The Atlantic recently asked its panel of 40 foreign policy experts about prospects for democracy, publishing the results in March.
One question–do you believe the proliferation of democratic government is inevitable in the long run?–yielded these results:
Skeptics’ comments included these:
- “We seem to have forgotten that democracy is an organic phenomenon–that … it is the outcome of specific histories, cultures, ethnicities, and events.
- “New models quite far from Jeffersonian democracy (China’s ‘Market-Leninism’) could begin to catch the imaginations of transitional societies.”
Someone in the “yes” camp offered this remark:
- “Despite the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, people who are free to choose (as Mrs. Thatcher said) do choose to be free. And the information revolution enables more people to see lives in free countries.”
Image: Racoles (Flickr)
The International Herald Tribune details the process of Islamization, using the case of Egypt.
In Egypt and other Arab lands, faced with frustrated hopes and poor economic prospects,
the young are turning to religion for solace and purpose, pulling their parents and their governments along with them. With 60 percent of the region’s population under the age of 25, this youthful religious fervor has enormous implications for the Middle East. More than ever, Islam has become the cornerstone of identity, replacing other, failed ideologies: Arabism, socialism, nationalism.
The article offers these implications:
- “The focus on Islam is also further alienating young people from the West and aggravating political grievances already stoked by Western foreign policies.”
- An Islamized populace has less distance to travel to reach Islamic radicalism.
Curiously, one of the drivers of social frustration in Arab countries is delayed marriage, due to high marriage costs, the article explains. In other words, given that these economies are not producing widespread wealth, the social system has developed a malfunction.
This trend has implications for stability:
- States may find it harder to control populations that have been primed for political Islam.
- Populations used to thinking in terms of Muslim solidarity may be more actively provoked by the current Israeli-Palestinian situation, and hostile to the impotent peace practiced by states such as Egypt and Jordan.
- Political Islam, with its statist inclinations and hostility to aspects of scientific reasoning, could reinforce the economic malaise that many Middle Eastern countries tend to suffer.
Future Atlas has a new map of an aspect of dyschronicity, the distance in time between places measured by culture, technology, or some other characteristic.
In this case, the map shows approximate distance between one place and the rest of the world in the area of values and attitudes.
The reference country in this map is Sweden, as it is notably further along in a number of social trends that many countries are now undergoing. The map is essentially an estimation of how long ago Sweden was like that place in its values and attitudes.
This kind of dyschronicity can illuminate some culturally-rooted issues. For instance:
- There is some logic in finding Denmark at the heart of the cartoon controversy of last year: it is centuries out of sync with most of the Muslim world at the cultural level.
- Turkey and Western Europe are at best decades apart at this level, helping to drive European reluctance to bring Turkey into the European Union.
- Western Europe and the US are also partially living in different times, with Europeans viewing Americans as backward on issues such as the death penalty, health care, and environmentalism.
For more, see this Future Atlas page.
PriceWaterhouseCoopers has released a study of potential growth in the world’s 17 largest economies out to the year 2050.
The study forecasts the eclipse of the current developed economies. The E7, largest emerging market economies (China, India, Russia, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Turkey), were only 20% of the size of the G7 economies at market exchange rates in 2005, but would be 25% larger than the G7 by 2050. By purchasing power, the E7 economies were only 75% as large as the G7 in 2005, but would be 75% larger by 2050.
In purchasing power terms, the shifts in relative GDP would be stark:
COUNTRY — relative econ size 2005 / 2050
US — 100 / 100
Japan — 32 / 23
Germany — 20 / 15
China — 76 / 143
UK — 16 / 15
France — 15 / 13
Italy — 14 / 10
Spain — 9 / 8
Canada — 9 / 9
India — 30 / 100
South Korea — 9 / 8
Mexico — 9 / 17
Australia — 5 / 6
Brazil — 13 / 25
Russia — 12 / 14
Turkey — 5 / 10
Indonesia — 7 / 19
Note that the values are relative within their respective years, but not across them; all economies are projected to be larger in 2050 than at present.
Purchasing power suggests, among other things, the military power the economy can afford to buy, suggesting that the realignment of power toward Asia will have substantially occurred. It will no longer be possible for the US to massively outspend all potential rivals.
The study also offers some startling numbers for per capita income. The figures suggest that the developed countries could have universal prosperity, and the emerging markets could achieve levels of wealth like those of developed countries today, eliminating dire poverty.
COUNTRY — 2005 / 2050 purchasing power GDP per capita (constant 2004 dollars)
US — $40,339 / $88,443
Japan — $30,081 / $70,646
Germany — $28,770 / $68,261
China — $6,949 / $35,851
UK — $31,489 / $75,855
France — $29,674 / $74,685
Italy — $28,576 / $66,165
Spain — $25,283 / $66,552
Canada — $31,874 / $75,425
India — $3,224 / $21,872
South Korea — $21,434 / $66,489
Mexico — $9,939 / $42,879
Australia — $31,109 / $74,000
Brazil — $8,311 / $34,448
Russia — $10,358 / $43,586
Turkey — $7,920 / $35,861
Indonesia — $3,702 / $23,686
These numbers suggest massive value shifts: countries reaching these wealth levels have shifted toward democracy, social freedom, and humane governance.
There is an underlying problem in these hopeful figures: sustainability will be strained with far more of the planet living at developed levels of wealth.