Though I’m skeptical. A lot of the benefits from democracy require liberal democracy. For example, both Iran and Russia are technically democracies, yet neither seems like a force for domestic welfare or international peace. In The Great Delusion, John Mearscheimer also casts some doubt on the democratic peace theory, pointing out that the US has toppled a number of democratically elected governments: “Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, Brazil in 1964, and Chile in 1973.” He also references a 1994 paper, “Kant or Cant: The Myth of the Democratic Peace”:
Perhaps the most damning evidence against the case for liberal democratic norms is found in Christopher Layne’s careful examination of four cases where a pair of liberal democracies marched to the brink of war, but one side pulled back and ended the crisis. He carefully examines the decision-making process in both Britain and the United States during the 1861 Trent Affair and the Venezuelan Crisis of 1895–96, the Fashoda Crisis between Britain and France in 1898, and the 1923 Ruhr Crisis involving France and Germany, and convincingly argues that liberal norms had little to do with settling these crises. There was substantial nationalist fervor on each side, and all four outcomes were primarily determined by strategic calculations involving the balance of power.
I don’t know how strong these objections really are, but I would take the democratic peace theory with a grain of salt.
Then there is China. Acemoglu and Robinson argue that China’s model is unsustainable in the long run, that it will end up having to liberalize in order to maintain economic growth, but this is disputed. China seems to be quite unique in terms of competence among authoritarian countries. Human rights would definitely improve if China were to become a liberal democracy, but the effects on long-term growth seem less obvious.
One issue is that the evidence in this area is fairly weak. See Kuhn’s post for more details on that.
With respect to neglectedness and tractability, I think it is best to do an analysis on a country by country basis. Promoting democracy in China for example seems not to be very tractable, and also carries some downside risk (making China hostile to EA). The question of whether promoting democracy might be an EA cause probably depends on whether it is possible to find a single country where there exists any examples of neglected and tractable interventions.
I think it is possible to find such interventions. Kuhn speculates that sponsoring independent investigative media in Senegal might be effective. Maybe there are some specific effective interventions in pro-democracy aid or election monitoring. I would love to see more research into similar interventions.
Thank you so much for these thoughtful comments! A few responses:
While there are of course differences of opinion on this issue outside of the research community, the social science research literature universally considers Russia and Iran to be non-democratic (see for example, the Polity IV project or the recent Acemoglu et. al. 2019 Democracy dataset). These regimes might be considered “competitive authoritarian” regimes (see Way and Levitsky) or hybrid regimes/”anocracies”—the benefits of democracy stated in the article do not apply to these states. While liberal democracy is likely preferable for outcomes like democratic peace, other outcomes like higher spending on public goods are linked primarily to electoral democracy, rather than to liberal norms.
In terms of the democratic peace—it’s true that not all scholars agree with the consensus about the democratic peace—though Mearsheimer is definitely an outlier to the extent of believing power politics to be the only thing that matters (i.e. he thinks Europe isn’t at war because of US troops in Germany). Scholars that have traditionally emphasized power politics (like Robert Jervis) acknowledge that the current situation—in which powerful countries in Europe/Japan/South Korea don’t even contemplate war against one another—is unique historically and likely linked to democratic norms.
I agree on China—I think pro-democracy aid can be effective when a country is in transition, like a mixed regime (and when a country actually needs aid enough to be influenced). Conditional aid can boost the fragile institutions of new democracies and make democratic consolidation more likely ( a very important long term outcome).
Thanks for the post. I agree that the promotion of democratic institutions as an EA cause area is worth a closer look. I think you might find this EA Forum post by Ben Kuhn interesting: “”Why Nations Fail” and the long-termist view of global poverty.”
Though I’m skeptical. A lot of the benefits from democracy require liberal democracy. For example, both Iran and Russia are technically democracies, yet neither seems like a force for domestic welfare or international peace. In The Great Delusion, John Mearscheimer also casts some doubt on the democratic peace theory, pointing out that the US has toppled a number of democratically elected governments: “Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, Brazil in 1964, and Chile in 1973.” He also references a 1994 paper, “Kant or Cant: The Myth of the Democratic Peace”:
I don’t know how strong these objections really are, but I would take the democratic peace theory with a grain of salt.
Then there is China. Acemoglu and Robinson argue that China’s model is unsustainable in the long run, that it will end up having to liberalize in order to maintain economic growth, but this is disputed. China seems to be quite unique in terms of competence among authoritarian countries. Human rights would definitely improve if China were to become a liberal democracy, but the effects on long-term growth seem less obvious.
One issue is that the evidence in this area is fairly weak. See Kuhn’s post for more details on that.
With respect to neglectedness and tractability, I think it is best to do an analysis on a country by country basis. Promoting democracy in China for example seems not to be very tractable, and also carries some downside risk (making China hostile to EA). The question of whether promoting democracy might be an EA cause probably depends on whether it is possible to find a single country where there exists any examples of neglected and tractable interventions.
I think it is possible to find such interventions. Kuhn speculates that sponsoring independent investigative media in Senegal might be effective. Maybe there are some specific effective interventions in pro-democracy aid or election monitoring. I would love to see more research into similar interventions.
Thank you so much for these thoughtful comments! A few responses:
While there are of course differences of opinion on this issue outside of the research community, the social science research literature universally considers Russia and Iran to be non-democratic (see for example, the Polity IV project or the recent Acemoglu et. al. 2019 Democracy dataset). These regimes might be considered “competitive authoritarian” regimes (see Way and Levitsky) or hybrid regimes/”anocracies”—the benefits of democracy stated in the article do not apply to these states. While liberal democracy is likely preferable for outcomes like democratic peace, other outcomes like higher spending on public goods are linked primarily to electoral democracy, rather than to liberal norms.
In terms of the democratic peace—it’s true that not all scholars agree with the consensus about the democratic peace—though Mearsheimer is definitely an outlier to the extent of believing power politics to be the only thing that matters (i.e. he thinks Europe isn’t at war because of US troops in Germany). Scholars that have traditionally emphasized power politics (like Robert Jervis) acknowledge that the current situation—in which powerful countries in Europe/Japan/South Korea don’t even contemplate war against one another—is unique historically and likely linked to democratic norms.
I agree on China—I think pro-democracy aid can be effective when a country is in transition, like a mixed regime (and when a country actually needs aid enough to be influenced). Conditional aid can boost the fragile institutions of new democracies and make democratic consolidation more likely ( a very important long term outcome).