Can favorable consolidation of democracy in Bangladesh serve as a bulwark against fanatacism and instability in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The simplest answer is yes. There are two ways, cases really, in which it might serve as a bulwark.
The first case: Bangladesh’s democratic consolidation serves as an exemplar to show interested parties in Afghanistan and Pakistan the ways that democracy might out-live poverty and work with Islam. To that end, Bangladeshi democracy wouldn’t be doing any work per se, but would rather stand as a demonstration of the possibilities of pluralistic visions of democracy. Democratic consolidation, in fact, would be an endogenous game within Bangladesh with the attendants benefits and costs for its own people. The second, more interesting case is where Bangladesh literally serves as a bulwark against regional instability in just the case the domino theory of regional stability is sensible. Hence in the first case, democracy is favored for itself, as a good in its own right. In the second case democracy in Bangladesh is favored and supported due to the exogenous consequences it engenders in the region, outside its own borders. Even though I want to argue that the U.S. should support further democratic consolidation in Bangladesh for reasons immediately unrelated to regional stability, for the cause of democratic consolidation, as a good, in itself, it is nevertheless a worthwhile exercise to fathom the second argument. It is to this argument that I now turn.
President George W. Bush was an proponent of a version of the domino theory. Though the so-called ‘domino theory’ asserted that the contagion of communism would infect and run through democracies and colonies of Southeast Asia, President Bush favored a more positive spin on that disreputable doctrine. For him, democracy is contagious and the infection is, indeed, oxidation; democracy would then cleanse the filth of corruption, philistinism and instability throughout the world. Armed with this bonhomous dogma his administration argued that the establishment and consolidation of democracy in Iraq would lead to a favorable form of contagion that would help spread ‘democracy’–itself justified without a sensible mechanism obtaining it, as a prior and obvious good– far into the Middle -East. The argument from democracy then supplied one of the more appealing teleological justifications for the invasion of Iraq.
The steps of the argument were two-fold and they ran as follows: Given Saddam Hussein’s intransigence and his persecution of majority and minority groups in Iraq, most Iraqi’s would favor his removal from power. Most Iraqi’s would favor self-rule as a norm–as would all God’s children. Instituting democratic reforms in Iraq would run together with a tsunami wave of democratic sentiment amongst the majority Shia. This wave of democratic sentiment would be strong enough and disciplined enough to quell any linger fears of the incumbent minority Sunni strong men. Therefore, democracy will take hold. The U.S. is justified in invading Iraq.
President Bush argued that the U.S. is further justified in invading Iraq in just the case that the following scenario is also true. When democracy takes hold in Iraq, pro-democracy advocates will be spurred on to act to support democracy in their own countries. As the fruits of democracy in Iraq shower down upon the various peoples of Iraq, and as these people govern within their own pluralistic vision of Iraq, groups disinclined to extend the franchise in operational terms would relent and segue to a democratic decison-making system. Underlying that premise, I might add, is a vision that all non-democracies are like Singapore.
Though the first case may yet prove to be true in Iraq, however modest the probability of that being the case, it is the second vision that supports the idea that Bangladesh might serve as a corrective bulwark against the tyranny of so many disenchanted dogmas in South Asia. Bangladeshi politics seems to be edging toward a point where popular dissatisfaction with quotidien politics has turned into an anti-do-nothing ground-swell. Consider that in 2008, the Awami League was called back to power with an overwhelming mandate to re-align politics with Bangladesh’s popular foundational social principles. Even members of the opposition coalition realized that some of their compatriots are viewed with suspicion and that they stand in no position to win any popularity contests. The military, in the meantime, drew back into the barracks. Democracy in Bangladesh came back and it might well be here to stay. Let us suppose, then that the first case has been successfully established successful in Bangladesh, if not in Iraq. Certain consequences would surely flow for this circumstance. By definition, as democracy consolidated, minority groups would lay down the credible threat of social tumult and the political economy of Bangladesh would tend to approach long-term stability. The U.S would do well to support Bangladesh’s efforts to maintain that vaunted and long-sought stability.
Would this (hypothetical, ballyhooed) stability then suffice or necessitate positive moves within the regions more conflicted countries? No. The domino theory to work at all, must be exogenous: the move to become politically stable comes from without. But as we noted earlier, it is only when majority and minority, incumbent and opposition decide to work together that any politics, at all, can become stable. That is to say, politics becomes stable endogenously. (That is also to say that if the first case is plausible then Iraq still might become stable through its own means.) If democracy as a rule of government offers stability at all, stability follows from the incentives that issue from the democratic contest of politics. As we supposed before, this must be the case for all countries. Democracy per se cannot do any work for anyone else, exogenously, universally. It must churn along contingently, at this time in this country within such and such a political framework. If we accept these propositions, then we must think the domino theory nonsense. But to date, this is the governing principle of regional security analysis. Indeed, the attempt to shore up Pakistan works only in so far as it serves as a favorable contagion to Afghanistan.
The only turn left is to suppose that Bangladesh now has exactly the right political framework, the right government to consolidate democracy within its own borders and that moreover–and contrary to likely circumstance– there remain waiting other eager political parties in other countries that will adopt the Bangladeshi model as their own imprimatur of democracy. But notice, this turn obviates any requirement that democracy come exogenously. If parties in Pakistan are ready to barter amongst themselves and hold the democratic mechanism of government as the supreme decision-rule, then they have effectively chosen to consolidate democracy endogenously. The domino theory does no work here at all.
I hope to have shown that the domino theory of Bangladesh as bulwark cannot work and that if one were to claim to have observed it working within the region, then one would in fact be observing duly independent political parties choosing to consolidate democracy on their own terms.
Bangladesh’s attempt to consolidate democracy can serve as a bulwark against fanaticism and illiberalism but only within its own borders, amongst its own people. And that is success enough.
