Land Reform

How Not to Save the World

Valiant efforts are being made every day to end hunger, reduce poverty, save lives. But if we truly want to solve the world's problems, here are five things we need to do.

Democracy: If You Want to Free Your Country, First Liberate Its Land

So you want to spread democracy. By now, it's pretty obvious that this is easier said than done. George W. Bush's stirring rhetoric about freedom has suggested a too-simple path: just rid the country of its tyrant and the people will be free. Bush often asserts that people in every country and culture yearn for democracy and are capable of it. To argue otherwise represents cultural condescension. It's not that President Bush is wrong at the abstract level—if Nazi Germany and fascist Japan could become democratic, it can happen most anywhere—but the argument holds at such an elevated plane that it becomes meaningless when applied on the ground. Consider, for example, Haiti, where the United States has attempted to foster democracy on and off for almost a century—with almost no success. Why? Surely Haitians yearn to be free. But there are aspects of its politics, economics and culture that have made it very difficult to establish liberal democracy. Changing these conditions is a hard, complex and long-term challenge. It is not impossible. There are many examples of success. But there are many more of failure. What is needed is careful study, pragmatism and humility.

One simple path to democracy is to hold elections. This has an obvious appeal. It legitimizes the political system, broadens participation and provides a simple answer to the question "Who should rule?" Holding elections is a defining feature of any liberal democracy. But it should not be the first step in building a democracy. Western societies went through centuries of modernization before they held elections. The Magna Carta, which first established limits on governmental power, preceded universal adult suffrage in Britain by about 800 years. It takes time to develop institutions of law and a civil society. Consider the problem of ethnic and sectarian strife, which is endemic to so many modern societies. If you hold elections in newly democratizing countries too fast, people will vote only according to their established ethnic, religious or racial identities— and that will undermine the creation of a genuine liberal democracy.

But if the simple solutions proposed by the right are not really that effective, neither are those suggested by the left. Foreign aid, for example, is not a panacea. More aid will not produce more democracy, or even better governance. Much of the history of foreign aid is one of good intentions leading to hellish situations—massive corruption and the entrenchment of near feudal elites. The early and successful transitions to democracy— in countries like Taiwan and South Korea in East Asia, and Chile in South America—were not the product of aid programs. There are certainly programs that have worked, many of them in medical and scientific areas. But while debt relief, new loans and grants are all worthwhile, how they are structured is absolutely crucial to their success. Otherwise, they can actually undermine the cause by giving foreign assistance a bad reputation.

If there is a dominant obstacle to building democracy, one that seems to recur in country after country, it is feudalism. In most developing countries, land is the most important asset, and is key to economic and thus political power. And the patterns of land ownership across much of the world are highly unequal.

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Do you do anything to help the world? What do you do that does not help the world, and why? Do you think that world destruction could be stopped? Valiant efforts are being made every day to end hunger, reduce poverty, save lives. But if we truly want to solve the world's pro... more

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