found that only 23% to 30% are satisfied.

“This is very disturbing,” Heald said. If the current levels of pessimism continue, he predicted, the world will see “some coups . . . in the next two or three years.”

The poll, the most comprehensive ever taken in Eastern Europe, is corroborated by other facts. In Poland, the region’s most populous country and the first to abandon communism, almost 60% of eligible voters did not participate last October in the first fully free parliamentary elections held since World War II. And those who did vote were so divided that no party won more than 13% of the vote.

Most of the parties that did best--including the renamed former Communist Party--advocated greater government intervention in economic affairs, reflecting popular anxiety over rising unemployment, inflation and price levels.

Recent Polish surveys indicate a sharp backlash against reforms. A poll published this month in Wyborcza, Poland’s largest daily newspaper, found that only one in four Poles favors free enterprise, foreign investment and privatization of state factories.

And in a poll assessing Poland’s leaders over the past 20 years, the last Communist leader, Wojciech Jaruzelski, ranked higher than current President Lech Walesa, the hero of Poland’s decade-long struggle for democratic reforms.

What has happened in Poland and elsewhere reflects the recognition that democracy alone does not produce answers to pressing economic and social problems, U.S. analysts say.

“Democratic governments are not necessarily more adept at managing reform either,” concludes the World Bank’s latest “World Development Report.” “Transitional democratic governments, perhaps because their political base is still fluid, appear to be particularly vulnerable.”

As an example, the report points to Peru, which faces one of the worst economic crises in its history, mostly as a result of policies implemented in the late 1980s by a democratically elected government. In 1985, only one in 200 Peruvians could not afford basic foodstuffs. By 1991, the ratio had increased to one in six.

“The collapse of authoritarianism generated enthusiasm and euphoria. The political struggles in democracy, in contrast, rapidly came to be seen as amoral, routine and petty,” Huntington observed. “The workings of democracy and the failure of new democratic governments to resolve the problems endemic to society generated indifference, frustration and disillusionment.”

Economics is not, however, the only factor that determines whether new democracies survive. A second major factor is a nation’s historic experience with democracy, U.S. specialists contend.

“In the 20th Century, very few countries created stable democratic systems on their first try,” Huntington said. Of the 29 countries that democratized between 1974 and 1990, for example, 23 had previous experience, either recently or long ago, with democracy.

That trend may not bode well for the 11 members of the Commonwealth of Independent States carved out of the old Soviet Union in 1991: None has any history of democratic rule.

Similarly, much of Africa, where more than 20 of the continent’s 50 states are now in transition to political pluralism, has had limited or no experience with the democratic traditions of a modern nation-state.

“It’s still an abstract concept rather than a real-life experience in many of these places,” said Mark Lowenthal, senior specialist in U.S. foreign policy at the Congressional Research Service. “And it’s not just that they’re not imbued with democratic traditions--democracy has been a hostile concept.”

Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin, Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk and Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev were all ostensibly opposed to democracy for years, he noted. Entire populations were indoctrinated against it.

“After all, in this country we established democracy after 761 years of experience with British law. Most of the new democracies have been at it two years or less,” Lowenthal observed.

A third factor in establishing and consolidating democracy involves human rights practices--especially the constitutional right of due process--which have become major international criteria of democracy only over the past two decades.

“In the absence of an independent judiciary and solidly rooted democratic popular instincts in the new democracies, the recent advances are by no means secure. . . . The problems faced by the world in consolidating such progress and dealing with old and new threats to fundamental freedoms must not be underestimated,” the State Department warns in its latest “Human Rights Report,” released this month.

Nepal and Zambia--two countries that underwent transitions to democracy in 1991 and are now ranked as “free” by Freedom House--are both criticized by the State Department for continuing human rights abuses, notably by police.

Support for democratization by a country’s security forces is pivotal to the success of the process. Democratically elected leaders or pro-democracy movements have been ousted or undermined this year alone in Algeria, the Congo and the former Soviet republic of Georgia by their respective militaries.

But even some democracies that have been at it for more than a decade are still inadequate when it comes to protecting human rights. Indeed, while Freedom House ranked 89 countries as democracies, it characterized only 75 as being “fully free.”

For example, Freedom House this year downgraded its ranking of India, the world’s most populous democracy, from “free” to “partly free,” citing political violence during the 1991 elections and suspension of basic civil rights in several states.

Or consider Peru, which, since its transition to democracy in 1980, has held three multi-party elections for the presidency. Its human rights record remains poor. “Since democracy was installed, thousands of people have been killed by the military, which is running rampantly wild and acting indiscriminately,” said Jack Healey, executive director of Amnesty International, USA.

The growing and global trend of ethnic, nationalist and religious divisions is the greatest single threat to human rights, according to U.S. analysts.

“When new groups come to power by democratic means--especially majorities previously excluded from the governing process--there is no guarantee at all that they will extend the same rights to former oppressors, minorities or rival groups,” explained Graham E. Fuller, a former senior CIA analyst now at the Rand Corp. and author of “The Democracy Trap.”

The Freedom House survey cites El Salvador, Guatemala, the Philippines and Pakistan as “cultures that encourage intolerance and exclusivity.” Although all four are led by democratically elected governments, they are ranked only as “partly free.”

These problems and others offer insights into the global trend toward democracy and the much-debated “end of history” theory, which holds that democracy represents the final development in the evolution of human political institutions.

“The democratization waves and the reverse waves suggest a two-step-forward, one-step-backward pattern,” Huntington said. Many countries, he added, inevitably will step back before democracy is secured over the long term.

A series of setbacks to democratization in the 1990s would not be mark the first such reversal. Ironically, the war fought to make the world safe for democracy--World War I--was instead followed by the rise of military, fascist and communist regimes. “Only four of the 17 countries that adopted democratic institutions between 1910 and 1931 maintained them throughout the 1920s and 1930s,” Huntington noted.

The pattern of setbacks swept three continents and affected countries ranging from Austria and Argentina to Germany and Uruguay.

A second reversal began in the early 1960s, when the process of democratization following World War II was spent. One-third of the world’s 32 democracies in 1958 had become authoritarian by the mid-1970s.

“The third wave, the ‘global democratic revolution’ of the late 20th Century, will not last forever. It may be followed by a new surge of authoritarianism constituting a third reverse wave,” Huntington predicted.

Indeed, the main ideological challenge of the future is probably not presented by the political left, but by the emerging right, particularly in the form of resurgent authoritarianism, U.S. experts contend.

“In times of trouble, authoritarians provide the easiest answers,” Lowenthal said. “It reflects a certain immaturity in the body politic. They abdicate rights in return for trains that run on time, three meals a day, and law and order. It’s like reverting to childhood. They think returning power to the government will mean taking care of them again.”

The rise of a new authoritarian right is already visible in Guatemala and Argentina, two countries that democratized over the last decade. Economic deterioration and civil breakdowns have led electorates to vote into office right-wing authoritarian candidates.

The key to democracy’s ultimate survival in both nations may depend on the ability of the electorates to vote those leaders out of office if they fail to create stability and meet democratic standards--and the willingness of those leaders to go.

The world record over the past four decades does not bode well. Since 1948, according to the World Bank, there has been at least one coup attempt per developing country every five years.

But the prognosis for democratization is not totally gloomy.

“The desire for freedom may be an inherent human characteristic, but the habits and behavior of democracy must be learned over time,” the Freedom House survey says.

The current experimentation with democracy may even provide the groundwork for a more lasting era of political pluralism. Reversals in the 1990s, Huntington concluded, “would not preclude a fourth wave of democratization developing sometime in the 21st Century.”

Freedom’s Formula

How to Define It

Democracy is evolving as a concept. The strictest standard:

*Decision-makers are selected through fair, periodic elections.

*There is a viable opposition capable of winning an election.

*Virtually all the adult population is eligible to vote.

*Citizens are free to speak, publish, assemble, and organize.

*There is a commitment to human rights, especially due process.

SOURCES: Samuel P. Huntington of Harvard University; Mark Lowenthal, Congressional Research Service.

How to Keep it

Other characteristics that help democracy survive:

* Economic prosperity and its equal distribution

* A market economy

* A strong middle class

* High levels of literacy and education

* Experience with democracy or pluralism

* A homogenous culture, or tolerance of ethnic and religious differences

* Low levels of civil violence and crime

* Strong encouragement or aid from the outside

SOURCES: U.S. analysts, Samuel P. Huntington of Harvard University; Mark Lowenthal, Congressional Research Service.

Freely Speaking

KYRGYZSTAN

“Democracy so far has done nothing for the man on the street or the fruit dealer in the bazaar. People believe in democracy, but they don’t know what democracy really means. It will take half a century for democracy to fully take root here.”

--Taabaldy Agemberdiyev, former ideological chairman of Democratic Movement in former Soviet republic.

MANILA

“The bottom line of a democracy is that power rests with the people, but the power of the people here spans the few minutes they write on the ballot and not longer. Afterwards, the bulk of the population go back to poverty, powerlessness, helplessness. . . . “

--Haydee Yorac, an election commissioner.

CHILE

“To live in democracy is to feel free, to be able to do whatever you want--within legal limits--without anyone coming to beat you, arrest you or send you into exile . . . I think people expected too much of democracy.”

--Ernesto Duran Duran, 34, bookkeeper in Santiago.

MOSCOW

“I am afraid that people have lost all faith in democracy and democratic principles. They would support a new Stalin or Hitler if he promises them cheap food and clothes . . . We will begin fearing each other as we did before, and the Iron Curtain will rise from ashes.”

--Marina G. Shishkina, 35, sales clerk at bookstore.

“Democracy is when one has a right to do whatever he wants to do. Under (former Soviet President Mikhail) Gorbachev, I could not sell some of the stuff I am free to sell now, like the erotica and soft porno papers . . . Now I can do what I like to do--make money, have fun.”

--Dmitri Ovchinnikov, 17, newspaper seller.

ALBANIA

“There are many problems with the new regime and the way we live today, but nobody can deny we have come into another world in less than two years. The changes have brought more good than bad, although it’s true we have much starvation and poverty. At least now we are on the right track.”

--Nuri Kulla, 42, sidewalk cigarette and bubble gum merchant in Tirana.

ZAMBIA

“Democracy in Africa is still a fragile concept.”

--Frederick Chiluba, Zambian president.

Too Poor To Be Free?

Fledgling democracies with fragile economies are the most vulnerable to backsliding. Here are the world’s poorest free or partly free countries:

PER CAPITA GNP

Mozambique; 100

Ethiopia: 120

Bangladesh: 170

Bhutan: 180

* Nepal: 180

Guinea Bissau: 190

Madagascar: 190

* Gambia: 200

Mali: 230

Nigeria: 290

* Zambia: 290

Niger: 300

Sierra Leone: 300

India: 340

Pakistan: 350

Central African Republic: 380

Benin: 390

Guyana: 420

Lesotho: 420

Sri Lanka: 420

Comorros: 440

Indonesia: 440

* Kiribati: 475

* Bolivia: 570

Yemen: 595

NOTE: * Countries ranked as free; all others partly free.

SOURCES: 1992 Freedom House Survey; U.N. Human Development Report 1991

Losing Faith Russians and newly liberated Eastern Europeans are mostly unhappy with their their democratic experiments, in contrast with Western Europeans. Question: “On the whole, are you satisfied . . . with the way democracy is developing in (your country)?” Lithuania: 52% Albania: 42% Romania: 41% Bulgaria: 39% Latvia: 37% Estonia: 31% Hungary: 30% Czechoslovakia: 28% Poland: 27% European Russia: 15% European Community : 50%

Notes: Survey of 10,000 people in October, 1991. SOURCE: Eurobarometer / Gallup