By JOHN RICHARD SCHROCK
Current unrest in Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon contradicts the American expectation that bringing a democratic governmental system to a country will convert the population to democracy. Now there is research that shows a population must itself grow from it its own history to develop its own form of more democratic system. Any attempts to impose democracy from outside are likely to fail.
This conclusion comes from a major study just published December 2 in the science journal Nature Human Behavior: “The cultural foundations of modern democracies.” The analysis was conducted by Damian J. Ruck and his team from the University of Tennessee.
They base their analysis on the fact that each person’s cultural values develop during their first decades of life and do not change thereafter. They therefore conducted surveys, using the responses of younger and older citizens to assess cultural values over several generations.
Ruck’s team used surveys of a person’s values to determine the extent they respected individual rights or had confidence in governing institutions. They analyzed responses from over 475,000 adults in over 100 countries gathered over 25 years. Aligning the range of ages surveyed, they determined cultural values back to the early 1900s. They then compared any changes in collective values to their country’s changing status between democracy to autocracy.
They found that any assumption that we can impose democracy on a country is wrong, and will usually fail unless citizens had already adopted democratic values. In other words, we cannot simply export our democracy to other countries. It may take up to 30 years for a population to become more open to diversity, become comfortable with others from different ethnic groups, or accept others with differing beliefs. But forcing a country to first form a democracy did not generate these democratic values.
Researchers also discovered that a lack of confidence in government institutions often led to a change in government. And democracies could just as readily change into autocracies.
Although not mentioned in this study, these findings become worrisome for other countries, such as India, where the world’s supposed largest democracy is suffering massive protests and a drift toward theocracy. They do point out that their data explain the back-and-forth political shifts in countries such as Brazil, Venezuela and Argentina.
Lessons from this extensive study may not change American policy, where the United States has a long history of not only interfering in other countries’ affairs militarily, but also ties diplomatic aid to a country conforming to our Western values. With a few exceptions, the U.S. has treated most of Africa and Central Asia as beyond help. But China provides aid without demanding change.
From its inception, China has forbidden itself from interfering with the internal politics of other countries. Their “Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence” basically states that China will work with other countries economically but without any coercion to change their political system. There is the belief that as a country rises out of poverty and achieves a higher level of education for its populace, that country will itself evolve from its historical base to develop a better governmental system.
In 2014, President Xi Jinping spoke at the commemoration marking the 60th anniversary of China's proposition of the “Five Principles of Peaceful Co-existence” and explained the current attitude of the Chinese government toward their Five Principles today:
“In the new era today, the spirit of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, instead of being outdated, remains as relevant as ever; its significance, rather than diminishing, remains as important as ever; and its role, rather than being weakened, has continued to grow.”
This recent research showing that a country must evolve its own cultural values and move toward its own version of better government based on its own unique history confirms the Chinese policy of helping other countries economically and not interfering otherwise. This new research does not support the American policy of trying to impose democracy by military might.
John Richard Schrock has trained biology teachers for more than 30 years in Kansas. He also has lectured at 27 universities in 20 trips to China. He holds the distinction of “Faculty Emeritus” at Emporia State University.