The fact is that institutions can exist on paper, but they have no power until people come to put faith in them. No one really knows how strong an institution is until it is tested. Passing a crucible test and surviving can lead to a virtuous cycle—as institutions prove themselves, people are likely to use them again and again. That is how they become worth more than the paper they are written on.
Lesson Four: Politics Must Connect to the People
Institutions are intended to minimize the impact of individual whims on a country’s course. But as we have seen, there can be a tendency for leaders to engage mostly in personal tugs-of-war. In Ukraine, the politics of personality made it difficult to get anything done, particularly after the Orange Revolution. The state of affairs was dispiriting for the population. People began to see their leaders as all about personal power all of the time.
If citizens lose interest in the politics of the country, the democratic system is compromised. That leads to another lesson: Politics in a democracy must connect to the interests and concerns of the people.
This is especially true for political parties. I met recently with a member of the Georgian parliament and an American who is helping with the elections there. The conversation turned to the problem of political parties that seem to have no real platform for governing—at least not one that addresses the questions on the minds of voters. It immediately reminded me of the problem with liberal political parties in Ukraine and Russia. The platforms rarely speak to the widows in the rust belt cities of the Russian periphery who have lost pensions or the worker whose factory has closed.
The problem is exacerbated by the fact that many liberal parties do not reach outside of the large cities. On the other hand, United Russia (Putin’s party) has tentacles in every region. One of the strengths of Islamist parties like Hezbollah in Lebanon has been its outreach to the poor and the rural. Tunisia’s success thus far makes the point clearly. The broad base of the labor unions and their appeal to ordinary voters—not unlike Solidarity in Poland—have helped to temper the actions of the Islamists.
If democracy is to work, people need a way to aggregate their interests and present them to those who would govern. And those who would govern have to represent those interests.
Civil society groups do this in part, but they are usually issue-limited—human rights, judicial reform, environmental stewardship, or women’s empowerment. A more direct relationship between ideas to address people’s daily lives and their politicians’ policies needs to emerge. One would think that in the age of smartphones and the Internet this would not be such a difficult task. It has been.
Technology has been a mixed blessing for the spread of democracy. On the one hand, it has helped people to mobilize to bring down the old—in Egypt, Russia, and Ukraine. In Kenya and Colombia, it allowed people to share information about what was going on and to protest when they disagreed. But there are few examples of technology actually strengthening the institutions themselves. Ukraine has experimented with “e-government” in an effort to root out corruption and improve efficiency. India’s biometric identification system has similar goals. A number of governments, such as Estonia, use the Internet as a forum for democracy, posting budgets for citizen comment.
These examples notwithstanding, the track record thus far is not very promising. Technology has been far more successful at tearing down the old than building up the new.
Political parties do need to represent people’s interests. But we have seen the dangers of the seemingly irresistible pull of sectarian parties. Many of Kenya’s troubles stem from the tribal basis of its parties. And it is a reminder too that even in an ethnically divided country, the balance between devolution and central authority can be a challenge. In Kenya, federalism appears to have reinforced tribalism. In Russia, the regions became too independent under Yeltsin and served to weaken the state. Now Vladimir Putin has reversed course—and federalism is no check on the central government. Decentralization can bring government closer to the people, but in some circumstances it brings its own challenges. Federalism is healthy in most circumstances, but not all. This last point should remind outsiders who want to help to attend to local conditions in institutional design. No one size fits all.
Lesson Five: It All Takes Time
The most important lesson, though, is the need for patience. The messiness, the fits and starts, the imperfections are all a part of the process—they were for the United States, and they will be for every country that sets out on the road to democracy. It took Great Britain 240 years, from the Revolution of 1688 until 1928, to grant universal suffrage. And along the way multiple rebellions and a civil war almost allowed absolutists to triumph. No country has had an easy path to democracy. It is well to remember again what Madison wrote in the Federalist Papers: “I never expect to see a perfect work from imperfect man.” And to remember too that no matter how imperfect democracy is, it remains the only system that fully accords with the “non-negotiable demands of human dignity.”2
Epilogue
THEY WILL LOOK TO AMERICA
Was it worth it?” A student in my American foreign policy class asked the question reluctantly but clearly. He meant the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and it is a question for which there is no facile answer. There was so much sacrifice of blood and treasure. We overthrew vicious and dangerous dictators who threatened our security. The world is better off without the regimes of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. After the security threat was gone, we made a choice to stand for freedom in those countries and in the Middle East more broadly. It has been a struggle and there is as yet no satisfying end in sight.
The trials and tribulations of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya have made us impatient with people who want the liberties we enjoy. We have come to associate democratization with violence and instability. Military power is not a good way to create a democratic opening. I have never believed that and never will. But that does not mean that America can step back in promoting democratic change by other means. One of my regrets about Iraq and Afghanistan is that that message has been obscured.
Democratic institutions are the best hope for humankind—including for the Middle East. Stability born of tyranny is a false stability. It is an unequal bargain in which someone oppresses someone else. When people have no way to change their rulers peacefully, revolution may be the only available course. Reform is better, and everything that we can do to encourage and insist upon change is worth doing.
There is both a moral and a practical case for democracy promotion. In the long arc of history, we know that democracies don’t fight each other. The “democratic peace” is observable. No one today is sorry that the United States helped to build a democratic Germany and Japan after World War II. Both had been aggressors against their neighbors and there was no guarantee that they would not be again. Neither country had sustained experience with democracy, and it required time for institutions to take root. But we stood alongside them, and now they help to form the foundation for international peace and prosperity.
No one today doubts that the spread of democracy through most of Latin America, Africa, and Asia and the emergence of free countries in Eastern Europe have been good for the world. In 2016, Freedom House ranked 145 out of 195 countries as “free” or “partly free.” That is a reason for celebration even if there have been setbacks and reversals along the way.
It is good news that so many countries respect their people and give them a voice in their affairs. The even better news is that they are largely peaceful—Japan doesn’t attack its neighbors, preferring to engage in international organizations. Tokyo is one of the world’s largest foreign aid donors today. Brazil does not harbor terrorists; Ghana does not employ child soldiers; South Korea does not engage in state-sponsored human trafficking. These democratic states and others believe in and support an international system based on the rule of law.
The United States has a real interest, then, in seeing their numbers grow. Democracy pro
motion has been successful and is cost-effective. If you ask the general public how much money we spend on foreign assistance, you will get wildly inflated estimates. A recent poll found that the average respondent thought it was about 26 percent of the federal budget.1 In fact, it is less than 1 percent (or a total of about $35 billion per year). Of that, roughly half goes to improving governance and supporting those fighting for liberty.
Our efforts are buttressed by effective and efficient organizations like the National Endowment for Democracy, created in 1983 by President Ronald Reagan. The NED consists of four centers that provide bipartisan expertise to democracy advocates around the world. The American Center for International Labor Solidarity engages with workers’ movements, such as those that played a pivotal role in Poland and Tunisia. The Center for International Private Enterprise works with business communities, which often serve as a counterbalance to governments in autocratic and even democratizing countries. The National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute represent our two major political parties in working with citizens around the world to provide training on how to organize parties and run campaigns. And we have a host of additional non-governmental organizations that pitch in to monitor elections and educate human rights advocates, parliamentarians, journalists, and others who defend freedom in their countries. These efforts help to sustain advocates for religious and political freedom in countries still ruled by tyrants.
If democracy is in recession across the world, we need to make every effort to reinvigorate it. I suspect, though, that the dire warnings about its prospects stem in part from dashed expectations that democracy’s march would be linear—a straight line toward progress. Instead, there have been ups and downs.
Still, the overall trajectory is worth celebrating. Just a few decades ago, Eastern Europe was trapped behind the Iron Curtain, and freedom seemed a distant prospect. A dominant form of government in Latin America was the military junta. There were few multiparty systems in sub-Saharan Africa. And virtually no one—not scholars nor the leaders and people of the region—talked about democracy in the Middle East.
So while Russia, Turkey, and Egypt discourage us, Chile, Liberia, and Tunisia should inspire us. And we can acknowledge that for every jailed dissident in China or Iran, there is someone else willing to speak out, no matter the cost.
Giving voice to the voiceless is a moral cause for a country—America—that is based on an idea: that human freedom is the source of human dignity and progress. That cannot be true for us and not for them.
“America, Be What You Claim to Be”
In the late 1940s, Judge J. Waties Waring wrote a stinging dissent in a voting rights case in South Carolina. He was troubled by the implications for justice at home, but also for America’s moral standing in the world. “When this country is taking the lead in maintaining the democratic process and attempting to show the world that American government and the American way of life is the fairest and best that has yet been suggested, it is time for us to take stock of our internal affairs,” he said.
Today, taking stock of our internal affairs reveals some ugly truths. Americans are experiencing a kind of crisis of confidence about our own democracy—who we are and what we value.
“We the people” is not an exclusive concept. It is not a religious, a national, or an ethnic designation. It is, in reality, based on an idea: equality under the law and equality of opportunity. Americans and their ancestors have come from every corner of the globe and enriched their new country with their energy and determination. And Americans do not see themselves as prisoners of the class into which they were born. They are united by a creed—a belief. I have often summed it up in this way: It does not matter where you came from; it matters where you are going.
Americans have remarkable institutions to help them achieve that dream. The history of the United States is in some sense a story of a long democratic transition to make “We the people” as inclusive as possible. Citizens have petitioned the government and appealed to the Constitution to be included—female, black, gay… It is a remarkable story of democratic stability born of an openness to change.
But today that essential role of institutions—to channel the need for change—is under stress. There is declining faith in our political institutions.2 Some see them as unjust. Others see them as rigged. For others still, they are just irrelevant. And governance challenges just keep piling up—from stalled social mobility, to the tragic state of education for the poor, particularly minority kids, to the worst tensions in race relations in several decades. Troubling trends and questions hang over the future of American democracy.
Yet, as America struggles to be what it says it is, we have an important story to tell—one not of perfection but of the constant need for renewal. I have been reminded of that truth many times in my life.
As a graduate student in Moscow in 1979, I was approached on the street by a middle-aged woman. “Where are you from?” she asked.
“I am American,” I said.
“But black people have internal passports and can’t leave America,” she said with absolute certainty.
“No,” I countered, “that would be South Africa.”
The woman sniffed, obviously sure that she was right and I was probably African, not American. I wanted to defend my country and the progress we had made, but she wouldn’t have gotten the point. I just let it go.
Years later, sitting in our first meeting with Prime Minister Tony Blair, I was heartened by something he said: “I look at the two of you and I ask whether this could happen in Great Britain. And I say, not just yet.” He was referring to the African American secretary of state, Colin Powell, and the African American national security adviser, Condi Rice, sitting on either side of the president of the United States.
Blair was not the only one to notice. President Lula da Silva of Brazil talked to me about America’s journey. “I wanted to be sure to have Afro-Brazilians in my cabinet,” he said. Upon taking office, he named four to his cabinet, as well as the first to the Supreme Court. When Lula appointed Edson Santos as his minister for promoting racial equality in 2008, he asked me to meet with him and to sign an accord on racial harmony. These were times when America’s own democratic journey sent a positive message.
And then there was that day standing on the stage of the elegant, rose- and cream-colored Franklin Room of the Department of State. It was January 28, 2005. My uncle Alto—the one whom I had peppered with questions about the importance of the vote in Alabama—stood next to me, as did my aunts Mattie and Gee. I could feel the presence of my parents, Angelena and John—long gone to the Lord, but it seemed hovering right beside me. My other ancestors were there too—those who had lived as not quite free men and women in the Deep South and those who had died as slaves.
And there was Ben Franklin looking down on us from the magnificent portrait painted by David Martin in 1767. What would old Ben think of this? I thought silently as President Bush made remarks. Then Ruth Bader Ginsburg—a Jewish woman and Supreme Court justice—asked me to raise my hand. “I do solemnly swear to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic… So help me God.”
The United States has been a north star for those seeking liberty not because it is perfect, but because it was born imperfect and is still struggling with imperfection. That has always been the best argument for America’s example—and America’s engagement. We are living proof that the work of democracy is never done. For those who are just starting—stumbling, and starting again—that is reassuring and inspiring. And it is a reason to be a voice for them as they struggle in their freedom—just as we do—to chart a better future.
2016
We are fed up of the so-called elite not listening to us.
—“BREXIT” SUPPORTER1
Democracy’s story is ever evolving. There are always new challenges, new responses, and new possibilities—good and bad. So it can be said
of 2016 and the rise of populism, nativism, and a tinge of isolationism. A revolt against political and economic elites, their institutions, and their globalizing and sometimes moralizing views has upended the status quo and left all to wonder, What comes next?
It is no surprise that this earthquake is shaking young democracies like Poland. But it is stunning that it has jolted the most mature of them—the United Kingdom, the United States, and much of Europe. In 2016, voters in the UK narrowly rejected continued participation in the European Union. Proponents of “Brexit” railed against economic red tape imposed by unelected EU bureaucrats and called for regaining control over their country’s borders. Brussels, they believed, had become disconnected from their aspirations and their fears.
In the United States, a new president was elected with absolutely no experience in government of any kind—the first in the country’s history. He has made clear what he thinks of America’s political elites whatever their ideological stripe. They have ceased, he believes, to represent the American people—their aspirations and their fears.
Similar concerns have spread throughout the European bloc—including to France and Germany—where the far left and the far right seem to have made a common cause of battling the establishment.
Some write darkly that these trends constitute a threat to democracy—if not the end of it as we know it.2 That seems alarmist and premature. Indeed, democracy is built for disruption with its institutions, its checks and balances, and its shock absorber—the ability of people to change their circumstances peacefully. People are exercising that right—at the ballot box, in the courts, and some in the streets.
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