Is Democracy the Best Idea Ever to Have Emerged in Human History?

Is democracy the best idea ever to have emerged in human history?

If we accept the claims of the so-called Western liberal capitalist order, the answer is yes. Democracy has acquired the status of a canon in the modern era; it is considered almost inconceivable that societies can thrive without following a democratic system.

Before discussing the merits or otherwise of democracy, however, we must recognize that, good or bad, it has also served as a tool of Western hegemony. As technological advances reduced the need for direct territorial control, democracy became a means through which the West could extend its influence and assert its dominance.

Alongside it came projects of economic and cultural assimilation, described as globalization. These envisaged uniformity across almost every aspect of life, from food, living arrangements and lifestyles to consumption, employment, political thought and the choices arising from it. All were expected to fit within the straitjacket of this conception of globalization. The economy, technology and democracy thus became instruments of a global order understood, in effect, as a Western order.

But it is only natural for an inquisitive mind to probe these claims. Was the United States not a constitutional republic with elected institutions while enslaved people were still bought and sold within its borders? Did it not fight a civil war in which slavery and its expansion were central issues? Democracy for some coexisted with bondage for others.

Was Britain not developing parliamentary democracy at home while denying self-government to vast populations across its empire? Was republican France not governing extensive African colonies without granting their inhabitants the political freedom it claimed for itself? What did democracy mean when its benefits stopped at the imperial frontier?

Germany presents a different but equally disturbing question. Hitler was appointed chancellor after the Nazis became the largest party in parliament. Germany under Hitler was a dictatorship, but his ascent demonstrated how electoral politics and constitutional institutions could be used to destroy democracy from within.

Did Robert Mugabe not first come to power through an electoral victory, before his rule became increasingly authoritarian? Has Benjamin Netanyahu not repeatedly formed governments through Israel’s electoral system? Does an electoral mandate justify genocidal acts committed by an elected government?

 Are democratic choices respected when they conflict with Washington’s interests? In Guatemala, the CIA-backed overthrow of the elected president, Jacobo Árbenz, in 1954 demonstrated how readily a democratic government could be displaced. In Chile, the United States sought to prevent Salvador Allende from taking office and subsequently used covert pressure to undermine his elected government before the military coup of 1973. What became of respect for democracy when the electorate chose a government Washington opposed?

And what of Venezuela, where Nicolás Maduro, who first came to power through an election in 2013, was seized by American forces and removed to the United States on 3 January 2026? His subsequent electoral legitimacy, particularly the claimed victory in 2024, was seriously disputed. But did that dispute give Washington the right to determine Venezuela’s political future by force? The operation was followed by arrangements placing Venezuelan oil sales and their proceeds under American control. Was this the defense of democracy, or the assertion of power over another country and its resources by a democratically elected government?

And what of Iran, where the CIA and Britain’s MI6 organized the overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953, after his government nationalized the oil industry? Mossadegh had come to office through Iran’s parliamentary process. His removal strengthened the Shah’s authoritarian rule. Where was the commitment to democracy when Iranian sovereignty challenged British oil interests and Western strategic priorities?

I remember passing through an American airport to catch a connecting domestic flight. Walking towards the departure gate, I glanced at CNN. Colin Powell, then secretary of state and a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was holding up a small vial at the United Nations Security Council. The vial was a prop illustrating how little anthrax could cause devastation. His presentation on 5 February 2003 sought to substantiate allegations about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and strengthen the case for war.

The invasion followed, justified principally through claims about weapons of mass destruction, alongside promises of liberation and democracy. Those weapons stockpiles were not found. The war and its aftermath brought mass death, displaced millions and plunged Iraq into years of insurgency and sectarian conflict. The promised democratic transformation became inseparable from the devastation through which it was pursued.

Where were the safeguards of the democratic order when those claims were being advanced? Why did parliamentary scrutiny, intelligence assessments and public debate fail to prevent a war justified by allegations that did not withstand subsequent investigation? Tony Blair stood alongside George W. Bush, presenting the invasion as necessary for security and beneficial to the Iraqi people. Britain’s own Iraq Inquiry later concluded that peaceful options had not been exhausted and that judgements about Iraq’s weapons were presented with unjustified certainty.

When an election produces an unwelcome result, how firmly is democracy defended? In Algeria, the electoral process was halted in January 1992 after the Islamic Salvation Front won the first round of parliamentary elections. The electorate was denied the opportunity to complete its choice.

In the Palestinian legislative elections of 2006, held across the West Bank and Gaza, Hamas won a parliamentary majority in a contest international observers judged competitive and credible. Yet its victory was followed by diplomatic isolation and restrictions on assistance, with recognition made conditional on its acceptance of specified political commitments. Was the electorate’s choice sufficient only if it produced an acceptable government?

In Egypt, Mohamed Morsi, elected president in 2012, was overthrown by the military in July 2013. Why did relations with Western democracies continue under the authoritarian order that replaced him? How consistently is the principle of elected government upheld when strategic interests are involved?

Is democracy defended as a universal principle, or selectively, according to the government it brings to power? When elected governments challenge Western interests, does their democratic mandate protect them from sanctions, covert intervention or externally supported attempts to displace them? Guatemala and Chile demonstrate that such interference is a matter of historical record.

The same concern extends to movements described as “color revolutions”: to what extent can Western support channel popular discontent towards bringing preferred leaders to power? Economic sanctions can deepen hardship among local populations, while the information networks and economic dependencies created by globalization can provide channels through which dissatisfaction with rulers opposed by the West is amplified. Popular grievances may be real, yet external powers can seek to turn them into instruments of political change. Whether that amounts to organizing a particular uprising must be established in each case.

Türkiye’s failed coup of 15 July 2016 brought this question into sharp focus: an elected government faced an attempt to overthrow it by military force. The question remains one of principle: how firmly and consistently do states that champion democracy defends an elected government when their relations with it are strained?

Finally, have Europe’s far-right, anti-immigration parties not gained ground through elections? Was Donald Trump not himself elected through the American constitutional system? If democratic processes can empower movements that cultivate exclusion and hostility, what does an electoral victory alone tell us about the moral character of the politics it legitimizes?

And finally, in an age when so much of the world is governed through the instrument of democracy, whether functioning, flawed or hybrid, have we achieved equality and justice? Have wars ceased or weapons of mass destruction disappeared? Is this age not also given us the climate crisis? Have fascism and exclusionary nationalism lost their appeal? Or does the world remain as brutal as before, its affairs still decided, ultimately, through the barrel of a gun?

Has the distance between those who have and those who have not become any less disturbing? Amid a sea of poverty, immense wealth and control over resources remain concentrated in comparatively few hands. Some multinational corporations command revenues larger than the annual economic output of entire countries. Many of these centers of corporate power are based in the United States and Europe, alongside others in China and elsewhere. How, then, has democracy ensured justice and equality?

Let us ask the question through another prism. If democracy is the only means of securing the collective good, how do we explain the high levels of satisfaction with government reported in China, a country the West categorizes as authoritarian? A Harvard Ash Center study covering 2003–2016 found that 93.1 per cent of respondents were satisfied with China’s central government in 2016. Meanwhile, an OECD survey conducted in 2023 across 30 member countries found that only 39 per cent expressed high or moderately high trust in their national government. These surveys measure different things and were conducted in different years, but they challenge the assumption that democratic government necessarily commands greater public confidence.

Consider also the systems through which public welfare is delivered. By the end of 2024, approximately 95 per cent of China’s population had basic medical insurance, while 27.1 million Americans remained uninsured throughout that year. China reported life expectancy of 79 years in 2024, compared with 78.4 years in the United States in 2023. Its high-speed railway network had already reached 45,000 kilometers by the end of 2023. Such achievements raise questions about the claim that effective public provision depends exclusively on democratic government.

European countries such as Britain, France and Germany maintain universal coverage for core healthcare services and record longer life expectancy than either China or the United States. Yet coverage alone does not establish how promptly or effectively a system serves its people. In Britain, the distinction between entitlement to care and timely access to treatment lies at the heart of concerns about waiting times and public dissatisfaction. The question, therefore, concerns more than the formal existence of services: how well do they function for those who depend on them?

If democracy is presented as the surest route to the collective good, why does it not consistently deliver the functioning systems on which that welfare depends? What matters to the governed—the form of government alone, or its capacity to provide security, essential services and a dignified life?

This brings us to the core question that prompted this debate about democracy: what is the collective good? Is it understood identically by every people, or does its meaning vary according to their values, historical experience and civilizational understanding? Can the Western model of liberal democracy and capitalism be prescribed universally, as though one political and economic arrangement could serve every society?

At one level, the collective good means providing basic services and ensuring peace, justice and equality. These are universal human aspirations. But the collective good also encompasses the dignity and sovereignty of a people, their freedom to determine how they live and the values through which they understand their existence.

What, then, takes precedence: conformity to a prescribed model of democracy, or a people’s freedom to shape its own future? Can material welfare alone constitute the common good if it comes at the expense of sovereignty and honor? And can a political order be called democratic if foreign interests exert greater influence over its direction than the people whose will it claims to represent?

The question is therefore one of dignity, freedom and equality within the community of nations. By what right should one civilization’s political model become the measure of every other? Should a nation’s future be determined by externally imposed notions of democracy, or by its own people, acting through their values and civilizational understanding, with sovereignty over their choices?

Türkiye once again stands at the cusp of rediscovering its historic civilizational moorings and advancing towards a dignified existence, echoing centuries of longing for justice and equality. At this juncture, it must assert its freedom to choose its own path while carefully negotiating the economic and governing models shaped by Western influence.

Governance is a means to an end; it cannot be an end in itself. Its purpose is to serve the collective good, a good Türkiye must define through its own civilizational ethos and historical experience, exercising sovereignty over the direction of its future.

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Firdous Syed is a Kashmiri political analyst. Formerly involved in the region’s 1990s resistance

movement, he later turned his efforts toward civil society, peacebuilding, and development. Over

the years, he has written extensively on Kashmir, South Asian politics, and international affairs

for various publications.