www.UsHumans.net: Chapter 19
Government in today's nations: authoritarian and democratic systems, and the cultural ingredients of democracy
The daily news talks of dictators, democracy, and political coups. (You might like to visit the virtual museum of political art at http://members.telering.at/pat/museum.htm.) This chapter contains a brief summary of some aspects of today's government within nation-sized groups of people. We’ll see something of the way in which autocratic systems function, we’ll examine a short list of factors that gauge how well a government is performing for its people, and we’ll find that democracy is much more than just voting. What is the difference between authoritarian and democratic systems? Democracy is a blending of views that partially satisfies everyone, while dictatorial governments have a single party with a single view of goals and priorities; this single party forces the nation down a single path by outlawing all other parties, views, and paths. These characteristics are required or a people to launch and sustain a democracy. The National Democratic Institute for International Affairs at www.ndi.org assists nations trying to become democratic. We'll see that moderate hardship or even poverty does not impel a people to change their political leadership; a sudden increase in poverty or in the inequality of wealth, as might accompany industrialization or a nation's entry into the global market, does sometimes impel a people to change their government. As another case, a government that performs poorly during a crises is sometimes changed. The summary here of the cultural elements of stable democracy is taken from Political Culture and Democracy in Developing Countries, edited by Larry Diamond. The list of reasons for changing government is summarized from Understanding Central America, by John A. Booth and Thomas W. Walker. The future, democratic assembly of democracies is fully explained by David Held in his article within Contemporary Political Philosophy, An Anthology, which is edited by Robert E. Goodin and Philip Petit.
Chapter 11 contained a description of earlier political forms, including bands, tribes, and chiefdoms. When we lived as gatherer-hunters in small bands of persons, our group sought food and mutual protection from predators and the elements. Group decisions were often made by the consensus of the parents within the group. A collection of bands sometimes form a tribe in response to a generating force. After the beginnings of agriculture, when circumstances required it, several groups would form a chiefdom to organize food surpluses and public projects.
The chief oversaw the public works and the redistribution of the surplus. Chiefs were often chosen by the consensus of the group members; they could also be unchosen. The steps to unchoosing a leader involve gossip, ridicule, rumors, the withdrawal of services, public admonitions, institutional sanctions, and then an elaborate removal ceremony. The position of chief became hereditary in some cases. The chief might also be the religious leader in what is then termed a theocracy. It was often the chief's duty to guarantee the success of the harvest, and this success gave legitimacy to rule over the people.
If a leader fails the people and so loses legitimacy then that leader is soon replaced. Each government has had some way of claiming legitimacy. Some leaders claim descendence from the gods or from the group's first leader. We saw that just before the English Civil War, King James claimed that he received the right to rule directly from God. He also claimed that the people had no say in his right or in his actions.
We saw that Mesopotamian farming villages required a few thousand years to grow into cities having populations of ten thousand persons. For centuries, these city-states were individual chiefdoms and were most often ruled by priests. As the population of these city-states grew to contain 100,000 persons within an area twenty miles (30 km) across, border disputes began to occur. War chiefs became more important than religious leaders, and soon invented the empire and its occasional mass murder.
The behavior of each person was influenced solely by the other members of the community. Not so for the behavior of some of our leaders. Sometimes, the main concerns of the king and queen were the maintenance or expansion of their own power and territory. This occurred throughout the world. (Do you see this occurring today? How many wars are occurring today and what, or who, is the cause of each of them? Does your leader try to convince you that war will be glorious.) In response, Mencius said in the fourth century bc that the character of a ruler is measured by the well-being and quality of life of the people. Some of our leaders instead made a study of ruthless behavior, as described by Machiavelli in 1513 ad. We saw that as economic and social injustice occurred in our large cities, and as our empires began committing mass murder, our most important moral leaders emerged to reemphasize proper human behavior (see Chapter 13).
Unlike today’s thoroughly regulated societies, earlier governments had little direct intrusion into the lives of the people–unless they were sent to kill and be killed. This was the case throughout much of history, from the kings and queens of Mesopotamian city-states to the medieval manor lord. The role of the state in daily life has slowly changed through the centuries, as has the art of governance. We saw that twentieth-century Big Government has been a slow and reluctant response to the social consequences of our shift from farming to factory work. The regulations of today's governments can intrude into most every facet of daily life.
Western ideas of personal freedom and individual liberty came as a response to a lack of specific freedoms during the recent centuries of the European past. The short list of demanded freedoms is also a short but important itemized list of past intrusions and abuses to which counter responses have been generated. That other regions of the world did not suffer these specific injustices is an example that historical circumstance and the cultural background of a people play a large role in the type of government that each group of people feel is "natural." For some peoples, these specific freedoms do not have to be declared by the government because they are imbedded within their religious view, as occurs in Islamic nations. Where a person from the U.S. might say "That action violates my freedoms," an Islamic person might say "That action is un-Islamic," as has been pointed out by others. If a people’s king and queen have always ruled with a single but caring voice then those people will feel that the only form of government that is natural and right is one ruled by a king and queen, not a democratic blending of all voices.
All peoples do not have the same form of government, nor do they agree on the exact societal role of government. The form and the role of government that a given people take for granted as being "natural" or "right" is part of their cultural heritage, and this heritage contains a mixture of elements from past epochs. Political scientists refer to this as "political culture." Diamond explains that it involves a people's predominant beliefs, attitudes, values, ideals, sentiments, knowledge, and evaluations about the political system of the country and about the role of the self within that system along with their commitment to it and their judgment of its performance. Within a nation, political culture consists of layers from previous forms of that nation's government and is durable and persistent but also plastic. Sometimes it can change within months while other times change requires generations to develop. Wildavsky points out that, since all persons within a nation are not alike, most nations contain a mixture of political cultures. For this reason, the comparative research of political scientists doesn't simply compare the culture of nations but instead has to contrast the combinations of cultures within different nations.
Lucian W. Pyle says that culture resides in the personalities of each person who has grown up in that culture and that our personality is the sum of our life experiences. It is hard to change a given personality because it is hard to change the sum of a person’s life experiences. Culture is not a vague feeling for historical tradition; it is part and parcel of our personalities. Cultural change, like personality change, involves true trauma. It is easy to see that our learned cultural view of the "correct" world is resistant to change. The type of government in which we grow, along with the views about government we learn from our parents and friends, determines the type of government that we believe is right. Each of us feels that the only correct form of government is that with which we grew; no matter if it was a band, chiefdom, kingdom, theocracy, aristocracy, or democracy.
Political scientists have a couple hundred modern nations to study and compare. (Their laboratory research is like that of cosmic-ray physicists who can only sit and wait for explanatory events to occur because direct manipulation is impossible.) There are many unique elements in each nation's government, but there are also many things that are common to different states. Since we are all human we tend to encounter similar problems and to solve them in similar ways. In their reports, political scientists often use the terms “state, “government,” and “elite.” The term “state” refers to those political institutions which make, implement, enforce, and adjudicate policies within a given nation. The term "government" refers to the group of leaders of a nation in much the same way that the word "administration" is used in the phrase "the administration of President Johnson." The “elite” of a nation consists of its most prominent individuals, including lawyers, doctors, journalists, intellectuals, and politicians along with its religious and business leaders. Within this collection of groups of elites is a range in viewpoints about the system's needs and goals. Sometimes a role of the elite of a nation is to initiate a public debate that might then lead to more-general public action.
Reasons for a people to change their political leadership
Political scientists have found that the people of a nation will sometimes change their government when it loses legitimacy, performs especially poorly during a crisis, or when there is a rapidly worsening level of wealth and income inequality or well-being. It isn't poor living conditions that lead to unhappy citizens; it is a rapidly worsening condition that does this. This is important for us to know as we try to understand why governments at certain times and places are changed. Booth and Walker describe how this has occurred in certain Central American nations.
In 1983, I spent a month in Arad, Romania accompanying my father on his business trip to setup railroad car test equipment in an engineering lab. Arad is a town of 200,000 persons. Our hosts were very nice people who took us to their favorite weekend spots. They prepared lunch for us every day so that we would have the opportunity to experience local home-food. For the first few days I ate three person's shares until I noticed that others were waiting for us to finish before having their share. One of our hosts was a fellow physicist who gave me a mathematics book. However, the Ceausescu government was performing poorly. I saw first hand how much we will put up with from a poorly functioning government (it is not in our nature to complain for little reason). The government did not have enough money to provide electricity for the downtown streets, even the traffic lights were not operating. Since each person was rationed a few liters of gas (one gallon) per month, horses were replacing automobiles. Shops were unlit. The government had outlawed the use of duplicating devices, including xerox machines and typewriters, so secretaries were handwriting each copy of a document. As the government imposed more and more on their daily life, people continued to be concerned only that they could provide for their families. If the leaders of our government do such a poor job that we have to walk ten miles for daily water, then we will just walk ten miles for daily water. We will not often resort to violent revolt unless the amount of food and water suddenly decreases or if there is no water or food. This makes me doubt the usefulness of placing economic sanctions against the people of a nation, as is sometimes done when one nation tries to apply pressure against the leader of another nation.
Laszlo Magyar, from Hungary, was also visiting there for business and became our friend. He pointed out that if you are occupied each day with just obtaining the day's food then you do not have time to worry about things like the Freedom of the Press. Laszlo said that he felt the communist system was very stable because it required little from its citizens during each day's work. He also said that throughout grade school students were repeatedly told that "everyone is equal." Laszlo harshly summarized the communist system as "the equality of the do-nothings."
Authoritarian governments of Eastern Europe from 1945-1989
Joseph et. al., explains that the most powerful person of the state is usually the president, prime minister, military dictator, Communist Party leader–as in China–or the Supreme religious leader–as in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The leader usually has a group of advisors or "cabinet." The state also contains a legislature and court system along with an army, police, and bureaucracy.
In an authoritarian state there is but one view of the role and priorities of the state because all other views are outlawed; anyone promoting alternative views is punished. To understand the implications of this more fully, imagine how your country's evolution would become fixed in a single direction if just one of its current political parties was allowed to set plans and chose projects with no opposing ideas allowed from other groups. For example, if U.S. law allowed only the Republican or only the Democratic Party–and no others–then what would it choose as goals, priorities, and actions for the nation? (You might like to compare the number of political parties in the nations of the world, see www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/fields/2118.html. While the U.S. has just two, every other nation has dozens. We see that these two parties have managed to maintain a shared monopoly, just as has occurred in most every business industry of the U.S.) The authoritarian state tries to control all political, economic, and social activity.
No organization of any kind can be created without first obtaining the permission of the authoritarian state. No organization will be allowed to serve any function that the state is already providing. Nor can they compete with the state or disagree with anything it is doing. An approved group is given a meeting place and allowed to publicize its goals and events and to collect dues. Those persons taking part in any unauthorized organization that is attempting to be autonomous of the state will be either fined, jailed, or expelled from one's profession or from the country. These punishments usually keep the number of active dissidents very low.
For more than forty years, the communist governments of Eastern Europe tried to impose allegiance and to create citizens who would obey state directives and go along with state-selected priorities and policies. But the imposed system never fully came to be viewed by the people as the "natural form of government." Daily opposition occurred as citizens were forced to find ways of circumventing state barriers just to obtain the needed resources that were constantly in scarce supply. Most Eastern Europeans felt that the imposed communist state was illegitimate and only grudgingly took part in mandatory voting, state-sponsored social groups, and demonstrations of state support. Most persons believed that the state was unable to bring about needed changes. As soon as the coercion ceased, during Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms, the Eastern European states quickly dissolved. Visit www.occupationmuseum.lv to see the Latvian view of its communist period.
In Diamond's book Christine M. Sadowski describes the role of illegal, autonomous groups in organizing alternative ideas within the communist states of Eastern Europe. These underground groups were operating "autonomously" from the state. The citizens within the autonomous groups used the same tactics that had been earlier developed by the underground in their struggles against the Nazis during World War II. Funds were setup to help pay the fines that group members incurred during their activities. They held meetings in private homes and would sneak into printing plants after hours to use their large printing presses to communicate with a national audience. Copies of books were hand-typed if no other means of duplication could be found. The initially stated purpose of the groups was to see that the state abided by the rules; they did not set out to overthrow the state. For example, an autonomous group of working class people would typically meet to discuss wages or the availability of food.
The autonomous groups of intelligentsia discussed freedom of speech and such. Often they addressed well defined issues of limited scope that might be in response to a particular injustice or grievance. Sometimes they were simply trying to offer advice on handling a particular situation. They sometimes chose to publish a letter in a foreign journal. These publications rarely evoked a public response from state officials. Instead, the dissidents might find that they could no longer publish in any domestic journal; this meant an end to their professional career.
Autonomous groups found it easy to get Western governments to aid in publicizing their causes and in giving financial assistance. Foreign radio broadcasts helped to spread dissident views. The groups found that foreign funding was easily obtained as they sought assistance from like-minded, Western organizations. For example, those groups seeking religious freedom received help from Western religious organizations, while groups concerned with workers' rights were aided by Western labor unions. The communist states inadvertently helped spread word of dissident groups when state-run news agencies published accounts of the arrest and conviction of dissidents.
In the end of the 1980s, the autonomous groups found that they were being allowed to come out into the open. They then quickly began to press for official recognition and to be allowed to operate independently of the state. They called for greater freedom of expression. Sadowski says that freedom of expression and the right to assemble paves the way for the development of a multi-party system. The laws forbidding autonomous groups were made obsolete in practice when many such groups were freely operating. When autonomous groups adopted some of the unmet goals of the state, they further undermined the legitimacy of the state because they were publicly revealing its limitations. For example, citizens would ask themselves, "If the state already has the declared purpose of protecting worker’s rights then why is a trade union needed?" The leaders of these autonomous groups had gained enough public support and organizational experience that they were prepared to step in and take control as the states were being remade.
The autonomous groups had to gather accurate information within their censored societies to support their claims and demands. This enabled them to speak the truth about specific issues where the state would not. This also reduced the power and legitimacy of the state and introduced the notion of holding the state accountable for its failures. The group's truths also won over many members of the ruling communist elite. The group's accurate information and open discussions brought change to the previously-authoritarian nations, though the group members were but a small fraction of the nation’s population. The existing states had then to choose between increasing repression against the increasing power of the autonomous groups, as did Romania and the German Democratic Republic, or to dilute their own power by allowing the groups to represent alternative views, which meant moving toward a multi-party system. Sadowski explains that the autonomous groups laid the foundation for the fall of the authoritarian, single-party states by presenting the truth to the people of their nation, publicizing goals, demanding that their rulers be held accountable, and making the rulers see that repression was futile.
In communist Romania, the Ceausescu regime used the most extreme measures to crush the formation of dissident groups. Citizens were cautious even during private conversations because they believed that about one in five persons throughout the entire population was paid to inform on everyone else. While I was in Romania in 1983, eating at a restaurant with my hosts, a governmental representative suddenly came up and photographed the group. My hosts believed this might be used against them in the future. To control the spread of alternative ideas, Ceausescu outlawed every means of mass printing and required every typewriter be registered with the state. Ceausescu's repression was so successful that when revolution came, few persons had even heard of any dissidents; and this meant that there was no previously-accepted leader waiting to take over control of the state.
As demonstrations became massive and change was eminent, the rulers of each Eastern European nation used military force to quell unrest. But every leader also refused to order their own citizen-troops to shoot their fellow citizens–except in Romania. In 1989, Ceausescu ordered his generals to shoot to kill. One hundred persons were killed in an anti-government rally of 100,000 persons. Ceausescu then bused in workers to take part in a pro-government rally, but the participants were not fooled. When their chants drove Ceausescu from a balcony during his televised speech, it showed the national audience that he was no longer to be feared. Within four days his government had been toppled and he had been arrested and executed. For the events of his removal, visit www.beyondtheforest.co.uk/Pages/RSR2.html.
Sadowski explains that forty years of unresponsive, communist rule has resulted in a general aversion toward politics for many Eastern Europeans. As people find that their government is unresponsive to their input they frequently withdraw from politics. This enables the government to become even more authoritarian and in turn further alienate the population. In Eastern Europe, many persons are reluctant today to join new political parties because of bad feelings toward the old Communist party. For many persons, "party" has become a bad word due to unhappy experiences. Ever since the democratization of Eastern Europe, there has been low voter turnout. This may be due to an aversion of politics or a belief in the unresponsiveness of government–no matter the system. It may instead be that in response to previously-mandatory voting duties, people are now expressing their new-found freedom by choosing not to vote.
At the same time, many workers and farmers feel that the government should continue to provide for their well-being, as it has done throughout their lifetimes. The sudden disappearance of governmental subsidies for food, fuel, housing, transportation, communication, education, and health care and such makes for economic uncertainty. The reforms of the new democratic governments must quickly produce growth; otherwise, the citizens may decide that the new government is also unresponsive to the needs of the people and that it is also incapable of producing needed changes.
Through the last four generations, the people of Eastern Europe have lived under four different types of government. The best hope for stable democracy is for the people to relearn tolerance, compromise, trust in government, pragmatism, flexibility in goals, and moderation over extreme partisanship. These are some characteristics of the people living in a successful democracy. How do you rate the level of these things in the people of your own nation today?
For an authoritarian state to be accepted as "the natural form of government," it is required that the people have more faith in a powerful leader than they do in their fellow citizens. It is part of the cultural heritage of some peoples to mute social criticism, to ostracize nonconformists, and to shun conflict over order. We saw that this Confucian concept was a characteristic of Medieval China. It is part of Confucian culture to lack suspicion of authority because a ruler is to be as a helpful “parent” who earns respect and obedience. For the people of some cultures, the more its people endorse dogmatism and shun those who have views that differ from the majority, the more long-lived will be its authoritarian regime. The regime is more stable if people also have a sense of powerlessness against an unresponsive system so that they feel they cannot initiate change. Does this describe the situation in your own nation? How do you feel about the responsiveness of your own government today?
Notice that it is ethnocentric imagination for a person from a foreign democracy to think that the people of every nation want to be just like them and will happily resort to armed rebellion today to discard their "wrong, nondemocratic system." Similarly, no foreigner can tell another group to abandon their "wrong culture" or to exchange their farming ways for industrialization. It is not the case that the people of every nation want to be industrialists and “just like us.” The form of government of each group of persons is a result of their own cultural and historical heritage. One nation cannot impose their own form of government onto another group of people because that imposed government will lack legitimacy, even in an occupation lasting for a generation. As soon as those people are no longer forced into submission they will break free, as occurred when foreign-imposed, communist rule vacated Eastern Europe.
For European news today, visit www.einnews.com/centraleurope, http://www2.etown.edu/vl/easteuro.html, www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/psnews.html, and http://newslink.org. Visit http://europa.eu.int/index_en.htm for information about the European Union. For a list of websites involving Eastern Europe today, including videos and dairies of the fall of communism, visit www.coe.ohio-state.edu/globaled/display.cfm?parent=5&child=15.
Now that we have seen some aspects of a single-party state, let's have a closer look at democracy to see what it is and to see which aspects of a people's culture and history will make democracy a suitable and stable type of government for them. While single-party states outlaw all points of view that are contrary to those of the ruling person or party, democratic nations have multiple parties that not only allow multiple views but expect debate of all groups to occur and for a consensus to form. The sources of debate include political parties, interest groups, the media, the alliances between these groups, and the process of action and conflict itself that results in legislation and subsequent bureaucratic practice. The list of interacting and sometimes competing interest groups include military, business, religious, university, labor, propertied class, radical left and right, centrists, environmental, scientific, families, and professionals–but rarely the poorest of us.
Democracy is more than elections and voting and more than free speech and civil liberties. It is first of all a blending of views that partially satisfies everyone. It is a firm belief in the toleration of different views and in the right of dissent of others who offer opposing views and priorities. (Undemocratic citizens might instead accuse dissenters of being unpatriotic.) This toleration readily exists in those persons who are open to new ideas and experiences. The range of views and priorities means that the citizens have also to tolerate a certain vagueness in the stated goals of the government. The single-party state can dictate an exact course of action because only a single course-proposal exists; all contrary views are outlawed. Each nation is a mixture of views about the role and goals of the state. Some categories of views were given in the above list of interest groups.
The citizens of a democracy have a distrust of power. For this reason, power is spread and balanced not only among the branches of government but also among many persons within each branch. Citizens have an ever-watchful attitude toward authority rather than a blind submission or a fatalistic acceptance of the actions and rules of the state. They have an intelligent distrust of leadership but they are not hostile toward the leadership. Authority must be questioned and challenged so that it does not become dictatorial, but it must also be supported or it will dissolve.
The citizens and interacting groups offer alternative viewpoints rather than armed resistance. The members of a democracy prefer consensus building and moderation over revolt. For this nonviolent interaction to occur requires that the citizens of a democracy believe and feel that the state is responsive to their requests and stated needs. Citizens must also have a trust in the motives and intelligence of the other citizens.
Citizens however must participate in the debate before they can measure the responsiveness of their system. The more involved are the citizens, the stronger will be their democracy. In addition to voting, citizens must have knowledge of politics, an interest in politics, keep informed of political affairs, and form political opinions and then express them through participation in public debates and organizations.
Democracy requires moderation, cooperation, bargaining, accommodation, and a flexibility that allows goals to be negotiable and to change through time. People of democratic character believe that no group or person has a monopoly on truth and that there is no absolute truth nor a single, correct answer to public policy issues. Restraining one’s ideology allows results to occur; otherwise, there is nothing but deadlock. Compromise makes all parties winners rather than having clear winners and clear losers. This also restrains the polarization that can lead to conflict. Compromise makes all parties partial winners–rather than having a clear winner and a clear loser. We see that within dictatorial or single-party states, a single person or party controls governmental plans and actions, while in democracies, plans develop through the jelling of consensus after an open debate of the views of all persons and groups.
Democracy exists only when a majority of citizens compromise in numerous ways and share tolerance. Democracy is most appropriate and durable when citizens have a working level of knowledge in politics, participate in political affairs, consider education for all to be beneficial to the nation as a whole, have social classes, desire economic development, have political beliefs and attitudes rather than apathy toward everything political, have trust in their mutually beneficial system and feel enough personal satisfaction from its existence to support it while it is temporarily performing poorly, have a belief in the legitimacy of the state, have interpersonal trust for the other members, do not view government as a caring and trusted parent or as an institution that has the divine right to rule, have goals for the nation, reject revolutionary change by instead having a consensus to use the existing system to make changes, and want to cooperate and compromise rather than suffer civil war. Sometimes the desire to compromise is obtained the hard way through prolonged civil war. With so many requirements for a successful and stable democracy, it is no wonder that a newly democratic nation's second election is even harder to obtain than was its first.
Democracy most easily develops if a nation begins with a small number–not a large number–of cooperating elite groups who share a common perspective of government and if it has existing leaders from a small number of differing social strata having differing views and goals. The existing elites choose democracy when the cost of suppressing opponents–for example, through yet another civil war–is greater than the cost of tolerating them. It is less workable to try in a single day to form democracy by mixing a large number of social strata and groups with varying goals, interests, and outlooks–as the U.S. is now proposing for Iraq. As England became democratic, the previously existing kinship and ideological ties among the lords restrained the severity of conflict because there were but a small number of social classes. After democracy existed, additional classes of people were more easily added. Democracy is a way to both allow and to limit change.
The government of a newly democratic nation will not last if it does not perform to the satisfaction of its new citizen-critics. The citizens judge its performance in socialization, education, economic growth, social reform, maintenance of law and order, its respect for the rules of the game, and its ability to govern invisibly and achieve legitimacy. How do you rate the level of performance of your own government today? In each of the numerous characteristics of democratic citizens given above, how do you rate the level of the citizens of your country? In a democracy, we are our own bosses and critics. To see how U.S. government publications define democracy and its cultural ingredients, visit http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/whatsdem.
Taiwan's conversion from authoritarian to democratic government
Ambrose Y. C. King discusses (in the book edited by Diamond) the transition from an authoritarian to a democratic regime in the socially and economically successful Republic of China in Taiwan. The Republic's social success is shown by the improvement in its literacy rate, which grew from 21% to 82% during the years 1966 through 1986. Each citizen first attends nine years of free and compulsory education; 25% of young adults then go on to attend college. (The same college-attendance percentage occurs in the U.S.) The Republic's Gross National Product grew at an average rate of 8.7% during the years 1953 to 1982. Industry accounted for 20% of the Gross National Product in 1952 but grew to 42% by 1990, which is a time-span of just two generations. Meanwhile, agriculture's share dropped from 42% to 4% as the population moved into the cities. The portion of the population living in urban areas grew from 30% to 90%. The portion of homes having telephones, television sets, and automobiles increased by a factor of one hundred. (These elements of the process of industrialization are familiar to us from the example of the U.S. given in Chapter 15, although the U.S. transition took several generations to unfold.) All this development occurred while Taiwan was an authoritarian regime.
Recall from Chapter 13 that Confucianism began around 500 bc during a time in which many states were fighting because of the recent collapse of the larger empire. Confucianism encourages one to support the existing social order and to be loyal to the monarchy. If children learn to respect older siblings and parents then as they become adults they will naturally respect the leaders of the village and the nation. In this way, political and social order develop naturally from the proper behavior of the family. Confucius taught that society consists of fathers, brothers, friends, layers of bosses, and the sovereign. We also saw that Mencius said that the character of a ruler is shown by the well-being of the people and that the people are important–not the ruler. It was widely believed that the main concern of politics should be people and that it was best to leave decisions up to the leader rather than having open political competition. There is a long history in China of viewing leaders as helpful parents. Remember also that China has usually been a single, large political unit while Europe consisted of many independent kingdoms. We also saw that Medieval China was conducting an enormous amount of commerce while contemporary Europe was just beginning to enlarging its own industry.
King explains that since the end of World War II there has been a nearly worldwide consensus on the value of national economic productivity. As in much of the world, Asian leaders and intellectuals have been vigorously and purposefully striving for modernization. Political scientists usually consider democracy and multi-party systems to be desirable and inherently good. They have found that many democratic nations have developed economically through industrialization and urbanization. (We have seen that industrialization and urbanization also result in decreased community ties and increased inequality.) But they do not find a one-for-one causal relationship in that authoritarian regimes have also achieved economic and social growth.
After the end of World War II, the island of Taiwan became the home of three million exiled members of the Leninist-structured Kuomintang who were expelled from mainland China during the Communist takeover. The Kuomintang was lead by Dr. Sun Yat-Sen who expected to build his state through the stages of an initial military rule that would be followed by democratic tutelage and then a constitutional democracy. His three Principals of the People were Nationalism, Democracy, and People's Livelihood. Chaing Kai-shek was the first president of Taiwan. He temporarily restricted liberties due to the continuing war with the mainland. Freedom of speech and of the press were curtailed and, except for that of the ruling party, all political parties were outlawed.
Taiwan's rapid economic growth during the following decades provided legitimization for the authoritarian government; the economic elite gave full support to the ruling regime. The state's concern for the welfare of the people is demonstrated by the improvement in its economic equality, as measured by its Gini Coefficient that decreased from 0.6 in 1953 to 0.3 in 1972. (The Gini Coefficient provides a measure of income inequality: a value of zero indicates that everyone receives the same income, while a value of one means that just one person receives all the income while everyone else gets none, as described in Chapter 22.)
However, Taiwan's government was not changing as its economy was expanding. As society was transforming from agrarian to urban and industrial, the attitudes of society were also changing, thus placing new pressures on the government to change. During the 1960s many persons were jailed for trying to start new political parties. At that time, the public considered these dissidents to be threats to the order of society and a threat to political stability, which we have to be an aspect of Confucianism. But the attempt to open up the political process would continue through the next twenty-five years, employing debate and demonstration. Demonstrations became violent in 1979 but the police were instructed not to react with force; only a few protesters were injured even though 183 police were hurt.
In 1986, president and party leader Chaing Ching-kuo, who is the son of Chaing Kai-shek, used his personal power and prestige to call for reform and to allow the formation of new and competing political parties. This meant an end to single-party politics and the beginnings of democracy. He also announced that no one in his family would succeed him in power. King points out that it was the leader of an authoritarian party who used no less than his authoritarian power to engineer and to legitimize a democratic breakthrough. In addition, the Western-educated and reform-minded liberals within the party went along with Chaing. This shows that democracy is most-easily accomplished when existing leaders have a firm and forceful commitment to its existence. In 1923, Ataturk similarly brought multi-party democracy to Turkey through a series of reforms. (For more information about Ataturk’s reforms, you might visit www.columbia.edu/cu/tsa/ata/hayati.html and www.allaboutturkey.com/reform.htm At www.turkishembassy.org/video/index.htm you can view Ataturk videos on-line.)
Taiwan now has democratic elections involving multiple views and parties. It has 84 registered political parties; three of them share dominance. It's political and civil liberties include the freedom of expression and of the press and the freedom to organize political parties, strike, demonstrate, and petition the government. The government seeks to promote educational, social, and economic well-being. In 1996, the average income of the upper 20% was only five times that of the lower 20%. In 2004, only 1% of the population earns less than half the national median income, compared to 12% in the U.S. Agricultural production accounted for just 2% of Taiwan’s 2004 gross domestic product.
Visit www.roc-taiwan.org for information about Taiwan today. For economic information, visit www.moea.gov.tw. Visit www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/tw.html for an overview of Taiwan today. Visit www.coe.ohio-state.edu/globaled/display.cfm?parent=32&child=48 for a list of websites involving East Asia; For China, see www.coe.ohio-state.edu/globaled/display.cfm?parent=32&child=49.
Various authors within Diamond’s book provide insight into what sort of political culture and historical circumstance are needed to successfully initiate democracy within a nation. Richard Sisson describes the development of democracy in India from its several-decade-long incubation by British colonialists. He explains that after a generation or two of experience with parliamentary democracy, it became ingrained into the way of thinking of its Indian practitioners.
Sisson explains that today, India is a successful democracy. This is true despite the fact that some students of political science might not expect democracy to be preferred by the people of India because many of its citizens are poor and uneducated. (In 1947, just before independence, the literacy rate in India was 15%. It grew to 50% in 1990 and 65% in 2000. India’s Gini Coefficient had the value 0.325 in 2004, while those of Sweden, the U.S., China, and Mexico were 0.25, 0.41, 0.45, and 0.55.) For an overview of India, visit www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/in.html. Sisson's explanation of India's stable democracy gives insight into the political culture that makes for successful democracy.
The English began visiting India around the year 1600 and were trying to control it by 1750. Much of India became a colony of the British empire in 1858 as a few thousand British officials struggled to oversee a nation of a few hundred million persons. When Indians demanded a role in their own government, the outnumbered British could hardly refuse. In response to the Mutiny of 1857, Sir Bartle Frere said that it was better to have Indian grievances out in the open before discontent became disaffection. From a small start in 1858, the British increased Indian participation in elected, parliamentary democracy. Including the Indians in politics was a survival reaction rather than a designed generosity. The British colonialists were learning that public discussion develops legitimacy while autocratic rule does not. The Indian council was initially limited in the subjects in which it could take action; it was also subject to executive veto. Reform acts obtained in 1861, 1865, 1892, 1907, 1909, 1916, 1919, and 1935 continually expanded Indian involvement in their own rule.
By the time of Independence in 1947, democratic activity had been growing for a few generations, including the direct election of all representatives throughout the last fifty years of the colony. Democracy had become part of the political culture of the people of India; they were already committed to democracy because they had already had one century of experience with it during their time as a British colony. Upon independence, India adopted a federal system of individual states.
Mahatma Gandhi played a large role in the fight for India's independence. Through the years 1920 to 1947, he promoted civil disobedience and nonviolence as a means of communicating political demands. Whenever a protest turned violent, it was terminated. Still today, 25% to 50% of Indian's believe that work and business stoppages, political fasts, and sit-ins are legitimate forms of political behavior. For on-line videos of Gandhi, visit http://web.mahatma.org.in.
The people of India practice all the elements of democracy. They have multiple parties that debate in Congress and then reach a consensus, there is no anti-regime party, voter turnout is 50% to 60%, and voters freely find information in India's 10,000 newspapers and 20,000 news magazines along with television and radio news broadcasts. (For news about India, visit www.indiadaily.com/pol.asp, www.worldpolitical.com and www.hindustan.net.) The Constitution of India includes fundamental rights for equality before the law and freedoms for speech, assembly, association, movement, settlement, and employment. The Constitution guarantees the right to life, liberty, property, due process, free access to all public places, prohibition of forced labor, and the right to follow and teach the values of one's own culture (in this last item we see a particular Hindu tolerance that is missing from the U.S. Constitution). At the time of independence, both India's elite and its population were already behind the creation of the constitutional democracy.
The public in India today shows interest in politics and forms opinions about political and public matters. Typically, half the citizens know the name of their representative–and the caste of this person. Citizens feel that the act of voting is an important way for them to influence their government. They will elect a different party into power whenever they feel that the old party has performed poorly in keeping prices down, handling the food supply, or in fighting corruption. Within a generation of independence, the Indian citizens were fully behind their new government and expected it to provide for them and to be held responsible for its successes and failures. They are voting and feel that their vote produces results. India is a successful democracy.
During the first few decades following the end of World War II, most every colonized nation throughout the world won their independence from Europe. Each colony won independence through varied events and circumstances but also obtained that independence for two reasons common to every colony. One reason was that during World War II, the colonies had fought alongside their European colonizers. The colonists then demanded that the colonizers acknowledge the hypocrisy of their relationship. (In a similar way, those of us U.S. citizens who are black returned from fighting in WWII demanding an end to the hypocrisy of our “separate-but-equal” system.) The second reason was that war also left the colonizers drained and no longer able to afford the expense of maintaining their territories. The 300-year-old, unjust European "fad" of holding colonies went out of favor.
African government before, during, and after independence
Naomi Chazon explains that instead of democratic systems, European colonists setup autocratic administrations of African nations. Citizens were not allowed to participate in their own government. The autocrats ruled for a century and then rapidly vacated within a single decade without having first given the residents any experience at all with democracy. After the colonial powers left, following the end of World War II, many African nations quickly reverted to autocratic rule, while democracy in India has instead had a stable and long life. But by the 1980s, the people of many African nations grew tired of dictatorial rule and began to insist on democratic rule. Here is a summary Chazon's article in Diamond’s book.
Africa began to be colonized by the Europeans around the year 1850. The reason for the lateness is actually that the immune system of European people was not prepared for the unfamiliar diseases of Africa–malaria, for example. (Just as the immune system of people in the New World was unprepared for the unfamiliar European diseases, such as smallpox). This kept the European colonists out of the African continent for a few centuries longer than the time at which they began penetrating into the interior of the American continents, which occurred within months of their first arrival in the year 1492.
Remember that Islam quickly spread across northern Africa after its beginnings by Mohammed around 500 ad (see Chapter 13). This was long before the arrival of the colonists. Remember also that during the Middle Ages, many cities in Africa had populations of 5,000 to 15,000 persons, including for example the cities of Timbuktu and Kinshasha. Chazon explains that before the European colonization, the people of the African continent were living in many separate chiefdoms, each based on agricultural and pastoral economies. (We saw a description of chiefdom societies in Chapter 11, and in Chapter 12, we saw something of the way of life of the Yoruba of Nigeria.) There were only a small number of imperialistic states in Africa, such as the militaristic Zulus and the Rozvi Mutapa empire of Zimbabwe. The ancient state of Egypt did not try to conquer the entire continent of Africa. You might picture the politics of Africa during this period to be similar to that of Mesopotamia before the spread of empires that began around 2500 bc.
For thousands of years, the many peoples of Africa were each following their own preferred political system. Many societies throughout Africa were making community-affecting decisions through public debate, while other societies had a centralized political authority in the chief, whom the people considered to be a caring "parent." The chief was held accountable for the community's success and failure and could be removed from power. The Mali and Songhai of Western Sudan had a loose sort of central federation of local communities that were still very much independent. Some local groups sent representatives to regional meetings where a consensus would be formed from differing views; it was said that "the middle road would be found by blurring opposites."
Many societies emphasized the importance of the community over that of the individual; both individualism and authoritarianism were strongly rejected. Obedience to elders, officeholders, clan heads, and village chiefs was often emphasized. The notion of individual liberty was notably absent in those societies that valued group affiliation as the basis for social interaction: the groups were the glue of society. We see that the goal of society was a smoothly functioning society–else disorder dissolve it. (We can bet many groups of persons learned this the hard way.) Remember also that we innately form social systems because we all agree that we will have a better life than if we "go it alone."
Around the year 1850, Europeans began subjugating the separate peoples of Africa and divided the continent into many colonies. Each colony consisted of a random mixture of people, tribes, and languages because it consisted of an arbitrary geographical area. From the start, Africans saw little reason for the complex legal systems of the colonialists. The colonialists setup hierarchical administrative institutions plus coercive devices that were meant to be instruments of domination over diverse peoples. These institutions were tacked onto what the colonialists saw as an existing system of "big men" and stressed law and order not participation and reciprocity. A person’s social standing became linked to his or her proximity to state power. The government was both externally imposed and excessively ruling, so it earned no feeling of legitimacy.
The colonies were established to promote the wealth, power, and prestige of the home country. They added territory and opened new markets for the sale of the home country's goods. They also wanted to setup a system of agricultural and mineral production meant for export. Chazon says that the vehicle of capitalism was the state rather than any private system of local entrepreneurs and that the African economic system was bureaucratized but barely capitalized even though there was some spreading in commercial activity into the community.
Colonial officials talked of the connections between intellectual enlightenment, economic advancement, and democracy but their subjects saw only that the reality of the imposed system was completely opposite to the presented rhetoric. The point of participation and consensus building among the colonized people was lost when they saw that their actions and views were simply vetoed by the state. The ethnocentric colonialists told their subjects to be "just like them." There was a gap between ruled and ruler, rhetoric and actions; the colonial system dissolved after World War II. After the colonies were asked to contribute money and lives to the war effort of the democracies–and did so–they demanded and won an end to the hypocritical system, as mentioned above. The call for the end to the authoritarian rule first came from the colonialist-educated African elite who began protesting the system after the end of World War I.
Through the 1950s, massive demonstrations were held to demand self-determination and the right of a people to shape their own destiny and to point out the injustice of foreign domination and the human indignities of colonialism. The more vocal the call for democratic participation, the more vocal also was the call for the rejection of colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism. The largest amount of violence occurred in those nations where the transition was most prolonged, including Zimbabwe, Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau. During the 1960s many African nations won their independence; soon all were independent.
Colonization lasted for a much shorter time in Africa than it had in India or the Americas–one century compared to two to four. Before independence, the colony of India had one hundred years of experience and involvement with a democratic system; they demanded that involvement after first experiencing authoritarian rule. The African colonies had just one century of experience with nothing but an authoritarian system that sometimes talked of democracy. During the independence struggle, democratic activities were being used to protest the authoritarian system but not to build tolerance and consensus. We Africans had a prolonged experience with small-scale democracy before the arrival of the colonists, as did most every band and chiefdom in human history.
Transitional governments were setup through agreements between the European colonialists and the people of each African colony. Most colonies simply agreed to anything that might result in a quick withdrawal of their colonists. These transitional governments typically lasted for about ten years and would put democratic and representational government into place. But democracy was not in the recent experience of the people so it was not imbedded in their political institutions or in their political culture. Throughout the previous century, Africans had experienced only an authoritarian system.
The newly independent nations were set up as democratic states. They had also to put social and economic plans into place and to setup international relations. The colonial system had created administrative but not political structures. The people of each nation had to decide whether to keep, modify, or to scrap these administrative structures. The political system of each newly independent, African nation was setup either on the British Westminster model of majority rule or on the presidential system of the Fifth French Republic. Each nation also debated the pros and cons of federal systems. Former British colonies–including Nigeria, Kenya, and approximately Ghana–chose federal systems while the former French colonies chose more centralized systems.
The mere ten-year transition to democracy did not embed the new form of government into the consciousness of the people. The new, democratic constitutions were viewed as alien systems from a foreign culture. The new political systems were unformed and uncertain beneath nothing but a veneer of democracy. The new democratic form of government was seen to be a sudden and revolutionary change for both society and the economy. (Democracy proceeded industrialization in Africa, just as it had in the U.S.) The society–that is, the electorate–saw no benefits and did not want to be revolutionized. Politicians were electorally dependent on those whose life were to be revolutionized. The general population did not believe in the new system–neither did any elite group, except for the intellectuals. The independence leaders had gained power specifically from their promotion of nationalism and not from any ideas of democracy-building. The independence leaders were the natural candidates to head the new nations; many were elected to be the first leaders. After the election, these leaders had little vested interest in perpetuating the democratic system. Within a year of independence, weaknesses in the political systems were exposed. The leaders of every nation, except those of Gambia and Botswana, quickly resorted to authoritarian forms of government to avoid the embarrassment of widespread knowledge about their limited resources and control. There was no autonomous middle class or any other foundation for effective political competition.
The new leaders figured that a domination of the state would provide the best means of achieving rule. The complicated provisions of the constitutions were seen as impediments to efficient government. They quickly learned to strangle opposing views and to harass or expel their opponents. They protected their own view of government by outlawing all other political parties, thus forming single-party states. (It requires much time to learn that democratic consensus building is a means of both enabling and limiting change.) Most every democracy proved to be short-lived and was replaced by a dictatorship. These authoritarian governments said that their centralization of power and curtailment of liberty would enable them to engineer rapid development. And by discarding the alien democracy they said they were promoting the re-Africanization of the continent's government. They would also claim that other political parties had been outlawed because they were against national integration and social progress and that the state's party is the embodiment of tradition. Since the leaders were the heroes of independence, they found it easy to call for continued changes. The leader centralized decision-making by eliminating intermediate offices and most levels of the bureaucracy and of the military. The expansion of the state also made extremely wealthy leaders amid a growing poverty.
Many circumstances made for a short experiment with democracy. We have seen that it takes time for democratic institutions and inclinations to take root and to thrive. Neither the leadership nor the people were committed to its growth or permanence; nobody cared to tolerate its development–or even to defend it. The urgency of the transfer of power from the colonialists could not allow for a lengthy period to establish democracy. Chazon explains that the amount of government was more at issue than was its type, and that centralization was a substitute for consent. A new government was sometimes excessively authoritarian in trying to hide the fact that it was inadequately authoritarian.
By the 1980s, most states were in the middle of an economic, social, and political crises. The official agencies could not perform even the most essential tasks. The already-scarce resources often ended up in the hands of officials who were diverting public funds. Social, medical, and educational services were deteriorating. Many nations had food shortages and basic necessities were unavailable. Such situations resulted in a visible decrease in the power and legitimacy of the state; decrees were simply ignored as people realized the regime's incapacity to govern. Many persons were more occupied with the daily search for needs within the confines of the existing, inefficient government than with devising a new form of government.
There were fifty coup d'etats in Africa in twenty years. The least-stable regimes were those that had little state-society interaction. Civil war occurred most often in those nations where the influence of various social groups was seen to be as strong as that of the state, itself. The intolerant absence of a willingness to compromise with other views led to civil war in many nations. Civil war coupled with drought brought horrific famine to some countries. Civil war would typically last twenty years until people decided that compromise was better than continued war and its daily death and destruction. After a couple decades (about a generation) of experience with the unjust authoritarian replacements for the authoritarian governments of the colonialists, people were ready to once again consider democracy.
Grassroots movements emerged to promote democracy as the people began to campaign against unbridled state power. The previous experiment with democracy had been arranged by the elite groups at the top, but the new call for democracy was coming from the people. As democracies were once again put into place, the people held the state directly responsible for its results and judge its performance in improving the well-being of the people, in the protection of civil rights, the promotion of equitable distribution, the administration of justice, and in the reduction of waste, corruption, and exploitation. The people now directly attribute depressed situations to the actions of the government and are aware of the pervasiveness of the state in their daily life. They are no longer content with rulers who enrich themselves at public expense. Such attitudes are the beginnings of strong democracy.
The peoples of these countries of externally concocted, arbitrary geographical regions had to form themselves into nations even though they contained random portions of unrelated tribes, cultures, and languages. Today, the citizens of each African country have successfully developed an emotional attachment to their nation and have a sense of nationalism. At the same time, people continue also to identify themselves with their village, region, and ethnic group.
During the 1980s, many Latin American nations switched from authoritarian governments, which were often military dictatorships, to those of a civilian, constitutional, and democratic form. Booth and Seligson discuss the political culture of the Central American nations in Diamond's book. They ask if economic downturns might play a role in driving the changes in regime type. For example, many Central American nations changed from civilian to military government during the great depression, and then back again after the recession of the 1970s. They report that the willingness of people to allow dissenting views within their society depends on three things: whether or not their party is in power, whether or not they are in the middle of a civil war, and on the percentage of people who are dissenters.
Diamond points out that since 1990, there has been a snowballing effect in the number of democracies in the world. Seeing the ability of one nation to make the switch away from an authoritarian system gives hope to others that they too can succeed in the transition. Peoples and leaders can learn from the efforts of others. In the formative years, the elite of a nation often plays a larger role than do the masses in the initialization of change. The elites have more power and influence on political events. They also have more elaborate political beliefs–and those beliefs are more likely to guide their actions. Ruling groups can largely determine the character and pace of democratization, but a democracy is stable only if the masses are committed to it.
Notice also that long-established democracies themselves are in a continuous state of becoming. Social, economic, and even generational changes produce new interest groups. The interests must be listened to or they might topple the democracy. Democracy requires flexibility or it crumbles. Some regimes, including the Italian, Japanese, Israeli, and U.S. governments are in danger of becoming inflexible due to ties to corporate and political interest groups. Political elites must respond–even if they don't lead–because only they can enact reforms from within the current government. Notice also that within the externally imposed governments of Iraq and Afghanistan, the successors of the George W. Bush administration are going to experience these same lessons in political cultural as they try to externally impose democracy where it is not already ingrained into culture.
Visit http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/africa/current.html or http://allafrica.com for African news today. For videos of praise poetry, browse http://aaas.osu.edu/praisepoetryproject/prototype/index.cfm. For music, visit www.afropop.org. See www.dayzero.co.za/steps/films/films_52/_films_52.htm for video clips involving the AIDS epidemic. Visit www.era.anthropology.ac.uk/Era_Resources/Era/Daylife/index.html for videos of a day in the life of Somie Village in today’s Cameroon.
Guiding principles for U.S. foreign policy
In Understanding Central America, Booth and Walker present a recipe for successful U.S. foreign policy that is designed to build and strengthen democracy around the world. They recommend that U.S. foreign policy pursue progress that supports genuine social, economic, and political development based on grassroots, majority participation. It should stop dumping money on pro-U.S. regimes regardless of their behavior, and stop underwriting large, export-based "development" projects that involve only large corporations. The small portion of the resulting, generated wealth that does remain within the country does not improve the well-being of the general population. The result is simply an increase in inequality and unrest within the nation (recall the U.S. labor unrest due to inequality during the 1880s). In some nations, the political leaders receive more income from exports (sales to foreign consumers) than from the local sale of locally produced goods. This can make those leaders less concerned about their own people. In contrast, 80% of U.S.-made products are consumed in the U.S., so citizens as consumers serve a purpose that the moneyed elite cannot do without, or even ignore.
A better foreign policy would instead assist small producers, peasant cooperatives, worker-owned enterprises, and labor intensive activities geared toward local and regional markets–as opposed to capital intensive enterprises. Aid money should be channeled through organizations experienced in grassroots economic development. Dependence on foreign markets can be socially destabilizing. The goal of the policy is to promote the many aspects of democracy that we have seen above, including greater public participation, government responsiveness, and the development of an increasing number of interest groups and political parties. The role of political parties is to increase debate and tolerance and to help guide and choose the actions and goals of the recipient nation's government. It makes good sense to promote anything that better enables a nation to once again be self-sufficient in its food production. U.S. policy should promote grassroots programs in literacy, education, housing, nutrition, and health. The health of infants is an especially important goal because it has been found that, when orchestrated by the government, the simple and basic application of health and sanitation procedures quickly decreases the infant mortality rate from, for example, one child in five to one in five-hundred (see Chapter 22). U.S. foreign policy should promote equality and social justice; if it does otherwise then it makes people mad at the U.S. Nobody benefits from that approach.
Traditional U.S. policy protects its economic and security interests by attempting to gain and hold as much influence as possible over events and policies and by trying to keep pro-U.S. and elite-dominated regimes in power. In the past, the goal of much of U.S. foreign policy was to suppress communism at all costs. This hurt the image of the U.S., created many enemies, and played a role in the deaths–due to war and its accompanying famine–of many persons throughout the world. The U.S. can best promote its own interests by promoting within each nation the aspects of successful democracy. The U.S. population tends to be ill-informed about world affairs, and U.S. legislators tend to be easily manipulated by the slightest claim of a communist intrusion. Both groups are susceptible to unexamined "patriotic" appeals and maneuvering.
Many foreign policy institutions are listed at http://www2.etown.edu/vl/amforpol.html, including the following websites. Some reports on U.S. foreign policy can be found at www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat. You might like to visit the American Foreign Policy Council at www.afpc.org. The Center for International Policy “promotes a U.S. foreign policy based on international cooperation, demilitarization and respect for basic human rights,” see www.ciponline.org. The Coalition for American Leadership Abroad consists of fifty organizations furthering well informed public debate about international issues affecting U.S. interests, see www.colead.org.
To form a quick characterization of a nation's present social, political, and economic situation, compare a few of its current figures with those from a few decades ago. Such figures might include the infant mortality rate, portion of its food supply grown within that nation, average life-span, literacy rate, average number of years of education, income and wealth by population fifths, real wages and purchasing power, the portion of an individual's budget spent on food and housing and health care, the United Nations Human Development Index, the Gini coefficient, the portions of urban and rural populations, portions of workers in agriculture and industry, the agricultural portion of the Gross Domestic Product, the portions of the governmental budget spent on well-being and education compared with that spent on the military, the average number of manufactured items in the home and the portion of those items made within that nation, portions of persons of various age groups living in poverty or in substandard housing, suicide rates, malnutrition rates, rates of child neglect, portion of the population that is in jail, average worker wages as a percentage of average executive wages, compensation of employees as a percent of national income, unemployment rates, international assistance money, number of deaths and disappearances, number of refugees, crime rates, average number of labor strikes per year, the number of officially recognized political parties, the number of anti-regime organizations, average number of political demonstrations per year, average number of hours per year a person spends discussing and participating in politics, and compare its Purchasing Power Parity and its Gross Domestic Product's growth rate to the growth rate of its population. These things measure the success of a government in promoting the well-being of its citizens. We will see more of these things in Chapter 22.
A global, democratic assembly of democratic nations
Many aspects of today's civilization have become global in extent. To catch up with this reality, certain aspects of our government will become global in extent. In his article Democracy: From City-States to a Cosmopolitan Order? David Held describes the increasing need for a democratic assembly of democratic nations in order to be able to deal with today's global issues. Some issues that are larger than one nation include the following. A single nation cannot pass laws to stop the causes of acid rain. Smallpox cannot be eradicated from the entire population of the Earth by vaccinating the people of a single nation. A single nation cannot regulate the Internet because it is global in extent. A country cannot pass laws to regulate the dwindling, non-renewable natural resources of another country. There has been a recent globalization of financial and production systems with the result that even the most powerful nations can no longer control their own economy. We saw in Chapter 18 that the effects of internal economic adjustments can be wiped out by the effects of external reactions to that attempted adjustment; external reactions have cancelled some steps taken by the president trying to control the economy of the U.S. (Will the European Union become global in extent? When will China, India, and the U.S. join?) We saw that today's global corporations cannot be fully controlled by any single country; they act as if they are a member of whichever country suits their interests at the moment. Antitrust legislation and minimum-wage laws and such would now need to involve the global cooperation of all nations.
For the last 5,000 years, each of the political units of the world have been independent, sovereign, and selfish entities that were answerable to no others. Relations between states have been a matter of power politics. There has been a recent surge in the number of democracies in the world, but this has not been accompanied by an increase in the democracy between democratic states. In this century, commercial and military operations each became global in scope but government has not at all. Each democratic state is based on a constitutional agreement to be the sole guarantor and protector of the rights and welfare of its members. Today's democracies receive the consent to govern through elections of governmental officials who take care of the state's day-by-day business. (Remember that in ancient Athenian participatory democracy, the citizens themselves operated the executive, judicial, and legislative components of government.) It has been a fundamental democratic idea that each group of persons has the right to govern themselves and to plan their own future.
In many aspects of today's globally connected world there can no longer be an independent group of people. Independent, sovereign, selfish nations cannot control today's global issues. (Third-world nations are already familiar with external influences on internal affairs but this comes as a recent shock to "powerful" nations.) One nation cannot take internal steps to deal with the global issues of health, law enforcement, the environment and natural resources, or of business and economic matters. Instead, there have been an increasing number of international agreements that attempt to guide and regulate these things.
There is a new international challenge to democracy to find global approaches to global issues. These global approaches will involve all of us because the issues affect all of us. David Held suggests that the answer is for the democratic nations to form an assembly of equal nations so that we can democratically approach these global issues. This is not a single world-government but a single cooperation among the world's governments on the issues that require this global cooperation. Constituency and representation must become global in size when an international issue needs to be brought under democratic control. It was mentioned above that there is much to be gained by pooling global resources on large projects and that everyone prefers local government on local issues. We will continue to have local institutions within a global superstructure. The specific inadequacies of the old-style independent nation means adjustments are going to occur. David Held says the arrangement of the United Nations would be close to filling the need but the superpower security council veto has left the U.N. in the power-politics world of old-style, independent, selfish, sovereign nations. For a more complete description, you might like to read his entire article. (For current news on this topic, you might visit the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance at www.idea.int.)
The political system is another aspect of a people’s culture. The form of government each person believes to be "natural" is that which existed during his or her childhood. For example, those of us who have always had helpful kings and queens believe that the only natural form of government is one run by a king and queen. This part of our culture cannot be instantly altered; it usually takes longer than a generation. This also means that one nation cannot impose a form of government of their own choosing onto the people of another nation. Neither can democracy be externally imposed on a people. That imposed government will not be accepted as natural or legitimate. History has shown that democracy is hard to begin and hard to sustain; often, a second democratic election is harder to achieve than was the first. Elections do not continue to occur unless the culture of the people includes those democratic elements described above–principally tolerance, trust in fellow citizens, and compromise. The colonial powers introduced the people of India to democratic principles–in part for their own preservation–through a number of generations but showed only authoritarian governmental control to the people of Africa. After a century of autocratic rule in which Africans were allowed little role in government, the colonial powers left. Depending on which particular nation one considers, they left one or two generations ago. African nations have mostly been autocratic since then, but they are increasingly experimenting with democracy. When similarly authoritarian controls were relaxed in Eastern Europe, people were soon expressing the multiple views that form democracy.(If you find the formation and modification of government to be an interesting aspect of our culture and civilization then you might like to read about the comparative political science of nations.) We saw that authoritarian systems consist of a single-party, with a single view of goals and priorities, that is able to force the nation down a single path because they outlaw all other political parties and agendas. It is as if the U.S. allowed only the Democratic or only the Republican party to choose goals and actions for the nation. In such a state, only one person or group has the power to dictate policy.
Democracy limits power by spreading and balancing it between several persons and groups. This also means that the views, priorities, and agenda of no single group can monopolize the actions of the government. Much of daily politicking consists of the attempt to persuade a sufficient number of others that a specific action should be taken by the nation. Democracy is more than elections and voting and more than free speech and other civil and personal liberties; it is the sharing of power among many persons and the blending of views into a compromise that partially satisfies everyone. Democracy functions only through this blending and sharing. It is undemocratic behavior for one group to imagine that their view should be imposed on everyone else. Democracy is a firm belief in the toleration of different views and the right of dissent of others who offer opposing views and priorities. Democracy requires consensus building not a view that "only my way is right and I won't compromise." The opposite of forming a consensus is conducting civil war. Democracy not only limits the pace of change but also its magnitude. Democracy requires moderation, cooperation, bargaining, accommodation, and a flexibility that allows goals to be negotiable and to change through time. People of democratic character believe that no group or person has a monopoly on truth and that there is no absolute truth nor a single, correct answer to public policy issues. Restraining one’s ideology allows results to occur; otherwise, there is nothing but deadlock. Compromise makes all parties winners rather than having clear winners and clear losers. While the citizens of a stable monarchy must have a confidence in benevolent kings and queens, the members of a stable democracy have a distrust of power and must have trust in the motives and intelligence of the other citizens. A democracy is stable if its citizens believe that the government is responsive to their requests and stated needs; in turn, citizens must participate in the debate before they can measure the responsiveness of that system.
The people of a nation will bear much personal hardship imposed on them by a poorly functioning government. If the leaders of our government do such a poor job that we have to walk ten miles for daily water then we will just walk ten miles for daily water. We will not often resort to violent revolt unless there is no water or food. (What then are the results of economic sanctions placed against the people of one nation by several others?) Historically, prolonged harsh economic conditions invite the emergence of harsh dictators. Brief hardship or poverty does not impel a people to change their government, but a sudden and dramatic increase in the inequality of wealth, as sometimes accompanies industrialization or a nation's entry into the global market, does sometimes impel a people to change their government. (We saw that Ancient Athenian democracy was the response to the inequality of wealth occurring as some merchants began conducting “international” trade with distant states.) A government that performs poorly during a crisis is sometimes changed. To form a quick characterization of a nation's present social, political, and economic situation one can compare the change in the level of the standard indicators over the last few decades.
We have seen that there is an increasing need for a democratic assembly of democratic nations to deal with today's global issues. This is not a single world-government but a single cooperation among the world's governments on the issues that require this global cooperation. Everyone prefers local government on local issues, but global issues can be solved only in a global manner. There is much to be gained by pooling global resources on global projects.
Booth and Walker present a recipe for a successful U.S. foreign policy as that which promotes the development, within each nation, of the elements of successful democracy. The U.S. government should promote an increase in the number of views, the blending of views through compromise, and the generational building of commitment to this blending of views. They recommend that the U.S. stop dumping money on pro-U.S. regimes regardless of their suppressive behavior, and stop underwriting large, export-based "development" projects. These projects mostly benefit the wealthiest members of the nation, increase inequality, and can result in a leadership more responsive to foreign business interests than to its own people. When global business enters a nation and only increases the hardship of the citizens, those citizens get mad at the economic intrusion. The people who are suppressed by a government seen to be financially supported by the U.S. get mad at the U.S. for playing a role in their continued hardship that might otherwise end. While campaigning for president in the 2000 election, George W. Bush said that “Foreign policy is easy: the U.S. should just stop doing things that make the people of other nations mad.” Booth and Walker further recommend that better policy assists citizens, farmers, and small business activities. Aid money should be channeled through organizations experienced in grassroots economic development. U.S. foreign policy should promote equality and social justice. It makes sense to promote anything that better enables a nation to once again be self-sufficient in its food production. Policy should promote grassroots programs in literacy, education, housing, nutrition, and health. The health of infants is an especially important goal.
We have seen that historically we were either food collectors, growers, or wage-earners. If we were to cease being wage earners then we would be farmers, and if not farmers then food collectors. In each of these three cases we are a nuclear family, an extended family, and a social group. We also organize ourselves into either bands, tribes, chiefdoms, kingdoms, or nations. (Will we next form a global community of humans?) Throughout most hours of the year we are simply being a family and a small, social community. Only a few moments per year does the larger political system intrude into our lives (political history books contain a record of these events). The political system also combines a portion of its member’s time and efforts to create large, multi-person projects. The more persons in the political system, the larger the projects can be. The size of projects also depends on organizational abilities of the political system. Without a political system to organize our efforts–that is, to combine, utilize, and redistribute efforts–we can be only food collectors or precariously-living farmers.
For world news today, visit www.globalvision.org and its news site at www.gvnews.net. For video clips of its studies of world politics today, visit www.globalvision.org/sample/sample.html. The PBS series Wide Angle covers the politics of one nation at a time, see www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle. For a list of topics of concern to the voters of the U.S. and the world, visit www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction.
Questions
1. What will be the change in our civilization as we move beyond the era of independent sovereign nations and form a democracy of democratic nations?
2. Do you have any feeling of being a member of a global society? A national society? A city?
3. We saw how the industrialization of the U.S. developed over a 150-year period. It resulted in an increase in the number of items in our homes from 20 to 2,000 but also resulted in decreased community ties and decreased control over our own continued livelihood. There was a shift from 90% down to 1% of us working our own family farm as we became wage-earners. We also moved from rural to urban areas. When a nation sets out to industrialize today, these things can happen within a shorter time span and so be more stressful on the society. How has industrialization affected the Southeast Asian nations like Korea, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and China? How has the oil industry changes society in the Middle Eastern nations?
4. Suppose you had been living in a chiefdom for as many generations as anyone could remember when suddenly an outside force came and told your group that you were now part of a larger nation and were to take part in a democratically elected assembly. What would you think about this? What would the Kalapalo think about this? What would be the benefits and drawbacks? Do you think you can successfully command the people of a region of the world to turn their society into a replica of your own on a certain Tuesday? What is the role of culture in both sides of this attempt?
5. Define democracy. What are its benefits and drawbacks compared with other types of government? How does its practice change through the generations?
6. Which cultural elements make for successful and permanent democracy? Compare the existence of these elements in the U.S. during the years 1800, 1900, 2000, and today. Which of these elements are becoming increasingly imbedded in our society and which are decaying today?
7. A characteristic of authoritarian government is an intolerance for dissenting points of view. When our marketing advisors tell our political candidates to show "uncompromising commitment," and the candidates then act in an uncompromising manner, will this intolerance lead to the development of a one-party state? Will everyone feel that their government is being responsive to their requests if every candidate acts in an uncompromising manner?
8. Do the two dominant parties of the U.S. actively crush opposing points of view in any way? How do we guarantee that they don't?
9. A nation remains a one-party state only by outlawing all groups with an opposing point of view. Describe the laws that would result in the U.S. if suddenly there was only the Democratic Party and all other parties were outlawed. How would the Republican Party change the U.S. if it were the only lawful party? If a nation has elections with many candidates but only one party, what sorts of differences exist among candidates? In the U.S. today, do the Democratic and Republican parties hold a virtual monopoly on political power? What number of parties are need for a healthy democracy? Before elections there are televised debates among the candidates. Is it healthy for democracy that our current system sometimes restricts the debates to candidates from these two-parties? If we can't include everyone in a televised debate then how do we hear every point of view? Are there other, equally influential media? How do you go about getting your views heard through these other forms of communication? How much money does it take to get your view heard? Should we hear only those views that have sufficient funding? Does a lack of interest in other points of view crush other parties? Is this healthy? We saw how the Eastern European autonomous groups gained in power when they spoke a truth that was being ignored by the official party. Third parties in the U.S. would gain influence if they openly discuss a topic avoided by the main parties. List some of these topics.
10. Do those of us who live in small bands have government? Would they prefer to have a government that is paternalistic, authoritarian, or a multi-party democracy? Which form of government do those of us who live in chiefdoms prefer?
12. Describe how our types of government are related to the mammal hierarchy of individuals, the primate social system of dominant families, or to the mutually beneficial primate social system of exchanging help between the individuals of the society. Considering democratic, dictatorial, or paternalistic-authoritarian types of government, which is closest to our innate biology?
13. Compare religious and governmental philosophies concerning the struggle against injustice. How are these viewpoints related to our primate social system of exchanging help among the individuals of the society?
13. Does the leader of your country more often say "I," "the people," or "the nation”?
14. What are the main concerns of dictators, the leaders of single-party states, communist leaders, and the leaders of democracy?
15. Describe some opposing points of view concerning a recent event.
16. Do you feel that your state is responsive to your requests? Can you initiate changes and improvements? Does your vote count? In what ways do you participate in the public debate about issues? Did you vote? (See the next question.)
17. Write a letter to your representative in the legislature and to your executive, and send a letter to the editor of a newspaper describing your own point of view about some recent event or a goal for the state. Discuss your view at the next meeting of an interest-group.
18. Do you believe that free speech gives a person the right to shout "movie" in a crowded firehouse, as does the Atlanta Onion newspaper?
19. List some groups who threaten armed revolt against your state, and describe their point of view.
20. Describe a recent action of your state with which you agree, and one with which you disagree.
21. In Political Culture edited by Diamond, Booth and Seligson ask if you feel the government should censor extreme viewpoints or crush demonstrations? Should any group be allowed to hold meetings? Should they be permitted to occupy public buildings–during a "sit-in" for example–to publicize their point of view? Would you participate in an organization to try to solve community problems? Would you work for a political party, candidate, or election campaign? Do you think people who say bad things about the state should be allowed to vote or run for office? Rate your agreement with each of these three questions on a scale of one to ten.
22. List the political groups in your area and describe their goals.
23. Why is your state the legitimate holder of power?
24. Do multiple points of view and democracy always result from economic development?
25. Is there anything that a nation's leaders should keep secret from its citizens?
26. How do you choose which candidate you will vote for?
27. What does the current apathy of many U.S. citizens for everything political, both foreign and domestic, mean for the future of their democracy?
28. How are a people's religion and their view of the proper form of government related? What role has Confucianism played in the Chinese view of the "natural form of government?" What role has Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, and Islam played in their follower's views of the "natural form of government?" Since Hinduism and Buddhism are tolerant of the religious views of others, are they also politically tolerant? Has the intolerance of the Christian Inquisition appeared in any political manner?
29. Recently the issues of gun control and abortion have polarized the U.S. in an uncompromising manner. What will be the effect on the health of the nation's democracy if there is no resolution to these issues. How does the magnitude of polarization compare with that which existed just before the Civil War? Compare the compromising capacity of the citizens of the U.S. during the years 1800, 1900, and 2000. What were the reasons that the leaders and the citizens of the U.S. chose Civil War over compromise?
30. In the year 1776, why did the leaders and the people of the U.S. choose a democratic form of government? What other choices could they have made?
31. Describe something that is becoming worse within your nation, and something that is improving.
32. During the years 1970 through 1996, the average income of individuals within the U.S. decreased by almost 20% while the highest annual compensation of a CEO grew to be one billion dollars. Today, the CEO of a large corporation makes 500 times as much as the average worker within those corporation (in other countries this multiple is typically between twenty and fifty). Those of us who are among the wealthiest 1% hold 40% of the nation's wealth. One in five of our children today live in a home whose income falls below the poverty line. Have these changes occurred slowly or rapidly? What effect have these had on the health of U.S. democracy? What will be their future effect? (During the 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns, only Ralph Nadar of the Green Party mention these facts–neither the democratic nor Republican candidate did so. Instead, they timidly said "We are doing well, but not all of us.")
33. Were ancient empires just military institutions or did they play a role in the daily lives of their home populations? Were the ancient empires only overthrown by other empires or did the people of an empire ever choose to change the form of their own government? When did the last empire dissolve?
34. What is the difference between an ancient empire and the imperialism of the 16th through 19th centuries? Has imperialism stopped occurring?
35. How many nations are currently ruled by dictators?
36. List the social and elite groups within your nation at the time of its origin and today.
37. How are the priorities of your government proposed and selected?
38. Describe how various groups proposed to solve a recent issue and the compromise that was accepted.
39. Describe the views and priorities of ten different political parties within your nation.
40. Did Medieval Europeans view their system as an authoritarian regime? Were the chiefdoms of the Ancient Mesopotamian farming villages an authoritarian system?
41. We saw that some religions–for example, Buddhism and Confucianism–teach that the group is more important than the individual. What effect does this have on the accepted form of government?
42. What does it mean to have civil liberties? Describe the ways in which an authoritarian regime makes your life un-free. Is it better for everyone's well-being and the nation's progress if we do or don't have civil liberties?
43. If both the Democratic and Republican Parties in the U.S. employ the same marketing techniques of testing and polling, will that mean that both come to the same conclusions, become indistinguishable, and merge into a single party?
44. The communist system existed for just a few generations. Describe how the children of each new generation viewed communism as part of their culture. What would their parents have told them about the new system? How many generations would have to pass before your religion would be forgotten if it were to be outlawed by your government? When the communist system ended, did the oldest people feel that only the ended system was the natural form of government?
45. What percentage of your daily conversations involve domestic politics, and what portion concerns foreign politics? How do these portions compare with the citizens of other nations, or during revolutions?
46. How many generations are required to pass under a dictatorial regime before a subjugated people decide that it is the only "natural" form of government? Does the number of generations differ for democracies, chiefdoms, or kingdoms? (Political Scientists refer to the cultural adoption of political ideas as "Rustow's concept.")
47. Describe an aspect of a suddenly changed political system that a people will adjust to within a few years.
48. Can you relate the number of elapsed years during a transition from an old to a new system with the longevity of that new system?
49. How many years elapsed after the revolution of 1776 before the citizens of the U.S. stopped pointing out those aspects of government that worked better under the old system?
50. Can it occur that everyone in a nation agrees about priorities and policies? Can you relate the number of popular viewpoints to the size of the population?
51. Will the economic expansion of the communist state of mainland China result in a transition from an authoritarian to a democratic regime? Since both Taiwan and the Mainland are of the same people and culture, a comparison of the two through time might give clues to the range of political development that can occur from similar beginnings (its Lyapunov exponent). You might like to track and compare the future developments in the two nations.
52. Do modernization and economic growth turn authoritarian regimes into democracies? What is the role of an authoritarian leader?
53. Does a newly industrialized nation always suffer an increase in wealth and income inequality? (Political Scientists refer to this possibility as "Kuznet's trap.")
54. The economic development of some early cities of Greece and Rome occurred as they produced products for export to the older states of the Middle East and Mediterranean region. Can you compare this with the economic growth of any Eastern Asian nations after World War II?
55. Communist governments might discourage religion but have so far been unsuccessful in its elimination. What are their exact religious policies and laws, and how effective have they been in reducing religious activities and beliefs?
56. Compare Dr. Sun Yat-sen's Principles of the People with the ideals of Confucianism.
57. Why do you vote? The article by King includes a chart by Fu and Ying-Long listing possible reasons for which an individual might choose to vote. They asked people to choose one or more of the listed motives as a reason for voting and to choose one or more of them as the most important. The choices were to exercise civil rights, perform civic duties, express your own view, support the candidate you like, to influence governmental policy, was instructed or advised by parties or other political groups, was urged by family members or relatives, was urged by neighborhood associations, was urged by an organization you belong to, because you are acquainted with the candidate, was urged by colleagues of the organization you work for, or other. Why did you vote? Which items would you choose from this list?
58. Compare the political interest or apathy of the U.S. citizens prior to the Revolution, industrialization, Civil War, labor strikes of 1890s, depression, World Wars, Civil Rights Struggle, wars against communism, New York Bombings, and today.
59. How thoroughly are the characteristics of democracy imbedded in the beliefs of the citizens of the long-democratic United States? Has their level of belief increased or decreased through time? During the Revolution, were the U.S. citizens aware of the full set of characteristics of democracy described above? Has the full set of characteristics become ingrained into the beliefs of most citizens today? What portion of U.S. citizens are tolerant of the views of others and want to reach a consensus through a blending of views? How much does the typical educational curriculum teach us about the long list of characteristics of successful and continuing democracy? After the New York Bombings, politicians, news reports, and news personalities–who were in a position to influence many persons–proposed many responses to terrorism, including long-term detention of suspects without being charged of given "a speedy trial" (about 1,000 persons were held), torture of suspects, retraction of client-attorney privilege for suspected terrorists, ignoring the rules of the Geneva Convention concerning the treatment of prisoners of war, governmental monitoring of client-attorney conversations of suspected terrorists, trials of suspects by secret military tribunals that allow no review or appeal, murder of suspects in foreign lands, secret activities by the U.S. government, asking Arab visitors who are temporarily in the U.S. on visas to "please come into the FBI voluntarily for questioning to help us find terrorists" (the U.S. citizen who revealed the internal note suggesting that authorities hold them indefinitely for any visa problem deserves a special democracy award), citizens encouraged to report suspicious activities of other citizens, military personnel encouraged to report suspicious activities of other military personnel, retaliatory bombing of any nation suspected of playing a role, bombing of nations of certain ethnic or religious groups due to imagined stereotypes but also toleration of ethnic and religious groups, a ridicule of stereotypes, and some talk of presumed innocence until proven guilty. Discuss the democratic principles involved in each of these proposed responses. Which of these proposals were put into action, and for how long? What was the range of reactions by U.S. citizens to these proposed responses? Are the people of the U.S. learning or forgetting how to be democratic? If the rights of a citizen represent moral obligations and statements of human dignity, should these rights be extended to or denied from foreign peoples? What portion of U.S. citizens believes in racist and imagined stereotypes? What portion of the U.S. citizens believe "It is ok to kill the world's Muslims because they are all terrorists and inferior persons?" What portion of the U.S. citizens wanted to begin World War III between one billion Christians and one billion Muslims? Why? How many terrorists were there? Did the media investigate and present all views of the possible attackers, their goals and motives? How many alternative solutions did the media present? Did television news attempt to inform the U.S. citizen about Islamic culture and history in order to generate understanding amid the accusations? Did any media portray the culture of Afghanistan as inferior to that of the U.S.?
60. The government of India has passed laws against discrimination of all types. This means the abolition of the prejudices of untouchability existing under the ancient Hindu caste system. Describe the changes in society and culture that have occurred so far due to the elimination of this prejudicial aspect of the caste system.
61. What was the role of Hinduism in Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolent, civil disobedience?
62. Compare the Indian and U.S. Constitutions.
63. What portion of a democratic nation has to become politically apathetic before its government can perform authoritarian actions? What if a branch of the power-balanced government becomes complacent, or if the nation's leader does (as in the Iran-Contra affair)?
64. Compare the reasons for colonial activity of the European kingdoms, with those of the ancient city-states. Are colonies social, political, or economic enterprises? Do the colonies generally mix into the local societies, conquer them, or remain separate from them? What sorts of reactions occur in the colonized areas?
65. Is the democratic, authoritarian, or communist form of government closest to our biological background of parenting mammals and social primates? Are individual needs biologically older than community needs? Did our social primate ancestors place more emphasis on community needs or individual rights? How about bands, chiefdoms, and democracies? Describe some situations where one is more important than the other.
66. The purpose of an empire is the extraction of payment from others. Can you relate the emergence of empires to the size of population centers? To the size of their storehouses? Do individuals within bands have surplus items?
67. Why do the citizens of a nation choose to change their leadership? Hy do they choose to change their type of government? Does the current leaders, elites, or the people initiate and accomplish the change?
68. Which factors should determine U.S. foreign policy? Describe some aspects of U.S. foreign policy that have made the people of another nation mad, and some aspects that have made them grateful.
69. What was the role of the elites and the masses in the revolutions of U.S. and France?
70. Can authoritarian or democratic states more-rapidly accomplish needed changes? How are the "needed changes" selected?
71. Describe a few recent interest groups in your nation.
72. Dr. Hamid Latifi asks: Since the U.S. president today can affect the lives of everyone on the planet, should every person vote in this election?
73. Does your leader explain the government's motives in terms of emotions or facts?
74. What is the stated role of the United Nations? What should it be doing?
75. In Chapter 18 we found that many global corporations are owned by a mixture of U.S., European, and Japanese citizens, and that the concept of export and import is blurred because half the "imports" simply involve transfer between segments of a single global corporation. If U.S. foreign policy is meant to protect its economic interests by increasing profits from overseas commerce, by increasing exports, and by promoting a corporation's sales in other countries, what portion of that corporation should be owned by U.S. citizens, and how should we measure "exports?"
76. What are the security interests of the United States?
77. List some elements of each of the religious views from Chapter 13 visible in the activities of our political leaders, and give some examples of the Golden Rule at work in politics.
78. We saw that the U.S. Civil War meant a temporary absence of the Southern legislators who preferred state power to federal power. During the war, were the Northern legislators able to act as a single-party state and have their own way?
79. Why do people become terrorists? What are their goals? Why do the majority of terrorist bombings against U.S. corporations occur in Latin America? Why did terrorists bomb New York City? Discuss any possible role in promoting or reducing terrorism in each of the following situations. Does U.S. foreign policy–for example, in the financial support of a harsh ruler who might not otherwise exist–play a role in creating terrorist reactions? When global business enters a nation only to increase inequality, does this play a role in creating terrorist reactions? Why do some people hate the government and corporations of the U.S.? Some persons in the world despise the invasion of foreign cultures brought through movies, television shows, and corporate products–especially when they depict and encourage behaviors which are opposite to those of local custom (just as some of our grandparent's were opposed to the changes in culture which occurred in the U.S. as we first industrialized.) Does the invasion of foreign culture generate terrorism? Does the invasion of foreign government, commerce, or religion generate terrorism? Out of the 3,000 families who lost loved ones in the New York bombing, how many do you think became mad enough to kill someone, or gave money to support revengers who would kill someone? There might be a few such persons but most of the family members just hoped to get through months of grief as they waited for justice for the criminals. When the U.S. recently bombed a Sudanese factory, and the nation of Libya and such, how many persons who lost a loved one do you think were angered to such a degree that they wanted to kill Americans? Maybe a few but not everyone. Should we just continue trading bombs or should we find out what has made each other mad enough to trade bombs? We saw that infants feel angry when they believe they have been treated unjustly. Are terrorists angry because they believe that their people have been treated unjustly? What is the percentage of us humans who have murdered another human? What is the difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter? (For a while in 2001, I wondered if Christian nations would go to war with Islamic nations over nothing but stereotypes. I can tolerate a certain amount of racism but not when it threatens to generate World War III. Except for those few hundred Muslims who are terrorists, the other one billion of us humans who are Muslims just want to raise our children and pursue life.)
80. Many civil wars occurred in the world in 1850 after the Industrial Revolution was in full growth. Compare the reasons for civil war in the U.S. and elsewhere.
81. Imagine camping for several years with six families. What sort of difficulties and problems might arise that would require group decisions? For most of our past we lived in groups of about six families who had to compromise and develop solutions because we knew we were all better off remaining in a group than separating and going it alone. We might decide that instead of separating we will expend more effort trying to remain together. Our species lives by forming into groups. In the same way spouses expend effort to remain together during difficult times because the combination is worth the trouble. Our species does it this way because we live longer and so do our kids. We don't think of it that way as we do it: we just do it. Compare the reasons for forming and maintaining marriages with the reasons for forming and maintaining small groups of gatherer-hunters, and large, nation-sized groups. Are there any reasons to form a species-wide and planet-wide group?
82. In nations today, public discussion of injustice occurs whenever public discussion is allowed. For example, in the U.S. during 1840s there were discussions about the injustice suffered by women, slaves, and sweat-shop workers. Was there injustice, and debates of injustice, in ancient Mesopotamia, or in the sloshing empires of the Middle East around 1000 bc? Was discussion forbidden? When did authoritarian systems learn to forbid discussion and assembly of groups? How big does a group have to be to threaten an authoritarian leader?
83. What are the historical layers of political culture in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America?
84. Which elements of a people's culture and history influence the type of government they feel is "natural" and will support for the long term? Why do you feel that your nation's government is appropriate? Is it simply because "it has always been that way?"
85. Compare the role of government in an ancient city-state to that of a nation today.
86. In recent years, corporate media mergers have resulted in the situation that most news that is seen, read, or heard by people in the U.S. comes from but a handful of sources. Which is more important for our nation, efficient corporations "purged of redundant reporting" or the democratic debate of all voices? Will the internet save the Freedom of the Press by providing a full range of views and opinions to feed our public policy debates?
87. Create a piece of art that describes political systems or their evolution.
88. In what ways can a sovereign nation govern international corporations? In what ways is it unable to govern them?
Primary sources for the chapter
Political Culture and Democracy in Developing Countries (textbook edition), edited by Larry Diamond, 1994, Lynee Rienner Publishers, Inc., Boulder, Colorado.
Understanding Central America, John A. Booth and Thomas W. Walker, 1993, Westview Press, Boulder.
Democracy: From City-States to a Cosmopolitan Order? by David Held is an article (pages 78-101) in the book Contemporary Political Philosophy, An Anthology, Edited by Robert E. Goodin and Philip Petit, 1997, Blackwell Philosophy Anthologies, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Suggestions for further reading
Twentieth-Century Dictatorships, The Ideological One-Party States, Paul Brooker, 1995, New York University Press, New York.
Popular Organization and Democracy in Rio de Janeiro, A Tale of Two Favelas, Robert Gay, 1994, Temple University Press, Philadelphia.
The Challenge of Third World Development, Howard Handelman, 2000, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.
The Making of Urban Europe 1000-1994, Paul M. Hohenberg and Lynn Hollen Lees, 1995, Harvard University Press, Cambridge Massachusetts.
Crises in U.S. Foreign Policy, An International History Reader, Michael H. Hunt, 1996, Yale University Press, New Haven.
Principle of Politics, An Introduction, John J. Schrems, 1986, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Engelwood Cliffs, New Jersey.
Principles of International Politics, People's Power, Preferences, and Perceptions, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, 2000, CQ Press, Washington. D.C.
Introduction to Third World Politics, edited by William A. Joseph, Mark Kesselman and Joel Krieger, 2000, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston.
The Political Economy of International Relations, Robert Gilpin, 1987, Princeton University Press, Princeton.
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