The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad (Paperback)

Following the history of the West (and particularly the Anglo-American part) from the Roman Empire to today, Dr. Zakaria shows that Western History followed a course, where enlightened despotism led to respect for the law, to transparency and balancing of power within government, to capitalism, and finally to restricted democracy (elected representatives instead of direct democracy, unelected judges, a constitution that the government could not violate in spite of overwhelming majority approval, and so forth).

But, in the modern West, unfettered democracy has become the newly enthroned ideal, and is being spread to the rest of the world, where it is producing some successes, and some dismal failures. Indeed, one has only to look at the present recall election in California to see what it is doing in the United States. As an added bonus, the author clearly focusing in on recent trends with in India, the Islamic world, and other parts of the world.

This is an absolutely fascinating book. I have always heard the Founding Fathers of the United States disparaged for their fear of unfettered democracy and a potential tyranny of the majority, but this book puts into concrete terms that which those men feared. While his solutions are somewhat nebulous, I did find Dr. Zaakaria's analysis to be highly thought provoking. If you are interested in examining what has happened to democracy in the modern world, then I highly recommend this book to you.

Zakaria's main claim is that democratic institutions - especially election of the government by a majority or policy making by direct democracy/referenda - are not sufficient.

They may result in 'illiberal' or authoritarian democracy that doesn't protect minority or individual rights.

He also makes a convincing argument that resource rich countries tend to be less democratic than those that have to rely on a skilled, educated population - and on taxation- so that the government has to provide something in return for taxing its citizens.

However there are some flaws on top of the many good points that make this book well worth reading.

Zakaria says that Muslim dictators in the middle east are 'more liberal' than most of their populations as if this was an argument against too much democracy - when , i would argue, the growth of Islamic fundamentalism is a result of these foreign backed dictatorships which have made secular opposition weak.
To be fair Zakaria does make the point that the only political outlet left open under these dictatorships is the mosque.

Zakaria then confuses problems caused by the concentration of economic power in the hands of fewer and fewer companies and their lobbying power with the supposedly harmful effects of 'too much' democracy. He doesn't seem to have any concept of economic and social aspects of democracy other than free market ones - which in practice mean control of that market - and ultimately of governments and their policies - by the very wealthy and large companies.

He puts California's power cuts down to government by referendum - when we now know they were the result of de-regulation of the energy sector which allowed Enron to engineer power cuts to push up the unit price of electricity and its profits.

He claims Chavez is a dictator while Putin is a 'relative success story' or 'liberal dictator'. What exactly is liberal about Putin i'm not sure given that he jails potential opposition Presidential candidates while Chavez lets them stand against him and wins in elections judged free and fair by international observers. Chavez may be authoritarian but not compared to Putin.

Despite this there is a lot worth reading in 'The Future of Freedom'.

Fareed Zakaria writes from an American standpoint, and if democracy is failing in the USA, then the outlook is indeed bleak!

He seems to be looking for important yardsticks by which to measure government: there must be checks and balances, it
must avoid short-termism, and there must be secure institutions - eg: an independent judiciary - but, underlying this he
seems to be looking for competence, which he clearly believes democracy cannot deliver on its own.

How does Britain measure up?

First it has a strong party system, and a winner-takes-all voting system. Having got a majority in Parliament, the
checks and balances against the abuse of power are non-existent.

Two case studies will suffice: the privatisation of the railways, and the Iraq War.

Both these policies were highly controversial, and the results have been less than impressive.

In the case of the railways a couple of policy "wonks" in HM Treasury believed that the railways could be transformed,
in Christian Wolmar's words, into "an M1 for trains". In his book "Broken Rails", Wolmar shows that inspite of doubts
voiced by even John Major himself (!) the decision was taken to separate track and trains. We still live with the
shambles so created. Yet the Conservative majority went along with the policy because the power of the Whips Office,
and party tribalism dictated the outcome.

No one, it seems, is prepared to unscramble this mess, probably because the system of contracts would be horrendously
expensive to scrap.

In the case of the railways, the failure of the policy cannot possibly be laid at the door of "democracy" however
defined.

The Iraq War was even more intersting, since it is probable that, on a free vote, the policy might have been defeated
in the House of Commons. BUT, and this is a vital but, the Prime Minister could have gone ahead anyway.

Again, no checks and balances, no sign of open government, and no constitutional clause - no written constitution! -
to provide an independent hurdle for Blair to surmount.

The Hutton Report functioned as a means of justifying the powers and actions of the executive. Neverthless, it
revealed what many had suspected: that an inner cabal were calling the shots. No liberal democracy there, then!

Underlying both cases, however, is Fareed Zakaria's test of competence. This is unanswerable, since I believe
no system "per se" can deliver a competent elite, and certainly NOT governments that treat the education system
to repeated doses of the worst kind of short-termism!!

Britian's age of greateness, approximately 1714 to 1914, was an era of essentially aristocratic government within a very
limited franchise. The Admiralty, for example, showed long-termism at its best, successively adopting new technologies as
and when they became available, and preserving Britain's naval power up to, and ending with, the Washington Treaty of 1922.

1 - 0 to Fareed Zackaria?