Democracy is resilient BUT solves nothing.

The value of democracy has been taken for granted until recently, but this assumption seems to be under threat now more than ever before. As was explained in Chapter 1, democracy’s claim to be valuable does not rest on just one particular merit, and scholars tend to distinguish three different types of values (Sen 1999). This book focused on the instrumental value of democracy (and hence not on the intrinsic and constructive value), and investigated the value of democracy for peace (Chapters 3 and 4), control of corruption (Chapter 5) and economic development (Chapter 6). This study was based on a search of an enormous academic database for certain keywords,6 then pruned the thousands of articles down to a few hundred articles (see Appendix) which statistically analysed the connection between the democracy and the four expected outcomes. The frst fiding is that a reverse wave away from democracy has not happened (see Chapter 2). Not yet, at least. Democracy is not doing worse than before, at least not in comparative perspective. While it is true that there is a dramatic decline in democracy in some countries,7 a general trend downwards cannot yet be detected. It would be better to talk about ‘stagnation’, as not many dictatorships have democratized recently, while democracies have not yet collapsed. Another finding is that the instrumental value of democracy is very questionable. The feld has been deeply polarized between researchers who endorse a link between democracy and positive outcomes, and those who reject this optimistic idea and instead emphasize the negative effects of democracy. There has been ‘no consensus’ in the quantitative literature on whether democracy has instrumental value which leads some beneficial general outcomes. Some scholars claim there is a consensus, but they only do so by ignoring a huge amount of literature which rejects their own point of view. After undertaking a large-scale analysis of carefully selected articles published on the topic (see Appendix), this book can conclude that the connections between democracy and expected benefts are not as strong as they seem. Hence, we should not overstate the links between the phenomena. The overall evidence is weak. Take the expected impact of democracy on peace for example. As Chapter 3 showed, the study of democracy and interstate war has been a fourishing theme in political science, particularly since the 1970s. However, there are four reasons why democracy does not cause peace between countries, and why the empirical support for the popular idea of democratic peace is quite weak. Most statistical studies have not found a strong correlation between democracy and interstate war at the dyadic level. They show that there are other—more powerful—explanations for war and peace, and even that the impact of democracy is a spurious one (caveat 1). Moreover, the theoretical foundation of the democratic peace hypothesis is weak, and the causal mechanisms are unclear (caveat 2). In addition, democracies are not necessarily more peaceful in general, and the evidence for the democratic peace hypothesis at the monadic level is inconclusive (caveat 3). Finally, the process of democratization is dangerous. Living in a democratizing country means living in a less peaceful country (caveat 4). With regard to peace between countries, we cannot defend the idea that democracy has instrumental value. Can the (instrumental) value of democracy be found in the prevention of civil war? Or is the evidence for the opposite idea more convincing, and does democracy have a ‘dark side’ which makes civil war more likely? The findings are confusing, which is exacerbated by the fact that different aspects of civil war (prevalence, onset, duration and severity) are mixed up in some civil war studies. Moreover, defining civil war is a delicate, politically sensitive issue. Determining whether there is a civil war in a particular country is incredibly diffcult, while measurements suffer from many weaknesses (caveat 1). Moreover, there is no linear link: civil wars are just as unlikely in democracies as in dictatorships (caveat 2). Civil war is most likely in times of political change. Democratization is a very unpredictable, dangerous process, increasing the chance of civil war significantly. Hybrid systems are at risk as well: the chance of civil war is much higher compared to other political systems (caveat 3). More specifcally, both the strength and type of political institutions matter when explaining civil war. However, the type of political system (e.g. democracy or dictatorship) is not the decisive factor at all (caveat 4). Finally, democracy has only limited explanatory power (caveat 5). Economic factors are far more significant than political factors (such as having a democratic system) when explaining the onset, duration and severity of civil war. To prevent civil war, it would make more sense to make poorer countries richer, instead of promoting democracy. Helping countries to democratize would even be a very dangerous idea, as countries with changing levels of democracy are most vulnerable, making civil wars most likely. It is true that there is evidence that the chance of civil war decreases when the extent of democracy increases considerably. The problem however is that most countries do not go through big political changes but through small changes instead; those small steps—away or towards more democracy—are dangerous. Not only is the onset of civil war likely under such circumstances, but civil wars also tend to be longer, and the confict is more cruel leading to more victims, destruction and killings (see Chapter 4). A more encouraging story can be told around the value for democracy to control corruption in a country (see Chapter 5). Fighting corruption has been high on the agenda of international organizations such as the World Bank and the IMF. Moreover, the theme of corruption has been studied thoroughly in many different academic disciplines—mainly in economics, but also in sociology, political science and law. Democracy has often been suggested as one of the remedies when fghting against high levels of continuous corruption. So far, the statistical evidence has strongly supported this idea. As Chapter 5 showed, dozens of studies with broad quantitative, cross-national and comparative research have found statistically signifcant associations between (less) democracy and (more) corruption. However, there are vast problems around conceptualization (caveat 1) and measurement (caveat 2) of ‘corruption’. Another caveat is that democratizing countries are the poorest performers with regard to controlling corruption (caveat 3). Moreover, it is not democracy in general, but particular political institutions which have an impact on the control of corruption; and a free press also helps a lot in order to limit corruptive practices in a country (caveat 4). In addition, democracies seem to be less affected by corruption than dictatorships, but at the same time, there is clear evidence that economic factors have more explanatory power (caveat 5). In conclusion, more democracy means less corruption, but we need to be modest (as other factors matter more) and cautious (as there are many caveats). The perceived impact of democracy on development has been highly contested as well (see Chapter 6). Some scholars argue that democratic systems have a positive impact, while others argue that high levels of democracy actually reduce the levels of economic growth and development. Particularly since the 1990s, statistical studies have focused on this debate, and the empirical evidence is clear: there is no direct impact of democracy on development. Hence, both approaches cannot be supported (see caveat 1). The indirect impact via other factors is also questionable (caveat 2). Moreover, there is too much variation in levels of economic growth and development among the dictatorial systems, and there are huge regional differences (caveat 3). Adopting a one-size-ftsall approach would not be wise at all. In addition, in order to increase development, it would be better to focus on alternative factors such as improving institutional quality and good governance (caveat 4). There is not suffcient evidence to state that democracy has instrumental value, at least not with regard to economic growth. However, future research needs to include broader concepts and measurements of development in their models, as so far studies have mainly focused on explaining cross-national differences in growth of GDP (caveat 5). Overall, the instrumental value of democracy is—at best—tentative, or—if being less mild—simply non-existent. Democracy is not necessarily better than any alternative form of government. With regard to many of the expected benefts—such as less war, less corruption and more economic development—democracy does deliver, but so do nondemocratic systems. High or low levels of democracy do not make a distinctive difference. Mid-range democracy levels do matter though. Hybrid systems can be associated with many negative outcomes, while this is also the case for democratizing countries. Moreover, other explanations—typically certain favourable economic factors in a country—are much more powerful to explain the expected benefts, at least compared to the single fact that a country is a democracy or not The impact of democracy fades away in the powerful shadows of the economic factors..8