The Devil's Bargain

John Gray, the philosopher, likes to be provocative. On the radio over the weekend he could be heard puncturing the confident belief of liberal-minded people, so described, that free societies and free economies are so inextricably linked to technological progress and prosperity that populations eventually demand them, and that there is consequently an inevitable movement in political culture towards liberal democracy. Not the case, argued Gray: authoritarian government and economic progress sit more comfortably than liberals think, and populations are worryingly ready to exchange personal liberty for the degree of security and prosperity that they find desirable. The world's remaining liberal democracies are being lapped by the waves of authoritarianism, and the tide may well rise higher, especially if another economic shock of the kind and degree of 2008's recurs. 

Although I think the economic part of Professor Gray's case is overplayed, a lot of it is true. When the Syrian war was just starting, I remember reflecting that the democratic rebels were never likely to achieve much given the degree of support President Assad appeared to have within his country - support which always seemed to baffle the liberal bits of the British media, but perfectly explicable when you thought of the Islamic fascism that non-Muslim Syrians (and plenty of Muslim ones) calculated was the most likely alternative to the brutal but at least secular regime they already had. And so it has turned out. This didn't stop said liberal media elements talking up the chances of the rebels, painting their familiar picture of repressed populations yearning to throw off their particular yoke. In fact, my mind casts even further back to my first few weeks of university when I was collared by a group of supposed Iranian democrats touting for support among British students: 'the victory of the resistance is imminent', their literature claimed - back in 1988. Given what most people want from life most of the time, a modicum of prosperity for their family and the peace to enjoy it, you can understand why they make this bargain.

But, rational though it may be in given circumstances when that prosperity and security are threatened, it will not, ultimately, produce the goods you want. Personal prosperity and security rely on law: consistent, reasoned, and universally applied. You have to be sure that nobody, no matter how powerful or influential, can simply take what you have away from you on their whim. Now, no governing class is predominately composed of modest, selfless, ascetic souls who prefer the needs of others to their own: the very business of promoting oneself as the best available ruler militates against such retiring virtues. These people seek their own interests, and part of the point of liberal democracy is that it works to counteract selfishness and the arbitrary exercise of power. Allow the powerful more scope to exercise their power unrestricted, and you introduce more and more danger for ordinary, unpolitical people, more scope for them to be abused and exploited. If one group of people remains long in control, and the means of settling and changing the law becomes obscure and overlaid by personal influence and connection, the whole weight of society becomes more and more skewed in favour of those who already possess wealth and power. Eventually families and individuals can't be sure that they will be left to enjoy what they have in peace. Professor Gray is right that people do often sign the devil's bargain, politically: wrong to suggest that the result is any more stable than the other messy and uncomfortable options.