The democratic dilemma

Democracies all over the world are showing signs of major decline in popularity. Why is it that a system that was born out of a necessity to ensure that people wielded ultimate power, in the type of governance that would decide the future of their own lives, is now losing its charm world over?

If you were to look west or south of Bangladesh, ignoring ourselves in the context of this write up, you will find examples since the dawn of this millennium, which point to challenges made to the concept of democracy, globally.

From Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Myanmar amongst the countless such examples now, you can see that nations once ripe for democracy to flourish are seemingly in disarray in regards to their governance system, and heading the other way, either by choice or as a resultant effect of the recent conflicts within these nations.

Protests have also broken out in established democracies such as South Africa, Brazil, Argentina, India, Indonesia and Turkey where you are currently seeing people at some stage of rising up against their governing power structure. From the “Arab Spring” to the “Orchid Revolution,” and the “Jasmine Revolutions,” people everywhere are fighting for, what they think are, a large spectrum of governance issues.

The daily protests in various parts of the world that we see today have more to do with fighting unfairness, lack of freedom, injustice, disenfranchisement, inequality, lack of transparency and accountability — than democracy itself. It’s a fight against corrupt authoritarianism.

The problem is not so much of “reform” but of “balance of power.” A steady decline has been noted in rights of those voting, in ratio to the increase in the power of those who are being voted for. This continues to add to the perception of declining freedom, and the real decline in the levels of freedom that a lot of these protestors around the world seem to have in common.

This perception is gaining a foothold predominantly amongst the growing middle-class power base, and is fairly representative of “solid” and “defective, unstable or young democracies” around the globe.

Joshua Kurlantzick, a Council on Foreign Relations Fellow for Southeast Asia states in his book titled, Democracy in Retreat: The Revolt of the Middle Class and the Worldwide Decline of Representative Government, that: “Today a constellation of factors … has come together to hinder democracy throughout the developing world.”

He continues: “Absent radical and unlikely changes in the international system, that combination of antidemocratic factors will have serious staying power.”

Kurlantzick further says: “That the revolt of middle class citizens, traditionally proponents of reform, have turned against democracy … are a major contributing factor to present global unrest; continuing that countries once held up as model new democracies, have since curtailed social, economic, and political freedoms. Military coups have interfered in the democratic process from Honduras to Thailand to Fiji.”

The number of representative governments have fallen, and the quality of democracy has deteriorated in many states where it was previously making progress, including Russia, Kenya, Turkey, Argentina, and Nigeria. It has also worsened in non-democracies such as China.

It doesn’t help either when examples come to the public domain such as the US, a leading promoter of the democratic system, when they continue to apply dual standards of justice for their own citizens, and those they pursue worldwide in the fight to protect their national security.

Something like the Snowden saga only adds to highlight discrepancies applied to the concept of freedom at large. “The renewed strength of authoritarian rule,” warns Kurlantzick, means that billions of people around the world continue to live under repressive regimes. In 2013, Freedom House, the global freedom monitoring group, found that global freedom sharply declined for the seventh year in a row, the longest continuous decline in nearly 44 years.

It pointed out that most authoritarian nations, or democratic nations with authoritarian characteristics had become even more repressive.

The report hints at the present conflict in Egypt and goes on to state: “The ambiguous nature of these developments combined with either instability or authoritarian retrenchment in other regions, had a significant impact on the state of global freedom,” that the decline in freedom was most pronounced amongst countries that have begun democratising but were not yet solid or stable democracies such as “Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Syria, Nigeria, Guinea-Bissau.”

To me, democracy is not the only effective means of governance. Other ideas should not be considered taboo, what they could be — I leave to your imagination. Constant adaptation of any system of democracy is vital to maintain the balance of power failing which we simply default to bestowing absolute power to the state, no matter how democratic it looks from the exterior.

This becomes a substantive problem, not in the least for already developed democracies tackling this, but also for nascent governments truly inexperienced in handling power.

It often leads to a downward spiral of mistrust, protectionism and paranoia by immature leaders, who in an attempt to hold on to power, find themselves in a battle with their own people, which eventually results in the tragic consequences that we see all around us today.

It’s sadly damaging to all parties in many respects. It’s important that leaders recognise before it’s too late that the thin line between authoritarianism and democracy is treacherous and that only sincerity, freedom, participation and transparency remain the best way to govern for any system to truly thrive.

Any government falling short of that standard, either democratic or otherwise is offering an illusion, or worse yet — a scam.

Originally published at www.dhakatribune.com on July 27, 2013.