nice post, Glen...
I'm sure the Iranian people really would have got the whole democracy thing wrong
well, "liberal democracy" has two parts--"liberal" and "democracy". according to Fukuyama, "liberal" means indivudal rights, especially property rights, are protected by the state. "democracy" means leaders are chosen from a universal electorate by secret ballot in multiparty elections.
thus a society can be liberal without being democratic, as in 19th-century Britain; or democratic without being liberal, as in Iran.
since property rights are essential to sustained real growth, the liberal part is actually more important than the democratic part. in fact, there are arguments that democracy stems from property rights, not the other way around. this was the case in the Greek city-states, where democracy was preceded by the development of property rights in post-Mycenaean Greece--basically, small landholders with secure property rights were more efficient in farming than their feudal counterparts, which led to timocracy (voting rights for landholders) and eventually 100,000 property owners with avg 10-acre plots in 700 BC. later democracy developed for landless citizens.
but that was all wiped away by the Peloponnesian War. liberal democracy then developed in fits and starts over a period of 2000 years in the West. as recently as 1790 there were only 3 liberal democracies (Britain, US, and Switzerland) and 13 in 1900. this rose to 61 in 1990.
it is highly stupid of America to think they could simply transplant this system in a few months to Iraq at the business end of a gun. |
