The Global South vs the Washington
Consensus
The relationship between the West and
the Global South is a little like the relationship between family
members of different generations. We always hope that the younger
generations will follow in our footsteps, but we'll always be
disappointed and surprised that they are not like us.
The West thought that Japan, South
Korea and Taiwan would end up being miniature versions of the
European countries, and in a way they did. But that was as far as it
went. The global south will develop and mature, but they will do it
their way. They won't do it the same way that the West did, although
they will try to learn from the experience.
The Shining City on the Hill and the
post-war international order
In many ways, the USA has been a benign
world leader because it was operating fom a vantage point that the
first half of the 20th century had been pretty terrible
for the West. There was the bloody Boer war in South Africa, which
posed the first real challenge to the British Empire. Then there was
Japan defeating Russia in the war of 1905. The outbreak of the First
World War, when seen from a colonial perspective, was the European
powers who had previously carved up the world among themselves,
engage in a Civil War of their own carelessness. The peace that had
existed on the European continent since 1848 was shattered, as the
fearsom military technology that hitherto beeen used to keep down
native populations was turned upon each other.
From then on, the terrible events kept
on happening: the Russian Civil War, that followed the Bolshevik
revolution. The terrible years of Stalinist rule. The rise of
Fascism. The Great Depression, and then the Second World war. Another
example of bad leadership was Japan, who managed to become the first
non-Western country to become a developed country in the modern era.
It saw itself emulating the Western Powers to be a colonial power,
and quite possibly tried to outdo the West. I don't know why, but
last few countries who tried to be colonail powers were just
terrible: Belgium, Germany, Italy and Japan were amongst the worst
colonial powers.
The one country that emerged with a lot
of credit was the USA, who in many ways saved the day. They came to
the aid of the Allied powers, and helped to deveat the Axis powers.
They created the Bretton Woods institutions for a new world order.
After the war, they successfully rebuilt Germany and Japan, helping
to shape the post WW2 world order that we know today. And many
countries of the Global South gained independence, and tried nation
building with varying degrees of success.
The success of the post WW2 world order
came from a place where Western civilisation was chastened after a
disastrous 40 year period where they almost managed to ruin the
world. They came from a Zeitgeist where people felt that colonialism
didn't work anymore.
The USA occupies a very unique place in
the context of European colonialisation. They are both an imperialist
power and one of the first post-colonial countries in the world.
Not following the formula
It's not correct to say that the
countries of the Global South are democratic or anti-democratic. It's
more truthful to say that they are indifferent to democracy. The
global south treats democracy as a suggestion and a recommendation,
but not as something that is mandatory. It certainly does not treat
liberal democracy as the be-all and end-all for keeping the system
honest. The USA is the city on the hill, and sees itself as such. It
was easy to impose a liberal democratic order on Japan who were just
defeated foes who were treated magnaminously. But it's harder to do
the same to peacetime allies.
It does appear that Singapore is going
to be an “illiberal” country. It really is a matter of whether
you call it half a glass full or half a glass empty. People are
always going to be the most important factors in East Asia. East
Asian cultures don't have this culture where the peasants are seen as
the cannon fodder for the aristocracy, as is the case for Western
culture. The fate of the common man is seen as something that rulers
have some duty of care towards. The West evolved to have democracies,
which is basically the people overthrowing their leaders every once
in a while and collectively having some say over who comes in. Which
came about because until then, their leaders had behaved like
despots.
There is such a thing as people power
in Singapore. In fact, in many of the countries in East Asia, people
do have a lot of power, because these are countries where labour is
the biggest factor in the economy. But in many ways, these are highly
stratified and hierachical societies. The notion that class warfare
isn't going to explode into larger social conflict. I would say that
a lot of East Asian countries are destined to be societies which are
not cults of some dictator or strongman, but have societies where the
passions and the energies of the people ultimately drive the economy.
But they may not be ready to be true democracies, partly because they
don't like the divisiveness of democracies, or the transitions of
power, or they don't like the notion that every human being is equal.
There is a resistance to the notion
that every human being is equal. The dark side of the Asian success
story is that it's built upon the underpaid labour of a vast
underclass. Not entirely, because technological achievements are a
great part of the economic success, but you couldn't imagine
Singapore existing without the foreign workers – the maids, the
construction workers, the blue collared workers who toil in the
tropical heat.
Any democratic country that has ever
succeeded works in a system that has less than universal
enfranchisement. You did have a working class system in the UK, and
they were on a lower rung, but the natives of the British colonies
were on a rung lower than them. You never had all the wretched people
of the earth also having the ability to cast votes at the same time,
along with the civil strife that that would cause, when they could
just vote in a demogogue or vote to destroy the society they lived
in.
Many countries have had democracies
that have operated in the context that only the elites were allowed
to be democracies. Even the CCP at one point was like that: the party
members get to vote on a lot of things. Ancient Greece, which was
where Democracy started, was also such a system. There was a
democracy amongst slave owners, but of course the slaves were not
allowed to vote. The USA was like that too. You had to be white,
male, and land owning to vote.
You could say it worked well, because
it didn't have people from the lowest caste voting in the same
election as everybody else. People could vote and have people power
because you could have people on the other side of the world, having
less power than you, to be the non-voting underclass.
In a modern democracy, when the people
on the second bottom rung of the ladder have to duke it out against
people on the bottom rung of the ladder, that is a recipe for civil
strife.
The West becoming liberal democracies
was the product of its own path-dependent trajectory. Liberal
democracy was the answer to the social ills of its day: despotism by
absolute monarchs, the class system and its hierarchies and warlords
fighting each other for the right to govern the realm. It was seen as
a peaceful solution to a lot of social problems. In the West, though,
democracy, the enlightenment and colonialism were a unique trifecta
which drove the development of the West. Democracy weakened the
aristocratic / feudal system and gave the common man more agency. But
that also meant that a lot of commoners could go to foreign lands and
colonise the place. Democracy was actually the fuel that enabled the
UK and France to become great colonial empires, because they released
the energies of the people. The enlightenment brought with it a
higher level of technology than the rest of the world (until very
recently). That also enabled colonialism to take place, because it
was mainly predicated upon being able to wage war against the natives
and win those wars 10 out of 10 times. The exalted state of the West
meant that the vast majorities of people from the West could feel
reasonably satisfied about their position in the world, and they
could unite themselves under the same flag. You would always have a
reasonably good country to live in, in spite of some of the
dysfunctions in government that come about as a result of democracy.
And a democratic country usually has the better militaries, because
when people fight for the flag, they know they are fighting for
themselves. In contrast, a lot of dictatorships have very impressive
march pasts and parades, and during peacetime all the soldiers swear
a lot of loyalty to the flag. But everything falls apart at the first
sign of trouble. The Napoleonic wars demonstrated the relative
effectiveness of these “arsenals of democracy”
But other countries can pursue other
ways of government, as long as they lead to the path of development.
In Taiwan and South Korea, Confucianism kept the system honest, even
when both countries were under martial law. Singapore never had much
respect for liberal democracy, but still managed to build a good
civil service which was largely free from corruption. The gulf states
in Qatar, UAE, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia are ruled by absolute
monarchs, but they managed to be high functioning enough to see big
infrastrucure projects to completion.
Time after time, it's been the case
that a country obtains its nationhood first, and then creates a
thriving economy, and finally matures into being able to function as
a democratic society. Democracy is something that comes at a later
stage of development, if at all. The idea that you could go into Iraq
and Afghanistan to impose democracy as a coloniser was seriously
nuts. During that brief hegemonic episode after the Cold War ended,
the USA believed that anything was possible, that it would be God's
mission to proselytise the western system, because they saw democracy
come unto several countries that used to be “under Communist
dictatorship”. After 9/11, they believed that the time was ripe to
expand that mission to Iraq and Afghanistan. But that was a
misbegotten goal.
At the same time, one of the strengths
of democracy is that it's able to mobilise the energies and talents
of the people in society. And the societies of East Asia can do
likewise, but in ways that are very different from how democracies do
it. There is a meritocratic system which exists in spite of an
absence of liberal democracy. There is a cultural bias towards
education being a very important component of self improvement.
Democracy is not going to work without
there being a big middle class, which is educated. It's not going to
work if the people are divided, and there are fault lines. Western
countries don't like to admit this, but ethnic diversity and
democracy are not a good combination.
There is actually a very big overlap
between Confucianism and liberal democracy. First, even though the
West likes to paint despotism / banana republics and Confucianism as
both being “authoritarian”, they are actually very different. For
Confucianism, there is the notion that the leader is ultimately
answerable to his people, as is the case for liberal democracy. There
is the notion that the regime rules with the consent of the people.
The outcome in both cases is benevolent leadership, even though the
means are different. There is some form of accountability involved.
In both systems, the welfare of the common people is a very important
part of the system, as is the incorruptability of the leaders. Most
importantly, both of these philosophies are about civic virtue and
keeping the system honest, although this happens through very
different means. Most significantly, under Confucianism, you are not
going to vote your leaders out of power.
One boon for the global south is that
all the countries are developing unevenly. That gives way for a lot
of trade offs. Some countries are already developed. Some cities are
first world places, but they could use unskilled labour from less
developed countries, and in turn, these unskilled labour would be
happy (or at least less unhappy) to do menial work for those more
developed countries, and bide their time so that they can do the hard
work of developing their own countries at their own pace. The
Philippines used to provide domestic servants to the rest of the
world. They used to be sailors and construction workers who did some
of the more unpleasant work. Then they brought their skills and
talents back to their own country and eventually turned Manila – if
not into a first world metropolis, at least they made Manila more
developed. Economic development happens through trade. China may not
be a great example to other countries in terms of being an
authoritarian state, but it is open for business, is very capitalist,
and is a very good trade partner.
Here's another paradox. The West likes
the idea of democracy and free markets, because in a way they are
bottom up processes. They allow ideas, governing philosophies, rulers
to be upvoted or downvoted as needed. But if the developing world
were to decide, largely independently of each other, that they would
not follow the path as prescribed by the West, they wouldn't like it
so much. Yet allowing the developing world to formulate their way of
doing things, is also a bottom up process, and they don't really like
that bottom up process so much.
There are two political ideologies in
the West, and they are the yin to the other's yang. Colonialism and
democracy were both part of the West's mindset. They were also
contradictory to each other. Colonialism means that people are not
equal. Democracy means that they are equal. Both of these have been
part of the landscape for so long that a lot of people in the West
don't really question that they contradict each other. Colonialism is
for other countries. Democracy is a way for countries in the West to
stop the common people from killing the elites. So long as the people
know that society has made a decent fist at having a system of
government by and for the people, then there will be a bit of peace
in this world.
The problem is that democracy has only
worked when there's always been some kind of underclass. The people
at the bottom level of society were always excluded from democracy,
and somehow that made the process more congenial. It was people
without land, or women, or blacks. In the UK and France, the people
at the bottom of society felt safe in the knowledge that there were
people in faraway colonies who were still below them in the totem
pole, and it was easier to be a patriot when that was the case. When
you had a society where both the poor blacks and the poor whites were
voting, it spilled over into open conflict, and it made democracy
less workable.
The Global South way has some
characteristics. They borrow more from the West when it comes to
science and technology, technocratic management, and free and open
markets. But they don't borrow from the West so much when it comes to
democratic processes and government. The formula of economic
liberalisation without political liberalisation is replicated a lot
across the Global South.
If people don't have democracy, they
will still accept a system where you have economic or social
mobility, and a developing nation is still viable. It's only when the
country gets into the middle income trap, that things start getting a
little funky, and you have to start giving people democracy before
they plot to overthrow their leaders. We saw this pattern before, and
this is how some Asian countries, like Taiwan, South Korea, the
Philippines and Indonesia got their democracies. Whether it will
happen to China is an open question.
If the West complains about China, it
has to take a long hard look at itself. Why has China managed to
raise the living standards of the Global South more successfully than
the West ever did? The complaining is really about: China is usurping
the exalted status of the West in this world, and it is helping the
countries of the Global South to develop, regardless of whether they
follow the Western prescriptions of political reform. It is building
another world system that might eventually upend the superior status
of the US Dollar in the world economy, and may be helping the world
to evade US trade sanctions.
That is because the USA is in some ways
a paradox. You are either exceptional or just like everybody else. If
you are exceptional, then people will not follow in your footsteps
because you are not like everybody else. Inasmuch as the USA has had
a WEIRD bias, its not that well suited to represent the rest of the
world.
The other thing is that the West is
losing a lot of influence on this world. It's no longer in the
economic growth phase, whereas the Global South countries are going
to increase their wealth and power in the next few decades. When the
economic power and population of the West recedes in relative terms
compared to the rest of the world, so too will their ability to shape
and intellectually influence the rest of the world.
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