American politics
Democracy in America
China v America
The end of the end of history
Jan 18th 2011, 21:52 by M.S.
FRANCIS FUKUYAMA'S 1990 article "The End of History" profoundly shaped my political identity: I thought it was so completely wrong-headed that I spent weeks working out the many ways in which I disagreed. I found it extremely implausible that Friedrich Hegel had simply figured out the direction of human political evolution in the early 19th century, and that everything else had been a matter of slow progress towards that goal, culminating in the Reagan-Mitterand-era spectrum of Western welfare-state capitalist democracies (with a preference for the Reagan end). Worse, Mr Fukuyama's thesis seemed like a strange right-wing version of the complacency of Soviet ideologues: the arc of history has already been mapped, and we are its apotheosis. It seemed a recipe for intellectual stagnation and a likely excuse for all sorts of foolishness and misconduct. After all, if we're the goal of history, how can we do wrong?
I never would have imagined that I would read a Francis Fukuyama essay 20 years later about the current direction of world history, and agree vehemently with every single word of it. Mr Fukuyama's Financial Times piece yesterday, headlined "US democracy has little to teach China", is brilliant. It's not the first time anyone has expressed these ideas, but Mr Fukuyama puts it all together in a fashion that's close to perfect. As he writes, America "managed to fritter away" the immense moral capital it held in 2000 "in remarkably short order", due to foreign-policy missteps such as the invasion of Iraq and, later, the American-centred global financial crisis. (It didn't help that American treasury and central-bank officials, who months earlier had been lecturing China on the need to decrease state involvement in the financial sector, found themselves feverishly doing just what Chinese officials were doing—funneling money to state-champion companies, hectoring large banks to cut profits and lend more—but with less success.) Meanwhile, China is "riding high", increasingly confident that it has nothing to learn from America. Here's the catch:
But what is the Chinese model? Many observers casually put it in an “authoritarian capitalist” box, along with Russia, Iran and Singapore. But China’s model is sui generis; its specific mode of governance is difficult to describe, much less emulate, which is why it is not up for export.
The most important strength of the Chinese political system is its ability to make large, complex decisions quickly, and to make them relatively well, at least in economic policy. This is most evident in the area of infrastructure, where China has put into place airports, dams, high-speed rail, water and electricity systems to feed its growing industrial base. Contrast this with [democratic] India, where every new investment is subject to blockage by trade unions, lobby groups, peasant associations and courts...
Nonetheless, the quality of Chinese government is higher than in Russia, Iran, or the other authoritarian regimes with which it is often lumped—precisely because Chinese rulers feel some degree of accountability towards their population. That accountability is not, of course, procedural; the authority of the Chinese Communist party is limited neither by a rule of law nor by democratic elections. But while its leaders limit public criticism, they do try to stay on top of popular discontents, and shift policy in response.
Mr Fukuyama thinks American hopes that China's economic modernisation will require a shift to multi-party democracy are misplaced.
Americans have long hoped China might undergo a democratic transition as it got wealthier, and before it became powerful enough to become a strategic and political threat. This seems unlikely, however. The government knows how to cater to the interests of Chinese elites and the emerging middle classes, and builds on their fear of populism. This is why there is little support for genuine multi-party democracy. The elites worry about the example of democracy in Thailand—where the election of a populist premier led to violent conflict between his supporters and the establishment—as a warning of what could happen to them
Ultimately, Mr Fukuyama's sympathies are clearly with a less statist economic policy and democratic governance. But he doesn't think this model is assured of triumph on its own.
[I]f the democratic, market-oriented model is to prevail, Americans need to own up to their own mistakes and misconceptions. Washington’s foreign policy during the past decade was too militarised and unilateral, succeeding only in generating a self-defeating anti-Americanism. In economic policy, Reaganism long outlived its initial successes, producing only budget deficits, thoughtless tax-cutting and inadequate financial regulation.
These problems are to some extent being acknowledged and addressed. But there is a deeper problem with the American model that is nowhere close to being solved. China adapts quickly, making difficult decisions and implementing them effectively. Americans pride themselves on constitutional checks and balances, based on a political culture that distrusts centralised government. This system has ensured individual liberty and a vibrant private sector, but it has now become polarised and ideologically rigid. At present it shows little appetite for dealing with the long-term fiscal challenges the US faces. Democracy in America may have an inherent legitimacy that the Chinese system lacks, but it will not be much of a model to anyone if the government is divided against itself and cannot govern.
I really have nothing to add to this. What Mr Fukuyama understands, and what so many Americans can't seem to accept, is that the Chinese mode of governance seems to be quite stable. There is no plausible threat to the political monopoly of the Chinese Communist Party. Eastern Europeans abandoned belief in Soviet Communism because its economic model was a pathetic shambles, and even so, it took decades to collapse. The Chinese economic model, meanwhile, is a productive powerhouse. As long as it maintains the confidence of its citizens, there's little reason to think that China's political system is going to change on any timescale subject to punditry.
More broadly, what Mr Fukuyama is doing here (and he's been on this track for years now) really retracts the thesis to which he subscribed in the early 1990s. History, he's saying, isn't closed. It's by no means clear that the United States or any other welfare-state capitalist liberal democracy is the goal. It's not clear where we're heading, and we should keep our wits about us and adapt; we can be left behind, just as others were before us.
(Photo credit: AFP)
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So throw out the Constitution? The fact is there's nowhere to turn except to what Mr. Fukuyama calls the model based on inherent legitimacy. For better or worse, we're on the path called doing the right thing.
@ ccusa: "So throw out the Constitution? The fact is there's nowhere to turn except to what Mr. Fukuyama calls the model based on inherent legitimacy."
That is a false dichotomy; there are plenty of functional democracies in the world that don't use our Constitution.
I don't think the Constitution needs to be thrown out, nor was that the recommendation. If anything, the document allows for its own amendment. That being said, we're riding our moral high horse straight towards a cliff. The Constitution will be of little comfort should some plausible scenarios play out within the next 50 years or so. The issue at hand is that many of the problems we have today will become unfixable if we do not address them in a timely manner, if they aren't already.
I am not the greatest fan of the end of history meme myself (it is sort of dissaproved by now right) especially when used in Europe as a defense for no defense.
But on the other hand, I sort of get the feeling that there really is no system that can be morally better than the liberal democracy. I know that ought and is are not the same, but I agree with ccusa in the simple fact that even if the liberal democracy is not the set fate of the world, we should strive to make it that.
A very good post, M.S.
As for preferring the Reagan end of the Reagan-Mitterrand spectrum, I guess you did not have to go out so much on a limb there. Considering you could take virtually everything Mitterrand did while in power (whether in social, economic, foreign or environmental policies) and point out that it was the wrong thing to do.
I do not particularly rate Reagan either.
How about the Kohl-Chrétien-Kok-Bildt spectrum instead?
:)
@Wunala
Please not Bildt either, that man very closely ruined Sweden completely.
To me it does not seem that Fukuyama is unsubscribing to capitalist liberal democracies as the final goal. Instead that America needs to live up to its own mistakes for democracy to prevail. His article hints that he expects china to eventually become a democracy when it faces an economic crisis, something about democracies being strong through adversity. I guess we'll see.
Its a strange article fukuyama has written with the title conflicting with his beliefs, i suspect he is saying he believes china believes that america has little to teach it. Anyway its confusing tbe way these academics operate
As somebody wrote in response to the (infamous) Tiger Mom article, "The Chinese feel that they can learn from Western education. Why can't Westerners learn from Chinese parents?"
Similarly, China has had no problem learning from the American way of doing business. It's time for our lawmakers to take a hard, nondogmatic look at Chinese business (and government) practices, and to return the favor.
While I love reading what Fukuyama writes, he has a tendency to express whatever the current consensus is quite well but without much real critical ability. China is growing! Exactly as we'd expect it to, re: unshackling China's economy, Krugman's "myth of asian economies", etc.
China can efficiently make decisions! Except, of course, when it can't, when it's blocked by infighting (see: currency decisions which different parts of government have different opinions on, the military independently making decisions, Hu's declarations and retractions).
Chinese people are happy! Except for the increase in protests despite a growing economy (what will happen when they have an inevitable recession? who knows?).
This isn't to say that he's not RIGHT. But all he's doing here is once again giving voice to common conceptions while ignoring the complexities of the real world. I don't ever get the sense that he's digging deeply, here.
China's model collapses when (through bad luck, bad judgment, or ideological blindness) the leadership makes mistakes that cause serious economic reverses. America's model collapses when (through bad luck, bad judgment, or ideological blindness) the leadership makes mistakes that cause serious economic reverses. Right now, China's leadership seems further from ideological blindness than America's leadership.
I thought "The End of History" was hubristic nonsense.
China has a large majority who have not enjoyed the blessings of explosive growth. I wonder how long the CCP has to deliver them to the have-nots before they get dangerous. It is one thing to order peasant soldiers to shoot down students; it may not work if their own families rise.
I think my previous post didn't explain things quite well enough. Democracy can collapse if people are starving; people decide to back whoever will bring order, even if it means a loss of freedom. Democracy can also collapse from a lack of legitimacy - none of the representatives have a position that represents me, so I vote for none, and then I feel that I have no stake in the government. The US is flirting dangerously with both of these modes of collapse.
The Japanese economy seemed unbeatable in the 1980s, and it was only when it went to illogical extremes and collapsed into stagnation that we saw where the cracks were. Will the Chinese avoid illogical extremes? The Chinese mode of government seems stable, but let's see them try to take away what ordinary Chinese people have attained by capitalism.
Finally, you say the Chinese make difficult decisions and implement them, quickly. All well and good, but do they make right ones? As much inflexibility of thought as their massive economy allows them to afford seems to me to be their hallmark.
The western liberal perspective is anchored by the belief that Chinese leaders (and other market orientated authoritarians) secretly realise that they are on the wrong side of history, clinging to their centralised power by denying their people any meaningful democratic discourse.
This is where the western liberal mindset, which claims its legitimacy through its declared universality, departs from reality. The Chinese not only believe that liberal democracy is not inevitable, they view it as truly undesirable.
Westerners of course have an inherent belief in superiority of their system, unfortunately history has not progressed enough to validate that perspective. Philosophically, there is no reason to elevate one system above the other and comparatively the Chinese model, being sui generis, has not been in existence long enough to be judged.
The Soviet system collapsed because of the contradictions within a planned centralised communist economy and the economic pressures of the Cold War. The Cold War was fought by the US because the USSR offered a then plausible alternative to capitalism and aggressively exported their system. The Chinese are fellow capitalists but are canny enough not to threaten the west in the ideological stakes, they don't export their model thus their place in the capitalist system protects them from a cold war like engagement with the west.
Fukuyama is right on the money this time...America, of late, has wasted its moral, economic, and political capital thus its ability to cajole or influence China which is a shame because there is no inevitability of China morphing into a liberal democratic state over time nor do they stand athwart the path of history in resisting political liberalisation.
The argument is whether market capitalism or liberal democracy is the true engine of modernisation and development. Just because America considers that its democratic credentials created its economic development does not make it axiomatic and universal....So far the Chinese are proving that the opposite is equally true, that economic development extends a legitimacy to their political system
So, progressives love enlightened authoritarianism.
Surprise, surprise.
G, I'm not trying to present a false dichotomy. I'm also weary of arguing with you, because you're hard to pin down to anything. Given that, let me say that maybe what I'm about to write is wrong, but don't focus on where it goes wrong, just look for the glint of truth that may be there.
The flavor of this article is to lament the US government's slowness to do certain things. This is similar to the idea spread about a little while ago that the US is ungovernable. All that stuff. Think health care debate, since that's when this idea started to get a lot of play on TV and in print. So, says MS, we should be ready to adapt. With my first post I just wanted to make it clear that we're not going to adapt away from fundamental rights, because we can't, no matter how efficient it may be (or seem) and no matter how stable or great the Chinese model may be (or seem). The fact is to get legislation, you need the people who are governed by it to agree to it, and that's fundamental. Not necessarily because the outcome is good, but because it's right. I understand MS doesn't think people who view things like that should have a say it law, but despite his confidence in that proposition it's a decidedly minority view. (If other versions of democracy are out there, that's great and we can move towards that, to respond to your post). But here MS is comparing and contrasting the US and China. I can see why the Chinese model appeals to MS given his recent posts. Recall MS's article about what things should be settled? How far of a cry is it from saying your opponents are unreasonable/"irrational" even to thinking it would be better if they didn't have a hand in making law? It would also spare him the burden of having to craft absurd articles on health care, since he could just do it. MS wants a strong federal government that can do big things as he defines them. That that doesn't happen I don't think is cause for lamenting. To the extent it has happened with health care and Iraq before without being clearly presented to the public I think is highly objectionable and all those bums deserved to be thrown out, as happened in 2006, 2008 and 2010. MS is a smart guy, but clearly not that smart, because if he were he'd have just a tab bit more humility before playing with the notion of concentrating political power.
By the way, I think kid destroyer's post is right on in terms of its critique of what appears to be the China praising going on in the article. There's a lot of people in China, and there's a lot going on. I know I would take the US's problems any day of the week over China's, notwithstanding MS's, I don't know, dislike of pricing for health services and lamenting that others just don't understand.
As Johnson may point out, Democracy comes from Demos and Krasis, "Citizen's rule". This requires the "Demos" in question to have certain ability to govern him/herself individually and rein in their urges and desires.
What today's democracies don't do is have a solid education program geared to giving every citizen the intellectual and psychological ability to govern him/herself. In fact, often the reverse is done precisely because such self discipline is UNPOPULAR.
Obviously, ccusa hasn't heard of Constitutional Amendments...
@JGradus,
Eeek. Sorry, mate.
I was aiming for a mid-90s prime minister who rescued the Swedish model by conducting courageous reforms post-1992 recession.
My apologies.
Who would take the credit for the rescue, then?
Anjin, to be fair, I have heard of amending the Constitution. I suppose I was a bit loose with my language. When I say "so throw out the Constitution" I meant throw out specific provisions, like the ones that ensure checks and balances, by amending it. Yes it would still be the Constitution, so technically I've made an error. I hope you can still see the point I'm trying to make notwithstanding the technical error.