Governments are determined not by what liberal humanists wish

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

Governments are determined not by what liberal humanists wish but rather by what business people and others require, Robert Kaplan says:

Burma, too, may be destined for a hybrid regime, despite the deification of the opposition leader and Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi by Western journalists. While the United States calls for democracy in and economic sanctions against Burma, those with more immediate clout — that is, Burma’s Asian neighbors, and especially corporate-oligarchic militaries like Thailand’s — show no compunction about increasing trade links with Burma’s junta. Aung San Suu Kyi may one day bear the title of leader of Burma, but only with the tacit approval of a co-governing military. Otherwise Burma will not be stable.

A rule of thumb is that governments are determined not by what liberal humanists wish but rather by what business people and others require. Various democratic revolutions failed in Europe in 1848 because what the intellectuals wanted was not what the emerging middle classes wanted. For quite a few parts of today’s world, which have at best only the beginnings of a middle class, the Europe of the mid nineteenth century provides a closer comparison than the Europe of the late twentieth century. In fact, for the poorest countries where we now recommend democracy, Cromwell’s England may provide the best comparison.

From Was Democracy Just a Moment? (1997).

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