Democratic futures

Michael Ignatieff on democracy in general and democratic providentialism in particular:

The poor democracies deliver more growth, lower infant mortality and higher life expectancy. And the recent sight of tens of thousands of people out in the freezing streets of Kiev, night after night, reminded jaded democrats everywhere that democracy is the one political system that says to every individual: you matter and your vote matters. So bad leaders can't treat democrats like fools and expect to get away with it.
.....
[However,] the Chinese pose a problem for the thesis that democracy works better than autocracy. Nasty, corrupt single-party rule in China has managed spectacular economic growth, with incomes growing nearly fivefold, from $186 to $944, between 1982 and 2002. Compare this with democratic India, which managed only to double its per capita income in the same period. China continues to attract an extraordinary share of investment going to developing countries. Its market is huge, its labor is cheap and the government keeps things stable. The question, however, is how long growth and autocracy can be combined. The Communist Party now represents no more than 5 percent of the population, its corruption angers millions of people and sooner or later both the winners and losers of the Chinese boom will demand a say in how they are governed.
.....
Pessimists say the U.S. is imposing democracy at gunpoint in Iraq, but the evidence is that millions of Kurds and Shia, and some Sunnis as well, passionately want free elections in their country. There is no reason that American soldiers cannot help them ensure a relatively free electoral process just as they have helped out in Afghanistan. This moment, frightening and precarious as it is, is the last chance Iraqis have to exit from the black tunnel of Ba'athist rule and the chaos of incipient civil war.

Giving them this chance requires the administration to live up to its rhetoric.

(Via Marc Schulman.)