In reading through the Freedom House report, a couple of things become clear. There is a rightful concern that the world’s democracies are not having a major effect in countering the spread of authoritarianism. I know that Madeline Albright once breached the idea of having a world Council of law-based Democracies, and you know what, even a world entity like this would have a major symbolic power in the world. It would be the club a country would want to qualify for, at least as a badge with which to entice outside investors, tourists, etc and show, “hey we are civilized”, at least we respect our people enough to have real elections and a system of law which is not arbitrary.
If an authoritarian regime is confronted with a concerted voice, it thinks twice. To have the US, Canada, the South American democracies, Europe, India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, etc, etc. all in One Body makes just as much sense as having a G-8 or G-20. The body should not have power to override the national sovereignty of any member of course but merely act as a central consulting body of all the world’s many democracies from around the world and be allowed to determine who is in, and who isn’t. If such an organization of democracies could speak to an authoritarian China, or Russia, or Belarus, or North Korea, with One Voice, about the lack of freedom of assembly, the killing of journalists, about the lack of any free press, of human rights abuses, it would register. Authoritarian regimes flourish on picking off players. Having the US say one thing about Chinese human rights, the Europeans another, etc. Japan another, doesn’t hold as much weight in today’s growing multipolar world as a united organization of democracies would if it spoke with One Unified Voice.
Two of the big losses in the democratic camp noted in the report are Ukraine and Mexico. Ukraine is a cardinal example in how to goof up a democratic revolution (the Orange in 2004): have the democrats split into factional fighting, while the authoritarian thugs bide their time and take over later, making sure upon taking power that freedom of the press gets thrown out the window, and the opposition is arrested so democratric forces never return to power. Then make sure all state channels only show good news about the governing power. The President becomes President for life and the Legislative branch becomes a rubber-stamp parliament as the Duma in Moscow has become for Putin who seems intent on running as President for life. You can even create fake parties which appear to give the people a choice in elections, but which are totally in the control of the President (i.e. this is what Zhirinovsky’s party does in Russia). It of course didn’t help that the Kremlin supported the authoritarians in Ukraine, but if a Council of Democracies could say to such countries as Ukraine’s current government: you keep up this repression, you’re out or will never get in - it does carry weight, and I’m sure Ukrainian democrats themselves would support such a move as would democrats in Belarus or Russia (i.e. Gary Kasparov, Boris Nemstov).
Having a democracy based upon the rule of law and an independent judiciary surely shows a society places value on human dignity. No random arrests at night, a free press, elections that count. And no the democracies are not all the same and all perfect, but they have more in common with each other than they do with North Korea, Saudi Arabia, or Belarus.
And corruption does thrive much more easily in authoritarian unaccountable regimes.
Anyway, just a thought.
