Democracy is coming FROM the USA?

Last week Toronto hosted a conference on Democracy. It was co-sponsored by the Canadian bank BMO  and The Eurasia Group ("to bring political science to the investment community and to corporate decision-makers." It was billed as a Canada-USA summit, but its panelists seemed to be mostly American and to have that unique Planet America vision of world affairs.

According to Susan Delacourt of the Star, Ian Bremmer of Eurasia set the tone by declaring: 

“Back in 1989, when the (Berlin) Wall came down, the United States was the principal exporter of democracy worldwide.... In 1989, other countries looked at the United States as an aspirational model. You wanted your political system to be like the U.S., right?"

They did? In 1989, when all the newly independent states of the former Soviet bloc looked to establish democratic governments, didn't they all choose parliamentary systems on the British model rather than the American (president, congress, and division-of-powers) constitution. (As did German and Japan and Israel and India and Pakistan and many other counties in the aftermath of the Second World War, and more in the decolonization of Africa and the Caribbean in the 1960s.)  Hardly anyone in the twentieth century has attempted to set up a democratic state on the American model.

Americans do take it as self-evident that the United States invented democracy and has been its principal exporter and role model -- well, until Donald Trump, some now think. It's still hard to get Americans to consider that their eighteenth century constitutional model is not even serving the United States well any more, and has not been widely copied by democratizing states for a very long time  -- really, since the South American republics were setting themselves up in the early nineteenth century.

To quote Delacourt again, the seminar also had a Planet America solution to the problems of democracy at least in North America. And it's so weird that I think I will just quote it:

The solution, the senator says, is to give citizens government that works for them, in a practical way. That’s why, he said, so many attendees at the summit were focused on matters of economic integration between Canada and the United States — because that’s where the solution lies to the political forces driving people apart

Update, April 20.

I should acknowledge there is much more to democracy promotion than providing a model for constitutional institutions. Vital American contributions to the sustaining of democracy such as, e.g., arming Ukraine, should not be forgotten  

 

 

Samara on democracy: doubling down on the political parties

Samara, the charitable organisation concerned with Canadian democracy and citizen participation, has released Democracy 360, based on a large survey of attitudes to government and democracy.  They assess democracy by "communication, participation, and political leadership -- talking, acting, and leading" ("accountability" still not a criterion). They give Canadian democracy a letter grade: C.

Their surveys find, among other things, that only 40% of survey respondents trust MPs "to do what is right" and only 42% place "some trust" in political parties. 62% feel candidates and parties only want their votes, not their involvement.

Samara recommends that "party leaders and MPs should work together toward more balanced relationships... that enable MPs to better fulfil their jobs as representatives," which is a good deal less assertive than even the watered-down Reform Act that MPs recently passed. Mostly Samara still thinks it's up to us citizens to fix things -- by doing even more for these parties that we do not trust and that do not want our involvement. Alison Loat, a Samara principal, recommends that citizens "find a campaign and become a volunteer."

But isn't this just encouraging the parties to continue subverting the goals Samara seeks? People are right to believe the parties don't want their involvement. They may want us to give money or to pound signs in a campaign, but who believes that serving a party campaign will give anyone a role in "making change" or "making their voices heard"?

Wouldn't we all be better to starve the beast, to withhold our money and our participation from these parties, until MPs begin to see some value in working around them, making their own links with citizens and rejecting the bosses the parties have foisted on them?

Read Samara's report for some grim statistics. But instead of promoting service to party, we'd be better off concluding that the parties as currently operating mostly corrupt Canadian democracy, and it is not ethical for either MPs or citizens -- or charitable organizations -- to encourage them.