Genuine Electoral Democracy and Human Rights. S. Wang (CityU)

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1 Genuine Electoral Democracy and Human Rights S. Wang (CityU) After Second World War, human rights have held a very powerful institutional position in the international arena and have evolved as one of the central arms in the machinery of the United Nations, but democracy has no such equivalent ideological place in the UN. 1 Nonetheless, many civil and political rights, listed in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), are taken as the essentials for electoral democracy. Then, the emerging issue is how to reconcile the electoral democracy and human rights, or whether democracy is a prerequisite for the human rights, or vice versa. Historical Concurrence: Democracy and Human Rights Historically speaking, the tidal wave of popularity for democracy swept around the world during and after First World War, which was the beginning of the century of the common man, of popular influence upon government, and of the self-determination of nations. 2 When the third wave of democratization began in 1974, it has not yet given way to a third reserve wave, in which the number of countries experiencing democratic breakdowns substantially exceeds the number of giving birth to new democracies. 3 The military rule in many Latin American countries, in Turkey, and in Pakistan gave way to civilian, multiparty electoral systems. The Eastern Bloc countries moved away from one-party communist rule one after the other, illustrating the process of the domino effect. Authoritarianism in Senegal and Philippines was replaced with democratic systems. Major steps toward competitive elections were taken in Jordan, Nepal, and the Soviet Union. 4 Meanwhile, human rights regime also developed significantly in tandem with democracy in the twentieth centuries. 5 If we look at the origin, it is most emphatically the case that the discourse and language of rights is peculiar to the modern West in its origins. 6 Similarly, the democracy was emerged and developed in the historical circumstances of Western countries as well. 7 The Common Agenda of Democracy and Human Rights 1 See C.H. Heyns & Frans Viljoen, The Impact of the United Nations Human Rights Treaties on the Domestic Level, 23 Human Rights Quarterly, 2001, at See Zehar F. Arat, Democracy and Human Rights in Developing Countries, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1991, at See Marc F. Plattner, Populism, Pluralism, and Liberal Democracy, 21 Journal of Democracy 1, 2010, at Ibid, at 1. 5 See Anthony J. Langlois, Human Rights without Democracy? A Critique of the Separationist Thesis, 25 Human Rights Quarterly, 2003, at See Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, at See supra note 5, at

2 Theoretically speaking, human rights and democracy pursue a common agenda and proceed in tandem. One of the reasons for this was that both were engaged in mounting a challenge to the authority of the monarch, the sovereign, and the state. Both human rights and democracy are about getting authoritative power to rule in the name of and for the interests of the people rather than merely serving their own interests. 8 Therefore, they are about transforming the privileges of aristocracy into the standard fare of the ordinary mortal. 9 Furthermore, both human rights and democracy change the forms of government by granting aristocratic privileges to ordinary folk, and these privileges are turned into human rights that are able to be safeguarded by the engagement of the ordinary citizen under a democratic government. Ruled people are no longer the gifts from the authority, rather, the democratic mechanism of a form of government is recognized by and accountable to the people. 10 As such, the coincidence of human rights and democracy is not merely historically contingent, but is philosophically determined by both being expressions of political liberalism. 11 In this sense, human rights and democracy are inseparable, because they share the same philosophical ontology of liberalism. And the observance of human rights is implicit within the idea of a properly functioning democracy. To have democracy means to have human rights. Michael Goodhart has perceived that since the seventeenth centuries, emancipatory democrats have understood democracy as a political promise of freedom from domination and unwarranted interference for all, and they have employed human rights as the language of democratic empowerment. 12 The argument of democracy as human rights is somehow grounded on both concepts. Western-centric or Universal? One may be doubtful that democratic forms of government are best suited to Western states and should only be accepted by non-western states who wishes to become Western. 13 Thus, it would be inappropriate to criticize other forms of traditional non-western government on the basis of Western democratic ideas. As some scholar argues that, the Western experience has failed to serve as a viable model that the developing countries can replicate. First, the economic breakthrough of the West was not an isolated phenomenon. It was a process that involved the rest of the world mostly at the disadvantage of other regions. Second, as a consequence of the intensive and hegemonic global interactions, compared to the Western experience, the process of change in developing countries has been faster, more compact, simultaneous, and less autonomous. Furthermore, although Western accomplishments in the areas of economic 8 Ibid, at See Stephanie Lawson, Democracy and the Problem of Cultural Relativism: Normative Issues for International Politics, 12 Global Society 2, 1998, at Ibid. 11 See supra note 5, at See Michael Goodhart, Democracy as Human Rights: Freedom and Equality in the Age of Globalization, New York: Routledge, 2005, at See supra note 5, at

3 affluence, human rights, and democracy set the goals and standards to be attained for many developing countries, the past Western dominance and its current repercussions set major obstacles for the fulfillment of such aspirations. 14 In this regard, some observers have suggested that one way to promote an international human rights regime, while preempting the charge of cultural imperialism or avoiding the notion of a clash of civilization, is to separate the idea of respect for human rights from the Western-centric notion of democratization, and treat such respect as the international norm. 15 As Andrew Nathan explains, it can avoid stimulating reactive nationalism and regain the polemical initiative lost to proponents of Asian values in China and Southeast Asia. 16 Therefore, it is perceivable that the international human rights regime requires individual liberty, but it does not require any particular kind of political or economic system. 17 Nonetheless, it should be noted that the human rights regimes most definitely require a particular type of political and economic system: that is, a system in which the rights are genuine and may be freely exercised without fear of arbitrary removal; a system in which the people having such rights are also the guardians of their rights. This does mean that a democratic government and a certain kind of free market are required. 18 In this regard, the human rights, recognized universally in international area but behind the democratic forms of the government, should be achieved with a universal validity, although the forms of the so-called democracy may be diversified in different countries. Human Rights Development in Non-democratic Developing Countries How to achieve human rights in the process of pursuing democracy in non-democratic countries is still a challenging issue, and due to the distinctiveness of culture, history and society in the developing countries, it could not reach an answer easily from the experience of Western developed countries. Considering China where the social-economic rights were significantly fulfilled over the last few decades, yet the protection of civil and political rights is still underdeveloped. This has shown that developing countries may adopt different strategies to implement different stages of human rights. For example, a different case from China is the failure of human rights development in the new independent states of Africa that established the democratic systems in the 1950s or funded democratic institutions in the 1960s. Within a few years after their establishment, many of these regimes were subject to military takeover, and others were maintained as democracies only in name See supra note 2, at See supra note 5, at See Mahmood Monshipouri & Claude E. Welch, The Search for International Human Rights and Justice: Coming to Terms with New Golobal Realities, 23 Human Rights Quarterly, 2001, at See Andrew J. Nathan, China: Getting Human Rights Right, 20 Washington Quarterly 2, 1997, at See supra note 5, at See supra note 2, at 2. 3

4 Therefore, it is impractical for developing countries to copy the model of Western developed countries thoroughly. The inevitability of a trade-off between individual liberty, mirrored in civil-political rights, and social equality, reflected in socioeconomic rights, is understandable, and argued both by the liberalists and by those who try to justify the need for authoritarian rule at least during the period of transition to a society of equals. 20 As some writer points out, contrary to liberal theory, civil and political rights can hardly prevail if socioeconomic rights are ignored. And the stability of political democracy (liberal democracy) somehow depends on the extent of balance between the two groups of human rights. 21 Therefore, it is necessary to balance human rights among different groups. Apparently, some scholars have perceived the authoritarian resilience in many developing countries, as dubbed by Andrew J. Nathan. For example, a large number of other non-democratic regimes, especially in the Middle East and the former Soviet Union, have demonstrated an impressive ability to maintain their hold on power, and it makes good sense to explore the sources of their survival. 22 But such resilience does not provide the legitimacy of the regime ultimately, as the authoritarian state is antagonistic to human rights in principle, and it prepared to engage strategically with the various institutional manifestations of human rights, largely in order to make certain realpolitik gains. 23 Therefore, even cases such as the People s Republic of China, with its remarkable success over the past three decades in achieving economic growth and military power, have not been able to convince citizens in the advanced democracies, even in China, that they would want to sacrifice their liberties to enjoy the putative benefits of singleparty rule. 24 As Amartya Sen wrote, even democracy is not yet universally practiced, nor indeed universally accepted, in the general climate of world opinion, democratic governance has now achieved the status of being taken to be generally right. 25 Conclusion It is demonstrated through Western history that human rights are developed concurrently with the democracy. This is somewhat truthful that in a democratic system, it is the citizens themselves who can engage in this process of determination, but in a non-democratic system, it is ultimately the authoritative state that determines what rights a citizen has. 26 Some developing countries, like China, has witnessed the success in pursing social and economic rights under an authoritarian regime with a resilient feature, the modern democracy still should be the goal in a way that the civil and political rights could be experienced effectively in practice. Apparently, a modern democracy, to sustain its legitimacy, should pursue policies that respect 20 Ibid, at See supra note 5, at See supra note 3, at See supra note 5, at See supra note 3, at See Amartya Kuman Sen, Democracy as a Universal Value, 10 Journal of Democracy, 1999, at See Jacky Donnelly, Human Rights, Democracy, and Development, 21 Human Rights Quarterly, 1999, at

5 and protect the civil and political rights of its citizens and provide effective responses to their social and economic needs. A balance in the government s performance in these two areas is crucial to the destiny of democratic political systems. 27 To promote human rights regime equates to promote democracy, and vice versa, even the forms of democracy may be diversified in different countries. 27 See supra note 2, at 6. 5