Deepening Democracy to Fight Poverty

Abstract

Professor of Political Science, University of Toronto. The most recent of his eight books on Africa is Closing the Circle: Democratization and Development in Africa (2000). The author wishes to thank, yet again, Cranford Pratt for a trenchant critique of an earlier draft of this article.DEMOCRATIC TRANSITIONS TO LIBERAL DEMOCRACY in the Third World usually disappoint their electorates. The 'third wave' of democratization recently surging across the world aroused high expectations of freedom and prosperity. Surely, newly enfranchised citizens might reasonably hope that this wave would usher in a virtuous and self-reinforcing circle of deepening democracy, human-rights observance, and poverty alleviation. After all, where the poor and the socially excluded account for a quarter or more of the population, their demands should sway popularly elected governments.(1) Yet, in practice, these expectations have rarely been fulfilled.This conclusion emerges from a series of regional workshops on 'Making Democracy Work for the Poor,' convened by Sweden's Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) in 2000.(2) For example, IDEA's south Asia workshop observed: 'The trappings of democracy have allowed unrepresentative elites to hijack power, promote their own interests, and bypass the poor... For most people elections have become irrelevant.' The workshop on the Commonwealth of Independent States concluded that human rights have deteriorated since the break-up of the Soviet Union. Equal rights before the law is a chimera, it declared; the quality of public education and health care has fallen; no legal right to a job or basic sustenance survives; religious intolerance grows; and political rights are merely formal. Similar complaints surfaced in the Latin America and Africa workshops. Disillusionment, even cynicism, have widely displaced citizens' enthusiasm.However, the delegates did not want to replace, but rather to improve, democratic governance. They therefore posed certain key questions. How can the promise of democracy to give voice and dignity to ordinary people be realized? How, in particular, can representative governments in poor countries be made more responsive to the aspirations of their poor and near-poor majorities? Seeking answers to such questions inevitably raises major controversies in the political economy of development.'Humane internationalists'(3) should engage these controversies. Not only is poverty a growing problem in our own countries, but also solidarity on issues of world poverty and human rights extends beyond borders in this globalizing world. We cannot avoid a role in the struggle: to empower ordinary people will require radical changes in the global economic order, as well as in local and national institutions and practices in developing countries.In defining a strategic response to deepen democracy worldwide, humane internationalists have grounds for scepticism about prominent positions on both the right and the left. A social-democratic perspective may provide the most efficacious guide.Many neoliberals contend that the fundamental role of democracy is to prevent tyranny and improve governance, not to empower the poor to press populist and statist policies on impressionable governments. Indeed, for them, economic or market freedom is as important as political freedom. Eventually, the interests of all will be served if governments liberalize markets and open their economies to international trade and investment. The consequent growth will lift all boats, though admittedly not all to the same level. Neoliberals regard the growing inequalities that attend liberalized markets as either a regrettable necessity or a welcome recognition of the varying individual contributions to expanding productivity. Hence, free markets, along with minimal safety nets and services to forestall a backlash against neoliberalism, responsible macroeconomic policy, and a liberal democracy, constitute for them the winning formula in poor countries. …