Is democracy as interpreted by the ‘Western world’ applicable as a universal form of government for all regions in the world?

Abstract

Democracy has never been as popular as from the twentieth century onwards. From just a handful of democracies at the beginning of the last century, today democracy is the most popular mode of government across the world. Freedom, human rights, popular government and other rights attached to democracy are attributed as the reasons for such a success. Yet, notwithstanding such success, democracies around the world differ in performance. Liberal democracies are just a few and are present mostly in the West (Europe and North America) and the rest of the developed world. The rest of the world's democracies, classified as electoral democracies, are not as performing as liberal democracies and their development towards higher performance is relatively slow. Not only are electoral democracies developing at a slow pace but, also the increase in the number of democracies has stabilised after the surge experienced with the fall of the Soviet Union. Why is democracy in scarce in the Middle East, across the Asia-Pacific region and Africa? Why did many former Soviet countries fail to consolidate democracy an established roots in comprehensive portions of the World? The West pushes for democracy because it is believed, that, democracies do not wage wars with others. However, this push met resistance in certain regions of the world. Thus, the question of whether democracy as conceived in the West can be adopted universally emerges. Critics of the universality of democracy like Samuel P. Huntington base their arguments on cultural, religious and economic aspects to discredit democracy's universality. Supporters of the universality of democracy like Amartya Sen argue that democratic values transcend any barrier. This dissertation hopes to contribute to this debate and facilitate answering the question posed: Is Democracy as interpreted by the "Western World" applicable as a form of government universally for all regions in the world?