"Suppose the election is declared free and fair," said Richard Holbrooke on the eve of the 1996 elections in Bosnia, and those elected are "racists or fascists, publicly opposed to peace. That is the dilemma." Indeed it is-not just in the former Yugoslavia, but around the world. Democratically elected regimes routinely ignore constitutional limits on their powers and deprive their citizens of basic rights. From Peru to the Palestinian Authority, from Sierra Leone to Slovakia, from Pakistan to the Philippines comes the rise of a disturbing phenomenon in international life-illiberal democracy.
It has been difficult to recognise this problem. For almost a century in the west, democracy has meant liberal democracy: a political system marked not only by free and fair elections, but also by the rule of law, the separation of powers, the protection of basic liberties of speech, assembly, religion and property. In fact this latter bundle of freedoms-what might be called constitutional liberalism-is historically distinct from democracy. Today the two strands of liberal democracy, interwoven in the western political fabric, are coming apart in the rest of the world. Democracy is flourishing; constitutional liberalism is not.
Today, 118 of the world's 193 countries are democratic, encompassing 54.8 per cent of the world's people, a remarkable increase from even a decade ago. We might have expected this to be a cause of celebration; instead there is growing unease at the spread of multiparty elections across south-central Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America-because of what happens after the elections. Popular leaders such as Russia's Boris Yeltsin and Argentina's Carlos Menem bypass their parliaments and rule by decree. (Menem has passed almost 300 presidential decrees in eight years, three times as many as all previous Argentinian presidents combined.) The Iranian parliament, elected more freely than most in the middle east, imposes harsh restrictions on speech, assembly, even on dress, diminishing Iran's already meagre stock of liberty. Ethiopia's elected government turns its security forces against journalists and political opponents.
There is a spectrum of illiberal democracy ranging from modest offenders such as Argentina to near-tyrannies such as Kazakhstan and Belarus, with countries such as Romania and Bangladesh in between. Along much of the spectrum, elections are rarely as free and fair as in the west, but they do reflect popular participation in politics and support for those elected. Examples are not isolated or atypical. Freedom in the World, Freedom House's 1996-97 survey, has separate rankings for political liberties and civil liberties which correspond roughly with democracy and constitutional liberalism. Of the regimes which lie between confirmed dictatorship and consolidated democracy, 50 per cent do better on political liberties than on civil ones. In other words, half the "democratising" countries in the world today are illiberal democracies. Seven years ago only 22 per cent of democratising countries could have been so categorised.
So far, few illiberal democracies have matured into liberal democracies; if anything, they are moving towards heightened illiberalism. Far from being in a transitional stage, it looks as if many countries are settling into a form of government which mixes a substantial degree of democracy with a substantial degree of illiberalism. Just as nations across the world have become comfortable with many variations of capitalism, they could well adopt varied forms of democracy. Western liberal democracy might prove to be just one of many possible exits, not the final democratic destination.
Since the time of Herodotus, democracy has meant the rule of the people. But, as Samuel Huntington has stressed, that is all it means: "Elections, open, free and fair, are the essence of democracy, the inescapable sine qua non. Governments produced by elections may be inefficient, corrupt... and incapable of adopting policies demanded by the public good. These qualities make such governments undesirable but they do not make them undemocratic. Democracy is one public virtue, not the only one."
If a country holds multiparty elections we call it democratic. When public participation in politics is increased-for example through the enfranchisement of women-it is seen as more democratic. But to go beyond this minimalist definition-labelling a country democratic only if it guarantees a catalogue of social, political, economic and religious rights-turns the word democracy into a badge of honour rather than a descriptive category. Sweden has an economic system which, many argue, limits individual property rights, France had a state monopoly in television until recently, and Britain has an established religion. But they are all democracies. When the concept of democracy comes to mean "good government" it is rendered analytically useless.
Constitutional liberalism, on the other hand, is not about procedures for selecting government, but rather government's goals. It refers to the tradition, deep in western history, which seeks to pro- tect an individual against coercion, whatever the source-state, church or society. The term marries two closely connected ideas. It is liberal because it draws on the philosophical strain, beginning with the Greeks, which emphasises individual liberty. It is constitutional because it rests on the tradition, beginning with the Romans, of the rule of law. Constitutional liberalism developed in western Europe and the US as a defence of the individual's right to life and property, and of freedom of religion and speech. It emphasises checks on the power of each branch of government, equality before the law and separation of church and state. Its canonical figures include the poet John Milton, the jurist William Blackstone, statesmen such as Thomas Jefferson, philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Adam Smith, Baron de Montesquieu, JS Mill and Isaiah Berlin. In almost all its variants, constitutional liberalism argues that human beings have natural ("inalienable") rights and that governments must accept a basic law, limiting its own powers, which secures these rights. Thus in 1215 at Runnymede, England's barons forced the king to abide by the law of the land. Magna Carta, the American Constitution and the Helsinki Final Act are all expressions of constitutional liberalism.
since 1945 western governments have, for the most part, embodied both democracy and constitutional liberalism. Thus it is difficult to imagine the two apart, as either illiberal democracy or liberal autocracy. In fact, both these have flourished in the past and persist in the present. Until the 20th century, most countries in western Europe were liberal autocracies or, at best, semi-democracies. The franchise was tightly restricted and elected legislatures had little power. In 1830, Britain-in some ways the most democratic European nation-allowed barely 2 per cent of its population to vote for the House of Commons; the franchise rose to 7 per cent after 1867 and to about 40 per cent in the 1880s. Only in the late 1940s did most western countries become fully-fledged democracies with universal adult suffrage. But 100 years earlier most of them had adopted important aspects of constitutional liberalism-the rule of law, private property rights and, increasingly, the separation of powers, free speech and assembly. For much of modern history, what characterised governments in Europe and North America and differentiated them from those around the world was not democracy but constitutional liberalism. The "western model" is best symbolised not by the mass plebiscite but by the impartial judge.
East Asia's recent history follows the western itinerary. After brief postwar flirtations with democracy, most east Asian regimes became authoritarian. Over time, they moved from autocracy to liberalising autocracy, and in some cases towards liberalising semi-democracy. Most of the countries in east Asia remain only semi-democratic, with patriarchs or one-party systems which make their elections ratifications of power rather than genuine contests. But these regimes have accorded their citizens a widening range of economic, civil, religious and (limited) political rights. As in the west, liberalisation in east Asia has included economic liberalisation-crucial in promoting both growth and liberal democracy. Historically, the factors most closely associated with fully-fledged liberal democracies are capitalism, a bourgeoisie and a high GNP per capita. Today's east Asian countries are a mix of democracy, liberalism, capitalism, oligarchy and corruption-much like western governments in about 1900.
Constitutional liberalism has led to democracy, but the reverse does not seem to be the case. In contrast to the western and east Asian paths, the past 20 years in Latin America, Africa and parts of Asia have seen dictatorships with little tradition of constitutional liberalism giving way to democracy. But a 1995 study by Larry Diamond of the Hoover Institute found that 8 of the 22 principal Latin American democracies "have levels of human rights abuse that are incompatible with the consolidation of liberal democracy." In Africa, democratisation has been extraordinarily rapid. Within six months, in 1990, much of francophone Africa lifted its ban on multiparty politics. Yet although elections have been held in most of the 45 sub-Saharan states since 1991 (18 in 1996 alone), there have been setbacks to freedom in many countries. In central Asia, elections-even when reasonably free as in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan-have resulted in strong executives, weak legislatures and judiciaries and few civil and economic liberties. In the Islamic world, from the Palestinian Authority to Iran to Pakistan, democratisation has led to increasingly theocratic politics, eroding long-standing traditions of secularism and tolerance.
Many of the countries of central Europe, on the other hand, have moved successfully from communism to liberal democracy, after passing through the same phase of liberalisation (without democracy) as other European countries during the 19th century. (Indeed, the Austro-Hungarian empire, to which most belonged, was a classic liberal autocracy.) Even outside Europe, the political scientist Myron Weiner detected a striking connection between a constitutional past and a liberal democratic present. He has pointed out that, in 1983, "every single country in the third world that emerged from colonial rule since the second world war... with a continuous democratic experience is a former British colony." British rule meant not democracy-colonialism is by definition undemocratic-but constitutional liberalism. Britain's legacy of law and administration has proved more beneficial than France's policy of enfranchising some of its colonial populations.
While liberal autocracies may have existed in the past, can we imagine them today? Until recently a small but powerful example flourished off the Asian mainland: Hong Kong. Until 1991 it had never held a meaningful election, but its government epitomised constitutional liberalism, protecting citizens' rights and administering a fair court system. A recent Washington Post editorial on the island's future was ominously headlined: "Undoing Hong Kong's Democracy." Actually, Hong Kong has little democracy to undo-what it has is a framework of rights and laws.
John Stuart Mill's classic work On Liberty opens by noting that as countries became democratic, people tended to believe that "too much importance had been attached to the limitation of power itself. That... was a response against rulers whose interests were opposed to those of the people." Once the people were themselves in charge, caution was unnecessary. "The nation did not need to be protected against its own will." As if confirming Mill's fears, consider the words of Alexander Lukashenko-elected president of Belarus with an overwhelming majority in 1994-when asked about limiting his powers: "There will be no dictatorship. I am of the people, and I am going to be for the people."
The tension between constitutional liberalism and democracy centres on the scope of governmental authority. Constitutional liberalism is about the limitation of power; democracy is about its accumulation and use. For this reason, many 18th and 19th century liberals saw in democracy a force that could undermine liberty. James Madison explained in The Federalist that "the danger of oppression" in a democracy came from "the majority of the community." De Tocqueville warned of the "tyranny of the majority."
Over the past few years, elected governments claiming to represent the people have steadily encroached on the powers and rights of other elements of society, especially in regions where presidentialism is popular. The leaders of developing countries, sometimes backed by the west, have argued that they need strong, central authority to break down feudalism, to split entrenched coalitions, override vested interests and bring order to chaotic societies. This confuses the need for a legitimate government with that for a powerful one. While anarchy has its dangers, the greatest threats to human liberty and happiness in this century have been caused not by disorder but by brutal, centralised states such as Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia and Maoist China. The third world is littered with the bloody handiwork of strong states.
Historically, unchecked centralisation has been the enemy of liberal democracy. As political participation increased in Europe over the 19th century, it was accommodated smoothly in countries such as England and Sweden, where mediaeval assemblies and local and regional governments had remained strong. Countries such as France and Prussia, on the other hand, where the monarchy had effectively centralised power, often ended up illiberal and undemocratic. It is no coincidence that in 20th century Spain the beachhead of liberalism was Catalonia, for centuries a doggedly independent region. In the US, the presence of a rich variety of institutions-state, local and private-made it much easier to accommodate the rapid and large extensions in suffrage which took place in the early 19th century. More recently, India's semi-liberal democracy has survived because of, not despite, its strong regions and varied languages, cultures, even castes. The point is logical, even tautological: pluralism in the past helps ensure political pluralism in the present.
Fifty years ago, politicians in the developing world wanted extraordinary powers to implement then fashionable economic doctrines such as the nationalisation of industries. Today their successors seek similar powers to privatise the same industries. Menem's justification for his methods is that they are needed to enact tough economic reforms. Similar arguments have been put by Alberto Fujimori in Peru. Lending institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank have been sympathetic to these pleas, and the bond market has been positively exuberant. But except in emergencies such as war, in the long run illiberal means are incompatible with liberal ends. Constitutional government is the key to a successful economic reform policy. The experience of east Asia and central Europe suggests that when regimes-whether authoritarian, as in east Asia, or liberal democratic, as in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic-protect individual rights (including those of property and contract) and create a framework of law and administration, capitalism and growth will follow.
in december 1996, Jack Lang made a dramatic dash to Belgrade. The French politician had been inspired by the student demonstrations against Slobodan Milosevic, whom Lang and many western intellectuals held responsible for the Balkan war. Lang wanted to lend his support to the Yugoslav opposition. Their leaders received him in their offices-the university philosophy department-only to declare him "an enemy of the Serbs" and order him to leave the country. It turned out that the students opposed Milosevic not for starting the war, but for failing to win it.
Lang's embarrassment highlights two common assumptions-that the forces of democracy are the forces of ethnic harmony and peace. Neither is necessarily true. Mature liberal democracies can usually accommodate ethnic divisions and live in peace with other liberal democracies. But without a tradition of constitutional liberalism, the introduction of democracy in divided societies has actually exacerbated nationalism, ethnic conflict, even war. The spate of elections held immediately after the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia were won by nationalist separatists and resulted in the break-up of those countries. This was not in itself bad. But rapid secessions, without guarantees for the many minorities within the new countries, have caused spirals of rebellion, repression and-in places such as Bosnia, Azerbaijan and Georgia-war.
Elections require that politicians compete for people's votes. In societies without a strong multiethnic tradition or a history of assimilation, it is easiest to organise support along racial, ethnic or religious lines. Once an ethnic group is in power it tends to exclude others. Compromise seems impossible. You can bargain on material issues such as housing, hospitals and handouts, but how do you split the difference on a national religion?
One of the most spirited debates in international relations over the past decade has been about the "democratic peace"-the assertion that no two modern democracies have gone to war with each other. This debate raises substantive questions (what about the American civil war? do nuclear weapons better explain the peace?) and even the statistical findings have been questioned. David Spiro of the University of Arizona points out that, given the small number of both democracies and wars over the last 200 years, the absence of war between democracies might be sheer chance. But even if the statistics are correct, what explains them? Kant, original proponent of the democratic peace, contended that in democracies those who pay for wars-the public-make the decisions, so they are understandably cautious. This suggests that democracies are more pacific than other states. But in fact they are more warlike, going to war more often and with greater intensity than most states. It is only with other democracies that the peace holds.
Seeking the cause behind this correlation, one thing is clear: the democratic peace is actually the liberal peace. Writing in the 18th century, Kant believed that real democracies were tyrannical; he excluded them from his conception of "republican" governments, which lived in a zone of peace. Republicanism, for Kant, meant a separation of powers, checks and balances, the rule of law, protection of individual rights, and some level of representation in government (though not universal suffrage). Kant's explanation for the "perpetual peace" between republics is closely linked to their constitutional and liberal character: a mutual respect for the rights of each other's citizens, a system of checks and balances ensuring that no single leader can drag his country into war, and classical liberal economic policies-most importantly free trade-which create an interdependence, making war costly and co-operation useful.
The distinction between liberal and illiberal democracies sheds light on another striking statistical correlation. Political scientists Jack Snyder and Edward Mansfield claim that over the last 200 years, states in transition to democracy went to war significantly more often than either stable autocracies or liberal democracies. In countries not grounded in constitutional liberalism, the rise of democracy often brings with it hyper-nationalism and war-mongering. Examples range from Napoleon III's France, Wilhelmine Germany and Taisho Japan, to contemporary Armenia, Azerbaijan and Milosevic's Serbia. The democratic peace, it turns out, has little to do with democracy.
an american scholar recently travelled to Kazakhstan on a US government-sponsored mission to help the new parliament draft its electoral laws. His counterpart, a senior member of the Kazakh parliament, brushed aside the options he was outlining, saying emphatically: "We want our parliament to be just like your Congress." The American was horrified and tried to dissuade him. This is not unusual. Americans in the democracy business tend to see their own system as an unwieldy contraption which no other country should put up with. Yet some aspects of the US constitutional framework could ameliorate many of the problems associated with illiberal democracy. The philosophy behind the US constitution-fear of accumulated power-is as relevant today as it was in 1789. Kazakhstan would be well served by a strong parliament like the US Congress, to check the insatiable appetite of its president.
It is odd that the US so often advocates elections and plebiscitary democracy abroad. What is distinctive about the US system is not how democratic but rather how undemocratic it is, placing as it does multiple constraints on electoral majorities. Of its three branches of government, one-the arguably paramount Supreme Court-is headed by nine unelected men and women with life tenure. Its Senate is the most unrepresentative upper house in the world, with the exception of the House of Lords which is virtually powerless. Each state sends two senators to Washington regardless of its population-California's 30m people have as many votes as Arizona's 3.7m-thus senators representing about 16 per cent of the country can block any proposed law. In legislatures all over the US, what is striking is not the power of majorities but that of minorities. To check national power further, state and local governments are strong and fiercely resist federal intrusion.
The US system is based on an avowedly pessimistic conception of human nature: people cannot be trusted with power. "If men were angels," Madison famously wrote, "no government would be necessary." The other model for democratic governance in western history is based on the French revolution. This places its faith in the goodness of human beings. Once the people are the source of power, it should be unlimited, so that they can create a just society. Most non-western countries have embraced the French model-not least because political elites like the prospect of empowering the state and thus themselves-and most have descended into bouts of chaos, tyranny, or both. This should come as no surprise: since its revolution France itself has run through two monarchies, two empires, one proto-fascist dictatorship and five republics.
Of course cultures vary; different societies will require different frameworks of government. This is not a plea for the wholesale adoption of the American way but for a more variegated conception of liberal democracy, one which emphasises both parts of that phrase. Before new policies can be adopted, there is the intellectual task of recovering the constitutional liberal tradition central to the western experience and to the development of good government throughout the world. As the American Declaration of Independence puts it, human beings have "certain inalienable rights" and that "it is to secure these rights that governments are instituted." If a democracy does not preserve liberty and law, it is small consolation that it is a democracy.
A proper appreciation of constitutional liberalism has a variety of implications for US foreign policy. First, it suggests a certain humility. While it is easy to impose elections on a country, it is more difficult to push constitutional liberalism on to a society. Genuine liberalisation is a gradual and long-term process, in which an election is only one step. Without appropriate preparation, it might even be a step back. Recognising this, governments and non-governmental organisations increasingly promote a wide array of measures to bolster constitutional liberalism in developing countries. The National Endowment for Democracy promotes free markets, independent labour movements and political parties; the US Agency for International Development funds independent judiciaries. But in the end, elections trump everything. If a country holds elections, Washington and the world will tolerate a great deal from the resulting government, as they have with Yeltsin, Akayev and Menem. In an age of images and symbols, elections are easy to capture on film. How do you televise the rule of law?
But governments should be measured by yardsticks relating to constitutional liberalism as well as elections. Economic, civil and religious liberties lie at the core of human autonomy and dignity. If a government steadily expands these freedoms with limited democracy, it should not be branded a dictatorship. Despite their limited political choice, countries such as Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand provide a better environment for the life, liberty and happiness of their citizens than do dictatorships such as Iraq or Libya or illiberal democracies such as Slovakia or Ghana. The pressures of global capitalism can push the process of liberalisation forward. Markets and morals can work together. China, which remains a deeply repressive regime, has given its citizens more autonomy and economic liberty than they have had in generations.
One effect of overemphasising electoral democracy is that little effort is made to create imaginative constitutions for transitional countries. Constitutionalism, as it was understood by Montesquieu and Madison, its greatest exponents, is a complicated system of checks and balances to protect basic rights and prevent the accumulation of power and abuse of office. As Madison explained, "ambition must be made to counteract ambition." Constitutions were also meant to tame the passions of the public, creating not simply democratic but also deliberative government. Unfortunately the rich variety of unelected bodies, indirect voting, federal arrangements, checks and balances that characterised so many of Europe's formal and informal constitutions, are now regarded with suspicion.
We live in a democratic age. Through much of history the danger to an individual's life and liberty came from the absolutism of monarchies, the dogma of churches and the terror of dictatorships. A few straggling totalitarian regimes persist, but they are anachronisms in a world of global markets and information. There are no longer respectable alternatives to democracy; it is part of the fashionable attire of modernity. The problems of governance in the 21st century will be problems within democracy.
Illiberal democracies gain legitimacy and strength because they are reasonably democratic. Conversely, the greatest danger that illiberal democracy poses-other than to its own people-is that it will discredit liberal democracy itself. This would not be unprecedented. Every wave of democracy has been followed by setbacks in which the system was seen as inadequate and alternatives were sought by ambitious leaders and restless masses. The last such period of disenchantment in Europe during the interwar years was seized upon by demagogues-many of whom were initially popular and even elected. Today, in the face of a spreading virus of illiberalism, the most useful role that the international community can play-instead of searching for new places to hold elections-is to consolidate democracy where it has taken root and to encourage the development of constitutional liberalism across the globe.
Democracy without constitutional liberalism is not simply inadequate, but dangerous, bringing with it the erosion of liberty, the abuse of power, ethnic division and even war. Woodrow Wilson took the US into the 20th century with a challenge to make the world safe for democracy. As we approach the next century, our task is to make democracy safe for the world.
