Democracy: Development and Ethnicity

Let me begin with a brief comment about the history of democracies, their sustainabil- ity, and the drivers of their existence. Then I shall comment on some of the questions posed to the panel. I will end with some commentary about the role of social sciences in the development of democracies and the role that government and agencies such as the World Bank play in the process. For me it seems like yesterday, but for many of you, it is so old you can't even remember it. However, it was early in 1974 that the stunning wave of the new dem- ocratic expansion in the world began. It was then that Portugal became a democracy. At that time, there were only forty democracies in the world, and they were mainly in the advanced industrial countries (Diamond 2003). There were a few other democracies scattered around the world, e.g., India, Sri Lanka, Costa Rica, Venezuela — but only a few. Since that time, democracy has expanded dramatically. By 1992 over half of all the countries in the world were democracies, and by 1995 just under two-thirds of the countries could be considered democracies. However, in the last decade and a half, the number has remained remarkably stable, so that today, as in 1995, only about 120 countries in the world are democratic in nature. During the same period (1974-2007) only fourteen nations became authoritarian, including countries such as Peru, Zambia, Russia, and Pakistan, and during this same period, some of these reverted to democracies, e.g., Turkey, India, Thailand (Freedom House 2003). For purposes of this paper, I define a democracy as "a system of government in which the people choose their leaders at regular intervals through free, fair, and compet- itive elections." Certainly this definition can be viewed as a continuum from those which are clearly democratic to those which are lacking in certain elements. In other words, it is not an "either-or" situation. It is also the case that electoral democracies can exist in countries with significant violations of human rights, massive corrup- tion, and a weak rule of law. As such, this definition is the minimal criteria that I would suggest characterizes a democratic society. A truly, ideal democratic system requires three components: