I am sure you will read and enjoy Friedman's column today on what we may face in "Nation Building" Iraq. If we do, we will spend a good bit of time here discussing it, I think.
We definitely should, imo. To the credit of the neocons and their supposed source in Woodrow Wilson, this issue will be very much on the table. It harks back to some discussions we had about Robert Kaplan's arguments. He argued that benevolent dictatorships were a necessity in these conditions. And, I can't recall exactly, some sort of gradual steps into democracy.
I gather you take point 2, below, from the author. That's the first paragraph of what I'm about to paste. And the second is your comments. Then I'm going to paste a review of a book I'm reading now which addresses precisely these issues though it looks at them through the issues of ethnic politics. That's precisely the issue the Bush administration will face in Iraq. First, here are the relevant bits from your post.
2) Stable democracies do not suddenly appear. They develop. Creation of the social and institutional infrastructure requires time. Moreover, the pattern of development inevitable reflects the distribution of wealth and resources in the society. The wealthy and the educated have better organizational skills and, therefore, political groups tend to emerge first among a small circle of elites. Thus, democracy begins with the rule of a narrow, enlightened elite and a limited participatory franchise. Over time, if the franchise widens, and if constitutional rules limit political power, as in the United States after the American Revolution, democracy takes root and flourishes.
Point two is difficult. We tend to want to go immediately to "one man, one vote." However we did write a constitution for Japan that was so damn good they still love it. But the point is, lets not be in too much of a rush to try to turn these Middle East countries into an American suburb.
I completely agree. But neither the US history when it comes to these issues nor the brief history of this administration makes one feel comfortable about this.
Given that this post is already a bit long, I'll paste the review of the Chua book I'm reading into the next post. |
