Democracy on trial

At the debate on parliamentary democracy recorded last week in Portcullis House for The Forum (broadcast on Sunday on the World Service) as part of Parliament Week, we in the audience were asked whether we thought democratic values were universal or whether they applied differently in different places. Most people voted for them being universal but I found myself in a dilemma. What does the question mean? Human rights must surely be everywhere the same. But does this mean that democracy should be the same wherever you are around the world? Do villagers living deep within the Swat Valley have the same democratic needs as shoppers on the Ku’Damm in Berlin?

We had just heard the three experts on the panel — Helena Kennedy, the barrister and expert on human rights, Ramachandra Guha, the Indian historian who now teaches at the London School of Economics, and Madawi Al-Rasheed, the political anthropologist of King’s College London — discussing whether western-style democracies could or should be applied everywhere. After all, as Madawi Al-Rasheed reminded us, in the past decade western governments have been dealing with political leaders who have not been elected and who have perpetrated terrible injustices in their own countries. Is this the kind of democracy that should be rolled out throughout the Arab world? And what about those blots on the British record for fair play, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay?

The Forum, chaired by the ever-brilliant Bridget Kendall, is broadcast to more than 40 million listeners across the globe. It would be fascinating to know what those villagers in the Swat Valley would have made of what they heard — if they had the opportunity to do so in their Taleban-dominated society. ‘To understand the history of democracy,’ says Ramachandra Guha, ‘it is salutary to look eastwards.’