Yuriy Gorodnichenko and Gérard Roland — The role of culture on democratisation

Heresy! Economics professors bringing in sociology. The horror of it. Who knows where this could lead. And look where it led Kenneth Boulding, who left economics to participate in the development of general systems theory.

Social science studies usually explain democratisation of countries with the increase in incomes. In contrast, this column argues that culture is a neglected but important determinant of democracy. The findings show that countries with individualist culture democratise earlier than collectivist cultures that may remain stuck for a long time with relatively efficient autocracies.....

We compare decisions of collective action under an individualistic culture, giving social status reward to standing out and innovativeness, and a collectivist culture emphasising conformity and embeddedness in large groups (tribes, clans).

• Individualistic culture tends to create a demand for democracy, as individual freedom is fundamental for self-achievement. Equality before the law and limited government provided under democracy help protect individual freedom.
• Collectivist culture instead focuses more on the necessity of a benevolent ruler to create stability between different clans and groups. The emphasis is more on hierarchy and order, and freedom can be seen as endangering stability.

As I have mentioned previously, the categories of the vertical axis of the Political Compass would be more accurately labeled "law & order" at the pole now labeled "authoritarian" and "freedom" for the pole now labeled "libertarian."

Because of these cultural differences, when there is a window of opportunity for collective action in an individualistic society, however infrequent, revolt against autocracy will always occur, independent of the quality of autocracy, and will lead to democracy. In contrast, in a collectivist society revolts against good autocrats will be rarer. Windows of collective action will thus lead either to democracy or to the establishment of a higher quality autocracy. Collectivist societies may thus remain ‘stuck’ with a relatively high quality autocracy. In the long run, individualist societies will thus end up with a democratic regime, whereas collectivist societies will end up either with democracy or with a high quality autocracy. The implication is that individualist societies will end up more often having democratic regimes than collectivist societies, even if collective action occurs less often than in collectivist societies that might be better in coordinating collective action.

The problem with this analysis is cognitive bias toward individualism and therefore "democracy." The authors focus too much on the poles and thereby creating an excluded middle range that include most political systems today. There is no government on earth today that is a true democracy as a government of the people, by the people and for the people. However, there are still some absolute (despotic and nepotistic) autocracies like Saudi Arabia. The so-called democracies are republics that are actually oligarchic plutocracies. What the authors call "democracy" is actually plutonomy, or as US founding father John Jay, the first chief justice of the US Supreme Court, is reputed to have said, "Those who own the country should govern the country." This was largely the view of the other founding fathers and the US Constitution as well as the discussion around it reflect this bias.

Another matter that the authors overlook is the fact that freedom assume security, whereas security can exist independently of freedom. Therefore, individualism alone is not a sufficient condition for democracy.

Again, societies rarely have become successfully democratic in other than a minimal way of holding period elections without the development of institutions that support law and order in a democratic society. The United States was an anomaly in that it was a new nation, on one hand, and secondly, most of the people involved at the beginning were British. Britain has a long history of power gradually being devolved from the crown to powerful feudal lords, beginning with the Magna Carta, and then from the landed aristocracy to include an upper class of landed gentry under the manor system and then the owners of capital. As result institutions were already either in place or patterns available for adoption by the new government. Imposing democracy on countries without such an institutional heritage and developmental process has generally not worked as well as hoped for.

My conclusion is that since the authors are economists, they have a strong cognitive bias toward methodological individualism that has shaped their thinking on this matter. They need to think it through more deeply. Culture has many more factors that individualism and collectivism, and even though terms are biased in that they carry a connotative charge instead of being purely denotative. Conversely, some sociologists who do not operate under the cognitive-affective bias of individualism might see what the authors call "collectivism" as "tribalism," which implies a strong emphasis on social fabric and social capital, whereas "individualism" implies a weak emphasis on social fabric and social capital. Psychologists might see he individualism of homo economicus as implying alienation and detachment, and the holism of homo socialis as implying adjustment and connectedness.

Interestingly, the only real democracy was evidenced by so-called primitive people. Even Athens, the so-called cradle of democracy, was based on a slave economy that gave the Athenian (male) citizens the leisure to debate the issues. Some time ago, I saw a documentary of a tribe of about two hundred people in Panama that made decisions collectively by consensus sitting in a circle with all members of the tribe, even very young children. Everyone had their turn and the youngest children, who obviously didn't know what was going on yet, were encouraged to say something, which everyone listened to intently, too. As far as I know, the closest we got in the US  was the New England town meeting.

But I am glad to see economists venturing off the reservation.

vox.eu

The role of culture on democratisation

Yuriy Gorodnichenko, Associate Professor in the Department of Economics, University of California – Berkeley, and Gérard Roland, E. Morris Cox Professor of Economics and Professor of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley; and CEPR Research Fellow