Today my task is to justify my claim that democracy cannot be instilled in Iraq in any reasonable time frame and for any reasonable cost.
I begin by stressing the historical rarity of democracy. Civilization has a good 5,000 years of history now, and during those 5,000 years, with all those different cultures and different political experiments, the number of functioning democracies we can point to is frighteningly small: some of the Greek city-states, early Rome, England beginning sometime between the Glorious Revolution and 1850, the USA, and a good number of developed nations in the 20th century. Democracy does not come easily; it requires very special conditions to work. Indeed, there is not yet a single polity in the world that can lay a convincing claim to being a full democracy. The best examples in Europe and North America are still subject to criticisms regarding the special powers enjoyed by the wealthy in their governance.
Democracy cannot take root in unprepared soil. A culture must possess a number of important traits in order for democracy to function. The first of these traits is near-universal literacy. People cannot rule themselves if they cannot inform themselves on the political issues. Examine this map of literacy rates around the world. Note the strong correlation between literacy rates and democracy; that's no accident. Literacy is not a sufficient condition for a well-functioning democracy, but it's certainly a necessary one. Note that Iraq's literacy rate is below 50%. There is no way that this country is ready for democracy.
But that's only the beginning; there's another crucial consideration. Throughout history, the most common form of social structure is what I will call an "authoritarian patronage system". The basic structure is a pyramid ruled by the Top Dog, with lesser dogs at successively lower levels, all the way down to the base of regular folk. Obedience flows up the pyramid and goodies flow down. In effect, the Top Dog buys the loyalty of his underlings, each of whom buys the loyalty of those underneath him, all the way down to the bottom. This basic structure permeates every single society on the planet, even the democracies. Consider that Mr. Bush demands first and foremost from his subordinates their loyalty. And he rewards that loyalty -- standing by Mr. Rumsfeld long after his resignation was necessary, pardoning Mr. Libby, and so forth. Patronage systems are universal.
Patronage is fundamentally and profoundly inimical to democracy, because it runs counter to the rule of law. The rule of law establishes that policy is determined by commonly agreed upon standards. If you deserve a goody, you get it regardless of how some big dog feels about you. In the rule of law, antagonizing a big dog doesn't mean anything, because big dogs can't retaliate against little dogs. Only the law determines how these things are done.
Here's the crucial problem in making the transition from authoritarian systems to democratic systems: how do you replace patronage with the rule of law? The killer problem is that everybody has to have confidence in each other's sincerity. If you decide to play by the rule of law, and your enemy decides not to, he'll play you for a patsy, take advantage of your cooperative attitude, and seize power, eliminating you in the process. Every society has its antagonistic parties, and obedience to the rule of law requires these parties to trust each other -- something they develop no experience in while living under a patronage system.
In practice, this transition has been accomplished by a slow process, with laws steadily reducing the power of the patrons and incrementally replacing patronage with legal rights. This process has been underway in England (and its daughter polity, the USA) for about 800 years. France tried to make the jump overnight in 1789 -- it didn't work. French democracy didn't really stabilize until early in the 20th Century. German democracy got started in 1848, went through many vicissitudes, made an impressive early effort in the Weimar Republic, and then finally got its feet in the 1950s.
Japan provides a fascinating example of a really odd way to bring about democracy. As part of the Meiji Restoration, Japan made an effort to import democracy along with all the other Western ideas. They made a real college try at it, but they didn't have any idea how to do it properly. Japanese democracy collapsed in the 1930s, but was restored by the Americans after World War II. However, the Americans can't claim any of the credit for Japan becoming democratic. The Emperor simply declared that the Japanese would be democratic, and the obedient Japanese went to work embracing democracy. Again, they really didn't have a good idea how to do it, but the Emperor said so, and that was that. This is important, because the Emperor provided them with the means to replace the patronage system with the rule of law. They didn't have any of the problems with mutual trust that other societies have had.
Russia provides us with a beautiful example of the other side of this coin. Russian culture is profoundly paranoid. These people have been invaded by the Mongols, the Tatars, the Poles, the Turks, the Swedes, the French (twice), the Germans (twice), the Americans, the British, the Japanese -- at one time or another just about everybody has grabbed a piece of Russia. And their own history has been a bloody sequence of horrors and mass murder. Yes, the Russians are paranoid -- they've got good reason to be. They don't trust anybody. And that's why they have never been able to make democracy work. Without that sense of trust in each other, they can't make possibly live by the rule of law. They NEED a strong man ruling the country just to keep them from each others' throats.
So now let's turn to Iraq. Here's a country with 5,000 years of history, all of it despotic. Iraq has always been ruled by a tyrant. Sometimes that tyrant has been moderately benevolent; often he has been malevolent. The Iraqis have nothing in their history to show them how the rule of law works; they have never lived under the rule of law. And so a bunch of naive Americans think that they can snap their fingers, declare "Let there be democracy!" and it will simply spring to life. What a crock!
The most rapid democratization of a similar country was the experience of Turkey, which went from absolute despotism in 1918 to enlightened despotism with hints of democracy under Ataturk, military rule alternating with shaky democracy for many decades, and finally something vaguely democratic began to emerge in the 1980s. Turkish democracy is still weak, and we still don't know if it will stick, but I think that they crossed an important line with the election of the AK party in the last few years. It took 80 years, but Turkey appears to be well on its way to democracy.
So yes, Iraq could pull it off, but it will take 80 years and an enlightened despot enjoying the universal esteem of his people. If such a despot does not arise, it will take longer. Which means that Mr. Bush's second political goal in invading Iraq was hopelessly misguided and doomed to failure.
In Part IV of this series, I will discuss American options at this sad point.
Monday, November 19, 2007
Part III: Can Iraq become democratic?
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6 comments:
This post brings in fresh points of analysis on the issue of democracy in Iraq. It seems that political objectives in this war just cannot be accomplished, but I do wonder about a few things regarding this.
The Iraqi people seem to have a sense of self-awareness when it comes to their nation: despite the hatred for one another that Muslim sects within Iraq have for each other, polls seem to continually show that the Iraqi people do not want any sort of partition, and in fact, many of them have protested at the building of walls by U.S. forces in Baghdad to separate neighborhoods based on this.
What I mean to get at is that I don't believe that Iraqis do not understand the idea of the rule of law and nationhood; instead, I really think that the majority of them identify themselves as nationals, and thus I think that the rule of law is an applicable principle to these people.
Before I digress, I would also like to point out that while a lack of literacy hinders the free flow of information, Iraqis did have a surprisingly high voter turnout early in Iraq. This does not suggest America had succeeded in "bringing democracy", let alone stable democracy, in any way, shape or form, but it is another sign of the fact that Iraqis do seem to identify themselves with nationalism and law, not patronage.
However, I do have to address the horrid political environment, even after the recent improvement in security. Iraqis do have distrust, despite how they wish to identify themselves, and thus we can see no "power sharing agreement." With Shiites and Sunnis fighting an underground war within the security forces, who would be trustful? I can't be sure if this would work (after all, I'm not for staying in Iraq, by virtue of projections of staying until at least 2017), but I think that its unfortunately time to at least partially, for now, to forget the idea of "future warfighting" (vague definition, but I mean the general idea that we can leave it to a country's armed forces, with embedded western units/technology to give them an edge in conventional strength). The armed forces/police of Iraq are full of corruption, and as long as they exist, they are a channel through which conflict can travel, and thus a reason for continued fear and paranoia. Thus, the U.S. military needs to clean up the police and armed forces. Tough task, I wonder if it could be done.
In a nutshell, what I'm saying is that in an indirect sense, security has not improved, because bombs going off in the streets is not the only form of violence/conflict by any means. I think that the Iraqi people identify themselves very strongly as nationals, which is in fact impressive for a people who live under such sectarian divides. Putting two and two together, I think that democracy isn't working in Iraq, but that it's not a cultural obstacle, just a much bigger and more complicated security obstacle than what shows on the surface.
(I hope my paragraphs are fairly clear; I find it hard to keep my thoughts organized when writing in a small text box, so I'd be happy to clarify anything.)
-Alex
That's a good point about Iraqi nationalism. Yes, Iraqis seem to reverse the normal hierarchy of identifications that we find in Islamic countries. Most Muslims consider themselves members of the umma, the family of believers, first and foremost; a Sunni, Shiite, or other sectarian second; and a national citizen third. Many Iraqis seem to put their national identification higher than their religious identification. However, this might be a reaction to the political reality in which they find themselves: do they really want to be absorbed by any of their neighbors? Certainly the thought of being annexed to either Iran or Saudi Arabia must send chills down the spine of any Iraqi.
BTW, I'm not arguing that the Iraqis don't understand the rule of law in an intellectual sense; my argument is that their culture hasn't figured out how to make it work. They haven't learned to trust each other enough to achieve the minimum level of cooperation necessary to make a democracy viable.
I did not mean to suggest that I interpreted the post as an accusation of Iraqis not having the intellectual capacity to understand the rule of law, but meant to suggest that Iraqi culture is not the primary roadblock to effective democracy.
I once again state that corruption, infiltration, and infighting within Iraqi security may be the cause of the distrust. If security is corrupted by conflicting militias, every politician has to pay attention to how much force they can depend on to protect them, and what advantage they give to the other side's forces when deciding whether to extend the olive branch to a politician of another sect. So long as there is this kind of intra-government warfare, how can any politician trust another? Therefore, I think that there may be progress if there were a way to root out corruption from Iraq's armed forces. Maybe.
And how do we root out corruption in the Iraqi institutions? It may well be that what we call 'corruption' the Iraqis call 'loyalty to your own people'. It's that old patronage system. Remember, the patronage concept still plays a large role in every society, even American society. The difference between Iraqi culture and American culture in this regard is one of degree: we have greater restraints on the exercise of patronage. Look how difficult it is to root corruption out of American government. Mr. Bush grants clemency to Mr. Libby and what outcry is there? In a rigidly anti-corrupt society, people would be up in arms over such an abuse of the rule of law. But a few Americans squawk and the whole thing is quickly forgotten.
If it's so difficult to maintain strict controls against corruption here, imagine how much more difficult it must be in Iraq.
This is very true, as far as corruption goes.
However, I once again will have to discount patronage as being the blocker. There's an old saying that goes "one rotten fish ruins the barrel." In this case, all it takes is some militias with higher loyalty to religion/clan/etc than the state, and paranoia is understandably contagious.
Regardless, this leaves the question of how to root this out. A much higher degree of embedding U.S. forces within the security forces may be a start. While a country may have problems protecting itself against patronage even with the most advanced political machinery, I don't believe that that's entirely the same as a patronage-neutral party (the U.S. military/state department, which has no vested interest in doing personal favors for anyone in the Iraqi military/police) enforcing rules on a body that is prone to patronage/corruption.
If this kind of a restraint worked, it may be possible to give leg-room for sufficient trust to build up, so politicians can bring about proposals with trust. However, the time this would take is a very long period of time, and the American public's patience wears thin.
Indeed, it should be possible for a disinterested external force to enforce whatever rule of law the Iraqis decided upon, thereby building up everybody's confidence in the process. As you point out, however, this would take much longer than the American public has the patience for.
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