Is Western-style democracy really the best form of Government?

In light of the Arab spring revolutions throughout North Africa, and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia's granting sufferage to women starting with the 2015 elections, it seems a good time to discuss the thing that so many people have been fighting to achieve this year: democracy. For most of the 20th and 21st centuries, the right to vote has been deemed something for which everyone should strive for. But is democracy really the best way to run a nation state?

From a European perspective, the consensus seems be that democracy is by far and a way the best way. The Second World War and the repression experienced under Adolf Hitler's National Socialists, Benito Mussolini's National Fascists and  Franco's Spain has convinced many that democracy,  representation by elected members of national parliaments, is the best system because everyone gets the right to chose who they desire to represent them, whether that be a right wing, centrist or left wing candidate.

However, a flaw of democracy is that, rather than simply doing what is morally right, politicians will do what is politically popular with their electorate - even if it is not in the long term interests of their citizens. Perhaps cynically, you could say that leaders in democracies are not driven by beliefs but by their electorates. It would have been in Greece's national interest to get its finances in order long before the financial crash, but pressure from the government's electorate to keep spending high stopped it from making the difficult decisions that it should have taken to get its house in order. George Papandreou, the Greek Prime Minister, and his Panhellenic Socialist Party would simply not have won the 2009 legislative election promising to do what was in the national interest, to dramatically and, at the time, prematurally reduce spending, because national interest and what is popular do not correlate. The unpopularity and animosity among many in Germany and France to bailing out Greece is understandable. Of course, the elected officials in France and Germany are echoing the hostility of their electorates to spending money on other countries. However, if Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy were  to appease their electorates and refuse to find some money for Greece they would violate their countries national interests. German and French banks would collapse if Greece defaults wholesale on its debts. The consequence of that? Well, working class German and French savers would lose all their savings. Leaders have to lead: however, in a democracy, leaders are sometimes forced to capitulate and not do what is right but what is popular or fashionable. 

On the contrary, dictatorships do not have an electorate to look out for. Dictators are not in a popularity contest for votes. Whilst history suggests that in some instances - and notably in European history- dictators have been a force for bad, in others dictatorship has actually been beneficial. China is an example of a dictatorship that seems to run rather silky smooth. In the last twenty years, China has seen phenomenal growth almost unparalled anywhere in the world. In the last quarter of economic activity, China continued to achieve a dizzyingly high 9.5% growth. This compares to 7.7% in India, the largest democracy in the world, and rather pathetic growth statistics in the countries of almost completely democratic Europe. Added to this, China is set to face years of double-digit wage increases which will help the Chinese proletariat: yet again, many workers in Europe and other democracies are unlikely to see such large wage increases in the near future despite high inflation in many countries.           

The attempts to enforce democracy in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan is instructive as to the failings of the democratic model of governance. The people of Afghanistan simply do not want democracy: they deem it to be a foreign concept not congenial with their culture and their way of doing things. Many Islamic nations are dictatorships for a reason. It is the system that works well for them, a way of doing things that they can relate to culturally. The West just does not get it: the Western value system assumes that a peoples not under democratic rule are, therefore, an unhappy not contented peoples. However, in many of these countries, security trumps personal liberty and human rights. Freedom from state violence and a state where torture does not exist are perhaps desirable, but they are higher order demands: a political do not run before you walk. Ultimately, people are concerned about their personal safety: human rights are nothing if to inforce them means your citizens will be blown to smithereens?                       

The post- war consensus has been that democracy is good and, therefore, dictatorship is evil, and with valid reason to believe this given the horrific events of the Second World War in Europe and the wider World. Many rich liberal do-gooders and socialists of all degrees use the human rights argument to critize dictatorships. However, with the debt crisis and the need for leaders to lead and not follow, and the ascendancy and success of China, could dictatorship be right after all? I leave you with the following quote by Charles Bukowski: 'the difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later: in a dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting' (http://www.dumb.com/quotes/dictatorship-quotes/2/).