The long road to democracy

By Terry Russell

JAKARTA (JP): In Indonesia, as in my own country, Australia, we cannot question democracy. We have all been told that democracy slayed communism in 1989 and that nowadays only fascists and fundamentalists question democracy.

Western governments are now pushing harder for democratization, abandoning dictators like Saddam Hussein, Soeharto, Pinochet and Mobutu, whom they supported during the Cold War. In the spirit of democratic debate, it is time to open our eyes and question whether western democracy is suitable for developing countries like Indonesia.

Let us define democracy as the right of citizens to speak freely and to vote in free elections. We will then ask whether democracy has worked in developing countries, and whether it is a system which developing countries can suddenly leap into or a system which must be built up over many years?

Has democracy worked in developing countries? India and the Philippines have had democratic elections and freedom of speech for many years. Indeed, excepting the occasional assassination of rivals and ongoing struggles with separatists who do not feel well served by their elected governments, these countries have had relatively peaceful democracies.

But this peace and freedom has not led to economic prosperity for the general population, so can we really call them successful democracies?

Japan, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea now have prosperity and some sense of democracy. South Korea even jailed one of its former dictators.

Their prosperity was, however, established under semiauthoritarian governments and supported by United States subsidies and military protection during the Cold War.

Malaysia, Brazil, Poland, Argentina, China, Thailand and Chile have made recent economic gains without great concessions to democracy. The latter four indulged in massacres of their own people in the 1970s and 1980s. It will be interesting to observe whether they choose the western prescription of immediate democracy to complete the transition to prosperity. If so, will this prescription work?

And what about countries less developed than the above seven. Can they make a sudden leap to successful democracy? Elections in Nicaragua in 1984, in Burma, now Myanmar, in 1988, and in Cambodia and Algeria in the 1990s, were deemed to have been reasonably fair. Unfortunately the results were promptly ignored by the losers, plunging these countries into war and vicious clampdowns. This would suggest that these countries were not ready for democracy.

The above survey suggests that countries are more likely to be prosperous and to enjoy lasting democracy if they first pass through a phase of semiauthoritarianism. If the government during this phase is sensitive and farsighted rather than corrupt, the country may, like Singapore and Japan, move peacefully to democracy and consolidate its prosperity.

This suggests that we need to stop looking at governments as either democratic or undemocratic. Let us accept that there are stages of democracy. Let us accept that a developing country may benefit from minimizing freedom of speech, hopefully for only a short period, allowing it to focus on socioeconomic issues rather than internal political ones.

Here then are the five stages of democracy. Indonesia has just moved to the third stage. Its media censorship is at stage three, but may regress to stage two when its elites reunite. If we look at the above examples of successful democracies, Indonesia now needs to develop a more independent judicial system and possibly a wealthier, more educated public, before it can progress peacefully to the fourth stage. The final utopian stage is included to remind westerners that their own governments are indeed still on the same journey as all other governments toward full democracy.

1. Authoritarianism: Ruling elites are immune to prosecution. No criticism is allowed.

2. Semiauthoritarianism: Ruling elites are immune to prosecution. Criticism is allowed, provided it is directed against ministries or is only minor personal criticism. Demonstrations are allowed in areas approved by the police.

This stage provides feedback to governments, allows people to let off steam nonviolently and develop their skills in debating rationally without feeling or inciting hatred.

Elections provide an opportunity for limited debate but are engineered to ensure the ruling party always wins.

3. Hijacked Democracy: Ruling elites may be prosecuted but not successfully. Any criticism is allowed, but harsh personal criticism will be directly censored by the government regulated mass media. Demonstrations may be held anywhere. Elections are free but influenced by vote-buying, intimidation, missing ballot boxes and the above censorship of the mass media.

4. Western Democracy: Rule is by law, with no military, financial or political elites immune from prosecution. Criticism is allowed and publicized without direct censorship of the mass media by the ruling elite. However, informal censorship still exists due to mass media owners' choices of moderately pro-elite editors, editors' fears of a backlash from wealthy advertisers and reporters' frequent reliance on government sources of information.

Elections are free, but campaigns focus on personalities and one or two oversimplified issues.

5. Full Democracy: Criticism is allowed and publicized without direct or indirect censorship. This stage of democracy can only arrive when everybody makes daily use of the internet or other mass media which are not dependent on advertisers, and when all government sources of information are truly free of elite interference.

Communications technology makes it cheap and efficient to hold frequent referendums, with voting for particular policies as well as traditional elections. Greater voter education leads parties to focus their election campaigns on a wide-range of issues.

The writer is an English language instructor with a B.A. (Hons) in world history.