The question I’ve recently been asking is, “Why are superpowers rarely democratic?” Although the term “super power nation“ originated soon after World War 2, I'm using the term here for any nation that has/had overwhelming influence over a significantly large geographic area for its time period. In the 19th to 20th century, a super power influences the entire world. Before the 19th century, a super power influences a continent.
I had a discussion with my friend James Pelayo, an astrophysicist, economist and historian. I asked him a series of questions. Here are his thoughts.
Why have there been so few democratic super powers in history?
I can think of several reasons:
1) Historically, military might has been the primary (if not the only) source of international influence.
2) Societies that are democratic and/or respectful of individual rights, in general, tend to be less militaristic than societies that are not. (Compulsory military service is a good indicator.)
3) Societies that are organized along militaristic lines (and thus more likely, historically, to become superpowers) tend to be hierarchical and place great emphasis on following orders, not questioning those in authority, etc.
The idea of an economic superpower is a relatively new one, and has only become possible in the recent era where every country in the world has become at least somewhat dependent on international trade. Even so, I believe there is only one economic superpower today that is not also a military superpower: Japan, and their defense is guaranteed by the US.
Off the top of my head, I can only think of three democratic super powers: USA of 20th century, France of colonial era, Athens of Ancient Greece. Would you agree with this?
Athens was a regional power, but I wouldn't call it a superpower. From the outset the Spartans controlled territory within 50 km of Athens, and only with Sparta as an ally of convenience was Athens able to snatch a draw from the jaws of defeat against the Persians. Within 60 years, Sparta conquered Athens, and within 120 years, Alexander the Great of Macedonia conquered EVERYBODY. (Definitely a superpower.)
The Roman Republic was nominally a democracy, although well short of Athenian standards.
Also, UK of colonial era was at least as democratic as France. "Liberté, égalité, fraternité" was not the official French motto until 1848, and France had a monarch exercising executive powers as recently as 1870.
Aaron Russo’s “America: Freedom to Fascism” claims that the USA is NOT democratic because he believes that the Federal Reserve controls all of the nation’s politics through the financial system. Do you have an opinion on this?
That hypothesis will be put to the test this year. If the bankers come to hate Obama as much as they hated Roosevelt, it will be very difficult to defend. On balance, though, I doubt any country is substantively democratic (as opposed to procedurally democratic). Maybe Switzerland.
A friend asked me, “why are modern countries that experience the highest standards of living a democracy?” I told him that the form of government is irrelevant. If a person wants to make money, it is better to befriend rich people than it is to befriend poor people. Countries experiencing the highest standards of living tend to be friends of the United States, and as such, benefit from its economic wealth. If the United States were a monarch, other nations would probably want to be monarchs as well to strengthen friendship and increase economic benefits. What do you think?
There are three categories that the countries with the highest standards of living in the modern world generally fall into:
1) Free-market effective democracies (USA, Canada, Europe, Australia, Japan, etc.)
2) Free-market effective non-democracies (Hong Kong, Singapore, and until recently South Korea, Taiwan, etc.)
3) "Petrodictatorships" (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE, Brunei, etc.)
You'll notice that the US has been quite willing to be friends with members of all of these categories, and those that are not in category (1) have not felt a great deal of pressure to join it. Until recently the only unforgivable sin in the eyes of the US has been Communism, and obviously Communist governments were not interested in the economic benefits of US friendship. This line of thinking began to change in the 1980s with the end of the Cold War and Deng's market reforms in China, and now almost every country is at least a nominal friend of the US.
So I agree that historically, a country's form of government has not been all that significant in determining its relationship with the US, and that a friendly trade relationship with the US has been beneficial for other countries, all other things being equal. However, I disagree that their form of government is irrelevant to their degree of economic success. Categories (2) and (3) are not stable in the long term - the number of countries in category (2) has been shrinking steadily since WWII as popular unrest leads to democratic reforms, and countries in category (3) have undiversified economies based on a single, valuable but finite natural resource.
If the next super power nation weren’t a democracy, will there also be fewer democratic nations around the world?
Probably, yes. Judging from the example of the US and Europe during the cold war, we see that democracies are willing to curtail civil liberties in the face of a perceived existential threat (USSR). They are also willing to support non-democratic regimes abroad (which they would presumably oppose in other circumstances) that are in a strategically valuable position vis-a-vis the non-democratic superpower rival.
If the next super power nation weren’t a democracy, will living standards around the world decline?
That's more of an open question. The potential for a reduction in living standards seems more obvious, as the superpower conflict will motivate all countries to devote more resources to military development. However, this can have a silver lining, insofar as the money flows to the domestic manufacture of war materiel, boosting employment and stoking the economy (note the the Great Depression raged during an isolationist era of US foreign policy, and ended with the outbreak of WWII). Also, military research spending can yield long-term standard-of-living benefits, as most military technologies have civilian applications as well (computers, microwave ovens, jet engines).
I have a theory that super power nations need static governments. So this means that super power nations either govern through authoritarian rule or they offer few political choices to vote on. There’s a “political natural selection” that chooses a static super power to provide the world with stability because an indecisive super power leads to catastrophe. Democracy is more prone to indecisiveness than authoritarian rule, and that’s why the world will never have “real” democratic super powers. What do you think of this?
The nature of superpowerhood has been evolving from a primarily military concept to a primarily economic one, especially over the last 20 years. Authoritarian Sparta defeated democratic Athens, but the Soviet Union lost the Cold War despite their conventional military superiority (and nuclear parity) because their economy simply could not keep pace with the West. I think this paradigm shift is reducing the premium on "decisiveness" that may have been the case historically (but note that while indecisiveness in the face of crisis leads to catastrophe, so does unwise decisiveness - just ask Hitler).
Out of today's undisputed superpowers China, Russia, and the United States, only the US is relatively free from authoritarian elements. While you could argue (and I would agree) that the US has few political choices at present, I think it is entirely possible for the US to greatly widen its political spectrum without degrading its standing as a superpower. India, for example, has a plethora of political choices (38 parties in parliament, Communists are #3 and #10, militant nativists are #8) and is very likely to be the world's next superpower. On the other hand, we have the European Union, a notably indecisive entity, which allows a group of regional powers (if that) to act like a superpower inasmuch as they can agree on anything.
In general, I think the current world economic crisis will teach us a lot about the advantages and disadvantages of the various political systems, corroborating some theories and refuting others. Will authoritarian countries recover more quickly or will they be destabilized by mass discontent? Will democratic countries succumb to the temptation of protectionism? Will the United States finally join every other first world nation in implementing universal health care? Hopefully, this "learning experience" will give us better answers to the burning socioeconomic questions, including many of the ones you've asked, in a few years' time.
It's interesting how opinions have changed over Europe. I remember some texts a few years ago which talked about the United States of Europe. Most of it came from conservative US commentators who were too blinkered to imagine the next powers would come from Asia or South America. Nowadays, most people seem to be in agreement that Europe is in decline and the EU is the nursemaid watching over this ailing region.
fascinating stuff.
its an interesting time to be alive. the economic crisis has put everyone's faith in the system to the test, and we'll see how people in power will react in the face of crisis. (IE: Bush, in the face of terrorism, rolling back on civil liberties.)
even Francis Fukuyama, author of probably the most influential political paper in the past twenty years, 'the end of history', has begun to waiver in his opinion. Fukiyama believed that society had reached its theoretical pinnacle - 'liberal democracy' - and because history is a 'struggle of ideology', the triumph of liberal democracy meant an 'end of history'.
fukuyama's reasons for his change in opinion stem largely from advancements in science and technlogy. as a result, humans for the first time can control their own evolution, and the very fundamentals of human nature can be changed. thus, history, and how humans acted in the past, is no longer a reliable predictor of the future.