How much democracy?

Thailand’s opposition party has just announced that it will boycott the country’s parliamentary elections scheduled for February because it doesn’t believe that the country is suitable for a majority-rules political system. This, and protests leading up to this point, were immediately criticized by many in the international community who tend to think that the closer a polity can get to pure “democracy” the closer it is to Godly perfection.

This raises the question of how much democracy is the right amount of democracy. Virtually everyone (probably now including some members of the Kim family) would agree that North Korea, at one end of the spectrum, has too little democracy — the will and welfare of the people seems to be of no concern to the country’s leadership. Nearer to the other end of the spectrum are areas that are at opposite ends of the economic development spectrum. States in the western United States, including California and Colorado, have constitutions that can be altered by a simple majority-vote referendum. This amount of democracy hasn’t worked for these states. California has collapsing basic infrastructure, poor schools and the second lowest bond rating of any of the rated states. A few years ago Colorado faced a future in which it was soon to be required to devote more than 100% of its budget to education.  Another place with strong democratic traditions is India. This too is an example of a place where it is arguable that too much democracy has made people’s lives worse than they could be. After over 60 years of democratic independence, India’s literacy rate remains a poor 74% (66% for women) compared to 95% for China, 98% for South Korea and its child mortality rate remains a dismal 53 deaths/1000 births, compared to 2 deaths/1000 births for Singapore and 22 deaths/1000 births for China.

Over the past decade an unintentional experiment arose in the Gulf desert. As Dubai is a majority South Asian city (estimated around 70% of population and mostly Indian) and clean, efficient and well-run, it is often called India’s most successful city. There are two major differences between Dubai and any other Indian city. The first is that Dubai has had a robust investment supported by oil revenues. The second is that it doesn’t have the democracy that other Indian cities possess. At a minimum Dubai can be used as evidence that Indian culture is not to blame for shortcomings in the quality of life in India, and the possibility exists that the Indian form of democracy shares some of the responsibility for the country’s poor performance in improving its people’s lives.

Not only can too much democracy result in poor results as in California and Colorado, but it can also result in the majority treating the minority poorly. This applies not just to traditional civil rights like racial discrimination, but also to property rights including excessive taxation. A majority-elected government whose policies included punitive taxes on the minority beyond what is necessary to support public goods and services can also be an example of poor government. The Thai protesters believe, among other things, that the current government spends too much money on hand-outs to its political supporters.

Does this justify less democracy or more authoritarianism? No, because for every Lee Kuan Yew, who is one of history’s saints in that he acquired great power and then used it solely and successfully for the good of the people, throughout history there are hundreds if not thousands of Vladimir Putins who have greedily gathered power for seemingly no reason other than to build their own imagined glory.

What it does say is that democracy is not a binomial have/have-not. Even saying that there is a continuum of democracy is not accurate as there are a lot of varieties that cannot be ranked against each other. Further there is no optimal, universal amount of democracy that will work at all times in all places because every community varies too much in local culture, education and social bonds. Rather what is important is good government defined, at least in part, as a government that protects individual rights. Beyond less or more democracy, there’s no one answer to how to structure whatever amount of democracy is right for a place and time; proportional representation might work in some places, a stronger executive in others, and town-hall meetings have been successfully used in small enough places for centuries. The answer needs to be nuanced, balanced and unique to each time and place. So, those protesting on the streets of Bangkok are not necessarily wrong (as long as they don’t use violence) just because they want to bring down a duly elected majority-supported government.