Still only two cheers for democracy
As international broadcasters begin a season of films about the strengths and weaknesses of democracy - Why Democracy? - the BBC's Paul Reynolds looks at what it means today.
The end of the Cold War saw the rapid spread of democracy
The triumph of democracy in the 20th Century was so great that it is curious that doubts have gathered around it today.
Its success can be judged by recalling the words of the Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, who told Western ambassadors in Moscow in 1956: "History is on our side. We will bury you." He could not have been more wrong. It was the Soviet Union itself that was buried in 1991.
All this led to the famous, infamous perhaps, statement from the American political scientist Francis Fukuyama in 1992.
"What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such," he wrote.
"That is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government."
Too optimistic?
The end of the Cold War did see the rapid spread of democracy, especially into the former communist states of Eastern and Central Europe. The European Union advanced to the Russian border. Democracies managed to assert individual rights and create prosperity.
And yet, even as he wrote, some critics felt that Fukuyama was being too optimistic - that the world would in due course resume its weary way.
Some alarms did go off. In the former Yugoslavia, majority voting in the component parts of the federation led not to a democratic agreement but to war. It was a lesson that democracy is about more than majority voting and that defining a majority is not always straightforward. The issue is currently an active one in Kosovo.
There have been disappointments: in the West, Russia is now felt to have strayed too far back to autocratic ways. Africa has not advanced as much as had been hoped - except for the shining example of South Africa. And the great prize of China remains elusive.
The recent crackdown in Burma shows that the struggle for democracy often has a high price.
And there is the threat from al-Qaeda and its followers. This goes beyond a disagreement over foreign policy. Osama bin Laden himself called on the United States to convert to Islam to avoid continued war.
Disappointment
Resisting militant Islamists should not be that hard for democracies well-schooled during the Cold War in the need for patience and clarity of vision.
BBC POLL: WHY DEMOCRACY?
Twelve thousand people in 15 countries were polled in August
58% thought terrorism could destroy democracy
62% thought voting in national elections was very important
57% thought the US political system better equipped than China's to tackle climate change
14% said they would be very unlikely to support the idea of a global parliament
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One factor is that not everyone believes in the benevolent intentions of democratic countries.
Iraq has led to the phenomenon that the most active exponent of democracy, the US, has attracted the greatest criticism. This has made it easier for al-Qaeda to gain recruits.
Even the Bush administration has given up its hopes of a rapid transformation of Iraq into a democratic beacon in the Middle East. President Bush argued that the Middle East was really no different from anywhere else, that its people wanted the same things and that, once upon a time, other parts of the world had also been written off as hopeless.
And yet it has not worked out like that - so far, at least. Iraq has shown that you cannot simply impose outside values on a society.
The definition of modern liberal democracy is now being examined, questioned even, more closely than before.
Weaknesses
Majority voting is clearly a key element. But that is not enough.
Others factors are free media, free elections, free speech, multiple political parties, protection of minorities, equal rights, rule of (good) law, responsive public services and a free enterprise environment (though arguments remain about the form this should take).
Some countries rejected the Hamas election results in 2006
Some parts of the world even question the value of democracy. And its enemies, be they theocrats or autocrats, are active.
Democracy has had its weaknesses exposed.
These include a sometimes naive assumption that it knows best. In the early 1990s, Russia was invaded by smart young men in suits. I recall watching a London business "expert" in his 20s, funded by a British government "know-how fund", telling the elderly manager of a Moscow bread factory (the son of one of Stalin's bodyguards) how to run the place, which had been functioning quite well for many years.
In the face of such arrogance, it is little wonder that there has been a backlash in Russia.
A more serious limitation is that voting can sometimes bring in an extremist, or extremists, who then cannot easily be removed.
On occasions, the outside world simply rejects what it regards as the "wrong result" or imposes conditions on the winner. This happened to Hamas in the Palestinian territories.
Gradualism
Governments claiming to be democratic have too often failed to create and spread wealth equitably.
Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time
Winston Churchill
A democracy has a flank open to violent rebellion. Afghanistan cannot fight the Taleban by itself, lacking the necessary power, yet by calling in outsiders it increases the chances of fuelling that rebellion.
Democracy sometimes falls down by not offering stability, order and security. Some societies, in the Middle East especially, but China as well, place these values higher than the freedoms exercised in the West.
That is perhaps why gradualism is now a preferred option. Equal rights, for women for example, can be a way forward instead of wholesale change.
In 1951, the novelist E M Forster summed it up in this way:
"So two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism. Two cheers are quite enough: there is no occasion to give three."
Winston Churchill's remark to the House of Commons in November 1947 (having been booted out by the voters even before the war ended) still stands:
"Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/7025675.stm