Democracies That Take Liberties by Fareed Zakaria

November 2, 1997

Democracies That Take Liberties
By Fareed Zakaria

The American diplomat Richard Holbrooke pondered a problem on the eve of the September 1996 elections in Bosnia, which were meant to restore civic life to the region. "Suppose the election was declared free and fair," he said, and those elected are "racists, fascists, separatists, who are publicly opposed to peace and reintegration . That is the dilemma."

Indeed it is, not just in the former Yugoslavia, but increasingly around the world. Democratically elected regimes, often ones that have been re-elected or reaffirmed through referendums, are routinely ignoring constitutional limits on their power and depriving their citizens of basic rights and freedoms. From Peru to the Palestinian Authority, from Slovakia to Sri Lanka, from Pakistan to the Philippines, we see the rise of a disturbing phenomenon in international life -- illiberal democracy. It has been difficult to recognize this problem because for almost a century in the West, democracy has meant liberal democracy -- a political system marked not only by free and fair elections, but also by the rule of law, a separation of powers, and the protection of basic liberties of speech, assembly, religion and property. In fact, this latter bundle of freedoms -- what might be termed constitutional liberalism -- is theoretically different and historically distinct from democracy. Today the two strands of liberal democracy, interwoven in the Western political fabric, are coming apart in the rest of the world. Democracy is flourishing; constitutional liberalism is not.

Westerners are growing uneasy at the rapid spread of multiparty elections across south-central Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America, perhaps because of what happens after the elections. Popular leaders like Russia's Boris Yeltsin and Peru's Alberto Fujimori bypass their parliaments and rule by presidential decree, eroding basic constitutional practices. Ethiopia's elected Government turns its security forces on journalists and political opponents, doing permanent damage to human rights (as well as human beings).

Naturally there is a spectrum of illiberal democracy, from modest offenders like Argentina to near tyrannies like Kazakstan and Belarus, with countries like Romania and Bangladesh in between. Along much of the spectrum, elections are rarely as fair as in the West today, but they do reflect the reality of popular participation in politics and support for those elected.

Freedom House's 1996-97 survey, "Freedom in the World," has separate rankings for political liberties and civil liberties, which correspond roughly with democracy and constitutional liberalism, respectively. Of the countries that lie between confirmed dictatorship and consolidated democracy, 50 percent do better on political liberties than on civil ones. In other words, half of the "democratizing" countries in the world today are illiberal democracies.

Until the 20th century, most countries in Western Europe were not democracies but rather liberal autocracies. The franchise was tightly restricted, and elected legislatures had little power. In 1830 Great Britain, in some ways the most democratic European nation, allowed barely 2 percent of its population to vote for one house of Parliament; that figure rose to 7 percent after 1867 and reached around 40 percent in the 1880's. Only in the late 1940's did most Western countries become full-fledged democracies, with universal adult suffrage.

But 100 years earlier, by the late 1840's, most of them had adopted important aspects of constitutional liberalism -- the rule of law, property rights and, increasingly, separated powers and free speech and assembly. For much of modern history, the "Western model" was best symbolized not by the mass plebiscite but the impartial judge.

Constitutional liberalism has led to democracy, but democracy does not seem to bring constitutional liberalism. In contrast to the Western path, during the last two decades in Latin America, Africa and parts of Asia, dictatorships have given way to democracy with no intervening liberalization. The results are not encouraging. In the Western Hemisphere, with elections having been held in every country except Cuba, a 1993 study by the scholar Larry Diamond determined that 10 of the 22 principal Latin countries "have levels of human rights abuse that are incompatible with the consolidation of liberal democracy." In Argentina, President Carlos Saul Menem rules using presidential decrees and has proclaimed almost 300, more than all previous Argentine presidents put together, going back to 1853!

Elections have been held in most of the 45 sub-Saharan states of Africa since 1991 (18 in 1996 alone), and there have been many setbacks for freedom. The scholar Michael Chege surveyed the recent wave of democratization and wrote that the continent had "overemphasized multiparty elections" and "correspondingly neglected the basic tenets of liberal governance." In Central Asia, elections, even when reasonably free, as in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakstan, have resulted in strong executives, weak legislatures and judiciaries, and little freedom.

In the Islamic world, democratization has led to an increasing role for theocratic politics, eroding longstanding traditions of secularism and tolerance. In many parts of that world, like Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt and some of the Persian Gulf states, were elections to be held tomorrow, the resulting regimes would almost certainly be more illiberal than the ones now in place.

A proper appreciation of constitutional liberalism has a variety of implications for American foreign policy. First, it suggests a certain humility. While it is easy to impose elections on a country, it is more difficult to push constitutional liberalism on a society. The process of genuine liberalization and democratization is gradual and long-term; it is a process in which an election is only one step.

Hence, the absence of free and fair elections should be viewed as one flaw, not the definition of tyranny. Elections are an important virtue of governance, but they are not the only virtue. Economic, civil and religious liberties are at the core of human autonomy and dignity. If a government with limited democracy steadily expands these freedoms, it should not be branded a dictatorship.

Despite the limited political choice they offer, countries like Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand provide a better environment for the life, liberty and happiness of their citizens than do illiberal democracies like Slovakia and Ghana. And the pressures of global capitalism can push the process of liberalization forward. Markets and morals can work together. Even China, which remains deeply repressive, has given its citizens more autonomy and economic liberty than they have had in generations.

Today, in the face of a spreading virus of illiberalism, the most useful role that the international community and the United States can play is -- instead of searching for new lands to democratize -- to consolidate democracy where it has taken root and to encourage the gradual development of constitutional liberalism across the globe.

Democracy without constitutional liberalism is not simply inadequate, but dangerous, bringing with it the erosion of liberty, the abuse of power, ethnic divisions and even war. Eighty years ago, Woodrow Wilson took the United States into the 20th century with a challenge, to make the world safe for democracy. As we approach the next century, our task is to make democracy safe for the world.