Democracy doesn't belong to the West

So Amartya Sen argues in this WSJ opinion piece. This essay is just another point of proof that Sen is one of the world's most vital and clear-headed thinkers today.

Sen starts off by talking about the common tendency to link economic performance to stereotypical aspects of culture. Examining the side-by-side cases of Ghana and South Korea, Sen shows how numerous factors independent of cultural 'attributes' affected the development of both countries and concludes, "This is not to suggest that cultural factors are irrelevant to the process of development, but they do not work in isolation from social, political and economic influences. Nor are they immutable."

Sen turns this argument next to political determinism—the idea that some cultures are inherently more susceptible to dictatorship or others to democracy.

When it is asked whether Western countries can "impose" democracy on the non-Western world, even the language reflects a confusion centering on the idea of "imposition," since it implies a proprietary belief that democracy "belongs" to the West, taking it to be a quintessentially "Western" idea which has originated and flourished exclusively in the West. This is a thoroughly misleading way of understanding the history and the contemporary prospects of democracy.

Sen apparently has a book coming out soon. I still need to read Development as Freedom, but the new one—Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny—will probably go on the list as well.