Making Sense of Liberal Imperialism

Making Sense of Liberal Imperialism

Description

Can a militarily irresistible foreign power help establish a lastingly democratic form of government in a country with no history of democracy? That a powerful military can more easily oust a dictator than erect a democracy has been demonstrated, if it needed demonstrating, by the U.S. invasion of Iraq. But one misbegotten experiment should not be allowed to disgrace and discredit the very possibility of democracy promotion in a previously undemocratic country by a foreign and therefore, by definition, undemocratic power. That is why it may be worthwhile to reinterrogate John Stuart Mill. Did the greatest nineteenth-century theorist of social improvement and liberal democracy believe that foreign rulers could foist this particular forward step on what he called “backward populations”? Why would foreign powers try? Is it rational for them to undertake such a project? Can there be too much democracy from their point of view? What are the principal reasons why foreign democratizers may fail? In his general discussions of democratization, whether homegrown or imposed, Mill tried to occupy a middle position between voluntarism and fatalism. Liberal democracy has specific preconditions and cannot be established, at the crack of a whip, anywhere anytime. On the other hand, originally absent but essential preconditions of liberal democracy can themselves, at least occasionally, be conjured, intentionally as well as inadvertently, out of existing raw materials. This is why Mill repudiates determinism, concluding emphatically that “institutions and forms of government are a matter of choice”. What is true of forms of government in general is also true of liberal democracy. A species of tree may be unknown in a given geographic area and may not materialize there spontaneously. Nevertheless, if implanted by a wandering arborist, a nonindigenous tree may survive, flourish, and reproduce. Analogously, a country that has long lived under autocracy and has not sprouted democratic government spontaneously may, if democracy is implanted by itinerant democratizers, become enduringly democratic. This is roughly Mill’s position. Societies and cultures are complex and malleable enough to support a variety of political institutions different from those that currently exist. Production technology, such as the cotton gin, is easier to transplant than interaction technology, such as banking law. But even production technology has “cultural” preconditions. Workers must possess the skills needed to make the machinery function properly. With time and training, indigenous workers can familiarize themselves with novel technology, imported from abroad, and hone the skills necessary to operate it successfully. Something similar is true about legal and political institutions. Citizens of one country can learn to “work” institutions borrowed from another country. Legacies of a society’s past, according to Mill, are far from negligible. They can hinder and even derail political reform. But they also underdetermine present and future behavior: “People are more easily induced to do, and do more easily, what they are already used to; but people also learn to do things new to them” (CW XIX: 379). Human beings chronically underestimate their own capacity to adapt successfully to change. Students of human behavior, instructed by hindsight, should not commit the same mistake.

Source Publication

J.S. Mill's Political Thought: A Bicentennial Reassessment

Source Editors/Authors

Nadia Urbinati, Alex Zakaras

Publication Date

2007

Making Sense of Liberal Imperialism

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