Democracy and universal suffrage are nowadays identified with the words liberty and basic rights. Not necessarily so argues Fareed Zakaria suggesting that it is not democracy itself that brings about liberty and rights, but that the creation and protection of those inalienable rights – along with economic progress and a rise in living standards – that ultimately make for legitimate democracy. To criticize democracy is sometimes seen as like criticizing the idea of human rights; how can anybody deny the people their right to choose their own destiny? As The Future of Freedom points out, greater voter representation in government can lead to intolerance of other people’s liberty and rights; if dictatorship is minority rule then democracy can be “majority overrule” (117).
Conversely, democratization can also lead to minorities such as interest groups having disproportionately high influence in government, to the detriment of society. Fareed Zakaria is an important and usually critical observer of the current Administration’s foreign policy. As editor of Newsweek International and former editor of the prestigious journal Foreign Affairs, he has a privileged vantage point on the writings of journalists and scholars.
In The Future of Freedom, Zakaria provides a whirlwind and world-wide tour of political history and theory (Yale Law Journal).
His broad sweep reaches back to the classical Greeks and Romans and examines current politics in Russia, China, and the Arab world; it even extends to California polities, which he cites as a US case of democracy being too much of a good thing (Cerami 152).
The Essay on Positive And Negative Liberty
The need for liberty lies deep within the very essence of the human entity. It seems that only in a state of freedom can the human being be provided with the propitious premises for a harmonious evolution. Even if the cultivation of high spiritual values and a number of great cultural, social and scientific achievements were also possible in freedom-lacking environments, we must understand that ...
Zakaria’s central claim in The Future of Freedom is simple: “that there can be such a thing as too much democracy” (146).
Excessively populist politics can undermine the “bundle of freedoms” important to any liberal constitutional order – pluralism, open political discourse, property fights, religion, and the rule of law. Though it does not offer an abundance of fresh insights, the book is still an important contribution – as much for its timing as for its message (Pastor 252).
Zakaria contends that liberty in the United States has been endangered by an excess of democracy.
The political process has been so subverted by polls, campaign money, and special interests that politics is now under the thumb of a “hidden elite, unaccountable, unresponsive, and often unconcerned with any larger public interest” (179).
This intuition has merit, but the conclusion tends to the hyperbolic. The remainder of the book, however, is much more nuanced, as Zakaria systematically demonstrates how foolish it is to believe that the mere accoutrements of democracy can be guarantors of fundamental civil and political fights (Kaufmann 625).
Holding elections in the 1990s did not, for example, prevent Russia from slowly “slipping toward … autocracy” (81) And, in the most important chapter, he argues that something similar would happen if elections were held today in much of the Middle East. Zakaria points out that many despots came to power through democratic means, often with large majorities. Democratically elected Salvador Allende came to power in Chile with only 36% of the vote – and enacted some illiberal policies.
In contrast, Zakaria observes that there are countries that do not hold elections, but have been run as “liberal autocracies” that have created the conditions for sound economies and robust civil institutions (Pastor 255).
Countries like Singapore or Tunisia are not democratic, but have thrived as a result liberal economies and strong institutions and as a result have increasingly free societies. Following the end of the Cold War, the wave of democratization led not to liberal democracy, but tribalism (Kaufmann 624).
The Term Paper on Describe The Goals And Uses Of Political Science citizenship And Democracy And Political Actors
Describe the goals and uses of political science (citizenship and democracy) and political actors. An elitist Plato, opposed to democracy and hostile to the masses, fills the literature. In the midst of an extensive philological and grammatical commentary on Plato's Republic, James Adam (1902, 2.24, ad loc. 494a) includes the following brief but telling observation: "The theory of Ideas is not a ...
Zakaria recounts how in 1996 a French politician made a visit to Belgrade to lend his moral support to students demonstrating against Slobodan Milosevic – only to be kicked out of their office and declared an enemy of the Serbs, because the students were angry at Milosevic for having lost the war in Bosnia. Though Zakaria doesn’t mention it, Slobodan Milosevic was equally popular in Kosovo where the Serb community, not so long ago in the majority in the province, saw him as the defender of their rights and land against the ever expanding Albanians nationalism (Cerami 152)..
