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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (105990)	7/17/2003 3:30:35 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

<Don't forget literacy rates, and rates of education> That's an interesting debate, about whether universal literacy is needed for a functioning liberal democracy. Ranking the world's 200 nations by freedom, and a separate ranking by literacy, and comparing the two rankings, there is a clear correlation. But this may merely be correlation, not causation. Is A causing B, or is there another factor (C or D or...) which is causing both A and B? Is there some quality in a nation, which predisposes to both liberal democracy and widespread literacy? There are counterexamples, India being the biggest one. They have, imo, met the minimal definition of democracy, since 1948, without anything close to universal literacy. Unfortunately, now that India is run by a religion-based party, which is violently suppressing non-Hindus, maybe they are no longer a counter-example. I would define them, today, as an illiberal democracy. The have elections, and the majority has voted to oppress the minority. The safeguards for the protection of the minority's rights have largely failed. And, before that, India was essentially a one-Party State, much like Mexico was (until recently).