The future of democracy in the international sphere

pp. 108-124

in: Howard P. Kainz, Democracy East and West, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1984

Abstract

When those of us who live in what we call "democratic" countries try to excogitate our future role in the international scene, it is impossible for us to do so without, at least implicitly, conceiving some specific model of world order as the backdrop or context of our thinking. But since "Western" civilisation has not developed any positive, well-defined, and universally accepted ideology, but formulates what ideology it has in a vague and negativistic way (as the champions of the "right of self-determination as opposed to communist collectivism"), it is not surprising that we find it hard to come up with a definite ideal, when we are pressed to do so. (Well-read Communists, on the other hand, can give decisive and fairly uniform 'scientific" answers when subjected to such challenges.) In general we seem to tend to project or extrapolate the systems that we already have and are familiar with into the international sphere (such that internationalism becomes our own society, "writ large"). Thus Woodrow Wilson, in his architectonic for the makeup of the incipient League of Nations, envisaged only "democratic" countries as full-fledged members. As the League developed, it gradually relaxed its restrictions on membership. The United Nations finally, as successor to the League, tried to define conditions for membership as broadly as possible, by developing a charter of basic rights to which many countries which were not specifically democratic (in our sense) could subscribe.