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Steps Toward a Democratic World Order
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19073 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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1 / 1991 |
3,915 Words |
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Morton A. Kaplan
Editor and Publisher |
A democratic world order is desirable because it makes government responsible to the governed. The preconditions for democracy, even if not yet universal, have reached a stage in which the transition process requires and can accommodate international assistance. In many areas of the world a crucial test is underway between the forces of democracy and those of repression. This is not a matter to which the great democracies should remain indifferent.
A democratic world order should not be thought of as an analogue of a democratic domestic system. If it were, movement toward a democratic world order would be a goal so distant that it could have little discernible impact on contemporary policy. Moreover, if it were achievable, it might be undesirable.
Democracy, at least in the contemporary sense, rests on a consensus of values. We accept majority rule because of the belief that certain limits will not be breached by the majority, whether because of cultural or constitutional constraints. One of the most important of those constraints is on governmental interference with the leeway liberal democracy provides for individual autonomy (but not necessarily transient desires).
Where the consensus is absent, democracy is severely flawed. Elections in Iraq or Turkey, for instance, would not solve the problem of the Kurds. Therefore, the development of democracy in Iraq might establish only a majoritarian tyranny, which the Kurds would be morally right in rejecting. The differences in cultures, traditions, and institutions among the peoples of the world are so great that any set of uniform rules would do enormous damage to the expectations and life styles of most people.
Extending democracy
It may be that there are areas of the world in which the preconditions for democracy do not yet exist. In South Africa, for instance, the extension of the franchise may doom democracy unless there is a rapid buildup of black entrepreneurs, professional people, and managers. Other factors may militate against democracy elsewhere in the short run.
There is a great variety of ways in which democracy can be institutionalized. These have been adapted to individual historical and cultural patterns. The extreme egoistic individualism currently being expressed in the West is a pattern that other cultures wisely may attempt to avoid. Respect for the past, concern for the
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