“Democracy” is Just a Word
Fundamentally, support for democracy should be extremely widespread, give or take a dictator or two. However, people tend to support democracy without ever really knowing what it means. Or worse yet, they don’t support democracy because their experience with it has been only negative. An example of this false sense of democracy was portrayed in Levitsky and Cameron’s article, as they discussed the state of the regime during Fujimori’s rule in Peru — and it’s lack therein of a quintessential democracy — despite it’s initial appearance as such.
As stated by Smith and Sells, the population’s support and advocacy for democracy is entirely dependent on their past experience, their personal values and ideologies, and the overall state of the economy (as well as other overarching indicators of society). Essentially, support for democracy is conditional, not absolute. Since there are so many forms of democracy, this conditional support may make sense — and the overarching word “democracy” may be unable to encompass all of the variations and implications that accompany it.
Ultimately, democracy should not be regarded as a single entity, rather should be considered as a spectrum upon which varying regimes may be placed. Polls cannot truly represent the population’s considerations without first examining the implications behind their opinions, and the state of the nation that they represent.
Even if we regard democracy as an unwavering administration, equal to all its related counterparts, the citizen population itself may still be unable to represent the efficacy of the regime. Any given population of a state is generally ignorant to the true actions of their government, and therefore may only consider their personal experience. Furthermore, the population does not usually have a full understanding of their rights under certain regimes, which may further lead to altered decisions and responses. Therefore, it is impossible to portray a population’s support for democracy as this factor entirely depends on the situation and the implications of each individual.
I agree with you, generally, that democracy seems like an ideal form of government. But, in practice, we see people unhappy with democracy cede power to less than democratic forms of governance. For example, the government we set up in Iraq was total crap, and did a poor job of providing basic services to the public. Sure, it was democratic, and people were able to vote when they previously unable. It is all about the ability to dole out services, and the services just were not there. That is why ISIL (ISIS, IS, Daesh, whatever strikes your fancy) was able to take power there. Sure they were terrifying and killed people wantonly, but they also were better at providing services. I was listening to a piece on NPR talking about how IS even had a rudimentary consumer protection board. That is astonishing. But more to the point though, despite democracies inherent upside, it takes a lot of work and focus on part of the people, and that is not something that comes easily.
As you stated, democracy is often viewed as a one-size-fits-all political system, when in fact it takes on many different forms and variations. It could be argued that perhaps the negative democratic experience in Latin America stems from the United States pushing our own personal form of democracy onto other countries, when we weren’t installing authoritarian regimes of course. On the other hand, perhaps the experience has been negative simply because democracy is not a very efficient form of governance. While authoritarian regimes are violent, detrimental to human rights, and favors certain groups over others, they are quicker about achieving goals because the leaders don’t have any checks and balances.
While “democracy”, as a word, might not be basically understood by the general public, the idea of freedom definitely is. Citizens know whether or not they are happy with the rights they are given but whether or not they care enough or know how to make social change is a different story. An interesting way to continue to look at this is by why a citizen would not car or know how to make social change in their country. This problem of lack of democratic participation is common in not only Latin American countries, but America as well. Not only uneducated citizens or citizens under authoritarian rule misunderstand their government.
Interesting take on democracy. I believe that all forms of government have pros and cons. For a country that has already developed, democracy is easy to implement. They already have an established economy and resources to support the majority. So they can let the people have a say in what goes on and not abuse human rights in the name of a “means to an end” narrative. Unfortunately for developing countries, an authoritarian regime could possibly be more efficient in getting things done. The problem is, at what price do they get things done? Are they murdering citizens, suppressing civil rights, or using the military to suppress any citizen revolts? Yes, the United States has meddled in Latin America when they should not have. But democracy does protect its citizens better than an authoritarian regime would. So one just has to decide if they are willing to sacrifice their personal freedoms in the name of a leader who may or may not have the countries best interest at heart
I agree that democracy should not be regarded as a single entity, given that the wide brush approach will never work in different countries due to the variables of culture, history, and current economic policies. Democracies should be tailored to each entity that seeks to transition and implement a Democracy. Part of the reason why U.S attempts to promote democracy in Latin America have failed is because policymakers attempted to replicate U.S Democratic development in these regions with vastly different political histories, culture, and concerns.