Democracy vs Authoritarianism

airsuperiority said:

valid points and descriptions.

Something we must also learn to distinguish is, authoritarian rule vs authoritarian values vs liberal democratic rule vs liberal democratic values

HK is a prime example of authoritarian(but semi-democratic) with a lot of liberal democratic values. when we're discussing these, we should know what applies and what doesn't in various scenarios. An authoritarian rule with liberal democratic values will be like in HK, while Iraq will be a democratic rule with much remnants of authoritarian characteristics, such as police brutality. And even in this scope, police brutality as a characteristic can always be argued as a tendency to surface amongst authoritarian states, not that it necessarily be a characteristic of authoritarian. To rule is one thing, while the rights and values a society may enjoy is another, and technically can be of different combos.

Finally, above points regarding accountability, transparency, and minimal police power abuse are indeed merits of democracy. One can argue how useless those bags of cells that are elected and how a state isn't getting anywhere with its policies, but this doesn't detract the privileges and guarantees of certain rights the citizens enjoy.

Authoritarian states can also see successes like a first world state, enjoy privileges of liberal democracy, uses a free market economy, while retaining its effective rule...theoretically. As for how true this is, my first thoughts would be Singapore

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solarz said:

You bring up a good point. I would go farther and say that the best form of government is a government that suits the values of its people.

If a people does not believe in equal rights, whether towards women or gays or ethnic minorities or whatever, and those people, including the law enforcement institutions among them, do not believe in the rule of law, then setting up a parliament and urging people to vote for their leader is not going to change anything.

Let's take the example of ROC vs PRC. When Sun Zhongshan established the "Three Principles of Democracy", China was still rife with polygyny, prostitution, and servant serfdom. It continued this way for 40 years until Mao Zedong declared that "women hold up half the sky". Overnight, women became the equal of men, and prostitution simply vanished. Although prostitution returned with the economic reform, its nature is far different from the feudal model of women selling themselves to a brothel and effectively becoming serfs.

This literally happened overnight, simply because Chairman Mao commanded it. No more forced marriage, no more concubinage. Women entered the work force in droves, where only 10 years ago, it was considered shameful for a married woman to interact with strangers. And this happened in 1951.

Now consider Afghanistan. In the 21st century, the US slapped a "democratic" government model on a people with tribal values. 10 years later, girls are still getting acid thrown in their face for going to school, women are still wearing head covers to go out, etc.

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airsuperiority said:

Agreed, and to expand your point a little further, we should heed serious attention to each culture, as cultures influence governance, as well as the other way around. Democracy and human rights may have emerged in Europe in recent eras due to individualistic cultures of the West, or it may be the other way around(democracy and human rights spawned individualism)..it's an argument of which comes first, chicken or egg.

On the other hand, Asian cultures, as described by schools of psychology, as collectivist. How accurate again is this is also a question (as HK and Singapore are beautiful melting pots of both, and whichever comes first is also a question). Having said that, Singaporean ruler once argued for "rules by Asian values", which stresses more on authoritarian approach, while Chris Patten, the last British governor of HK, claimed such as absurd, while believing that democracy can be seen in virtually any society.

With all having been said, I'm just bringing some perspectives from various thoughts, and I'll also leave behind my thoughts: May democracy be spawned in various versions? And is democracy even the final product? Or will the societies see beyond the current eras and possibly to a post-democratic age?

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jackliu said:

Can't believe they lost my post about the media's function in a democracy. While my position is that democracy is a very good idea when done right, with the media serves as the watch dog for the people and keep the government's false ambition such as war in check, however time and time again, it has been shown that the media itself is not that free, nor do they serve as any serious counter balance to government's stupid ambition. So I'm not against free media, I am against the media that we current have, which it calls itself the "free media" but in reality it is controls are actually far worse than the authoritarian controlled media.

When people often think of democracy, they would think of USA, UK, France, Germany, New Zealand etc... all of them are democratic one way or the other, presidential or parliamentary system etc... and they all share one thing in common, they can be said to be successful, it is able to wisely distribute the resources to benefit the masses, and also provide decent services for it is people that it governs.

However, what many people forget that when you think of democracy, you should also think of nations such as Philpines, Indonesia, India, Haiti, Republic of the Congo, Peru, Bolivia, Brazile etc.. all of which are one way or the other, democratic in choosing it is government and leaderships. However all these nations have very dysfunctional politics and economy, the true power is being hold within the hand of the elites, no matter who is elected, they elites are the ones that are truly in control, and they can use whatever social, economic and media means to maintain power. (One can argue that US is heading towards that direction)

And when you examine the successful democracies closer, most of them are concentrated in Europe or direct descents of the Western power (New Zealand, Aulastria etc..) And by no accidnet, most of these nations are white majority, and most of those nations are within the US sphere of influence. From this I can argue, that their success is not primary due to democracy, but rather due to a shared culture and historical background, and most of them started the whole process of industrialization, democratization way as early as 1700s.

I think most of the nation got rich, have gone through a process of industrial revolution, because working in a factory is the greatest form of income redistribution, because in manufacturing, often wages are the most expensive cost, and the workers themselves often do not need any higher form of education, so the barrier of entry is very low, so they can make enough money to better themselves or their children. I see US, Europe, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan have all gone through this process, and now so is China. After industrialization, then a nation can go ahead and develop a service economy, which in general have much higher pay, but the barrier of entry is a lot higher, because you would need a certain level of education to be able to work in the call center, computer programmer, tax accountant, lawyer etc... This is why I think it is a huge mistake for India to skip industrialization to try to leap from agriculture economy straight to service economy. This would only means the very few who can afford education will get ahead, while those who are stuck in agriculture will stuck there forever, that means the society will eventually have a extreme elite rich class, a few middle class, while vast majority of the population would be stuck in forever poor. And when those European nation was in the process of industrialization, they were not really democratic as you think today, there was wide abuse of labor, abuse of human right, abuse of woman, abuse of children, abuse of minorities, in fact if you want to take their today's standard judging China, compare to their own past, it would put China's current Industrial Revolution's labor and environmental practice to shame. It is only after those nation got rich, they being to be more considerable of people's right, they started to give woman and minorities the right to vote, they begin to regulate the labor laws, food and drug laws etc.... not before, not during the process of industrialization. Also, those nation also started the process of democratization way early from within as early as england's magna carta, and through out time there was gradual changes to the society to this day.

I think in order for a society to work with democracy it must meet a few prerequists first.

1. All the basic need must be meet, food, shelter etc... One cannot bother to vote if they are starving, this is happening in most of Africa and India.

2. The people must not see politics as a game where the winners takes all, one must understand it is ok to give and take, to win and lose. Many society are not ready for this, they often see politics as an extension of other matters such as blood feud and religious conflict, this is what happening in Middle East.

3. Democracy must work in a society where people are somewhat educated and can make conscious decision base on critical thinking, this is missing in many African and South East Asia democracies, and increasingly United States as well.

4. The society itself must respect the right of law, where corruption is not be the accepted norm from all part of the society, this is missing in Latin America, South East Asia.

5. The government must be willing to implemented programs that directly involves the people, and the people in turn must also expecting the government to intervene into their life as well. This is very much missing in India and Africa democracies.

All I see is United State government try to slap on democracy to any nation on earth regardless of their historical and social background, this often end up in epic failures.

I also think there are some areas that authoritarian government have advantage over democracies, I'll post those later.

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solarz said:

I think the whole Individualistic West vs Collectivist East approach is too much of a generalization to be of any value. Indeed, many of the so-called "collectivist" characteristics in Eastern societies are a result of authoritarian rule.

Instead, I would advocate looking at history and social culture.

First, in regards the social culture, I've always been of the opinion that for China, the Rule of Law is far more important than holding elections. Proponents of democracy argue that it is the very nature of democracy (transparent government + independent media) that can uphold the Rule of Law. There have always been dysfunctional "democratic" nations that shows the invalidity of that argument, but no example is greater than Iraq after US occupation.

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icbeodragon said:

A small correction, but one very close to my heart, Democracy is not based on rule of law, at its heart it is based on mob rule. A Republic is based on rule of law.

I understand how the difference between a Democracy and a Republic has been blurred by the media, and this is a somewhat dangerous trend imo, but as this discussion is on going it might be more correct to instead refer to the virtues of republicanism vs the virtues of authoritarianism, as that is what all the liberal democratic values the thread is referring to are based on, except for sheer representation.

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solarz said:

I think the whole Individualistic West vs Collectivist East approach is too much of a generalization to be of any value. Indeed, many of the so-called "collectivist" characteristics in Eastern societies are a result of authoritarian rule.

Instead, I would advocate looking at history and social culture.

First, in regards the social culture, I've always been of the opinion that for China, the Rule of Law is far more important than holding elections. Proponents of democracy argue that it is the very nature of democracy (transparent government + independent media) that can uphold the Rule of Law. There have always been dysfunctional "democratic" nations that shows the invalidity of that argument, but no example is greater than Iraq after US occupation.

Clearly, having elections does not guarantee a transparent government nor does it automatically create an independent media. Without those two institutions, democracy cannot uphold the Rule of Law any better than a random authoritarian government.

The question then is, is there a way to uphold the Rule of Law in an authoritarian government? The example of Singapore comes to mind, but what's remarkable about Singapore is that it is really a democratic society: it just so happens that everyone decided that they wanted to be ruled by an authoritarian government.

That would be very difficult to reproduce in a nation the size of China, so I think there are still many challenges for the Chinese society to overcome before it can become a truly modern nation.

The second issue, one that deals with history, is the issue of the legitimacy of a government. No matter how authoritarian it is, a government that has lost its legitimacy in the eyes of its people cannot survive. In the 2500 years of feudal China, only 2 dynasties were ended by foreign invasion. All others were toppled by peasant rebellions. This concept is so important that the Chinese gave it a name: the Mandate of Heaven.

This tells us that when the Chinese people accepts a government as legitimate, they accept it until they feel that the government has lost the Mandate of Heaven. In other words, so long as people can live in peace, most Chinese do not want to challenge the government.

This is in contrast to the democratic process, where the government is constantly challenged. While this can be good at times, in the long run, it breeds a political class who rarely sees past the next election. That is why issues like Climate Change and fossil fuel depletion are so difficult to gain traction. These long-term risks pale in comparison to the immediate rewards offered by industry lobbyists and claims of "creating jobs".

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Kurt said:

OK, the Mandate of Heaven that sticks to the laws will be the only accepted gouvernance system in China. The problem with peasant rebellions is that they are bloody, destructive and might need several attempts and generations to succeed. Can you think of a way that allows for less bloody and equally effective rebellions if the Mandate of Heaven is violated? I have the gut feeling that in our very populated and rapidly developing world such a peasant rebellion might cause major havoc and negative longterm effects to the nation.

As for local village organistaion, we seem to agree that the traditional Chinese democratic approach will work well today as in the millenias before.
How do you govern the cities? Would you take European city constitutions that influenced HK and Singapore into consideration?

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