4
O
viedo
| C
ampoamor
T
heatre
| 21
st
O
ctober
2005
From the Second World War onwards, democracy, that is liberal democracy, has been spreading.
New areas to be conquered have opened up with the demise of the Soviet regime and its ideology.
However, whilst the economy has become truly global (insofar as the market economy has been
the downfall of Soviet-styled collectivist economic planning), political systems remain divided
worldwide into democracies and non-democracies. This fact raises questions as to the export
potential of democracy (to what degree and in what conditions). The question clearly presupposes
that democracy is born of and in Western civilizations and that the so-called “democracies of the
others” are figments of the imagination (just as the notion of Communist democracy was equally a
figment of the imagination and a fraud). Having said this, as far as the export potential and spread
of democracy is concerned (I am obviously simplifying here), there are two basic theories.
The first theory is economistic: the fact is that democracy is hampered by poverty and is
associated with prosperity. Historically, this has not been the case. Liberal democracy as demo-
protection, i.e., as a system of freedom and protection under a constitution, arose in desperately
poor societies. What is more, liberalism proclaims the limited state, the control of power and
freedom from within (the state); just that, neither more nor less. However, this is now no longer
the case. Nowadays, demo-power, which calls for demo-distribution (of wealth), has been added to
demo-protection, and in this scenario, the thesis of the economists becomes one of “if you generate
wealth, you eventually generate democracy.” The thesis of the sociologists is more cautious. In
S.M. Lipset’s classic version, “the richer a country is, the more likely it is that democracy will be
sustained.” This is most certainly true. In other words, it is true that prosperity smoothes the way
to democracy. The quandary now is whether prosperity will continue increasing and whether the
war on poverty (in the world) can eventually be won.
Personally, I doubt it. The world’s population has tripled in less than a century. There are now
over six thousand million of us, and we continue to increase by seventy million a year, all in poor
countries, which are probably doomed to continue to be so. The only thing I would deduce from
this, here, is that the economistic theory should not make us lose sight of the fact that democracy
as a political system of demo-protection is an asset
per se
, and that it is always better to be poor
living in freedom than not poor, yet living in slavery.
The second theory is cultural and relates to “world views”. If it is true —and it is— that liberal
democracy is born within the bosom of Western culture and as a function of its secularisation,
then we really ought to expect it to encounter resistance and even cultural rejection as it travels
the world. Yes and no. Democracy has been exported to Japan by force of arms, but it then took
root. In India, democracy is a British legacy, but it has been totally assimilated. So there are cases
of culturally unlikely export drives that have nevertheless been successful.
Giovanni Sartori
—
Prince of Asturias Award
for Social Sciences
2005
Excerpt from the speech given on the
occasion of receiving the Prince of
Asturias Award for Social Sciences on
21/10/2005.
