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Today’s Economic Times carries an editorial entitled “Democracy - receding tide?” by Bronislaw Geremek (A former Solidarity leader). The article talks about the disillusionment with democracy in many parts of the world, as highlighted by The Pew Global Attitudes Project for 2003. Though people in countries with limited democracy seem to want more freedoms, those in former-Communist or Totalitarian countries seem to prefer stronger leaders to freedom, especially in Eastern Europe and Russia.

One of my favourite tautologies in “History repeats itself”, and this is a ripe opportunity to build analogies with post-WW1 dissillusionment, that led to most of Europe and Japan coming under the power of intolerant, expansionist xenophobes. What really interests me about this survey is - people actually seem to think that they would be better of with fewer freedoms. I wonder if this is manifestation of deja-vu for strong leadership as the Pew researchers point out, or representative of the problems with democracies that Bastiat and Mises wrote at length about and Brian Caplan has summarised in two articles at Econlib: Mises and Bastiat on how Democracy goes wrong, Part I and Part II.

The editorial ends on a rather potent note:

Pericles, in his speech about democracy, as recorded by Thucydides, expressed a timely thought: “Guided by tolerance in private life, we respect the law in public life; we obey all laws, especially those unwritten ones, laws that defend those to whom injustice is being done, and laws the transgression of which brings universal disgrace.”

I wonder, can Democracy, deliver on this great programme that Pericles laid out for it?

In my opinion the development of the democratic or liberal attitude is an essential precondition for actual democracy. Milton Friedman once said that if you introduce economic freedoms, political freedoms will follow not far behind. This is not only the lesson of the recent success stories of Chile, South Korea and Taiwan but even historically the development of Modern Democracy has happened after a significant development in free-trade and markets.Free-markets seem to breed the attitudes that make democrats out of serfs, and grudging ones out of Lords.