1.1DEMOCRACY AT THE GLOBAL LEVEL?
After reading about the various phases of expansion of democracy, phases of expansion of democracy, a teacher, Mr. Singh, asked the students to summarise what they had learnt. This is how the conversation took place:
farida: We have learnt that democracy has
been expanding to more and more regions and countries all over the world.
Rajesh: Yes, we live in a better world than before. it seems we are
moving towards a world democracy.
Sushmita: World democracy! How can you say that?
I saw a television programme that showed how the Americans invaded Iraq were
not consulted at any stage. How can you call that a world democracy?
Farida: I am not talking about the
relationship between different countries. I am only saying that mnore and more
countries are becoming democratic.
Rahesh: But what is the difference between
the two? If more and more countries become democratic, is’nt it obious that the
world also becomes more democratic? After all the Iraq war was all about taking
democracy to that country.
Sushmita: No, it is not obvious to me.
Singh sir: I think we are talking about two
very different things here. Farida spoke about establishment of democratic
governments within different countries in the world today. Sushmita and Rajesh have
differences over something else. Their difference is over the relationship
among different countries. It is quite possible, Rajesh, that the rulers of a
country who are democratically elected by their people may want to dominate
over other countries.
Sushmita: yes sir. That is exactly what
happened in the case of the war on lraq.
Surinder: I am confused. How can we talk about
democracy at the global level? Is there any world government? Who is the president of th world? If there is
no government, how can it be democratic or non-democratic?
INTERNATIONAL
ORGANISATIONS
Let us respond to the question that came up in this conversation: Does an
increase in the number of democratic countries all over the world automatically
lead to democratic relations among countries? before we do that, let us think
about the point raised by Surinder. There is a government of the United States
of America, and so on. But there is no government of the world. No government
can pass any law that will apply to all the people of the world. If there are
no such government, if there are no rulers and ruled, how can we apply the two
features of democracy here? These two features, you would recall, were that the
rulers should be elected by the people and that people should have basic political
freedoms.
While Surinder is right in a simple sense, we cannot say that the
question of democracy does not arise here. There is no single World Government.
but there are many institutions in the world that perform partially the
functions of such a government. These organisations and citizens in a way a
government can, but they do make rules that put limits on what governments can
do. Consider these points:
Who makes laws and rules to govern the seas that do not fall within
the boundaries of any one country? Or
who takes syeps to control environmental degradation that threatens all the
countries together. The United Nations (UN) has evolved many Conventions on
these questions that are now binding on most countries of the world. The UN is
a global association of nations of the world to help cooperation in
international law, security, economic development and social equity. The UN
Secretary General is its chief administrative officer.
What happens when a country attacks another country in an unjust manner?
The UN Security Council, an organ of the UN, is responsible ofr maintaining
peace and security among countries. It can put together an international army
and take action against the wrongdoer.
Who lends money to governments when they need it? The International
Monetary Fund ( IMF) does so. The World Bank also gives loans to the
governments. Before lending they ask the concerned government to show all its
accounts and direct it to make changes in its economic policy.
ARE THESE DECISIONS
DEMOCRATIC?
So, there are many institutions at the world level that perform some of
the functions that a world government would perform. But we need to know just
how democratic need to know just how democratic these organisations are. The
yardstick here is whether each of the countries has free and equal say in the
decisions that affect them. In this light let us examine the organization of
some of these world bodies.
Every one of the 193 member states (as on 1 September 2012) of the UN has
one vote in the UN General Assemblly. It meets in regular yearly sessions under
a president elected form among the representatives of the member countries.
General Assembly is like the parliament where all the discussion takes place.
In that sense the UN would appear to be a very democratic organization. but the
General Assembly cannot take any decision about what action should be taken in
a conflict between different countries.
The fifteen-member Security Council loft h UN takes such crucial
decisions. The Council has five permanent member – US/ Russia, UK, France and
China. Ten other members are elected by the General Assembly for two-year
terms. The real power is with five permanent members. The permanent members.
The permanent members, especially the US, contribute most of the money need for
the maintenance of the UN. Each permanent member has veto power. It means that
the Council cannot take a decision if any permanent member says no to that
decision. This system has led more and more people and countries to protest and
demeand that the UN becomes more democratic.
International Monetary Fund (IMF) is one of the biggest moneylenders for
any country in the world. Its 189 member states (as on 12 April 2016) do not
have equal voting rights. The vote of each country is weighed by how much money
it has contributed to the IMF. More than 40% of the voting power in the IMF is
in the hands of only seven countries (US. Japan, Germany, France, UK, Italy and
Canada). The remaining 182 countries have very little say in how these
international organisations take decisions. The World Bank has a similar system
of voting. The President of the World Bank has always been a citizen of the US,
conventionally nominated by the Treasury Secretary 9(Finance Minister) of the
US government.
Compare these to the kind of democratic practices that we have been
discussing in this chapter. What would you say about a country where some
persons have a permanent position in the ministry and have the power to stop
the decision of the entire parliament? Or a parliament where five per cent of
the members hold a majority of votes? Would you call these democratic? Most of
the global institutions fail to pass the simple test of democracy that we use
for national governments.
If global institutions are not democratic, are they at least becoming
more democratic than before? Here too the evidence is not very encouraging. In
fact, while nations are becoming more democratic
than they were earlier, international organic\sations are becoming less
democratic. Twenty years ago there were tow big powers in the world: the US and
the Soviet Union. The competition and counflict between these two big powers
and their allies kept a certain balance in all the global organisations. After
the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US in the world. This American dominance
affects the working of international organisations.
This is not to say that there is no urge or move towards global
democracy. The urge comes from people who get more opportunities to come In
touch with one another. different countries have come together without their
governments organisations against war and against domination of the world by a
few countries and business companies. AS in the case of democracy within the
nations, the initative for democracy among nations has come from the struggles
of the people.
Democracy promotion
Take a close look at the two cartoons on this and on the next page. These
cartoons raise a fundamental question related to global democracy. Recently,
many powerful countries in the world.
particularly the United States of America, have taken on the task of
democracy promotion in the rest of the world. They say that propagating the
values of democracy is not enough. Existing democracies should directly
intervence in countries that are non-democratic to establish democracy there.
In some cases powerful countries have launched armed attack on non-democratic
countries. This is what Sushmita was talking about.
Let us see what happened in Iraq. Iraq is a country in Western Asia. It
became independent from British rule in 1932. Three decades later there were a
series of coups by military officers. Since 1968, it was ruled by Arab
Socialist Ba’th Pary (the Arabic word Ba’th means renaissance). Saddam Hussein,
a leading Ba’th party leader, played a key role in the 1968 coup that brought
the party to power. This government abolished traditional Islamic law and gave
women the right to vote and several freedoms not granted in other west Asian
countries. After becoming the president of Iraq in 1979, Saddam ran a dictatorial
government and suppressed any dissent or opposition to his rule. He was known
to have got a number of political opponents killed and persons of ethnic
minorities massacred.
The US and its allies like Britain, alleged that Iraq possessed secret
nuclear weapons and other ‘weapons of mass destruction’ which posed a big
threat to the world. but when a UN team went to Iraq to search for such
weapons, it did not find any. Still the US and its allies invaded Iraq,
occupied it and removed Saddam Hussein from power in 2003. The US installed an
interim government of its preference. The war against Iraq was not authorized
by the UN Security Council. Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General, said that the
US war on Iraq was illegal.
The example of Iraq raises some basic questions that we need to think
about:
Is this the right way to promote democracy? Should a democratic country
wage a war and invade other countries for establishing democracy there?
Does external help work in every case? Or does it work only when the people
of a nation are actively engaged in a struggle to make their societies
deomocratic?
Even if external intervention leads to the establishment of demnocracy in
a country, would it last long? Would it enjoy the support of its citizens?
Finally, is the use of external lforce to gift democracy to the people in
keeping with the spirit of democracy?
Think about these questions in the light of all that you have learnt in
this chapter.
