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Evaluating Democratic Progress: A Normative Theoretical Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2012

Brad R. Roth
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Abstract

Roth argues that much of the current discourse on the diffusion of democratic norms is misleading and that only a realistic assessment of the progress of societies in transition will focus attention on the problems that remain to be solved. Only in this way will normative evaluation contribute to progress in the achievement of democratic ends.

Type
Articles
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 9 , March 1995 , pp. 55 - 77
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 1995

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References

2 See, for example, Franck, Thomas M., “The Emerging Right to Democratic Governance,” American Journal of International Law 86 (1992), 46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fox, Gregory H., “The Right to Political Participation in International Law,” Yale Journal of International Law 17 (1992), 539Google Scholar.

3 The following list of requisites is typically cited: “(1) Control over governmental decisions about policy is constitutionally vested in elected officials; (2) Elected officials are chosen and peacefully removed in relatively frequent, fair, and free elections in which coercion is quite limited; (3) Practically all adults have the right to vote in these elections; (4) Most adults also have the right to run for the public offices for which candidates run in these elections; (5) Citizens have an effectively enforced right to freedom of expression, particularly political expression, including criticism of the officials, the conduct of the government, the prevailing political, economic, and social system, and the dominant ideology; (6) They also have access to alternative sources of information that are not monopolized by the government or any other single group; (7) Finally, they have an effectively enforced right to form and join autonomous associations, including political associations, such as political parties and interest groups, that attempt to influence the government by competing in elections and by other peaceful means.”Dahl, Robert A., Democracy and Its Critics 233 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989) (defining polyarchy).Google Scholar

4 Bernstein, Richard, “New Issues Born from Communism's Death Knell,” New York Times, August 31, 1991, 1.Google Scholar

5 Aristotle opined that human beings, as political animals, seek political community in the collective pursuit of excellence; “for without this end the community becomes a mere alliance…and law is only a convention, ‘a surety to one another of justice’…and has no real power to make the citizens good and just.”Aristotle, , Politics, ed. Everson, Stephen (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 64Google Scholar (bk. III, para. 9). Alternatives to liberalism, whether democratic or not, have frequently emphasized this grander mission of politics.

6 Montesquieu, , The Spirit of the Laws, ed. Cohler, A., Miller, B., and Stone, H. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 44–48.Google Scholar (bk. 5, chs. 5–6).

7 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, “The Social Contract,” in The Social Contract and Discourses, trans. Cole, G. D. H. (Toronto: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1973), 204.Google Scholar (bk. II, ch. 11), 181 n.l (bk I, ch. 9).

8 Macpherson, C. B., The Life and Times of Liberal Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 10Google Scholar.

9 For the most famous critique of liberal democracy along these lines, see Marx, Karl, “On the Jewish Question,” in Tucker, Robert C., ed., The Marx-Engels Reader (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1978), 26, 42–43.Google Scholar

10 I have elsewhere presented an analysis of the legal ramifications of this development. See Roth, , “Governmental Illegitimacy Revisited: ‘Pro-Democratic’ Armed Intervention in the Post-Bipolar World,” Transnational Law & Contemporary Problems 3 (Fall 1993), 481–513Google Scholar.

11 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, G.A. Res. 217(A), UN Doc. A/810, at 71 (1948).Google Scholar

12 See, for example, Steiner, Henry J., “Political Participation as a Human Right,” Harvard Human Rights Yearbook 1 (1988), 77–134Google Scholar (discussing Article 21 of the Universal Declaration and Article 25 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights).

13 Locke, John, “Second Treatise of Government,” in Laslett, P., ed., Two Treatises of Government (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 354–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar (ch. X, paras. 132–33).

14 Ibid., 407–10 (ch. XIX, paras. 212–18).Google Scholar

15 Elections alone frequently fail to resolve the issue. A popular will is subject to competing articulations. Freely elected heads of state may vitiate their mandates before the end of their terms by running afoul of the constitution, generally accepted customs, or public opinion as expressed in polls, mass demonstrations, or general strikes. Contradictions may arise, as in Russia in 1993, between the elected president and the elected legislature, each asserting the authority to remove the other, with a weak high court weighing in on the basis of a poorly esteemed constitution. However great the value of established processes, popular sovereignty cannot be reduced to any mechanistic formula.Google Scholar

16 For such an interpretation of these developments, see Fox, “The Right to Political Participation in International Law,” 579–90. My disagreement with Fox is based not only on the above normative analysis but on a different assessment of the actual opinio juris of states in these contexts. See Roth, “Governmental Illegitimacy Revisited,” 509–10, n. 100.Google Scholar

17 Rousseau, “The Social Contract,” 194–96 (bk. II, ch. 7).Google Scholar

18 Ibid., 250–5l(bk. IV, ch. 2).Google Scholar

19 Compare Weber, Max, “Politics as a Vocation,” in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, trans. Gerth, H. H. and Mills, C. Wright (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958), 77, 78–79.Google Scholar (habitual conformity, charisma, and legality as the three “legitimations of domination”).