Book Review: Is Democracy Exportable?

In 2007, Sirote Klampaiboon, a Thai independent researcher in Political Science, complied his articles and published a book titled “Prachatipatai (Mai Chai) Khong Rao” (lit. Democracy is not ours) to stress to the members of this society, who have an innate belief that they are unique and distinct from the others in various aspects, on the fact that the government system being used for over 75 years, since 1932, is not a creation of their own ancestry but that of those from the other side of the globe. Thus it was not for anyone on this motherland to claim or proclaim as a new denomination of their own interpretations, perspectives, or traditions, collectively called a “culture” of their own and designated it as “Thai Democracy”. While Klampaiboon, along with many from regions all over the world, tried to show their fellow nationals that the “Democracy” was an abstraction their ancestries had “brought in/imported” from, or worse “been indoctrinated” by, the Western world, such as Europe and the United States, and hence it must be abided by as it stands, Zoltan Barany and Robert Moser of the University of Texas advised us to review this from a different perspective by raising questions such as “Can democratic states transplant the seeds of democracy into developing countries?” “What have political thinkers going back to the Greek city-states thought about their capacity to promote democracy?” and “How can democracy be established in divided society?” “Is Democracy Exportable?” is an effort of them, along with 13 fellow academics from the United States, in the finding of the answer to the questions, or stated in terms of 2009 context and before “Can or should the United States or other democratic countries try to export it?”, though it has become a crucial part of foreign policy of the United States of America since the first World War and its international norm since the 1990s. Along with the introduction by Marc Plattner of the National Endowment for Democracy, igniting a chain of thoughts on the unsuccessful efforts to promote democracy of the States, and conclusion by Oxford University’s Nancy Bermeo of analyses of empirical evidence that democracy is not exportable, the book has complied articles from conferences of six divisions within the University of Texas at Austin in April 2007, divided into three parts: Part I. “A Moral Imperative?” contains a single chapter “The Morality of Exporting Democracy: A Historical-Philosophical Perspective” by Thomas Pangle of the University of Texas; Part II. “Structural Preconditions” contains four chapters, “Re-Integrating the Study of Civil Society and the State” by Sheri Berman of the Columbia University, “Encountering Culture” by M. Fish of the University of California, Berkeley, “Does Democracy Work in Deeply Divided Societies?” by Daniel Chirot of the University of Washington, Seattle, and “Democracy, Civil Society, and the Problem of Tolerance” by Adam Seligman of the Boston University – remarking on structural preconditions such as culture, divided societies, and, particularly, civil society, which has been tightly associated with democratization and consolidation since the 1990s, and getting even more critical when Seligman points out that “Whereas democracy may or may not be “exportable”, it is pretty clear that the civil society of any particular country or society most probably is not.”; Part III. “Institutions and Processes” contains five chapters, “Electoral Engineering in New Democracies: Can Preferred Electoral Outcomes Be Engineered?” by Robert Moser, “Does It Matter How a Constitution Is Created?” by John Carey of the Dartmouth College; “Building Democratic Armies” by Zoltan Barany, “Democratization, Conflict, and Trade” by Edward Mansfield of the University of Pennsylvania and Jack Snyder of the Columbia University, and “Exporting Democracy: Does It Work?” by Mitchell Seligson of the Vanderbilt University, Steven Finkel and Anibal Perez-Linan of the University of Pittsburgh – remarking on democratic institutions and processes, such as constitutions, elections, security sector reform, conflict, and trade, ending with a question “Does democracy promotion work?”. In the reviewer’s perspective, as more empirical evidence has increasingly been applied to raise questions on large-scale accounts nowadays, which are progressively becoming more like faiths, or unquestionable realities that are often elicited, “Is Democracy Exportable?” covers prime examples of such important deeds, is recommended for reading, and joining everyone in this extensive and informative discussion on the matter in hand.