I've been a fan of Fareed Zakaria's for a while but he really hit home for me in his acclaimed series in Newsweek on Arab Rage -- "Why They Hate Us".   His latest book, The Future of Freedom is an extension of an earlier Foriegn Affairs article he wrote which introduced many to the concept of "Illiberal Democracy" [p 17]

For people in the West, democracy means "liberal democracy":   a political system marked not only by free and fair elections but also by the rule of law, a separation of powers, and the protection of basic liberties of speech, assembly, religion, and property.   But this bundle of freedoms -- what might be termed "constitutional liberalism" -- has nothing intrinsically to do with democracy and the two have not always gone together, even in the West. 

Chapter 1 -- A Brief History of Human Liberty -- had an excellent summary of the forces -- philosohpical, religious, and geographical which led to the formalized definition of "liberalism" in the West.   I found Zakaria's mix of the factors far more satisfying than purely resource based accounts for this evolution such as espoused in Guns, Germs, and Steel or the almost completely non-resource ones advocated by Victor Davish Hanson (yes, despite the constant paeans to VDH in my blog, I can occasionally find room to criticize him.)   Zakaria walks through a series of causes including geography, organized religion, and capitalism as tools which helped ensure the liberalism of many Western states -- well before the full-fledged institution of democracy had taken hold.  Inter- and Intra-national institutions like these were critical in setting up parallel and conflicting centers of power -- the English example is of particular note.  The Western example, at it's core, is a case of liberty & economic development occuring well before democracy.

Chapter 2 -- the Twisted path -- examines the liberal & illiberal paths followed by other nations including Western ones such as France and Germany.   A broad theory posited in research is relayed by Zakaria [p 70]:

...one might conlcude that a country that attempts a transition to democracy when it has a per captia GDP of between $3,000 and $6,000 will be successful.   This zone of transition to democracy holds true even going back in history.  

Zakaria notes examples of countries that attempted to democratize on both sides of this transition range (East Asia, Indonesia, Eastern Europe, etc.).   In many of these cases, democraticization dramatically -- and in some cases quantitatively -- affected the liberalism of these societies.   Countries that tried to democratize before they reached economic modernity in some cases ended up compromising on both.

China, in this light, presents a very interesting situation for the missionizing democracy zealots (whom I occasionally associate with  ).   Zakaria argues, and I concur, that economic modernity will be the true path for Chinese democracy rather than vice versa.   Tiananmen was no doubt a tragedy but almost perversely, the true end goals of the protestors will be eventually realized via the shoe and sewing factories in the coastal industrial provinces before they are realized in the capital.  Capital mobility, large-scale industrial organization, and inter-organization contractual enforcement will end up necessitating a capitalist infrastructure within Red China - a fermentation that will erode communist ideology from all sides.

Chapter 4 -- the Islamic exception -- is very liberally lifted from Why They Hate Us.  The core argument as it applies to illiberal democracy is that in an environment where wealth is literally mined from the ground, the social infrastructure for Capitalism simply never gets formed.   There are a few new datapoints which pepper his argument but it is nevertheless quite directly a reprint.  That's fine -- I probably recycle a lot of old material myself   ;-)

Perhaps the most interesting aspects of the book are the next few chapters.   Here, Zakaria veers quite far from his traditional home base in foreign policy analysis and dives deeply into domestic.   The foreign policy world is simply much crazier wilder jungle than the domestic.   As a result, there's pretty wide latitude between the political categories it's easy to chart a strong, thoughtful path that still appeals in a bi-partisan way -- and I think this is a large element of Zakaria's popularity.

But in describing his domestic policy, it becomes possible to pigeon hole Zakaria into an almost Edmund Burke-style paleo-conservative mold.   Zakaria argues that the over-faith in democracy is poisoning politics domestically as well as abroad  [p 162]:

Founded as a republic that believed in a balance between the will of the majority and the rights of the minority -- or more broadly, between liberty and democracy -- America is increasingly embracing a simple-minded populism that values popularity and openness as the key measures of legitimacy.   This ideology has necessitated the destruction of old institutions, the undermining of traditional authority, and the triumph of organized interest groups, all in the name of "the people."   The result is a deep imbalance in the American system, more democracy but less liberty.

Zakaria places much faith in strong leadership - a very telling anecdote [p 167]:

...during World War II, Britain's prime minister, Winston Churchill, was advised by a colleague in Parliament to "keep his ear to the ground."   He responded by pointing out that "the British nation will find it very hard to look up to leaders who are detected in this position."   The American people have watched their leaders bow and scrape before them for the last three decades -- and they are repulsed by it

As more and more of the government apparatus falls prey to the machinations of the electorate process, Zakaria argues that we're actually seeing less accountability, less transparency, and far less predictability when that was precisely what we were looking for.  A FASCINATING section describing California's fate as the vangaurd case of where America is heading -- where mass market referendums correlate with a profound loss of voter trust and political efficacy in the state government.  (Critics of Zakaria's thesis may be tempted to argue reverse causality here -- that the loss of faith preceed or even necessitated the use of state wide referenda.)

He opines for a more technocratic -- or even elitist -- system of government as the solution to these problems.  He echoes some of David Brooks' conclusions about elite political life in Bobo's in Paradise.   Put simply, both he and Brooks put significant faith in a public minded, near-aristocracy that has always existed in some form or another in American political life.

Zakaria sees a cynicism and reflexive distrust of authority leading to a breakdown of a healthy political life -- particularly non-governmental participation of the "American Aristocracy" in the public sphere [p 220]:

Thirty years ago, the people who published books, produced television news, ran law firms, and headed hopsitals viewed themselves as concerned partly with profit, and partly with public service. 

...One of the distinctive elements of Anglo-American society has been that private elites and associates have always performed public tasks.   This is unusual;  most countries follow the French-continental model in which government agences and bureaucrats are placed in charge of every aspect of economic and social life.

He sees the "way out" as finding a generation of leaders who have to courage to educate the American public about the dangers of overly politicized decision making.  Nevertheless, there are some critical problems facing Zakaria's proposal.

Zakaria is a big fan of pre-1960's American technocracy -- with its focus on publicly minded, apolitical civil servants.  (He is NOT defending 1950s/1960s government and society wholesale -- he is simply holding this aspect of it up as an example of good technocratic governance).  But, within the book, Zakaria expressly mentions his affinity for the EU-style technocracy for certain types of decisions.  

The problem, however, is that these models are quite different from each other and often hostile and mutually exclusive towards one another.   However, he spends little time enumerating the underlying philosophical gulf between these 2 world views.   The EU system is a triumph of a centralized, "French-Continental" model of political involvement rather than the Anglo-American one.

Examining these philosophical strands reinforces my belief in an alternate option -- instead of trying to place more faith in technocratic institutions and improve their inner workings, we should instead focus on a general reduction in the scope of government overall.   A solution should avoid the need to place an outsized faith in our technocrats in the first place.

I was disappointed by how little discussion / acknowledgement Zakaria gave to the world of Public Choice economics which lays a large part of the intellectual groundwork his book inherits.   There are a few de rigeuer references to Mancur Olson but not much beyond that.   Given how much of Zakaria's book is predicated on rampant rent-seeking behavior, I expected a more thorough discourse on this subject applied to the international scene.

Finally, I'm also surprised that Zakaria didn't more formally discuss the notion of political mobility - the degree to which the individual can shape / influence his own political destiny - for better or for worse.  Perhaps the greatest danger I see in trying to tactically apply Zakaria's prescription is the FAR greater level of political mobility found in the average individual today -- especially in "spotlight" regions like the Middle East.   It's simply much harder now than it was before to tell a society "you haven't earned democracy yet." Limiting the scope of their mobility is a particularly difficult pill to push and Zakaria isn't terribly articulate on how to sell the plan wholesale.

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