>
>
> The real question is why in the years from 1945 to 1989 the non- or
> semi-democratic regimes in the West Bloc--Greece, Turkey, Italy, Spain,
> Portugal, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Philippines, Thailand, and
> Malaysia--have evolved, slowly and haltingly, toward political democracy,
> human liberty, and economic prosperity, while their counterpart
> non-democratic regimes in the East Bloc--Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, China,
> North Korea, Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia,
> Poland, E. Grermany, and the USSR itself--did not until the revolutions of
> 1989.
Oh and "market democracy" has made the lives of people in former Eastern bloc so much better. That's why they keep electing former communists to power in hopes that they will re-introduce elements of the old system.
> It's not because of any general greater openness to reform on the
> part of "authoritarian" than "totalitarian" regimes: none of the East Bloc
> regimes were "totalitarian" in any sense after Stalin's death...
Nor during Stalin's reign. This Stalinophobia is worthy of a Trot sectarian.
>
>
> The difficulty of this historical problem is amplified once one notes that
> for almost the entire post-WWII period this democratizing trend did not
> hold for South Asia, Africa, or Latin America (although we hope it holds
> now). Moreover this democratizing trend did not hold before WWII in
> Europe--then it was democratic regimes that evolved into non-democratic
> ones, not the reverse. Fascism in the sense of Mussolini, or Hitler, or
> their many interwar imitators in Europe and post-war imitators outside
> Europe, is a powerful enemy of political democracy.
You seem to lack any insight into institutional change over time. Why did these so-called democratic regimes evolve into fascist ones? What has been the source of this democratizing trend you describe? Why has it occured? Why has faired so poorly in the former Eastern bloc?
>
> I don't think that I have all of the answers.
>
> I have been impressed by Charles Maier's analyses of the "politics of
> productivity" after World War II in western Europe. I have scattered
> thoughts about how the success of western European social democracy in
> Bonn, Paris, London, Benelux, and Scandinavia exercised a powerful magnetic
> attraction on non-democratic countries in southern Europe (and the failure
> of really existing socialism exercised an equally powerful magnetic
> repulsion). I have scattered thoughts about how interwar fascism--of the
> classic Action Francaise-Mussolini-Nazi variety--is a very different animal
> from post-WWII non-democratic regimes, and how the use of "fascism" as an
> all-purpose term of abuse or even as a term descriptive of all regimes that
> do not hold free and fair elections.
>
> But most of all I think that the increasing cultural and economic
> integration of western Europe played the most powerful role: it got Greeks
> used to thinking that they should have the same kind of rights to control
> their government as Italians, and Spaniard thinking that they should have
> the same kind of rights protecting them against their government as
> Frenchmen.
>
> This is, I think, the reason to be in favor of policies of economic
> engagement, which these days automatically carries with it enormous
> cultural integration as well. There is a chance that we can get people in
> Shanghai and Canton thinking that their next government should run much
> more along the lines of government in Tokyo or Taipei or Washington, just
> as post-WWII economic and cultural European integration provided strong
> support for democratization in Madrid and Athens.
Right. Get the people in these countries thinking that politics belongs solely to the realm of elites and not the unwashed. That politics is the shadow cast over society by big business and has nothing to do with popular involvement in decisions that effect the lives of the majority. Democracy is overrated. The vote does not give someone three good meals a day. In fact ,in todays world, the vote means nothing at all other than the opportunity to ratify the class structure within which one lives. The most important issue to working class people (like me) is economic insecurity. Most might be willing to trade the vote for a measure of economic security.
Sam Pawlett