AHC: Make this article Factual

Are Americans Ready for Democracy?

David Berreby on February 22, 2011, 5:15 PM




By Firouz Folani
Institute of Near-Western Studies
TEHRAN, Feb 24, 2011 -- As a wave of "people power" this month toppled dictators throughout the Americas, citizens of Africa and the Middle East—the world's prosperous democracies— felt joy and sympathy. Nowhere was this more true than here in Iran. But with the fall of the dictatorship in Washington, it's time for us, the world's one remaining superpower, to lay sentiment aside. We have to ask the tough questions: How can we be sure that the next American regime won't be even worse? How can we be sure, for that matter, that Americans are ready for democracy?
Officially, of course, Iran, Tunisia, Egypt, Cameroon, Nigeria, Turkey and other rich democracies support free speech, personal liberty, the rule of law and fair elections for every country on earth. But we have to balance our democratic ideals with a realistic assessment of our interests (and the world's) in resource-rich North America.
Rest of article http://bigthink.com/ideas/31329
 
You'd need to butterfly away the whole European Age of Exploration & Conquest and the Crusades, make the dominant flavor of Islam something more along Baha'i and Sufi lines than the authoritarian Sunn'i Caliph-led states or some other religion assume dominance over South Asia and North Africa for the respect of individual opinions and conscience to have the necessary room to operate.

Kim Stanley Robinson wrote The Years of Rice and Salt exploring WI the Black Plague in Europe was >90% in mortality rates and basically how the Chinese and Muslim civilizations would colonize and exploit the vast majority of the earth.

As an American it's easy to associate economic prosperity and political freedom, but that can tilt into solipsistic territory. How does a modern democracy arise?
You need a variety of things, rule of law, widespread literacy and room for difference of opinion, a concept of the individual as being unique and accorded free will with unalienable rights, rapid enough communications for a quorum to be established in a useful time frame, collective identity independent of ethnicity and a concept of the country and government as something subject to change but with some basic guidelines.

I believe any group of people can make a democracy run with the above principles in mind, but IOTL, the reason the Near East and Africa didn't was because empires swept through those areas making the local wishes of the population irrelevant for thousands of years.
Loyalties stayed at the personal and tribal level because those didn't change regardless of who was collecting taxes. Some of the despots were enlightened, most just wanted to stay in power and left large sections of the population alone with some minorities as scapegoats.

Many West African Islamic empires (Ghana, Songhai, Hausa and Mali) arose, were enlightened rulers, trade, industry, and scholarship blossomed, but fell to invaders and internal squabbling once prosperity spoiled everyone, or the Almoravids decided anyone not practicing their strain of Islam was a heretic and needed conversion or a scimitar through the gut.
Any of those empires lasting long enough to develop and maintain a successful collective culture would be an example worth emulating, though you could find or tweak any number of OTL nations and cultures to make them the democratic archetype everyone wants to emulate.
 
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