An 8 in Democracy

When I first started to consider going to Russia, people started to ask me a lot of questions about human rights in the former land of tsars and comissars. I have done a fair amount of research on this--naturally, I would be curious to know what risks I would take in coming to Russia--and what I have found indicates to me that the situation is mixed and, well, complicated. I will address more on this in a later post (and, presumably, in posts from Russia). This post will deal only with ways degrees of democracy can be assessed.

I should point out, before I delve further into the topic, that I do not like the term "human rights". Not because I am opposed to the basic liberties that all human beings should enjoy, but because I feel the term is misleading and used for purposes I disapprove. Prior to the Second World War, the prevailing term for these rights and freedoms was not human rights, but natural rights, a term that came from Enlightenment philosophers like John Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau. The United Nations and other international organizations have popularized the former term because they felt natural rights was too linked to Enlightenment philosophical assumptions that people enjoy their rights as a result of nature.

Well, to me this assumption is inherently true and should be promoted unvarnished. Certain liberties and rights are sacred precisely because they are the products of nature and of nature's G_d. And this is not a fact the United Nations (or for that matter, organizations that actually promote human freedom instead of just talking about it in erroneous ways) should proclaim loudly and proudly. But I digress.

One source I looked into with respect to Russia's record of protecting the natural rights of its citizens are the various indices of democracy and freedom put out by various organizations. But what I have found shows to me that these indices suffer from various kinds of bias, perhaps inherent to creating quantifiable rating systems.

The one I find the most problematic is the Democracy Index put out by The Economist. This index ranks societies on a 1-10 scale, with 10 being the most democratic. Countries rated 8 or above are considered "full democracies"; countries rated 6 to 7.9 are considered "flawed democracies"; countries rated 4 to 5.9 are "hybrid regimes"; and countries with a rating lower than 4 are considered "authoritarian." For the record, Sweden is considered the most democratic society, with a rating of 9.88; North Korea is the least, with a rating of 1.02. Russia rates a 5.02, classifying it as a "hybrid regime".

Now, I don't doubt that Sweden is a more democratic society than North Korea. Clearly some societies are more democratic than others. but within the ranking of the most democratic socities, I wonder what logic is being applied, as I fail to see what shades of democracy are being shown.

For instance, the United States ranks 8.22, 1.6 points below Sweden, and 17th out of 167 countries surveyed. This doesn't make a lot of sense to me, as I have never felt unfree in my own country, and have no reason to believe I would feel more free in Sweden. And while I admit I have never actually met a Swedish person, I have also never heard anything to indicate that Swedish visitors to the United States feel less free here than they do at home.

According to Wikipedia, the Democracy Index considers four factors so important in makings its assessments that a low score automatically leads to a "penalty" in assessing how democractic a country is:

1) Whether national elections are free and fair (emphasis mine);

2) The security of voters

3) The influence of foreign powers on government

4) The capacity of civil servants to implement politics

Three of these criteria strike me as having fatal flaws. I can see no reason to assess national government more than state, provincial, or local governments in their degree of democracy. Some nations are more federal than others (I would argue that this is true of the United States compared to Sweden). One can envision a country with a less democratic government at the national level, but which gives most governmental powers to local governments which are more democratic.

The influence of foreign powers upon government strikes me as an issue that can cut both ways. Popular sovereignty can be undermined by interference of foreign powers, but it can also be enhanced. I would argue that, to the extent that democracy exists at all in lands controlled by the Palestinian Authority, it is only because of the interference of Israel and the United States. So I cannot see that interference inherently undermines democracy or human freedom.

I also fail to understand the logic of the fourth criterion, "the capacity of civil servants to implement politics." Or rather, I am confused by it, as I am unsure what it means. Certainly, there are countries in the world where civil servants are unable to maintain law and order, prerequisites for a functioning democracy. But I would also argue that there are societies where civil servant elites actively thwart the will of the people (one such society being the European Union, which maintains a ban on capital punishment contrary to the will and wishes of the vast majority of European citizens...but this is a topic for another post). Civil servants can be enemies of democracy as much as they can be its conduits.

In short, I question whether democracy can be accurately quantified. I can see no criteria for declaring Sweden more democratic than America that is not fraught with ideological biases. Americans, like Swedes, are secure in their voting rights, and I can see no evidence that the United States has less freedom of expression than has Sweden.