Larry Diamond - Views On Democracy

Views On Democracy

Despite the surge of democracy throughout the world up until the 90s, Diamond believes democracy must improve where it already exists before it can spread to other countries. He believes solving a country’s governance, rather than its economy, is the answer. Every democratic country needs to be held responsible for good governance, not just when it suits them. Without significant improvements in governance, economic growth will not be sustainable. As Diamond stated in his book, The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World, “for democratic structures to endure – and be worthy of endurance – they must listen to their citizens’ voices, engage their participation, tolerate their protests, protect their freedoms, and respond to their needs.”

Diamond has written and edited many pieces on the growth of democracy and its current recession on an international level. In his paper The Democratic Rollback: The Resurgence of the Predatory State, Diamond states that one of the main reasons for this recession in democracy is a surge of young democratic countries who employ rigged elections, intense intimidation of any opposing political party, and unstoppable expansion in executive power. What makes it worse is that many of these countries are still being accepted as democracies by western states. He cites Putin in Russia and Hugo Chávez in Venezuela as examples. Due to the growth of these corrupted semi-democracies, which Diamond calls electoral authoritarianism, there has been a worldwide fall in the confidence in democracy especially in developing countries. Unlike many other political scientist, Diamond doesn’t hold economic development, or lack there of, as the number one factor in the decline of democracy. Diamond states that the efficiency of the government is the first problem. If the government cannot provide a safe and equal economic and political playing field then any work in promoting economic development will be useless. He cites the Kenyan President Kibaki as an example. Kibaki helped Kenya reach some of its highest levels of economic growth but failed to address massive corruption, which led to claims of fraud in his 2007 presidential election, which in turn exploded into violence.

Diamond believes if governance is not improved in democratic states, people will turn to authoritarian alternatives. This will then lead to predatory states. Predatory states produce predatory societies: people do not gain wealth and a better quality of life through ways beneficial to the entire country, but get rich by taking advantage of power and privilege, by stealing from the state, and diminishing the power of the law. In order to ensure predatory states do not occur, institutions must be put in place to establish control and order.

So that democracy can be revived, and sustained, throughout the world, the U.S. and other developed countries must play their part. The U.S. should only give financial aid to countries that are using the money to further develop their governance. This selectivity is defined in the Millennium Challenge Account (part of Bush’s foreign policy). Under this policy, it says a country will receive aid “whether they rule justly, whether they invest in basic health care and education, and whether they promote economic freedom.” The important thing to remember is promoting democracy will take time and effort.

His books include:

• The Spirit of Democracy (Times Books, 2008)
• Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq (Owl Books, 2005, ISBN 0-8050-7868-1)
• Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation
• Promoting Democracy in the 1990s
• Class, Ethnicity, and Democracy in Nigeria
• Political Culture and Democracy in developing Countries ed.