Global affairs expert Larry diamond says democracy could be on the decline

Larry Diamond, an expert on establishing democracy across the globe and current professor in political science and sociology at Stanford University, gave a lecture entitled "The Global Democratic Surge and Recession" at the FedEx Global Center at 5:30pm on Thursday, March 22. He said, "In the last several decades there has been a democratic surge around the world." Later he said "I think the military coup in Pakistan in October 1999 represents a kind of inflection point in this third wave of democracy." Throughout the lecture, he displayed data and graphs that showed trends related to democracy, political rights, and civil liberties. He ended his lecture with an optimistic prediction for democracy; "I think in the long run the world will move in a democratic fashion," Larry Diamond said.

Some democracies are failing and bad governance is to blame, said Larry Diamond, an expert in global affairs.

Diamond is a professor at Stanford who has consulted with the United Nations, the World Bank and the State Department.

He spoke Thursday to about 200 people at the Nelson Mandela auditorium of the FedEx Global Education Center.

Diamond said the percentage of countries around the world with democratic governments could be on the decline.

According to Diamond, 35 percent of the world’s countries had democracies in 1974, and 62.5 percent in 1999.

But by 2010, the number of democratic countries decreased slightly, signifying a plateau, he said.

“If you want two words, what I think the problem is it’s bad governance,” he said.

Diamond said that stable democracies rarely collapse, and unstable democracies fail because they cannot restrain abuse of power.

He said many established countries attempt to throw money at young democracies, hoping it will trickle down from the government and stimulate the economy.

But this rarely works, Diamond said.

“The problem is, who is capturing the economic growth?” he said, adding that it is often social elites that benefit most.

This causes average citizens to lose faith in democracy, he said.

Diamond said bad governance often occurs as a result of ethnic and religious divisions and weak and ineffective political institutions within a country.

He believes citizens need to attack both of these issues in order to strengthen an unstable democracy.

“We need a very broad agenda to improve the quality of governance,” he said. “I’m not sure if there is a clear, decisive answer that gives us a sequence of steps to follow.”

During a question and answer session after the talk, an audience member asked whether or not democracy is right for every country.

“I don’t presume that democracy is right for, or can work for every country at every moment in history,” Diamond said.

He said countries must have either a committed group or individual for democracy to take hold.

Andrew Reynolds, chairman of the global studies department, said the lecture went well.

“There was definitely a really strong interest,” Reynolds said.

Sophomore Shane Shields, a global studies major who attended the lecture, said he was excited to hear such an important speaker within his field.

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“He is a big figure in the global sphere, and I came to hear his ideas about globalization and democratization,” he said.

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