“…I just want to make three points. The first is that, I think, it is very interesting to note the rise and continued development of the phenomenon that I call ‘illiberal democracy’. The basic idea I had was, that, looking around in the 1990s, I found that were many places that there were holding elections but when you visited them it did not seem that they were democracies in the sense that one had come to understand democracy. And I discovered that there was an interesting difference between holding an election and creating a sustained consolidated liberal democracy.
I would argue that the essential difference is about the rule of law. The degree to which there is a systematic impartial traditional system that can hold important people within the society, and important people in government accountable is probably a better definition of what we mean by modern democracy. Because it means that a society exists, in which power does not manipulate rules but rules exist for those who are powerful or powerless. This is why the words inscribed on the top of the building that has the United States the Supreme Court are “equal justice under the law”. In the Western world the tradition of the rule of law developed much earlier than the democratic tradition, so that Britain would have been considered to have some sustainable development of the rule of law by the middle of the 19th century. At this point already people like Voltaire had praised Britain as the most free and democratic society in the world. But, of course, only about 4 per cent of the people in Britain were able to exercise a vote. And when you look at modern societies, what I am struck by is what one might call the dictator’s learning curve, that is the ability of autocratic leaders to learn how to create the fa?ade of democracy – hold elections and ensure that the outcome is that they would wish. But much less progress has been made in terms of the rule of law and the genuine impartial system of rules which govern all people in the society. I was in Africa recently and the prime minister of one country who is himself a former dissident and has been involved in a very difficult and hardly contested electoral process said to me. ‘In Africa elections are not won or lost, they are manipulated’. And I think that it could be said to be true of many parts of the world. And so I would argue that the real focus should be on this question – to what extent do we have genuine independent courts, genuine independent judicial system. These are, of course, much more difficult institutions to develop. It is easier to hold an election than it is to develop a substantial body of the impartial law. And I think we in the media have a responsibility there too. It is easier to televise the election than it is to televise the rule of law.
The second point that I would like to make is that with all these troubles, it still remains true that there are very few modern societies that are not democratic. And since the conference is about modernity it is worth thinking about this reality. If you exclude countries whose GDP is almost entirely the product of oil, there is only one country in the world that has a high national income and that is not a developed pure democracy, and that is Singapore. Singapore is a very small and a very unusual country. It is probably not the basis for many general theories. But other than Singapore, every rich country that has earned its wealth is a liberal democracy. Hence, there is possibly something in the process of modernization that also forces a society and its state to become more accountable, more transparent, more impartial. It is something to reflect upon when you think about Russia and its own path to modernity. The final point I would make is that I think that even developed democracies continue to have problems that are inherent, that are within being democracies. By which I mean that some problems are functions or aspects of their democratic nature…”
