The application of democracy in countries considered democratic is rarely uniform.
In some countries democracy is restricted to the rotation of the recognised political
2As argued by Shapiro (2003), only democracy has provided the incentives and opportunities for men to seek and, if possible, to achieve better lives.
3Teune (2002) explains why the future of global peace and cooperation depends on the spread of democracy and the free market economy, with full respect to the cultural, religious and other characteristics of the national identity of countries.
parties in the government (a two-party system would be such an example). In some other countries, citizens also have certain basic political and civil liberties, and in still some other countries, citizens are endowed with nearly all the sovereign rights ancient Athenians enjoyed in their city–state. Thus, for purposes of ranking on this scale, countries can be placed into three categories: democracies which only allow elections, contemporary democracies as described in Chaps.2and3and countries where succession in governance is hereditary and there are no elections.
The first two categories lend themselves to interpretation, and admittedly, some controversy; the third category is without significant complexity. We will first assess those countries that are classified as democratic, with elections as the minimum requirement. In such countries, citizens should be able to replace one government by another, and elections should be regular, free and fair. That elections be free and fair is not so simple in actuality, as can be seen in the elections in recent decades in large multiparty countries like Russia, Ukraine, Nigeria and Indonesia. For this reason, these countries are classified in an in between group that is neither democratic nor undemocratic.
Great difficulties arise also in the grouping of free and open democracies. The reason is that the quality of democracy depends on conditions like the following that cannot be measured in a meaningful way:
• Freedom of religion, expression, organisation and protest.
• Citizens are equal in front of the law, and they are not convicted until found guilty after due judicial process.
• The judiciary and the other institutions controlling the abuses of power are politically independent and neutral.
• The society is open, pluralistic and tolerant.
• The armed forces are under government control.
• There exists political and social stability.
Since it is difficult to say just how much freedom of expression, pluralism, tolerance, legitimacy, transparency or political and social stability a country must have in order to qualify as a free and open democracy, the margins for error are large. However, researchers at Freedom House constructed Table6.1on the basis of an in-depth survey during 1999–2000 convinced that the usefulness of the classifi- cation exceeds the significance of inaccuracies that may be involved. Looking closer at this table, we are led to the following interesting observations:
• During the period of the survey, researchers found that there were 192 indepen- dent countries. In 120 of them or 63 %, citizens could change the government after elections. No significant differentiations have taken place since the survey period.4As can be seen, the vast majority of countries are democratic.
4From the survey that was conducted in 2008 by the Economist Intelligence Unit, the magazine Economistconcluded that, while the Democratization Index stopped rising, progress towards democracy in various countries did not regress.
• In 37 % (71/192) of independent countries and in 59 % (71/120) of democracies, citizens enjoyed a wider or narrower range of political and civil liberties, as well as living conditions such as those mentioned above. Therefore, over one third of all independent countries and nearly two thirds of democracies are free and open ones.5This form of governance is the dominant form of political organisation in Western Europe and the English-speaking countries (28/28 or 100 %), the Pacific Islands (9/11 or 80 %), the rest of Europe including the Baltic states (9/
16 or 60 %), Japan and Israel. While some free and open democracies flourish and grow, others do not. They are affected by social, cultural, institutional and other conditions that prevail in each country, as well as numerous other variables. Weingast (1995) attributes the success of certain democracies to the extent to which their politicians respect the constitution and the individual rights of citizens.
• Combining the democracies of Europe and the Anglophone countries (USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand), as well Japan and Israel, the percentage of the world’s population living under free and open democracy does not exceed 20 %.
• Only 20 % (8/41) of Arab countries with limited democratic governance, combined with non-Arab countries which have Islam as their main religion, are democratic.
• With the exception of the Baltic countries, the democratic countries of the former Soviet Union or 42 % (5/12) did not have a free and open democracy until the period 1999–2000.
Table 6.1 Democracy and liberal democracies by region and cultural grouping, 1999–2000
Regions
Number of countries
Democracies Liberal democracies Number of
countries %
Number of countries % Western Europe and Anglophone
states
28 28 100 28 100
Central America and Caribbean 33 29 88 16 48
South America 12 11 92 4 33
Eastern and Central Europe and Baltic states
15 14 93 9 60
Former Soviet Union (less Baltics) 12 5 42
Asia (East, Southeast, South) 26 12 46 3 12
Pacific Islands 11 10 91 9 82
Africa (sub-Saharan) 28 20 42 5 10
Middle East and North Africa 19 2 11 1 5
Total 192 120 63 71 37
Arab countries 16 0 0
Predominantly Muslim countries 41 8 20 0
Source: Freedom House Survey;Journal of Democracy, 11, 2000
5The results obtained by De Haan and Sturm (2003) for the period 1975–1990 show that the relationship between economic and political freedoms is too important to be neglected.
From the preceding, we surmise that (a) the vast majority of the world population continues to live without political and civil liberties; (b) while democracy spread quickly in the past century, the proliferation of free and open democracy was more moderate; (c) excluding Japan, the spread of free and open democracy faces serious difficulties in countries with languages, faiths and cultures different than those of European and Anglo-Saxon countries. If this conclusion is reminiscent of the analysis by Huntington (1997) regarding the clash of civilisations, it is of particular importance for the path towards the new world order, which is expected to emerge from the current circumstances; (d) undemocratic countries either accept passively democracy’s influences or assume combative postures. By impli- cation, free and open democracies confront similar but more acute dilemmas than those ancient Athens faced in relation to Sparta and (e) given that free and open democracy is a way of life based on the resolution of conflicts through negotiations and mutual concessions, armies and weapons should be maintained mainly for deterrence, because the advantage of these democracies lies in the credibility and persuasiveness of their arguments in international affairs, rather than the use of force.6