Low intensity democracy

Abstract

By evoking the US counter-insurgency catch phrase 'low intensity conflict', it is out intention to show that perhaps more than at any other time in the recent past, today the struggle to define 'democracy' has become a major ideological battle. 'Democracy' has replaced 'development' as the buzzword for the 1990s. Democracy seems to be sweeping the globe, driving before it both communist party dictatorships and rightist military regimes on every continent. Yet the paradox of this new wave of democratisation is that its 'success' is built upon the failure of 'development' both in the Third World and the former Second World. Some have tried to explain this wave of political change as the historical triumph of an idea/ideal, heralding the dawn of a grand new age of global democracy. Alternatively, there are grounds to be sceptical of both the purported causes, and the ends, of this putative democratic new world order. Whereas some regard formal democracy to be sufficient in itself, if the content of this new democracy is critically examined it may be found to be seriously flawed on many counts. This article began as a book project involving a series of case studies of transitions from authoritarian to democratic regimes in the Third World. * In these studies, the contributors to the project discovered that the institutions of formal democracy that have recently re-emerged in many countries of the Third World have failed to broaden popular political participation in a very meaningful way. They found little evidence to support the widespread assumption that formal electoral democratisation alone would bring about a lasting progressive breakthrough in these societies or that it is capable of solving their fundamental social and especially economic problems. What should more accurately be called 'elite democracies' in effect coexist with tacit military dictatorships. Social reform agendas that could have established the basis for broader popular participation and greater social justice have been abandoned. Human rights violations continue virtually unabated. The new regimes are more readily manipulated by external forces such as the International Monetary Fund or via bilateral political and economic pressures, particularly from the USA. Economic policies often mandate austerity for the majority without, in most cases, bringing about significant economic growth. Progressive movements find it virtually impossible to implement an agenda for reform when powerful domestic and international groups opposing such change, not least the military, remain in place.