[lit-ideas] Re: Fukuyama, Sen and Democracy

Hi, Phil. Thanks for the pointer to Fukuyama's latest effusion.
It is hard to imagine a better example of the intellectual conceit that
imagines history as a conflict of ideas, disregarding material
circumstances(global warming, increasing economic gaps between North and
South, rich and poor, intensifying competition for increasingly scarce
resources, that sort of thing) and the power of attitudes, ethnic or
religious chauvinism, in particular, from which the rational man recoils in
his own version of pious horror.

You suggest that


>  Fukuyama is overlooking is the relationship between
> capitalism and democratic institutions.... I am thinking specifically of a
> provocative argument made
> by Amartya Sen, a Nobel prize winner in economics, that democracies
> are best suited for responding to economic as well as other kinds of
> disasters.
>


Sen, too, however, may be paying more attention to theoretical models than
to facts on the ground. I recall again in this regard a book that became the
cause of some discussion here a few months or years ago, Amy Chua's World on
Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global
Instability. Chua notes that in multiethnic populations it is often the case
that an ethnic minority is better equipped to take advantage of free market
opportunities while the ethnic majority sees democracy as a tool for
rectifying the injustices of their poverty. As the economic gap expands, the
minority increasingly favor harsh, authoritarian measures to protect their
property. In reaction, the majority turns to increasingly radical forms of
democratic resistance to what is seen as oppression. This process gradually
spirals out of control and leads to violence, of which massacres of the
opposition are a common type. Indonesian politics in the 1960s are one
commonly cited example.

John
-- 
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
Tel. +81-45-314-9324
http://www.wordworks.jp/

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