Development of the American Democracy Transnational Social Movement. Strategic Insights v4 n5 May 2005

摘要

Winston Churchill described democracy as 'the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried.' According to Mohamed Abed Jabri, a contemporary Arab philosopher, 'democracy is the only principle of political legitimacy which is acceptable nowadays in Muslim societies.' Abdul Karim Soroush, an Iranian Islamic reformist, opined: 'Islam and democracy are not only compatible, their association is inevitable. In a Muslim society, one without the other is not perfect.' As these statements reflect, democracy has become the preferred type of governance in the world as well as the Middle East. Over sixty percent of the countries of the world are defined as electoral democracies. Not surprisingly, democracy offers considerable advantages. Political scientists Bruce Russett and John R. Oneal found that 'the risk of conflict declines as the proportion of democracies in the international system increases.' In addition to this pacifying influence, democracies are better at providing for their citizens' needs. Amartya Sen, the recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Economics, demonstrated this point: 'No substantial famine has ever occurred in any independent and democratic country with a relatively free press ... in comparison, China, although it was in many ways doing much better economically than India, still managed (unlike India) to have famine... the largest recorded famine in world history: Nearly 30 million people died in the famine of 1958-61, while faulty government policies remained uncorrected for three full years.' Moreover, The Economist reports 'across scores of countries and centuries of history, democracy has promoted growth far more effectively and consistently than any other political system.' In spite of democracy's benefits and Middle Easterners' acknowledgement of its benefits, no democracies--either liberal or electoral--exist in any Arab Middle Eastern states.