“Authoritarianism at Heart” and Washington’s Democracy Promotion

Abstract

Democracy is a system of popular rule that includes elections or a rational choice of well-informed citizens (Shumpeter),¹ a free opposition, and the rule of law. The last is critical for preventing manipulations of society by the state and the state by society. Without opposition and the rule of law, a democracy, in Thomas Jefferson’s memorable formulation, “is nothing less but mob rule where 51% may take away the rights of the other 49%.”

Looking back, we may also one day see 2004 as the year when a new iron curtain descended across Europe, dividing the continent not through the center of Germany but along the eastern Polish border.

(Anne Applebaum, “The New Iron Curtain,” The Washington Post, November 24, 2004)

I do not think that it is accurate to say that democracy is in retreat in Russia. Democracy has been assassinated in Russia.

(Bruce P. Jackson, “Democracy in Russia,” The Weekly Standard, February 18, 2005)

[Putin] has used the Kremlin’s full powers to quash all serious political opposition, recreating a virtual one-party state … How like the credo Mr. Putin learned in his old K.G.B. days.

(Editorial, “Vladimir Putin’s Russia,” The New York Times, February 27, 2008)