Thinking About Huntington's Proposition

Source: "Sam Huntington, 1927-2008," Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek, January 3, 2008.

In his tribute to Samuel Huntington, Zakaria writes:

Sometimes, progress American style—more political participation or faster economic growth—actually created more problems than it solved. If a country had more people who were economically, politically and socially active and yet lacked effective political institutions, such as political parties, civic organizations or credible courts, the result was greater instability. That has been the story of parts of the Third World over the past three decades. Think of Pakistan, whose population has gone from 68 million in 1975 to 165 million today, while its government has proved ill equipped to tackle the basic tasks of education, security and social welfare.

Living through change, people have often stuck with their oldest and most durable source of security: religion.

Comment: The position seems reasonable to me. I think it would have seemed reasonable to Thomas Jefferson, who clearly thought that an educated population with freedom of expression would engage in revolution rather than accept poor governance.

I would hope that U.S. foreign policy did not draw back from encouraging more political participation and faster economic growth in the belief that they would favor instability. Nor is a willingness to accept instability in the pious hope that it would inevitably result in successful democratic societies a reasonable proposition. Without some stability I think freedom and progress are most often in peril.

The question is how to balance the improvement of political participation and economic growth while also promoting the development of the needed institutions, and keeping adequate stability. Clearly there is no universally adequate way to do these things, and I suppose the question must be addressed country by country. JAD