Western donor organisations insist on the democratisation of developing countries as a condition for aid. It is believed that democratisation fosters development. Is there strong evidence that this is really true? This article from the journal ‘New Political Economy’ discusses the tension between democracy and development.
The author argues that democracy is a conservative system of power. This is the case in at least two important respects. Firstly, while democracies have established the principle and practice of civil and political rights, they have not, to the same extent, been able to define, agree on or institutionalise social and economic rights such as job security or universal and equal access to health and welfare systems. As a general rule, it is in the nature of democratic governments to tread warily when seeking to extend their political power from the public domain into the private domain. Secondly, the system of power which democratic policy represents has great difficulty in taking rapid and far-reaching steps to reduce structural inequalities in wealth, even though this may be vital for establishing developmental momentum, especially in late developing societies. Democracies have few of the characteristics of ‘mobilisation’ systems as opposed to ‘reconciliation’ systems. Consolidated democratic politics is characteristically the politics of accommodation, compromise, and the centre, and its political logic is, therefore, generally consensually conservative and incremental in the change it brings about. For many, this is a virtue, for others, it is a vice.
The main problem is that development is both by definition and in practice a radical and commonly turbulent process that is concerned with often far-reaching and rapid change in the structure and use of wealth. The prospects of combining such transformation in the structure of wealth with democracy are slim. Other conclusions from the article are:
- The need for establishing and sustaining a variety of forms of legitimacy, such as geographic, constitutional, and political makes democratic politics veer towards procedural conservatism
- The democratic system requires all political forces to exercise restraint, although the temptation and the developmental or egalitarian need is often to rewrite the policy book
- New, or born-again, democracies are more likely to consolidate or prosper if the new government does not pursue highly contentious policies too far or too fast, especially where such policies seriously threaten other major interests
- Land reform requires a non-consensual step in politics and, thus, is one of the most problematic for developing democracies.
Effective development will not depend on regime type, but on the character of the state, whether democratic or not. The policy implication from this statement makes it clear that:
- Donor organisations should not expect to achieve effect results too quickly in the under-developed world, following contemporary western insistence on democratisation.
