Nafis Abedin

Section #09
Research Essay
9 March, 2016

Democracy: Does it suit every country?

In the United States, it is widely accepted that democracy is the best form of government.

After all, the countries that are ranked the highest in the democracy index are also the most

developed countries in the world. The term democracy originated in Ancient Greece in Athens

during antiquity around 6th century BCE. The word democracy means rule by the people. In

the earliest democracy, the citizens of Athens were directly involved in the political process.

Since then, democracy have evolved and many different forms of democracy have emerged.

From political science, the surge of democracy occurred in three separate waves. The first wave

started in the United States during the Jacksonian Era when the majority of the white males in

the United States gained the right to vote. The second wave began after the Allies won the World

War II and started spreading democracy to many of their newly invaded countries and territories.

And lastly, the third wave began with the establishment of volatile and unstable democracies in

many underdeveloped countries in Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Africa. Even though

democracy comes in many different forms, however, in order for a democracy to work

successfully, some factors must to be ensured. First of all, there has to be a system of checks and

balances to prevent corruption in the government. Secondly, every citizen needs to have equal

rights and the opportunity to vote and make their voices heard in some way. So a bill of rights is

necessary to protect the rights of the citizens. Lastly, a multiparty system and fair elections are

needed to let citizens choose their leaders through voting. These characteristics are prevalent in

all of the developed countries that have democracy, and it seems to be working out well for them.

However, the question is, whether democracy suits the underdeveloped and developing
countries. Many third world countries have had trouble making democracies succeed. These

countries fail to establish the essential features of an incorrupt democracy for a variety of cultural

and social factors.

Underdeveloped countries often lack a well maintained system of checks and balances to

ensure democracy properly as a form of government. One of the most important factors that is

necessary for a democracy to succeed is that there has to be separation of power in the different

branches of government to assure that there is no corruption in the government. While the idea

seems very plausible in theory, its a lot harder to implement in practical life in many countries.

The term separation of power was first coined by the 18th century French social and political

philosopher Charles-Louis de Secondat. In his publication Spirit of the Laws, he created a model

that inspired the famous documents The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Constitution of

the United States. In his model, the government is divided into three branches: legislative,

executive and judicial. He established that in order to promote liberty and democracy, all three of

these branches have to be independent so that they can create a system of checks and balances.

The legislative branch is responsible for creating and enacting laws, and funding the money to

operate the government. The executive branch is responsible for implementing and administering

the public policy enacted and funded by the legislative branch. And finally, the judicial branch

interprets the constitution and laws and resolve any controversies involving the Constitution.

Many of the countries that adopted democracy during the so called third wave of

democratization in recent years have not been able to implement these three branches of the

government properly. One limitation is that the judiciary in these countries are often not very

reactive to situations. Therefore, they must wait until matters are brought to them before they do

anything. The problem here is that not many will be in a position to take up a test case because of
the newness of the democracy there. They simply arent used to this tradition as we are in the

United States. Another problem is that the judicial officers in these countries are not appointed or

removed by the judiciary itself, which kind of contradicts the whole point of separation of power

as the judiciary is not completely independent. Moreover, the judiciary in the poor countries do

not always have adequate resources for them to survive independently. And more often than not,

the resources are under complete control of the executive branch. Hence, incorrupt democracy is

hard to establish without a solid foundation of multiple social and monetary factors.

Additionally, a lot of the poorer and newer democratic countries frequently fail to ensure

the basic political and human rights. One reason democracy succeeds in the United States is that

every person in this country has equal access to some basic rights and freedoms irrespective of

economic, racial, ethnic, cultural or religious background. However, many underdeveloped

democracies do not even guarantee their citizens and civil societies basic freedom and rights.

Freedom and democracy are inter-related concepts and generally a country cannot have one

without the other. However, there has been many quantitative measures of freedom that shows

that having democracy does not always lead to freedom in a country. One of the best known

quantitative measure of freedom is the Freedom House Index. Freedom House analyzes the

freedom in a country using two indices, one on political liberties consisting of 9 checklists and

other on civil liberties of 13. According to the Freedom House Index, out of the 195 countries

that were assessed, 89 were free of the 123 democracies in the world.(cite) Moreover, the

Economist Intelligence Unit also has an index that measures the state of democracy in countries.

The index is based on 60 indicators grouped in five different categories measuring pluralism,

civil liberties, and political culture. In addition to a numeric score and a ranking, the index

categorizes countries as one of four regime types- full democracies, flawed democracies, hybrid
regimes and authoritarian regimes. According to this index, only twenty countries in the world

have full democracy. The rest of the democratic countries in this index have flawed

democracy where only a few of the factors of democracy are satisfied. (cite) After analyzing

these indices, it can be concluded that complete political and civil liberties/freedom must be

established in order to have a successful democracy. Installing democracy in a country where

these freedom are not guaranteed would only lead to more corruption and inequality.

The poorer countries also fail to maintain independent civil societies. The civil

societies, non-governmental organizations and institutions that represent interests and will of

citizens and different groups(cite), must be autonomous in a successful democracy. When the

government of a state dominates civil societies, it endangers the political liberties that are

necessary for democracy. This is especially a problem for democracies in central and eastern

Europe where its a tradition for the government to dominate the civil societies. In these post-

communist countries where democracy is still relatively new, the rate of participation in the civil

societies is extremely low. This is ironic because the original meaning of democracy as stated

earlier is by the people. If the people are not voluntarily participating in their political process

then that means the the government has strong presence in the civil societies, which would fail to

ensure the autonomy of civil societies. Moreover, minority civil society institutions should also

be autonomous from that of the primary ones. Its a big problem in Asian and African

democracies where religious, ethnic and tribal affiliations deeply affect the basis of civil

societies. Furthermore, large economic inequality also affect democracy because the civil

societies may only serve the interests of the rich and powerful people while ignoring the rest of

the population. Hence, social equality and autonomy from government is needed in order to

ensure civil societies in a democracy.

 Some democracies have a weak multiparty system that leads to a single dominant party

having too much power. It is imperative that a successful democracy has several different parties

for the voters to choose from representing different ideas and plans. However, a lot of the times

the multiparty system gives rise to a lot of issues in some countries. In many countries, even

though there are many parties listed formally, one party usually dominates the rest and wins most

of the elections. Thus, even though a country like this has a multiparty system in paper, in reality

it really is a one-party system. For example, the Institutional Revolutionary Party(PRI) in

Mexico has dominated its government and elections for more than half a century which

obviously went on to cause a myriad of corruptions in Mexicos government. Another instance

where one political party dominates is Russia where Vladimir Putins party United Russia

practically controls everything in the country including the other political parties. Hence, having

a multiparty system does not always ensure a incorrupt democracy.

Also, some countries fail to have a system of fair elections happening every few years to

make sure the people can choose their representatives and head of government. A fair election is

one of the most important features of a democracy. After all, people cannot choose their leaders

without a fair election. However, many democracies fail to establish this basic requirement of a

democratic government. Most of the time, only the first election in a new democracy has been

fair after a regime change. In the subsequent elections, the incumbent leaders manipulate the

elections to produce results in their favor so that they can continue to rule.(cite) Hence, by failing

to establish fair elections, many democratic countries fail to have a proper democracy. (use an

example/case study to extend this paragraph)

Instituting democracy in a country suddenly does not always lead to positive results. In

fact, most of the time it continues to suffer from the same problems of corruption and inequality
that was present in the previous regime. In order for a democracy to work successfully, some

factors must be ensured. There has to be separation of power between the different branches of

government. Every citizen in the country must have the basic human rights regardless of their

race, religion, and ethnicity, and the civil society institutions must be run autonomously without

interference from the government. And last but not the least, there has to be a strong multiparty

system and a system of fair elections occurring every few years. Without the presence of these

factors, a democracy would not succeed no matter what. Many underdeveloped countries do not

make progress as much as the developed countries did with democracy because of the lack of

these factors in their government. Even authoritarianism under a good leader may lead to more

progress than democracy would without a strong base of the aforementioned factors. Hence,

democracy must be built gradually with a strong foundation of some social and cultural factors in

order to be successful.
Sources:

first body paragraph:

http://www.ncsl.org/research/about-state-legislatures/separation-of-powers-an-overview.aspx

http://www.kas.de/rspssa/en/events/23490/

second and third body

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/ihsg/publications/pdf/No-7-1.PDF

third body

http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/samples/cam033/2002024638.pdf

fourth body:

https://www3.nd.edu/~kellogg/publications/workingpapers/WPS/174.pdf (brazil)

http://www.comm.ucsb.edu/faculty/mstohl/failed_states/1998/papers/sorensen.html

last body:

file:///C:/Users/Nafis/Downloads/Prof%20KK%20Prah%20-%20Multi-Party%20Democracy

%20and%20It%E2%80%99s%20Relevance%20in%20Africa.pdf