Tuesday, 12 November 2002

Part of the challenge of writing a pro-democracy article, as opposed to describing why I think anarchy isn't a viable option, is overcoming the "duh" factor. These days, proclaiming that democracy is a better system of government is like declaring your belief that Hawaii has nicer beaches than New Mexico.

This wasn't always so obvious. In the 1930s, much of the world thought that fascism was the system of the future; while the democracies of the world were mired in the Great Depression, the fascists appeared to be revitalizing their nations. In the 1970s communism reached its zenith, and people genuinely believed in the inevitable triumph of world socialism. It took years, even decades, for the flaws in those systems to become apparent; afterwards, of course, everyone proclaimed that they'd known about the flaws all along, and congratulated themselves for their brilliant hindsight.

But what was it that led democracy to eventually succeed where the other systems failed? Why did the other systems appear to work better than democracy in the short run, then eventually crash and burn?

One of the enduring myths about Benito Mussolini's Italy is that he made the trains run on time—a myth that, like any good urban legend, has a grain of truth in it. Compared to fascism, democracy is a slow, frustrating, inefficient, bureaucratic mess of a system: It's a Gordian knot of bickering factions, ad-hoc alliances, and temporary compromises that leaves each participant feeling uniquely cheated of success. Democracies react slowly to outside influcences or the changing will of the populace, and have an in-built inertia that is difficult to overcome.

By comparison, dictatorships are a model of simplicity and efficiency: One man makes all the decisions, and things get done. Why doesn't the nice, clean, efficient system of government win out over the slow, messy, and inordinately complex one?

The answer, I think, is that these other systems can outperform democracy—in the short term. A truly outstanding leader doesn't need a parliament to review and endorse his decisions; in fact, the parliament may be an obstacle that prevents the wise king from acting in the nation's best interest. Democracies are riddled with compromises and half-measures that sometimes fail where bold action would succeed, and the dictator has a free hand to pursue those actions. There are situations where it appears that a nation is best served by putting all power in the hands of one leader, so that the leader can do what must be done, and in the short term this approach works.

Over time, though, the dictator turns out to be flawed like the rest of us: He's a brilliant general but a rotten admiral, or a terrible economist. His faults are not corrected, because no one has the power to do so, and when his gambles fail spectacularly they take the entire nation down with him. At best the emperor lives a long and successful life, dies, and then the empire collapses into civil war as his heirs duke it out for the sceptre.

In the long run, I think democracy succeeds because it makes bad decisions—truly bad, irrevocable, land-war -in-Asia decisions—less often than any other form of government. Democracies are better at correcting their mistakes, better at transitioning power from one leader to the next, and make better use of their resources; it isn't the most efficient system for decision-making, but over time it gets better results.

Just for my own peace of mind: Pure democracy would mean a system where every person votes on every issue, something that I consider desirable but currently impractical; the ancient city-states of Greece did it, and there are some New England communities that continue the practice, but it doesn't scale up well. The American system of government is a democratic republic, where we vote for the members of Congress and they vote on the actual issues.

I think we're slowly approaching the point where technology will make pure democracy practical again, and I think that pure democracy will eventually correct some areas where the American system has rigged itself in favor of the incumbents.

- Posted by Scott Forbes at 12:42 am. comments.