DEMOCRACY EAST AND WEST

Dean, Vera Micheles

DEMOCRACY EAST AND WEST by VERA MICHELES DEAN Woodrow Wilson, an historian turned President, set a high goal for the United States and for the rest of mankind when he proclaimed that World War I...

...He lived to see the emergence in Eastern Europe of free nations —Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and others—whose peoples had had a long and rich history but had been conquered and held in subjection by the empires of Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Germany which were dissolved as a result of World War I. Yet a quarter of a century later these new nations were no longer "safe for democracy" or even free of foreign rule, for Communist Russia had imposed upon them both its political and ideological domination...
...The United States is hardly comparable even to Western Europe, let alone the non-Western world...
...efficient administration...
...Otherwise, how can one explain that Portugal and Spain, although often described in the United States as part of the "free world" in the cold war against Communism, proved impervious to democracy, and are today no more democratic (in some respects, even less) than some of the newly emerged nations we call authoritarian...
...has taken important steps to integrate the former untouchables and the tribal peoples into the social order...
...In implementing their policies they frequently seek and receive the aid of labor, which has often developed a strong position ahead of a native middle class, and, like the intellectuals, wants rapid improvements in its lot, even at the cost of ditching democratic practices...
...It was tried because this regime was characteristic of those Western peoples that had been in the ascendant during the immediately preceding period of the world's history...
...In this respect they continued the traditional authoritarian insti-tutions of non-Western lands—of princes and sultans and tribal chiefs —on whom they relied for the maintenance of law and order...
...Nor would it be amiss for us to take a hard look at ourselves from time to time, and ask whether, with all our advantages, we are making a good job of democracy here, before we throw stones at nations which are as yet on the threshold of modern development...
...But even more important, we must ask ourselves why so highly gifted and technologically advanced a people as the Germans failed to develop democratic political institutions as late as the Nineteenth Century, why the Weimar Republic withered before it had had time to bloom, and why the Germans could tolerate, even if they did not all support, the Nazi regime, which was not only authoritarian and totalitarian, but also one of the most brutally ruthless regimes in history...
...She will leave that post to become professor of international development at the Graduate School of Public Administration at New York University in September...
...Is democracy a phenomenon restricted to a few countries of the West...
...These rulers stressed the need for concern with the well-being not only of men but also of beasts, and strove to reconcile the various religions within their domains...
...and its first Labor Prime Minister came to office only in the 1930's...
...Thus increasing economic opportunities brought about political equality, and this process will continue until minorities still excluded on racial grounds, such as the Negroes in our South, are also brought within the fold of political democracy...
...In Western experience, democratic political institutions followed, rather than preceded, the economic transition from primitive agriculture to the Industrial Revolution, which created a new middle class of traders and bankers—the "third estate"—and the "fourth estate" of intellectuals...
...During its several-thousand-year history India experienced a number of public-spirited rulers who surrounded themselves with public-spirited administrators...
...In the Eighteenth Century France had succeeded only in overthrowing its monarchy, and a century passed before it established a stable democracy...
...and the Mogul Emperor Akbar, who reigned at the end of the Sixteenth Century and whose efforts to bring about a synthesis between Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, and Judaism stands in sharp contrast to Henry VIII's defiance of Rome in the name of a national religion, and to Europe's religious wars of the Seventeenth Century...
...To Americans who judge democracy solely in terms of Western, and, even more narrowly, United States', experience, the use of the term "democracy" by non-Western leaders and by Communists often seems, at best, a lie, at worst a sacrilege...
...Colonialism, particularly as practiced by Britain and France at their best, in India and in French West Africa, brought many benefits to the colonial territories...
...Let us take India as an example, for today many Westerners think of India as a showcase of non-Western democracy, while Toynbee apparently regards its democratic prospects as bleak...
...Whatever their other contributions to the non-Western world, the Western colonial powers acted not as democratic but as authoritarian rulers...
...By suppressing or delaying independence on the ground that non-Western peoples were not yet "ready" for self-rule, the Western democracies in effect postponed the experience of self-government which in their own history had proved a basic prerequisite for the gradual introduction of democratic institutions...
...Outstanding among them were the Hindu Emperor Asoka who, in 300 B.C., became a convert to the non-violence doctrine of the Lord Buddha, and whose Rock Edicts on the conduct of administration could serve as a model for some Western countries...
...Even in the world of today we find that, contrary to the long-held assumption of political scientists that literacy is a prerequisite for democracy, India, with 438 million people of whom fewer than twenty-five per cent are literate, has proved its capacity to operate a parliamentary democracy in an orderly way, as evidenced by three general elections held since it achieved independence in 1947...
...When freedom from foreign domination did not prove to be synonymous with internal freedoms familiar to some Western countries, critics of the new nations not only berated the new governments—from Ghana to Egypt, from South Korea to Indonesia—but even on occasion argued that if independence did not spell democracy, VERA MICHELES DEAN, for many years research director and editor of the Foreign Policy Association, is director of the Non-Western Civilizations Program at the University of Rochester...
...Unpalatable as the demands of the British Crown may have seemed to British settlers in Massachusetts and Virginia, they can hardly be compared to the relationship established by Britain, or France, or Portugal, or Belgium, or the Netherlands with the peoples of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, who, no matter how great and ancient their civilizations, were regarded by Westerners as inferior, and treated as such...
...We have a right to take pride in the democracy we have forged in this land, which was a wilderness when the first immigrants arrived, but we must recognize that ours was an easy task compared with the Sisyphean labors of Europe yesterday and of the non-Western world today...
...As expanding industrialization demanded more and more specialized skills, social status became less and less important, a once stratified society grew increasingly mobile and flexible, and all members of the new society gradually came to share political power on the basis of the principle, "one man, one vote...
...But a similar list, subject to differences in history, geography, and economics, can be drawn up in any society—and often is in the United States, Britain, and France, generally regarded as models of democracy, and even in seemingly-unassailable democracies such as Sweden and Switzerland...
...It has actually proved more successful in creating democratic political institutions at this stage of development than the Western European countries were able to do in a comparable pe-riod...
...For the United States obtained its democracy as a ready-made product from the British and French who had prepared all the groundwork for its foundation in the new world...
...Although Islam is usually regarded as intolerant of "infidels," and the bitter hostility of Arabs toward Israel in our own times has been understandably criticized, it should be recalled that within that empire Christians of various sects as well as Jews enjoyed religious freedom...
...We must get used to the idea that in politics, as in other aspects of life, man can have a variety of experiences...
...The test of democracy is not perfection, for the simple reason that human beings are not and never will be perfect...
...It is at this point that misunderstandings arise which could prove dangerous for the foreign policy of the United States...
...It did not complete the broadening of the suffrage to include the new labor class until the late 1800's...
...In his most recent book, Between Oxus and Jumna, Professor Toynbee, writing after visiting Pakistan, Afghanistan, and India, observes: "It is not surprising either that parliamentary democracy should have been tried or that it should have proved a failure...
...Perhaps it was a talisman that would magically ensure success...
...A similar process of change is now taking place in the non-Western world, but at a faster pace and under some markedly different circumstances...
...The test is whether a given society is earnestly seeking to foster the political freedoms, the economic development, and the social improvement of its people within the limits of the historical stage it has reached as well as the limits of its natural resources...
...Yet it is both a tribute to the universal aspiration for democratization, and an anticipation of developments ahead, when Marshal Ayub Khan speaks of "basic democracies" in Pakistan, or Sukarno of "guided democracy" in Indonesia, or President Nasser of "socialist democracy" in Egypt—or even when the Communists vaunt the benefits of "people's democracies...
...Is it possible that the world cannot be made safe for democracy—not only in Eastern Europe, but even less so in the newly emerging nations of the non-Western world, in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, or in Latin America...
...The Western powers, which in three and a half centuries of colonial domination—1600 to 1945—had not yet achieved the level of concern for a majority of human beings reached only in our own times, did not act democratically in non-Western countries...
...then it might have been better to have perpetuated colonial rule, apparently on the assumption that colonialism was more democratic than native authoritarianism...
...Yet this revolution was staged by white men against white men, with both rebels and colonial rulers drawn from the same nation and sharing the same culture...
...And when independence movements first appeared, usually led by men who sought not only to overthrow foreign rulers but to improve the social and economic conditions of their peoples, the first reaction of colonial governments was to hold them back—at worst by force, at best by insisting on delays in granting freedom...
...The key factor in Toynbee's analysis is "the presence in the body politic of a large contingent of able, experienced, honest, public-spirited citizens...
...Most important of all in the search for an answer to the question, "Is democracy impossible in non-Western countries...
...Britain was still an aristocratic society in the Eighteenth and early Nineteenth Centuries...
...the rule of law...
...Toynbee's unfavorable diagnosis is shared by many Americans who, nurtured in a tradition of anti-colonialism, had hoped that the end of Western rule in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East would bring about the establishment of democratic institutions in the newly-emerging nations...
...Democracy is not only possible in non-Western countries—in the long run it cannot be averted...
...That the development of these institutions requires many years, and may take centuries, is demonstrated most clearly by the experience of the Western democracies themselves...
...In seeking an answer to the question of whether democracy is impossible in non-Western countries, it is necessary first to define the ingredients which have made democracy work in the few countries where it has proved successful...
...It brought, public health measures and medical services (although these, unaccompanied by population control and measures to encourage industrial development, lighted the fuse of population explosions...
...India has carried out these revolutionary political, social, and economic changes by democratic means, without resort to force, and without limitations on the activities of parties on the Right or Left, including the Communist Party, which freely challenges at the polls the ruling Congress Party headed by Prime Minister Nehru...
...The missing ingredient in Germany and Japan was the quality of public-spiritedness—or, to put it in another way, of a sense of responsibility on the part of leaders toward their people and of citizens toward their government and toward each other...
...These new leaders find their initial task eased by the absence of mon-archs, most of whom vanished long ago, and the remaining princes or tribal chiefs offer little if any resistance...
...They are skipping stages, telescoping their revolutions...
...These were all significant achievements, which until recently were not sufficiently recognized by most Americans, reared in a tradition which regarded all colonialism as an unmitigated evil because of memories of the American Revolution...
...They could not make a start on democracy until they were free of foreign rule...
...Of the four qualities listed in this prescription, the Germans in Western Europe, and the Japanese in Asia, possessed three: They had able, experienced, and honest citizens who proved capable of creating a highly efficient industrial society and a military machine that conquered many peoples who were less able and experienced...
...How, then, does a nation acquire public-spirited citizens...
...Toynbee then expresses admiration for the authoritarian regime of Marshal Ayub Khan of Pakistan, and pessimism about the prospects of democracy's success in India, after pointing out the failure of brief attempts at democracy in Russia and mainland China...
...Among targets for their criticism are top-heavy bureaucracy, corruption in bigh as well as low places, errors in economic planning, failure as yet to eliminate some of the worst features of the caste system, the influence of religious and caste groups in politics, the persistence of economic inequalities, and many others...
...and is in the process of transforming a stagnant agrarian society into a society in which a modest but significant program of industrialization is transforming the Indian way of life just as the industrial revolution altered the way of life of Europeans emerging from the feudal economy of the Middle Ages...
...With a few exceptions, as in India where a small middle class of civil servants and traders had become well-established, the leaders of non-Western revolts are for the most part not bourgeois, but intellectuals or military officers who may be the first of their families to leave the ancient plough or come out of the bush, the first to become educated...
...These new classes brought about the downfall of monarchy and aristocracy, took over political power at mid-Nineteenth Century and controlled it until it was itself challenged by factory workers, the "proletariat" who in the words of Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto had at that time "nothing to lose but their chains...
...This does not mean that India has achieved an ideal society—and the Indians, who are never shy about criticizing their own government, are the first to point it out...
...Nor is India's experience unique...
...We are the fortunate inheritors of the fruits of bloody wars and revolutions which opened the way to democracy in Western Europe—of Cromwell and Robespierre, of Danton and Napoleon, and of the German liberals and other Europeans who staged the revolutions of 1848...
...In this sense the Ottoman Empire had achieved a greater degree of democracy, hundreds of years ago, than the modern Germans under Hitler...
...it is only since World War II that France has carried out modern social and economic changes...
...DEMOCRACY EAST AND WEST by VERA MICHELES DEAN Woodrow Wilson, an historian turned President, set a high goal for the United States and for the rest of mankind when he proclaimed that World War I was being waged "to make the world safe for democracy...
...Because of this very speed, the non-Western countries are not repeating the development of Western nations step by step...
...Dean is the author of many books on world affairs, among them "The Nature of the Non-Western World," "New Patterns of Democracy in India," and "Builders of Emerging Nations...
...public order...
...But it would have been wise, before adopting it, to take note of the practical conditions that would have to be fulfilled if parliamentary democracy was to be made to work effectively...
...At the war's end, he pressed for the self-determination of nations, which he had listed as one of his Fourteen Points...
...and security against encroachments by rival great powers of the West...
...But even in Western Europe democracy did not prove "a talisman," as Toynbee is, of course, fully aware...
...Some of the ancient lands which were conquered and administered by Western powers had had a far longer experience with rulers who had a sense of responsibility for the welfare of their peoples than was true of Western nations...
...In spite of multifarious complexities created by the vastness of the country, by its rapidly growing population which may reach 800 million by the year 2000, by its four major languages, and by the subcontinent's wrenching partition into the two nations of India and Pakistan, the Indian government has incorporated more than 560 princely states into the new republic (an operation which might be contrasted with the as-yet-unaccomplished political integration of Western Europe), has maintained law and order, and has protected the civil rights of Muslims as well as Hindus...
...Most of them have not had an opportunity to produce a strong middle class of their own, for until they became free of colonialism, the role of the middle class was played by the Western colonial powers' traders and bankers...
...Yet the very changes these new groups are making create the pre-conditions for eventual political democracy, as peasants flock to cities and acquire new skills, workers demand better living conditions, and education opens minds to new ideas about political rights...
...Does this mean that Woodrow Wilson was wrong...
...As Toynbee rightly points out, "In those few Western countries in which this political regime [democracy] had been evolved, it had been worked out, by trial and error, over the course of several centuries, and, insofar as it had been successful, its success had been dependent on the presence, in the body politic, of a large contingent of able, experienced, honest, public-spirited citizens...
...Experience indicates that it is much easier to master techniques, no matter how complicated, than it is to master the arts of human relations within a given society...
...Theirs will not be like our democracy, but neither is ours a carbon copy of the democracies of Britain or France...
...How did it happen that settlers from Spain and Portugal have found it extremely difficult to develop stable democratic institutions in Latin America, in spite of the fact that the countries of that area have been free from colonial rule for periods varying from a hundred to a hundred and fifty years...
...If this test is applied, then India, which today is emerging from its own version of the Middle Ages, in terms of its economy, is politically and socially in the Twentieth Century...
...This seems to be the conclusion of another distinguished historian, Arnold J. Toynbee...
...In addition to creating and implementing the machinery of political democracy, India has within fifteen years carried out social changes which in another country would be regarded as a social revolution, through measures designed to prevent discrimination on grounds of race, religion, color and sex...
...a start on education, par-, ticularly of a university-trained elite, although little at the levels of primary and secondary education...
...Whether consciously or not, the new nations now emerging from the authoritarian rule of Western colonial powers or of their own governments, as well as those which hope for a continued "thaw" in lands still under the sway of Communism, are on the way to some form of democracy...
...To the intellectuals, social and economic changes seem more urgent than political systems, and conflicts between political parties represent troublesome obstacles to their plans for rapid modernization...
...In the era of astronauts and jet planes, of radio and television, of rapid communications and of continuous exchanges of ideas in international forums, notably the United Nations, political transformations are proceeding not at the pace of oxcarts but often at jet speed...
...Why is it that their political turmoil and economic underdevelopment resemble that of the countries of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East far more than the political stability and advanced economies characteristic of the West...

Vol. 26 • July 1962 • No. 7


 
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