Will Democracy Work in the Middle East?

President Bush recently declared America's commitment to democracy in the Middle East. But democracy there and in other regions has not had much success. There are solid reasons for this failure.

by Melvin Rhodes

The words "democracy" and "democratic" have been much abused. During all the years that I lived with my family in Ghana, there were two German embassies in our neighborhood. One was the embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany, which is still there. But, on the corner of a busy junction in the capital city of Accra, lay the heavily protected embassy of the German Democratic Republic.

This building represented the communist state of East Germany. Perhaps the bars on the windows and the barbed wire at the top of high walls were as much to keep the employees in as to keep intruders out. It was often said that the GDR wasn't "German" or "democratic," nor was it a "republic," but countries can call themselves what they want. North Korea's official name, for example, is the "Democratic Peoples' Republic of North Korea."

What is a democracy?

Highlighting this important distinction was the recent Commonwealth meeting in Nigeria, where sharp differences emerged over how to handle the behavior of Zimbabwe's president. By any Western definition, Zimbabwe is a dictatorship. The president can do what he likes. The country does have a parliament, but so did Iraq under Saddam Hussein. A year ago, Iraq's parliament backed him 100 percent.

Zimbabwe's neighbor is Zambia. The Zambian president's comment on the Commonwealth dispute was rather interesting. He said Western democracies should remember that their democratic systems took centuries to evolve, so they should be more patient with Africa. Well, maybe, but if a country is going to call itself a democracy, it should be one, if only to avoid confusion.

Democracy is defined in my 1982 Collins Standard Reference Dictionary as "government in which the people hold the ruling power either directly or through elected representatives; a country, state, etc. with such government; majority rule; the principle of equality of rights, opportunity, etc., or the practice of this principle."

Read the full article at www.gnmagazine.org/issues/gn51/democracy.htm

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