The Spread of Democracy
Why did Democracy spread so rapidly from around one
third of global Nation States in 1975 to more than two thirds in 1995 ?
The idea that ideas themselves evolve in a universal Darwinian process uncovers new insights into why democracies are economically efficient.
The battle of ideas had moved decisively by 1995, more and more people were learning and understanding that adaptation is the only way to survive in a hostile environment - democracy is a Darwinian process where cooperation emerges from interactions in populations as synergies are discovered and accumulated, discrediting the idea of democracy as a construction of planned social design -
where individual preferences are aggregated into 'something' called 'society' and a 'common good' is calculated (but the maths is impossible and conclusions contradictory)
or where deliberating, discussing and persuading others to agree leads to a consensus 'common good' (but rational debate often leads to entrenching differences and 'analysis paralysis' or 'collective fiddles while Rome burns' with tittle tattle prevailing at the expense of evolutionary science)
Evolutionary thinking reveals new insights into Plato's democratic conundrum, 'mob rule and emasculation of the wise' and John Locke's democratic caveat, 'freedom under the law' - all authoritarian elites have a political impulse to command and control at the expense of the civil liberties essential for creative innovations - the ancient Greeks identified the a double whammy -
Plato suggested elites could never agree as they had imperfect knowledge of reality, just opinions in the mind, mere shadows of reality! Deductive reason was a problem as there were no certain axioms.
Aristotle suggested elites could never have any authority as opinions were always challenged by sense perceptions, and the curiosity and tolerance of science! Inductive reason was a problem as 1000 white swans did not make the future certain.
Oppressive Bishops, tyrannical Princes, dictatorial Generals
and errant Bureaucratic majorities inhibit the discovery and
accumulation of better alternatives -
unpredictable future - command and control systems of 'pecking orders' are unstable and inefficient, all 'top down' design fails to cope with unintended consequences, unknowable responses of others and unexpected events
keep your options open - elites don't possess any infallible 'know how' for future survival, creative capacities are widely distributed amongst the population and nobody knows when or where the next good idea is coming from, nor how best to exploit it
and remember Lord Acton's insight, 'power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely'
Economies grow faster in democratic environments where the diverse freedom to generate and test rival ideas is tolerated and can speed up the 'copy, vary, select' stages of evolution -
replication of success - ideas generating more survival value for less cost can be freely imitated and accumulated
diverse participation - more folk are free to generate and test their own ideas for survival value increasing the chances of discovery
competitive survival - some ideas will have more survival value than doomed alternatives and those which tend to benefit more folk in the long term will tend to spread through the population ... that's why they survive!
The distorting effect of 'economic power' isn't resolved by majority voting - voting simply transfers the 'power' from vote losers to vote winners - but it can be resolved by evolved democratic institutions ...
Oppressive
Bishops, tyrannical Princes, dictatorial Generals and errant Bureaucratic
majorities can
be constrained as democratic institutions evolve -
constitutional checks and balances constrain autocratic Bishops, Princes, Generals and Bureaucratic majorities, particularly separation of powers and Judicial Review where unelected judges invalidate elected legislatures
tort law protects individual freedom and provides some defence from parasites, predators, thieves and 'free riders', the rule of law is much more efficient than the costly alternative of bloody fighting
competitive pressures result from the increasingly visible economic growth achieved by democracies where folk tend to be free to innovate and no longer waste time and energy fighting one another
Democratic institutions will tend to discover more survival value for the costs incurred and become more prevalent in the world at the expense of 'rent seeking' alternatives.
NB By definition 'we the people' are involved in the painful evolution of free democratic institutions they are -
never perfect - never the best just 'better than the alternatives which have been tried from time to time'
always innovative - in the business of surviving and defending themselves - institutions cannot be imposed - institutions must be defended ...
The essential characteristic of 'free & equal' evolved democratic communities is that they evolve as economic behaviour becomes institutionalised within a legal framework. Ordinary folks and their mates are free to lawfully experiment ... to generate and test ... in larger groups ... innovation becomes a humdrum routine ...
Read my essay notes here
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