Last week, I was reading one of Larry Diamond’s articles and came across an interesting point on three paradoxes of modern democracy. He outlined these paradoxes two decades ago, but they seem as relevant today as they were back then.
First: Democracy requires both competition and conflict, but too much conflict leads to instability. In its original sense, conflict really means disagreement, but the problem if that disagreements can spill over into actual conflicts that lead to instability. You need to allow conflict, but how do you decide when enough is enough before its too late?
Second: Democracy should balance power and governance, making sure that power is not concentrated in one set of hands and is dispersed throughout the system. Yet, governments also need to be able to take swift action when needed and not be paralyzed by internal rules and procedures – in other words, democracy must “have energy.”
Third: Consent doesn’t mean effectiveness. Consent requires legitimacy, and to acquire legitimacy democracy must deliver – perform well in a variety of socio-economic areas. But in many countries good performance requires unpopular reforms, which themselves undermine consent and legitimacy.
Reconciling these paradoxes is difficult. For instance, the second and third one lead to many debates on the difference between democracies and autocracies in terms of delivering economic outcomes. As one argument goes – democracies do not outperform autocracies because oftentimes they are not able to make swift decisions and political leaders don’t have incentives to implement necessary but unpopular reforms fearing that they will lose consent (elections).
This may seem true, but there are exceptions. One is Leszek Balcerowicz, who implemented unpopular but necessary reforms in Poland in the early 1990s; reforms which helped propel the country forward. He lost the next elections, which he knew would happen at the outset. However, Balcerowicz later came back for other successful stints in the government.
Overall, the paradoxes are a real thing democracies have to deal with. But they shouldn’t be a sign that democracy is somehow inferior to an authoritarian system. All it signals is that democracies are complex and it takes a bit more than putting a few procedures into place to make them really work.
Published Date: May 19, 2010