Democracy In Decline?

There is an at least interesting article in the March/April edition of Foreign Affairs titled, "Democracy in Retreat", which was written by Larry Diamond. Diamonds article claims that democracy around the world may be declining. Diamond uses the term democratic recession in his article.

For those in support of Venezuela and Hugo Chavez there may be a small level of skepitism in that Diamond levels at least some criticism of Hugo Chavez. In addition, one might wonder if Diamond at one point raises the bar for democracy so high so that Chavez and those like him cannot qualify as leaders of Democracy. In the article Diamond states,

"For a country to be a democracy, it must have more than regular, multiparty elections under a civilian constitutional order. Even significant opposition in presidential elections and opposition party members in the legislture are not enough to move beyond electoral authoritarianism. Elections are only democratic if they are truly free and fair. This requires a fair and neutral electoral administration, a widely credible system of dispute resolution, balanced access to mass media, and independent vote monitoring."

Diamond did not list Venezuela as one of the countries that would have slipped below this mark, but he did criticize Chavez in some previous paragraphs. In addition, he questioned whether other like Evo Morales and Rafael Correa would go down the same road as Chavez.

One could also say that Diamond's article does give a blow to Bush and his allies who claim that "freedom is on the march". Diamond points out that the Freedom House survey reported that for the first time since 1994 there had been two consective years with net declines in freedom. In addition, the ratio between the countries with improving scores and declining scores was the worse since the Berlin Wall fell.

Diamond later levels a blow at the people who promote the idea that installing free market economies is the best way to build democracies. Diamond claimed that first good governments had to be formed in that without good governments economic growth cannot happen. Diamond went on to say that a number of countries on the verge of becoming non democratic had poor governance.

I would like for everyone to read the article and discuss your thought on the article. What did you think about the article? Did you agree with the author?

http://fullaccess.foreignaffairs.org/20080301faessay87204/larry-diamond/the-democratic-rollback.html

www.foreignaffairs.org

times is up.

But the cure, as claimed by a writer named Edward Abbey, is more democracy. As we've seen with bushco the illness we suffer is because of less democracy.

Stolen in 2000 and again in 2004, the presidency has become a dictatorship sailing away from a democratic beachead. We've got to turn the ship around or build a new one from the flotsam of the old.

Either way, the cure is more democracy not less, and the cure is held by all of us, we just need to apply it.