Thinking about Freedom and Development

I have been reading The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad by Fareed Zakaria. He seems to be making a point that has been made many times before -- that dictatorship by the mob can be very bad for individual freedom (not to mention for the quality of government). More seriously, he notes that broadly based democratic governments seem to work better if they follow a long process of constitutional liberalization which guarantees human rights.

I think more generally he is saying that an unchecked central government is likely to both fail to respect human rights and to deteriorate into authoritarianism unless checked by important forces. Among those forces are religions institutions (under a system separating church and state), businesses under private enterprise, and organized civil society. He also points out that constitutional liberalism (in the classical sense of liberal) provides undemocratic controls such as independent courts, separation of policy making and implementation in independent branches of government, and constitutional bills of rights.

He raises the question of culture, pointing out that there are a number of historical examples in which countries have instituted liberal regimes rather quickly, as was done in Germany and Japan after World War II, and in Central European nations after the fall of Communism.

The question I ask myself is, absent major outside influences, does culture determine whether the policies will be accepted and implmented necessary to produce constitutional liberalism and strong non-governmental institutions needed to balance the power of government. Perhaps the difficulty of this happening is why the successes that come to mind, outside of foreign invasion, were based on liberalizing authoritarian regimes, often imposed my military coup.