When US President Abraham Lincoln gave his definition of democracy, his intention was not to simply come up with poetic prose. He was serious and he meant what he said. For democracy to survive and flourish it ought to be closely connected to the people, it ought to be a “Government of the people, by the people, for the people.”
According to Kean, European representative democracies failed to mature because republicans who liked to speak of “the people” frequently and seek legitimacy from the “active consent of citizens”, were not certain of who exactly “the people” were. This confusion, Kean believes made republicanism an ideology based on inequality. European democracies were losing their real meaning through exclusion of commoners, commoners whose efforts for establishing their equality with those in possession of wealth and power formed the essence of democracy in ages before the emergence of the representative democracy in Europe. The crowd action of people of Cordoba of Spain in the spring of 1652 is one such example of enthralling resistance of oppressed commoners including women for survival, who knew not the language of democracy, but who knew the language of resistance.
Markoff further builds on the notion of confusion in the meaning of democracy. He argues that there were different interpretations of democracy throughout. He gives the example of President Wilson’s “unhappiness” about universal suffrage to include voting rights for African-Americans and women. Wilson had such beliefs despite his rhetoric of equality that had inspired Asian and African democratic movements all over the world.
However, it was not just conflict between belief and words. History is full of examples of conflict in words and actions of many, including US government. If “confusion” led to failure of democracies in Europe, something definitely beyond mere “confusion” in understanding the essence of democracy led to national and international anti-democratic policies that destroyed democratic governments in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The role of US military in Maxico, Haiti and Dominican Republic in 1914 to 1916 did not advance democratic institutions in these states as Markoff argues. From 1950s to 1970s US policy of containment of communism drove US government into supporting anti-democratic dictatorships all over the world.
Democratically elected government of Iranian President Mussadeq in 1953 was overthrown by CIA under US government directions because Mussadeq aimed at nationalization of Iranian oil resources. In the same year, the US government toppled Jacob Arbenz, the elected President of Guatemala because he was suspected of having communist leaning; Iran suffered under Shah till the 1979 Iranian revolution which brought fundamentalists on power who whitewashed the faces of all anti-democrat regimes; Guatemala faced 30 years of civil war and dictatorship after Arbenz was toppled. In both of the above cases the driving force was not “confusion” but economic and political interests.
This list can go on and on in number, but there are two important conclusions to derive. First that debate or confusion over the meaning of democracy cannot lead to extending, in good faith of course, blind support to anti-democratic governments, and second that the “very special conditions” which social scientists of 1960s were convinced of as conditions for thriving democracy were not out-worldly phenomena. The “very special conditions” were not “western culture, prosperity or distinctive institutional history” but were people’s active participation in government and importance of public opinion in decision making which were becoming extinct with time, either due to internal issues or due to international policies of super powers.
The secret of success of a government is in popular support. People support a government when they see it functioning as a system that fulfills their demands for welfare and their rights. A government cannot truly represent its people’s wishes, if it is not made of those people. And to realize this, people need not have extraordinary “political wisdom.” When governments forget or intentionally stop serving the rights and interests of “the people” and instead serve the interests and rights of a powerful and wealthy minority, they are doomed. The possibility of governments behaving in such manner is very likely, because no matter what, social classes exist, wealth is not distributed evenly, and inequality is the face of the world. And most importantly, people bestow power upon their representatives in good intention, those representatives take it and commit to use it in good faith, but after all, it is power, and power corrupts.