by Matt Barr

Quit pretending you're for democracy if you're not

I should nod thoughtfully, thumb and forefinger maybe on my chin, when the subject of Hamas' victory at the Palestinian polls is discussed. But reaction has been nothing short of absurd, and I'll treat it that way.

"The success of Hamas in the January 25 Palestinian election gives new urgency to the longstanding need to rethink the whole question of democracy in the Middle East," intones Barbara Lerner. Is that so? I've had about enough of people who haven't respect for democracy, or republicanism here at home, for that matter, who only pay lip service to it if they get their desired policy outcomes.

Note that I'm not talking about the Bush administration threatening to withhold aid if Hamas doesn't renounce terror and recognize Israel. We should tie our charity to whatever sensible conditions we want to.

I'm talking about rethinking whether this whole "democracy" thing is really all it's cracked up to be. So anti-incumbency -- the ruling Fatah party was incompetent on many levels -- nationalism and millenia-old hatred won a violent, cracked party an election. Let's call the whole thing off!

These hand wringers aren't pro-democracy, they're pro-peace. They don't want people to be able to hire and fire their government because that, in and of itself, is the only way to acknowledge the dignity and liberty of human beings. They want governments that all get along and don't war with one another or support violence and terror.

It's perfectly fine to be pro-peace, but if that's what you are, get off the democracy train. Certainly don't act like democracy might not work because you didn't get what you wanted out of the last election.

Besides being the only form of government that squares with the dignity of human beings, democracy does indeed have a moderating influence, even if it's not evident in the first election. Democracy doesn't work because the governed can choose leaders, it works because the governed can choose to throw out leaders.

Is anyone reading this prepared to argue that an unabated campaign of genocide and terror is in the best interest of the Palestinian people? It's not. The Palestinian people will choose to leave Hamas in power or not based on whether they advance the interests of the Palestinian people. So either Hamas moderates, or it gets thrown out of power next time.

Lynn Kiesling made this point from a new institutional economics perspective, because she's all like that.

When you're in opposition, you can "get away with" more; once you have formal, official, legal power, that power comes with constraints, both pragmatic (now you have to think about budgets, staffing, etc.) and conceptual/constitutional.

So even though some people are worrying about the peace process and the Palestinian economy in the short run, perhaps holding Hamas to external, enforceable accountability will induce them to change their strategy in a way that is long-run beneficial. After all, don't we have precedent for that in Ireland?

It's natural for Presidential administrations to, let's say, fail to take the long view and demand appropriate results immediately (in political time). Particularly if they're angling for a Nobel Prize and running out of term. Term limits are a scourge on the republic in that regard. But there's no reason for responsible citizens to see an election that was as far as we know fair, legitimate and fraud-free and consider it evidence that democracy is flawed.

Ask yourself a question, and be honest with the answer. If you could by fiat enact your favored policy preferences into law, would you? I think we all would at least warm up to the idea. The problem is that we don't have that opportunity, or, more directly, the problem is that everyone has ostensibly an equal opportunity to get their policy preferences enacted into law. As keen as I would be to see things run my way, I can't think of anybody else but myself I would be comfortable giving that power. No offense. I bet you feel the same way.

So since we can hopefully all agree that no one but ourselves should have the power to make laws by fiat, we make laws as best we can by aggregating the preferences of everybody. That means, regretfully, that sometimes the election won't come out your way.

When you're talking about a region and culture that hasn't embraced this idea in millenia and now gives very strong indications of moving toward doing so, be of good cheer. Don't fret that you didn't get your way. There is not one place on earth inhabited by human beings that would be better off without elections than with. Whatever the outcome of the first one.

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