Democracy, Wealth and Liberty
Democracy doesn’t mean liberty.
For example, if it weren’t for the Turkish military, voters probably would have voted in favor of making Turkey a theocracy by now. But the generals have made it clear that they won’t abide by any reversal of Turkey’s secular state. By standing against the democratic will of the people, the Turkish military has stood with the forces of liberty.
Adam Przeworski studied every attempted transition to democracy around the globe, and found that once a country passes $6,000 in per capita income it is virtually guaranteed to succeed in its transition to democracy. States between $3,000 and $6,000 have less than a 50-50 chance of staying democracies. And countries below $3,000 are almost bound to fail.
The one great exception are nations with huge amounts of oil or other natural resources. As Fareed Zakaria notes in The Future of Freedom that these states didn’t “earn” their wealth and so they didn’t develop the liberal habits and institutions necessary to sustain a democracy.
Studies also show that foreign aid prevents the sort of development that leads to democracy, almost as much as oil wealth does.
Unfortunately, Iraq’s per capita income is only between $1,500 and $2,400, and at least some of that comes from oil wealth.
“Democracy in Iraq,” by Jonah Goldberg