Why haven all the worlds countries become democracies?
Here’s a provocative new answer. The question itself may seem romantic and naive. But when Communism was collapsing two decades ago, many people assumed that democracy would sweep the world. Once countries reached a certain standard of living, dictatorships couldn’t manage the complexities. Without an ideology to justify their repression, dictators would have no basis to rule. And with open borders, open trade and open communication — especially the Internet — they’d be unable to squelch their people’s natural desire for freedom. Now comes Ivan Krastev with the counterintuitive suggestion that those very factors — openness and the absence of ideology — may in fact be helping authoritarianism to survive. Krastev, a Bulgarian and one of the world’s most original thinkers on subjects like this, propounded his theory, taking Russia as his example, in a speech Tuesday night, the Seymour Martin Lipset Lecture on Democracy in the World at the Canadian embassy in Washington. It’s true that
