Liberal democracy is a rare beast. But it is not surprising that liberal democracies are few, but the fact that they exist at all
In Mohammed Hanif's novel Red birds there is a scene where an American bomber pilot who crashed somewhere in the Arabian desert and ended up in a refugee camp talks to the owner of a local store about thieves. "Our government is the biggest thief," he says. "He steals from both the living and the dead." The seller responds to that. "Thank God, we don't have such problems. We only steal from each other".
This little vignette sums up well the main message of Darren Acemoglu and James Robinson's new book The narrow corridor: states, societies, and the fate of liberty. The authors present the thesis that the prospects for achieving freedom and prosperity depend on achieving a very delicate balance between state repression on the one hand and the lawlessness and violence into which societies often fall on the other. Giving excessive powers to the state in relation to society leads to despotism. If the state is too weak, we will end up in anarchy.
As the title of the book points out, there is a very narrow path between the two dystopias that only a small number of countries have found, mostly in the industrialized West. Also, the fact that we found the path does not guarantee that we will stay on it. Acemoglu and Robinson emphasize that if civil society is not alert, cautious and capable of mobilizing against potential autocrats, the possibility of regression to authoritarian forms of government always threatens.
Acemoglu and Robinson's new book builds on their previous bestseller Why nations fail: the origins of power, prosperity, and poverty (Serbian translation). In that book and in their other works, they define what they call "inclusive institutions" as the main drivers of economic and political progress. Such institutions - for example, the protection of private property and the rule of law - are available to all citizens (or at least to the largest number) and do not allow favoring a small group of elites over the rest of society.
The country that threatens their thesis the most is China. The political monopoly of the Chinese Communist Party, the high level of corruption, and the ease with which the assets of political competitors and economic opponents are confiscated do not at all resemble inclusive institutions. However, it cannot be denied that over the past four decades, the Chinese regime has maintained unprecedented rates of economic growth and achieved the greatest reduction in the poverty rate in known history.
In a previous book, the authors argued that China's economic growth would quickly stall unless exploitative political institutions were replaced by inclusive ones. They insist on that in the new book. China is described as a country where the state dominated society for almost two and a half millennia. After so much time, they believe, there is little chance that China will find the narrow path of democracy. In the case of China, in their view, the prospects for political reform and continued growth remain very slim.
Another big country that today violates the author's original thesis is the United States. At the time of the publication of their previous book, many believed that the United States was the best example of the functioning of inclusive institutions, because it is a country that got rich and built democracy by protecting private property and the rule of law. But the distribution of income in the US has become as distorted as that of a true plutocracy, while the political institutions of its representative democracy buckle under the fierce attacks of demagogues.
It seems that Narrow path partly written to examine the perceived weakness of liberal democracies. The authors introduce the term "red queen effect" to describe the ongoing struggle to preserve open political institutions. Like Alice, civil society must always run faster than authoritarian leaders and their despotic ambitions.
The ability of civil society to counter the "Leviathan" could depend on the nature of social divisions and their evolution. Democracies usually arise from the rebellion of a group large enough to challenge the power of elites or from divisions within elites themselves. The mobilization of such groups in the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries was caused by industrialization, world wars and decolonization. The ruling elites finally accepted the demand of the opposing party to extend the right to vote, without the condition of property ownership, to (usually) all men. In return, the group that gained the right to vote accepted the limitation of the landlord's power to expropriate property. In short, the right to vote is given in exchange for ownership rights.
But, as I argued in a joint paper with Sharun Mukanda, liberal democracy requires more than that: it implies rights that will protect minorities (we can call them civil rights). A defining feature of the political settlement that produces democracy is that those who most need the protection of civil rights, namely minorities, are excluded from the negotiations. They have neither resources (like the elites) nor numbers (like the majority) on their side. Hence this political settlement favors an impoverished version of democracy - which we might describe as electoral - over liberal democracy.
This may explain why liberal democracy is such a rare beast. Failure to protect minority rights is a well-known consequence of the political logic on the basis of which democracy is established. What requires explanation is not the relative rarity of liberal democracy, but its very existence. It is not surprising that liberal democracies are few, but the fact that they exist at all.
That is not a comforting conclusion in an age when liberal democracy is facing threats even in those parts of the world where, as we believed, it was permanently rooted. But understanding how fragile liberal democracy really is should help us overcome the apathy that has come from taking it for granted until now.
(Project Syndicate; Peščanik.net; translation: Đ. TOMIC)
Bonus video:
