The Importance Of Democracy

Register to read the introduction… 2). It is undoubtedly true that democracy is ideologically more hospitable to ensure good governance and rule of law; however, in practice democracy does not help very much. It is also often been argued that the liberal democracy is a ‘Western Value’ and west tires to impose it throughout the world which goes against the other values like ‘Asian Values’ that are more dedicated to order and discipline than on liberty and freedom; and the universal effort of democratization ignore the reality of diversity of other political system (Sen, 2011) . Every society has its own context and culture, which may not allow the democracy to be successful. Sometimes democracy does not go with the perspective of a society. Lee Kuan Yew, the legendary figure of Singaporean development miracle, argued that the democratic freedom of rights hamper economic growth and development. In this context, different initiatives should be taken to run this society. Amratya Sen (1999) attempted to confute this thesis arguing that it was the conception of nineteenth century, and the idea of democracy as a universal promise is a concept of twentieth century, the thinking has been changed with the acknowledgment that the argument itself was wrong , though he acknowledged that the claim to democracy as a ‘universal value’ is …show more content…
Considering these economic successes under authoritarian regimes and failure of number democratic regimes in the perspective of development, a group people argue that democracy hinder the process of development. Huntington (1968) elaborates how democracies have fragile political institutions and lend themselves to popular demands at the cost of beneficial investments. They believe that denial of democratic rights i.e. political liberty and civil rights sometimes encourage economic growth, which is widely known as ‘Lee’s thesis’. Lee Kuan Yew, former Prime Minister of Singapore, argues that democratic freedom is not fit for economic development for all countries. Democratic regimes are weak to pressure for redistribution to lower-income groups, and are encircled by rent-seekers for “directly unproductive profit-seeking activities” (Bardhan 1993, World Bank, 2005). In this case Non-democratic government can apply force to implement strict policies that are helpful for development, as well as eradicate socio-political disorder due to various reasons. But democracies cannot resist such problems. For effective development, markets should come first and dictatorial government can easily take such initiatives (Doucouliagos & Ulubaşoğlu,