In March, the
Kingdom of Bhutan transitioned from Monarchy to Democracy.
it a bit. (check it out, it's a great story)
I don't know much about Bhutan, but after watching that video, and having read things
here and
there regarding various countries' moves to democracy, I'm left wondering if their future is about to become brighter or dimmer.
Africa's democracies seem to have trouble developing, and some of them are practically a sham. It's pretty debatable how much net good or bad has come from it all. Or take places like Iraq, or Afghanistan. Their transition has been very rough. And as Arab nations,
Sharia is very, very important... Is it even possible for our interpretations of democracy to flourish in their culture? The pervading idea seems to be that democracy is best, but what if there are fundamental disconnects between a culture's values and the presupposed values of democracy? Will the peoples' lives (eventually) improve, or are there more pitfalls and hardships in store which we're blind to, perhaps through bias?
Another question raised: what's better? Things like knowledge, technology, wealth, freedom? Maybe culture, peace, health, and happiness overshadow those? Are some of these qualities mutually exclusive to each other? What among these does democracy promote?
Does it tend to stifle other areas? Certain ideals of peace, or harmony for instance? China's rise has seen an increase in a lot of the mentioned qualities, and quality of life seems to be improving broadly. They would have us believe it's people have a lot of faith in their government as well, which is not a democracy. Would their solution be better for some countries' situations?
This is, of course, on the assumption the form of government isn't prepackaged with a predilection for monstrous human rights violations like China...
Or is that actually a very pressing part of the equation? Are non-democracies naturally prone to disregarding human rights? Is this the reason Bhutan's king stepped down, to prevent the eventuality of a bad guy becoming king, and irreparably damaging their society? But then compare the the potential damage of westernization...
Modern western democracies seem to be doing alright, but the political and economic climate of the world was also much different when our current governments came into existence. Perhaps our countries had it easy 'growing up' in this respect. That newer democracies face more obstacles to political 'modernization.' Or does this matter?
It's certainly risky, changing a country around nowadays. That said, what kind of risk is a shot at freedom worth?
(In general though, those were all meant to be hypothetical questions.
Uh, except for the last one.)
I think there are many ways that democracy can evolve and there is no right way. While there are a lot of developing countries out there that are having a rough time getting to democracy, its not to say that the U.S. didn't have its own road blocks. I think that the U.S. likes to gloss over that a lot.
We point out the failures of these developing nations as if we've never been in the same situation. I think just in the last few years we can point out several violations of a democratic ethic in the U.S. government.
I think the U.S. as one of the Imperialist powers of the last century needs to get over itself in thinking that we can force democracy on the world. It may not be what the world needs. So far its just created a lot of strife.