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Achieving Democracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2012

Thomas Pogge
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Abstract

Overcoming corruption and authoritarian government in developing countries is hampered by global institutional arrangements. In particular, international borrowing and resource privileges, which entitle those exercising power in a country to borrow in its name and to effect legally valid transfers of ownership rights in its resources, can be obstacles to achieving democracy. These international conventions greatly increase the incentives toward attempts at coups d'état, especially in countries with a large resource sector. In exploring how this problem might be highlighted and addressed, it is essential to understand that affluent societies have a great interest in upholding the prevailing institutional arrangements: Their banks benefit from their international lending and, far more importantly, their firms and people benefit greatly from cheap resource supplies. Institutional reform is more likely, then, to come from the developing countries.

Thus, fledgling democracies may be able to improve their stability through constitutional amendments that bar future unconstitutional governments from borrowing in the country's name and from conferring ownership rights in its public property. Such amendments would render insecure the claims of those who lend to, or buy from, dictators, thus reducing the rewards of coups d'état. This strategy might be resisted by the more affluent societies, but such resistance could perhaps be overcome if many developing countries pursued the proposed strategy together, and if some moral support emerged among the citizenries of affluent societies.

Type
Articles
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , March 2001 , pp. 3 - 23
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 2001

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References

1 To complement this brief account, let me mention some important works on large-scale modern democracy: Beitz, Charles, Political Equality (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989Google Scholar); Bobbio, Norberto, The Future of Democracy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984Google Scholar); Christiano, Thomas, The Rule of the Many: Fundamental Issues in Democratic Theory (Boulder, Colo.: West view Press, 1996Google Scholar); Copp, David et al. , eds., The Idea of Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Robert, Dahl, A Preface to Democratic Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956)Google Scholar; Dahl, Robert, Democracy and Its Critics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989Google Scholar); Elster, Jon and Slagstad, Rune, eds., Constitutionalism and Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Elster, Jon, ed., Deliberative Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Guinier, Lani, The Tyranny of the Majority (New York: The Free Press, 1994Google Scholar); Gutmann, Amy and Thompson, Dennis, Democracy and Disagreement (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996Google Scholar); Habermas, Jürgen, Between Facts and Norms (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996Google Scholar); Held, David, Models of Democracy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990Google Scholar); Lefort, Claude, Democracy and Political Theory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988Google Scholar); Manin, Bernard, Principles of Representative Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997CrossRefGoogle Scholar); Rawls, John, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996Google Scholar [1993]); Rosenblum, Nancy, ed., Obligations of Citizenship (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000)Google Scholar; Schumpeter, Joseph, Capitalism, socialion, and Democracy (New York: Harper, 1984Google Scholar [1943])

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4 Regarding this goal, see Höffe, Otfried, Demokratie in Zeitalter der Globalisierung (Munich: Beck Verlag, 1999Google Scholar).

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6 See Parfit, Derek, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984Google Scholar), sec. 2.

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9 When a democratically legitimate government has been unconstitutionally replaced by an authoritarian junta, for example, some governments may not want to judge the change unconstitutional because they view the new government as “friendlier” and perhaps even had a hand in bringing it to power. Other governments may come under pressure from more powerful states to refrain from such a judgment—pressure they find it hard to resist when doing so would adversely affect their own interestsGoogle Scholar.

10 One way to cope would be for this government to offer future resource exports as collateral for its debts. Potential authoritarian successors could then renege on these debts only by halting such resource exports altogetherGoogle Scholar.

11 As evidence that something like this can happen, consider the 1997 Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Officials in International Business Transactions, which ended a longstanding practice under which most developed states (though not the United States after 1977) permitted their companies to bribe foreign officials and even to deduct such bribes from their taxes. Public pressure, generated and amplified by Transparency International, played a vital role in building momentum for this convention, which thus sets a hopeful precedent. Still, one should not overlook the fact that while the suppression of bribery may well be in the collective self-interests of the developed states and their corporations, the Democracy Panel and the Democracy Fund are notGoogle Scholar.

12 This name alludes to a period in Dutch history that began with the discovery of huge natural gas reserves in 1959 and, by the 1970s, produced revenues and import savings of about $5 to $6 billion annually. Despite this windfall (enhanced by the “oil-shock” increases in energy prices), the Dutch economy suffered stagnation, high unemployment, and finally recession—doing considerably worse than its peers throughout the 1970s and early 1980sGoogle Scholar.

13 Ricky Lam and Leonard Wantchekon, “Dictatorships as a Political Dutch Disease” (Working Paper, Yale University, January 19, 1999), pp. 35–36. In a later paper, Wantchekon presents data to show that “a one percent increase in resource dependence as measured by the ratio of primary exports to GDP leads to nearly 8 percent increase in the probability of authoritarianism.” Wantchekon, “Why do Resource Dependent Countries Have Authoritarian Governments?” (Working Paper, Yale University, December 12, 1999), p. 2; available at http://www.yale.edu/leitner/pdf/1999-11.pdf. For earlier work on the Dutch Disease, see Jeffrey D. Sachs and Andrew M. Warner, “Natural Resource Abundance and Economic Growth” (Development Discussion Paper No. 517a, October 1995); available at http://www.hiid.harvard.edu/pub/pdfs/517.pdfGoogle Scholar.

14 The value of immovable public property abroad is rarely significant, and I will therefore ignore such property, which, in any case, poses problems very similar to those posed by movable goodsGoogle Scholar.

15 The developed countries also enjoy more lucrative business opportunities as a third dubious benefit: Authoritarian rulers, made more frequent by the international resource privilege, are more likely to send the proceeds from resource sales right back to the affluent countries, to pay for high-margin weaponry and military advisers, advanced luxury products, real estate, and financial investmentsGoogle Scholar.