Democracy and Development

By Madhubhashini R. Rathnayaka

“The more well to do a nation the greater the chances that it will sustain democracy” says Seymour Martin Lipset

According to Rutsow, writings of American sociologists and political scientists favor three types of explanation of Democracy. One of these, proposed by Seymour Martin Lipset, Philips Cutright and others, connects stable democracy with certain economic and social background conditions, such as high per capita income, widespread literacy, and prevalent urban residence. A second type of explanation dwells on the need for certain beliefs or psychological attitudes among the citizens. A long line of authors from Walter Bagehot to Ernest Barker has stressed the need for consensus as the basis of democracy either in the form of a common belief in certain fundamentals or of procedural consensus on the rules of the game, which Barker calls "the Agreement to Differ.[1]Understanding the core idea of Lipset’s above mentioned statement will pave the way for deep analysis – hence if it is described further, Lipset moreover has elaborated it as “all the various aspects of economic development—industrialization, urbanization, wealth, and education—are so closely interrelated as to form one major factor which has the political correlate of democracy.”[2]Lipset has deliberately argued more broadly and it is not a simple correlation between per capita income and democracy[3].Depicting the relationship between democracy and development complicated, Adam Przeworski and Fernando Limongi[4] argue “democracies emerge as a result of economic development or they may be established independently of economic development, but may be more likely to survive in developed countries” In UNESCO Report on Democracy and Development the question is raised “Is democracy a precondition for development?” Considering all these aspects the argument can be summed up as whether democracy leads to development of a country, or whether development leads to democracy?

According to Robert A. Dhal in his book On Democracy “Democracy provides opportunities for 1) effective participation, 2) equality in voting, 3) gaining enlightened understanding, 4) exercising final control [by the people] over the agenda, and 5) inclusion of adults. The political institutions that are necessary to pursue these goals are 1) elected officials, 2) free, fair and frequent elections, 3) freedom of expression,4) alternative sources of information, 5) associational autonomy and 6) inclusive citizenship” [5]

Initially here in this study it will be taken consideration the economic development (Along with Education) with the two sets of democratic and authoritarian countries for easy comparison.[6]The information used is based on World Bank List on Economies – 2011[7] and Democracy Index Unit (DI)-2011[8] of Economic Intelligence Unit. According to DI 25 countries are shown as Full Democratic and from those countries 22 are High Income, while 3 countries are Upper Middle Income according to the World Bank List of Economies. Of 52 Authoritarian countries 19 countries are Low Income, 14 are Upper Middle Income, 12 are Lower Middle Income while 7 are High Income. The analysis shows almost all democratic countries are well to do while as a whole the other countries that do not practice democracy are not highly developed except a few. At the same time from the first 20 countries - under UNDP Human Development Index- 2011 - which are Norway,  Australia, Sweden, Netherlands, Iceland, Ireland, Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, Slovenia, Finland, Canada, Chzech Republic, Austria, Belgium, France, Spain, Luxembourg, United Kingdom and Slovakia[9] majority is Full Democratic. This shows that not only economic development but high statistic of life expectancy, education, and income indices (which are used to rank the Human Development Index) are visible in these countries.

According to DI thatin some 40 countries there has been deterioration in scores for media freedom since 2008. This has included three countries in Western Europe (France, Italy, Turkey), eight in eastern Europe (Albania, Azerbaijan, Hungary, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Russia and Serbia), nine in Latin America (Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua and Peru), four in the Middle East and North Africa (Iran, Egypt, Palestinian Territories and Saudi Arabia), four in Asia and Australasia (Fiji, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Thailand), and eight in Sub-Saharan Africa (Angola, Burundi,Cameroon, Congo Brazzaville, Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Madagascar and Rwanda). Thus the list of above mentioned countries reflect of a majority as developing and/or with situations of Authoritarian, Flawed Democracy and Hybrid.

The reasons for this outcome have been pointed out as underlying negative trends were exacerbated by the 2008-09 global economic crisis. Many governments have felt increasingly vulnerable and threatened and have reacted by intensifying their efforts to control the media and impede free expression. Increasing unemployment and job insecurity have fostered a climate of fear and self-censorship among journalists in many countries. The concentration of media ownership has tended to increase, which has had a negative impact on the diversity of views and the freedom of expression. Advanced nations have become more inward-looking and hence less interested and capable of monitoring and pressurizing emerging market governments to ensure freedom of the press. In authoritarian regimes, which have often become stronger and more confident, state control and repression of any independent media is a given and has if anything tended to get worse, with increasing attacks on independent journalists.[10]

And according to Rostow by 1960 it was not unreasonable for men to question whether democracy was to be the natural outcome of modernization in twentieth century. And to this result the endemic failure to make democracy work in the developing regions has contributed[11]At the same time Hertzen argues before the Reformation, democracy was unknown in Europe (and the rest of the world), apart from a few free cities and isolated farmer republics. Religious emancipation, Enlightenment ideas and the precedents of Antiquity, paved the way for democratic development, culminating with the American Revolution – actually an evolution. The French revolution was a disseminator of democratic impulses, but it also drove them off course. World War I was the harbinger of a deep crisis. Successive totalitarian regimes put the democracies under severe pressure but, despite an impressive display of power, they fell into their own trap; the all-out commitment of the United States turned the tables.[12]

Here in this study it is going to pay attention on countries which do and do not practice democracy in the present world; and how their political behavior links with the development with reference to Lipset’s interpretation of development.

Norway which has ranked as 1 in Democracy Index Unit (DIU) has of 427.1 $ billion Per capita Gross National Income in 2010 according to World Bank Development Indicators 2012and its Gross National Income Rank is 24. United States which is ranked as 1 by World Bank with14,645.6 $ billion Per capita Gross National Income is ranked by DIU as 19 in regarding democracy practice. Gambia which is ranked as 198 (the last) in Gross National Income with 0.8 $ billion Per capita Gross national income is ranked as 132 by DIU. The Gross National Income of North Korea is estimated as low income in the World Bank Development Indicators, which has been ranked as 167 (the last) in DIU. In view of that the two countries Norway which is top in Democracy has a high Gross National Income, while United States which is top in Gross National Income is Democratic- but the situation becomes opposite in relation to Gambia and North Korea.

Norway has hereditary constitutional monarchy government. Until the 1981 election, Norway had been governed by majority Labor Party governments since 1935, except for three periods (1963, 1965-71, and 1972-73) and from 1981 to 2005, governments alternated between Labor minority governments and Conservative-led coalition governments.[13] Stein Ringen mentionsNorway has a democratic tradition that goes back to 1814, when the then radical constitution that still prevails (with modifications) was adopted.[14]The nation state has provided the framework for three modern political projects: theconstitutional state, democracy and the welfare state and Oil wealth has made it easier to sustain both its commitment to participation in the international arena and its national welfare schemes[15]The Norwegian economy is a prosperous mixed economy, with a vibrant private sector, a large state sector, and an extensive social safety net. The government controls key areas, such as the vital petroleum sector, through extensive regulation and large-scale state-majority-owned enterprises.[16]

Before the independence from Denmark in 1814 the Norwegian economy was traditionally based on local farming communities combined with other types of industry, basically fishing, hunting, wood and timber along with a domestic and international-trading merchant fleet. After the Norwegian spesidaler gained its par value to silver in 1842, Norway saw a period of significant economic growth up to the mid 1870s.[17]Independence in 1905 (from Sweden –Writer) coincided with the advent of rapid industrialization.[18]Officially Norway was neutral during World War I. However, in terms of the economy, the government clearly took the side of the British and their allies. From 1917, when Germany declared war against non-friendly vessels, Norway took heavy losses. After the war the challenge was to reconstruct the economy and re-establish political and economic order. The Labor Party, in office from 1935, grabbed the opportunity to establish a strict social democratic rule, with a growing public sector and widespread centralized economic planning.[19] Considering oil resource, Norway's emergence as a major oil and gas producer in the mid-1970s transformed the economy. Large sums of investment capital poured into the offshore oil sector, leading to greater increases in Norwegian production costs and wages than in the rest of Western Europe up to the time of the global recovery of the mid-1980s[20] and Norway is the world's second-largest gas exporter; and seventh largest oil exporter.

Considering democracy, Norway has proved fertile ground for democracy. That is explained by historical factors, by a rather remarkable experience of progress that followed in the wake of independence, and by solidity of public policy decision-making and Norway is today a highly egalitarian society, but egalitarianism is not, as is often believed, a recent product of the welfare state. It is rather the country’s historical inheritance and a legacy that was not created but maintained by the welfare state.[21]On the contrary Raymound Guesn argues “ ‘Democracy’ as s self-conscious, theoretically articulated and defended, positively valuated political ideal associated with a political movement , is an invention of the very late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries” and moreover he states that, though there were early Greek experiments in democracy and also form of government practiced in some of Swiss cantons there was no real continuity between any of these experiments and any concrete feature of the modern world.

If it is considered aboutthe7 Authoritarian countries which are underHighly Developed category;Saudi Arabia, Equatorial Guinea, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, Baharain and Kuwait of which economies are majorly backed by oil and natural gas industry. On the other hand 13 countries out of 25 which are categorized as full democracies own proven oil reserves- all of them are high income countries. In this narrow analysis it is visible that “black gold” has become a factor that decides the economic development of the countries, no matter the political systems operated. But once democratic system is practiced in these countries as they are wealthy, it supports the prevalence of the system.

But there are some other factors like historic political behavior of the countries that fertile the prevalence of democracy. When considering the historical emergence of modern democratic regimes according to Huntigton it falls into four phases. What could reasonably called a democratic political system at the national level of government first appeared in the Unites States in the early nineteenth century. During the following century democratic regimes gradually emerged in Northern and Western Europe in the British dominions, and in a few countries in Latin America.Virtually all significant regime changes were from less democracy to more democracy.[22] In the meantime Lipset points out that the wealthiest countries like United States and Canada were with the nonexistence experience of socialist parties and other wealthiest countries like New Zealand,Switzerland, Sweden, United Kingdom, Denmark, Australia, Norway, Belgium, Luxembourg and Netherlands moderate socialism predominates as the form of leftist politics. In none of these countries did the Communists secure more than higher percentage of votes.[23]But the historical behavior and factors of the countries decide their direction to democracy and non-democracy. According to Rostow on the eve of first World War the English-Speaking world, France, Scandinavia and Germany evolved with the direction that parliamentary democracy was the natural with Japan and Russia, Vast China and the colonial countries, but the situation was changed with the first World War and aftermaths.[24]

As it has been discussed about Norway which is Full Democratic and a High Income Country, thus it has to be compared with another in which Full Democracy is not practiced, but a method like Authoritarianism is practiced. China can be considered as an ideal example for this. Over the last century, the Chinese people have experienced three historic changes on its way forward. The first stage was marked by the 1911 revolution, which overthrew the autocratic monarchy that had ruled China for thousands of years. The second stage came with the foundation of the People’s Republic of China, and the third with reform, an opening up and a bid to achieve socialist modernization. And Ever since Deng Xiaoping opened up China’s economy more than 25 years ago, inaugurating an era of blistering growth, many in the West have assumed that political reform would follow. Economic liberalization, it was predicted, would lead to political liberalization and, eventually, democracy.[25] But as predicted, political liberalization did not come into visible in China. The country has learnt from the lapses of Soviet Union and as a result of that economic freedom was grated in high level but oppressing the political opponents.[26] In the chart no 3 extracted from his article Does Economic Success Require Democracy?[27]it has been shown how the politically repressed countries surpass the economic growth of politically free countries. At the same time he mentions unfree China had a growth rate of 9.5 percent from 2001 to 2005.

Unlike many transition economies in the former Soviet bloc, the Chinese economy had better economic fundamentals (absence of a monetary overhang, high savings rates, a young and relatively well-educated and healthy labor force, a relatively small socialist state and a flexible central-local political structure conducive to local initiatives). The combination of enlightened government policy and lure of the huge potential market also attracted enormous foreign direct investment, mostly from the Chinese Diaspora.[28] According to Hassett that the un-free governments now understand that they have to provide a good economy to keep citizens happy and they understand that free-market econ­omies work best.[29] But then arises another question does only good economy keeps the citizens happy? Once other factors like freedom of expression, equality, free and fair elections, human rights etc. are violated and corruption reigns do they enjoy the real life? But countries like China always tend to control people via many ways to keep them bounded. As part of China’s political institutions, information and mind control has been conducted for more than half century since Chinese Communist Party (CCP) took power in 1949. While the information control means, through personnel control of editors and reporters, all media in China; the mind control includes indoctrination from kindergarten to college through officially compiled textbooks, as all teachers are categorized as “educators of CCP”. Therefore, it is not simply motives of some officials but the system itself that imposes and enforces information and mind control.

I would like to point out first that, when the countries face with economic mishaps, maintaining democracy becomes difficult, for an example media freedom which is an essential factor of democracy is oppressed in countries, and the background factors shown for it are mainly related to economic mishaps faced by the governments in the respective countries. Some of the top listed countries under Flawed Economies in DI which are Cape Verde , Portugal, South Africa, France, Slovenia, Italy, Greece, Botswana, Estonia, Chile, Israel, Taiwan, Slovakia , India , Cyprus , Lithuania , Timor-Leste, Trinidad and Tobago including Sri Lanka it reflects that most of these countries were colonized by the Western world and directed towards the practice of democracy, the countries have been facing with economic crisis, civil wars, invasions in recent history and much more problematic situations. Thus struggling to overcome these problems finding short and effective solutions no matter democratic approach or any other these countries have flaws in democracy- which does not mean that they are not good in governance. Sometimes the case becomes when the democratic methods of other countries are implanted in foreign soil without adaptation it also become a fail, but if we consider a country like Japan which also has the country’s roots in the ruling system, that has become successful in both practice of democracy and economic development.

Bibliography

EH.net, Economic Histroy of Norway Retrieved from http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/grytten.norway

Democracy Index Unit, Democracy Index- 2011

Dhal, A  (16^th Dec 2012) On Democracy Retrieved from http://www.newschool.edu/uploadedFiles/TCDS/Democracy_and_Diversity_Institutes/Dahl_%20On%20Democracy.pdf

Lipset, Seymour (16^th Dec 2012) Some Social Requisites of Democracy : Economic Development and Political Legitimacy, Retrieved from (Stable URL) http://www.jstor.org/stable/1951731 

Minxin Pei, Carnegie Economic Institutions, Democracy, and Development,  World Bank Conference on Democracy, Market Economy, and Development, February 1999  Retrieved from <http://www.carnegieendowment.org/1999/02/26/economic-institutions-democracy-and-development/3i9>

Przeworski, Adam and Limongi, Modernization: Theories and Facts, Retrieved fromhttp://dss.ucsd.edu/~mnaoi/page4/POLI227/files/page1_13.pdf

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Wucherpfennig, Julian Modernization and Democracy: Theories and Evidence Revisited

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[1]Rustow, Dankwart (16^th Dec 2012)  A Comparative Politics -Transitions to Democracy: Toward a Dynamic ModelRetrieved from <http://dcpis.upf.edu/~raimundo-viejo/docencia/pehe/pdfstransiciones/Rustow_1970.pdf>

[2]Lipset, Seymour (16^th Dec 2012) Some Social Requisites of Democracy : Economic Development and Political Legitimacy, Retrieved from (Stable URL) http://www.jstor.org/stable/1951731 

[3]Wucherpfennig, Julian Modernization and Democracy: Theories and Evidence Revisited, Retrieved from

[4]Przeworski, Adam and Limongi, Modernization: Theories and Facts, Retrieved fromhttp://dss.ucsd.edu/~mnaoi/page4/POLI227/files/page1_13.pdf

[5]Dhal, A  (16^th Dec 2012) On Democracy Retrieved from http://www.newschool.edu/uploadedFiles/TCDS/Democracy_and_Diversity_Institutes/Dahl_%20On%20Democracy.pdf

[6] Annexure 1

[7]World Bank List on Economies – 2011

[8]Democracy Index Unit, Democracy Index- 2011

[9] UNDP Human Development Index 2011 Retrieved from <http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/HDR_2011_EN_Complete.pdf>

[10]Democracy Index Unit, Democracy Index- 2011

[11] Rotsow,W,W, 1971, Politics and the Stages of Growth, Cambridge University Press

[12]Hertzen, Gustav, The Challenge of Democracy p. 53 Retrieved from http://gustavhertzen.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/the-challenge-of-democracy_net-2.pdf

[13]US Department of States (30^th Dec 2012) Background Note: Norway Retrieved fromhttp://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/3421.htm

[14]Taiwan Journal of Democracy, Volume 6, No. 2: 43-55 Retrieved from <http://www.tfd.org.tw/docs/dj0602/043-056%20Stein%20Ringen.pdf>

[15]Østerud, Øyvind, The Norwegian Study on Power and Democracy  Retried from <http://www.oecd.org/futures/33800474.pdf>

[16] Central International Agency (CIA) the World Fact Book Retrieved from <https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/no.html>

[17]EH.net, Economic Histroy of Norway Retrieved from http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/grytten.norway

[18]Taiwan Journal of Democracy, Volume 6, No. 2: 43-55 <http://www.tfd.org.tw/docs/dj0602/043-056%20Stein%20Ringen.pdf>

[19] http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/grytten.norway                                                                                       

[20]<http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/3421.htm>

[21]<http://www.tfd.org.tw/docs/dj0602/043-056%20Stein%20Ringen.pdf>

[22]The Interaction Between Democracy and Development UNESCO publication

[23]Lipset, Seymour, Political Man Retrieved from www.archive.org

[24]Rotsow, p. 267

[25]Bueno, Bruce , Development and Democracy Retrieved from http://www.hoover.org

[26]Hassett, Kevin, Does Economic Success Require Democracy, Retrived from http://www.american.com

[27]ibid

[28],Minxin Pei, Carnegie Economic Institutions, Democracy, and Development,  World Bank Conference on Democracy, Market Economy, and Development, February 1999  Retrieved from <http://www.carnegieendowment.org/1999/02/26/economic-institutions-democracy-and-development/3i9>

[29]http://www.american.com