By Will Bland
There has been a strange symmetry to global politics in 2011; spring brought democracy to a region with a tradition of autocrats, and autumn has brought unelected leaders to two nations where citizens were voting two thousand years ago.
Does the resignation of Silvio Berlusconi and George Papandreou show that Italy and Greece have lost faith in democracy, and that young Egyptians and Tunisians have been worshiping a fallen idol?
Of course not. For one thing, Italian politicians have only called in former European Commissioner Mario Monti for a few months, and the same is true in Greece for Lucas Papadermos.
For another, the problem isn’t so much that Greeks and Italians have lost faith in democracy, but that they’ve lost faith in themselves. Almost one in five Greeks are now unemployed and their country’s generous welfare state means that they’re regarded as spoilt children by the rest of Europe. The country’s prime minister must have struggled to shake off that sense of shame when he came to negotiate with France, Germany and the International Monetary Fund.
Finally, Greece and Italy couldn’t ignore the verdict of the bond markets; their chosen leaders would lead them to ruin.
The changes of government in Greece and Italy don’t represent a rejection of democracy, but they do show up its shortcomings. And, as many of the world’s major democracies prepare for elections next year, those weaknesses are conspicuous elsewhere in the world.
Commenting on his decision to stand for a third term as president, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, who is currently prime minister, last week observed that one problem for democracies is the scarcity of natural leaders. He was speaking the day after one of the Republican candidates aspiring to become U.S. president made a farce of his policy proposals on live television, when he couldn’t name one of three ministries that he has pledged to shut down.
Sure, it’s hard to find someone exceptional at every new election, but that’s not really why unimpressive people are elected powerful positions. In fact, as Greece and Italy have just acknowledged, there are plenty of brilliant economists who are better qualified for government than the people who stand for elected office.
The truth is that people often elect politicians in their own image - not geniuses or professors, but people they can relate to. Unlike the Democrats that he defeated, George W. Bush came across to Americans as someone personable.
The dilemma that Italians and Greeks confronted last week – that there are sometimes easier paths to prosperity than picking leaders though popular elections – is something that most westerners in China quickly confront. It must also particularly galling for those who come here from India.
Most westerners can’t understand what it’s like for people to grow up without electricity or running water, and therefore can’t really assess whether people would prefer a one-party state that can guarantee electricity to a multi-party democracy that can't.
Equally, it’s very hard for people who haven’t lived in a democracy to know how their lives might be different if they could choose their government.
European and American historians seem to believe, like Harvard University’s Niall Ferguson, that, democracy is the best way to generate wealth in the long-term. However, that’s only half the argument.
The campaign between Barack Obama and John McCain in 2008 inspired 131 million Americans to vote, representing 62% of the electorate. That’s not perfect – four in ten Americans didn’t bother voting – but almost everyone who did could have reasoned that their participation made no difference at all to the outcome. The result would have been identical if they’d stayed at home.
Equally, the chant of “yes, we can” with which Obama and his supporters inspired the electorate built up vague expectations that could never be met.
The fact that Obama couldn’t transform American as fast as he suggested doesn’t mean that he’s a liar or that democracy is based on deceit.
Lawmakers who don’t believe in general elections gradually suffocate the societies over which they rule. By giving people the right to elect dithering prime ministers like Berlusconi and Papandreou, the drafters of the Greek and Italian constitutions also gave them a stake in their communities.
That gave Greeks and Italians an impetus to argue for change. Without that impetus, people eventually chose between violence and apathy – their societies either boil up or freeze over.
