One Size Doesn’t Fit All: Democracy is Not Always the Best Form of Government (Transcript)

Speaking first for the motion, Martin Jacques, a senior fellow at Cambridge University, author of the global bestseller ‘When China Rules the World’. He’s also a visiting professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing, and fellow at the Transatlantic Academy in Washington, DC. Please welcome Martin Jacques.

MARTIN JACQUES: Let me start by saying what this motion is not about. We are not proposing that the UK and other developed countries should abandon democracy. That would be a nonsense and fly in the face of our history and our tradition. Rather, what we are arguing is against the Western mantra that democracy is the right and appropriate system for all countries, whatever their circumstances.

After 1989 and the collapse of Soviet communism, the Western orthodoxy was that democracy was the universal panacea. First of all, let’s take Russia. There was a widespread expectation and belief that Russia would develop a Western-style democracy and a Western-style free market. Over the years, it’s become clear not only is that not true, but what we’ve witnessed is the reassertion of Russian history, Russian traditions and Russian culture, and with that, the emergence of an authoritarian state.

Or take Iraq. You may remember that the United States, in conjunction with Britain, invaded illegally Iraq in the name of democracy. What’s happened to that democracy? Has it worked? It certainly hasn’t.

Or take Egypt, the litmus paper test of the Arab Spring, where democracy briefly sprung into life and has been killed off by the reassertion of military power.

Or take China. China in 1990 was still an extremely small economy. And since then, we’ve seen what I would argue is the most remarkable economic transformation in human history, and it’s been presided over not by a Western-style democracy, but a different system altogether.

The fact is that democracy is not universally appropriate and applicable in all countries, regardless of history and culture and circumstances. Above all, the democracy-fits-all mentality ignores the fundamental historical and cultural differences between the developed countries and the developing countries. The level of a country’s economic development is a critical issue.

Let me remind you that not a single Western country was a democracy at the time of its economic take-off. The crucial problem facing development countries, home remember to 85% of the world’s population, is economic take-off, industrialization, the shift from the countryside to the cities, just as it was for us in an earlier era.

Please bear in mind, too, that developing countries frequently have to contend with very different circumstances to those that faced the West in the 19th century. A dominant, highly competitive West bent on pursuing its own interests, often at the expense of the developing countries.

My final point concerns China. The last 30 years, we’ve seen a most extraordinary achievement. A country of 1.3 billion people, 20% of the world’s population, growing at 10% a year. One twentieth of the size of the United States economy in 1980, now over half the size of the American economy. Six hundred million people taken out of poverty. China, no Western style democracy, but an extraordinary competent state.

Over time, I believe, democracy will grow. But it must grow in its own way and according to a country’s own history, culture and circumstances. Democracy will come in many different forms, shapes and sizes. They may learn from us that they will not be like us. Thank you very much.

NIK GOWING: Martin Jacques there, speaking for the motion. Martin, thank you very much indeed. Let’s go to the first speaker against the motion, Ian Bremmer. Political scientist, consultant specialising in global political risk, author of ‘Every Nation for Itself: Winners and Losers in a G-Zero World.’ Please welcome Ian Bremmer.

IAN BREMMER: Thank you very much. One of the good things about not writing a speech is it doesn’t bother you when you just want to respond to some of the points that your colleague makes right at the beginning.

The first point. So why should we tell a country to support democracy as a system when we didn’t support democracy in earlier stages of our development? That’s a very good question. Why should we tell a country to respect human rights when we didn’t at an earlier stage in our development? Why should we tell a country not to engage in slavery when we didn’t do that at an earlier stage of development? That’s a hard argument to swallow, right? It doesn’t feel good.

Look, I completely understand that it is actually not fashionable to take this side of the argument. But at the same time, the notion of by the people and for the people intrinsically feels right to us. Running a country, having that kind of power, being invested in anyone but us, is problematic. We don’t trust anyone with that sort of power except maybe the Canadians. We don’t trust individuals to run it without checks and balances, without legitimacy, without the ability to throw them out if they do a bad job or when they appoint their son, since it’s rarely their daughter. We don’t like it. That’s one reason. I think that we should pay attention to what we think deep down on that.

Second point to Martin. Russian authoritarianism. No question. Yeltsin came in. Short-term efforts at democracy failed. I’m sure we all agree that Putin’s authoritarianism is much better for Russia, right? It’s not true. Putin’s very powerful. He’s very rich. He uses every mode of conveyance I’ve ever seen in my life, any transport, any animal. He’s all over it. He looks good to some people.

But the fact is that he’s enriched himself on the backs of, at the expense of, the Russian people. The brain drain has been phenomenal. The capital flight has been huge.

Egypt democracy. What a failure. There was no democracy in Egypt. The military ran the country. We had an Arab Spring. Everyone got excited. How wonderful. The military never went anywhere. They still controlled the country.

Arab monarchies. How do we think they work? Do we think they’d be better off if there was actually more representation? How would women be treated in those Arab monarchies? A little better? I think so. Do we like that? Sure. Should we be telling them what to do with women? What do you think the Arab women would say? I know what they’d say. They’d like a different system. That’s not the West shoving it down their throat. I hate the idea of American exceptionalism. I don’t want to tell people how to run their system. Look at the way we run our system. Isn’t it a disaster?

The fact that the U.S. government today is less popular does not mean that democracy is less popular in America. It actually means that people want to return to democracy in America. I completely agree with Martin that China is the interesting case here. Right? The Arab states are not. Russia is not. It’s very clear in so many countries of the world that they would be run better for their people if there was more democracy and accountability. It’s very clear. Right?

In China, for 35 years, they’ve been growing at, on average, 10 percent a year. And the world’s never seen that. 1.3 billion people. That’s very impressive. But what interests me in China is that they understand that that’s not sustainable. If they don’t have the ability to tell their people that there’s a reason that you vote for us besides throwing you 10 percent growth every year, they’re in very serious trouble. Because you know what happens in an authoritarian regime. When you lose power, they don’t just vote you out. It’s worse than that.

The Chinese government, the most successful authoritarian revolution and experiment that the world has ever seen over 35 years, even they understand that if they don’t create a more democratic system, they’re gone too. If they recognize that, what does it mean for the rest of us? Thank you very much.

NIK GOWING: Ian Bremmer, thank you very much indeed. Now, our second final speaker for the motion, Rosemary Hollis, professor of Middle East Studies and expert on conflict and security in the region, also director of the Olive Tree Scholarship Program at City University here in London. Please welcome Rosemary Hollis.

ROSEMARY HOLLIS: A lot of nonsense is talked about democracy, and mostly by people who live in relatively rich Western democracies, who attribute their comparative wealth and well-being to, of course, first, their own hard work, second, their liberal capitalist system, and thirdly, their democratic form of government.

In other words, the benefits of democracy are relative. It depends on who you are, where you are in the global system, how wealthy your state is compared to others, and where you are in the evolution of your own political system.

Now, first, looking at who you are, supposing you are a member of a minority community, an ethnic or religious minority, for example, a Basque separatist in Spain, a Jew in Nazi Germany, a Turk in Germany, how well will majority rule protect you? Democracy does not automatically do so.

Your safety depends on the values espoused by the government of the day, and a populist government may win election by playing to majority prejudices at the expense of the minorities. Why else would religious minority communities sometimes feel safer under dictatorial rule than majority rule? The benefits of democracy all depend whether you draw the lines on the map around the democracy concerned.

For ordinary Indians who do have a democracy, and Chinese who do not, what matters is that their government is strong enough to defend their national corner. They’re not operating in a vacuum, democracy or otherwise. Thus, whether they have a say in the composition of their government is less relevant to their chances of prosperity than the ability of their government to exercise leverage at the international level.

Suppose you live in a small, underdeveloped country, dependent on investment and aid from the developed world for you to achieve a halfway decent standard of living and gain full employment. Whether elected or not, your government will have to bow to the dictates of multinationals and international financial institutions, whose priorities are, respectively, profits and loan repayments, not your well-being.

Your democracy is meaningless when your government has no real power. In any case, politicians are masters at managing national perceptions, manufacturing consent even. And I contend, the Western democracies mistake their moral authority at home as a license to tell other people how they should govern themselves. But their own systems are non-exportable. Do not, please, ladies and gentlemen, equate the word democracy with what makes you feel good here, because it cannot work without the comparative economic advantages that are enjoyed here. Thank you.

NIK GOWING: Rosemary Hollis, thank you very much indeed. So we’ve heard the two main voices for the motion. Now the final speaker against the motion, Andriy Shevchenko, a former journalist turned politician who represents the fatherland party of Yulia Tymoshenko in the Ukrainian Parliament. He has been described in the London Times as a potential future leader of Ukraine. Here, straight from Kyiv, Andriy Shevchenko.

ANDRIY SHEVCHENKO: I would first show you this thing. This constructor’s helmet is one of the symbols of recent anti-dictatorship protests in Ukraine. It was supposed to protect your head from police sticks, or if you were lucky enough, from rubber bullets. Of course, later on, helmets like this would not protect people from snipers and from gunmen. And as you know, more than 100 protesters died in the streets of Kyiv, mostly because of the snipers’ bullets and because of police grenades.

But if – well, I have brought this helmet here just to remind all of us that there are countries where people literally fight and die for their right to live under democracy. And if you talked to my brothers on the barricades, they would be very surprised to hear this kind of discussion. Democracy for them means that no one can govern people without their consent. Democracy for them is their right to be responsible for their future. So people, those angry men who were wearing orange helmets, orange constructors’ helmets, they were literally feeling themselves – felt themselves as constructors of their future. This is what democracy is about for them. It’s a very clear moral choice. It’s a choice between freedom and slavery, between hope and humiliation. That’s what democracy is about for them.

And I think we should really keep that in mind before we go into some more pragmatic things to discuss.

Now, let’s do some numbers, and let’s talk pragmatically. Here is the world list of the richest countries by the per capita income in 2012. Only four out of top 20 countries were not democracies. Only six out of top 30 countries were not democracies. And there is a clear evidence of a correlation between democracy and economic development, and we perfectly understand why.

True, not all democracies are rich. In fact, some democracies are miserably poor. But if you build a stable democracy, you have better chances to be rich and to live in a prosperous society. We understand why, because democracy also means rule of law, freedom of entrepreneurship. More democracy generally means more prosperity.

Here is the United Nations Human Development Index list of 2013. And it’s even more interesting for us because this index is based on three criteria. It’s life expectancy, it’s education, and it’s the per capita income, which we have just discussed. So the premier league of the list is called the countries with very high human development. Only three out of 47 countries on the list are not democracies. And that makes sense because democracy means that you spend wealth, national wealth, not just for fancy palaces or luxury cars for the few who are in power, but you’ve got to take care of the constituents.

When you cast your vote in the end of this debate, I really ask you to think about the rest of the world. When you will be making a decision, please cast your vote on behalf of protesters in Venezuela, on behalf of civil activists in Iran, on behalf of all those people who know they will not be able to enjoy the privileges of democracy you enjoy by the end of their lives. That’s the reason why they are ready to fight for that. That’s the reason why they are ready to fight and probably die to give the chance to their kids and to their grandchildren.

So please do think about the Ukrainians who have been fighting for freedom of their country, for its territorial integrity, and for the better world for all of us. So please vote against the motion and in favor of democracy.

NIK GOWING: Andriy Shevchenko, thank you very much indeed and for being here from Kyiv. Now we’ve heard from the four speakers for and against the motion. Before I hear from you in the audience with the microphones, I’m going to give you the result of what you decided as you were coming in, not having listened to any of the debates so far.

Let me tell you that almost half of you had not made up your minds. Forty-four percent of you don’t know what your view is on this motion. Democracy is not always the best form of government. But 38 percent of you did think that you were for the motion and 18 percent were against. So there’s a lot of work to be done on both sides here to convince you.

Let’s hear from you. Please stand up. Could I get a lady there and a lady somewhere in the middle there, please?

FEMALE AUDIENCE: Hello, this is a question for Ian. You gave a lot of examples in your speech of sham democracies and democracies that are flawed. I was wondering whether you could give us an example of a good democracy, as if that’s something that we all should be working towards. It would be good to have a role model.

NIK GOWING: Stack that up, Ian. At the back, please. You’ve got the microphone. And then move the microphone down here, please, to the gentleman here.

FEMALE AUDIENCE: Hello. I was wondering if we could have a definition of what democracy is. If it’s about voting, and for representatives, we have a 55 percent unelected legislator here in the UK, the House of Lords and the Queen. Are we a democracy? Also, for turnout rates, particularly among young people, about 30 percent at the last general election, 15 percent at the last European election. Is this a democracy? Thank you.

NIK GOWING: At the back there, please.

FEMALE AUDIENCE: I am against the motion and for democracy. And I think that Ian Brenner had really good points. He’s a very good speaker as well. But I think that a very important point he made was that the question really isn’t whether democracy is or isn’t the best form of government, but it’s about accountability. And that is something that I think we’re kind of missing the point. And it’s democracy in many countries. Countries can be poor and democratic and rich and democratic. It doesn’t mean that democracy is always being practiced, but it is the best form of government.

NIK GOWING: Right. So the issue about definition of democracy, which we could debate all night. But, Andriy, when you look at what you’ve been through, what you’re still going through, and what lies ahead in your country, do you have a clarity about what democracy is?

ANDRIY SHEVCHENKO: I think what we might think about is we can explore some new opportunities of democracy. I think it would be ridiculous to limit democracy just to representative democracy in the classic meaning. Think about Iceland. After it went through this terrible financial crisis, they had a constitutional assembly. It wasn’t elected in the classical way. But when people represented fishermen, teachers, whoever, get together, got together…

FEMALE AUDIENCE: Andriy, if I may say so, in other words, democracy is everything that makes you feel good.

ANDRIY SHEVCHENKO: Democracy is something that the lady was talking about. It’s really about feeling accountable on behalf of the government.

FEMALE AUDIENCE: It can’t hold all the good things.

ANDRIY SHEVCHENKO: I would say it would be ridiculous to limit democracy just to mathematics and to the vote count. That’s my point. But going back to Iceland. So when they got together, when they were rewriting the constitution of this country, one of the first things which was in the document was we are supposed to protect the earth. It’s probably something which typical politicians would not think about in the beginning of the constitution. So I think new forms of democracy could provide us with some great new forms of governing. But it’s not to undermine the basic principles we are talking about.

IAN BREMMER: I said at the beginning, government for the people, by the people. Yeah, you have a queen. It’s true. Do I think that really impinges on representative democracy in Britain, the House of Lords? I mean, it costs you some money. But fundamentally speaking, no. There’s a spectrum here.

Look, China is more democratic than North Korea, right? Do we think China is more generally respectful of civil rights than North Korea? Yeah. Who’s farther along that spectrum? India is more democratic than China is. Do we think India is more respectful of human rights, generally speaking, than China? I think the answer is yeah.

Are there any well-run democracies out there? Look, Canada is more democratic than the United States today. Canada is pretty well-run. The Scandinavians are more well-run than the United States. Absolutely. I’d say Australia, on balance, is more run. They’re smaller. It’s easier.

ROSEMARY HOLLIS: Efficiency is part of the definition. Excuse me? Efficiency, well-run.

IAN BREMMER: Well-run is part of being a democracy? No, no, no. I didn’t say that at all.

ROSEMARY HOLLIS: You said they were better democracies because they were well-run. What does that mean? That means leadership.

IAN BREMMER: No, no. I said better democracies in the sense that they are governments that are more effectively run for and by the people. They are more legitimate and seen as more legitimate. As I mentioned, the United States has a more difficult time today because the state has been captured to a degree by the private sector in a way that it has not in Canada. That absolutely undermines the ability of the American government to be seen as governed by and for the people.

ROSEMARY HOLLIS: So your argument does basically rest on ideals, not realities.

IAN BREMMER: No, I wouldn’t say that at all. But democracy absolutely takes into consideration the ideals of the people of the country.

MARTIN JACQUES: Well, I mean, you know, I don’t really know beyond a point what your argument is because it seems to be everything. Now, let’s take the example of China, OK, compared with any Western country at the moment. And you look at the Pew Global Attitude Survey statistics and the levels of satisfaction amongst the Chinese with what’s going to happen to their standard of living, the economic competence of the government and their outlook in terms of what the future is going to bring is way higher than it is in Western societies.

And it’s not true that, you know, democracies are by and large better run than things that in our book, like China, aren’t democracies. Although, of course, they do have elements of democracy.

NIK GOWING: Up there, please. You’ve been very patient. And a lot of other people as well. Which way are you voting?

MALE AUDIENCE: Well, I don’t know, I’m afraid. And I’m still swinging in the wind.

NIK GOWING: I hope not.

MALE AUDIENCE: I’m swinging both ways. But if I can offer a handy realistic definition of democracy, we all really know what it means, don’t we? The Queen has nothing to do with it. All it means is that the executive can be held meaningfully to account through whatever mechanism, representative or not, by a large enough body of the electorate or public. And that does seem to go hand in hand with the virtues of liberalism, which include freedom of the individual, whether or not this takes a fully capitalist form or not, although I suspect that capitalism is intimately linked with freedom.

Therefore, I want to put an argument to Dr. Hollis and Dr. Jacques. I hope I haven’t promoted you.

NIK GOWING: He’s a professor.

MALE AUDIENCE: Professor. I beg his pardon. The argument is this. If you were to find, by some secret channel, that there were movements afoot in China, to move China decisively towards that notion of representative democracy, would you really stand in its way?

NIK GOWING: Hold that thought. Up there, please.

FEMALE AUDIENCE: Specifically on China, I just would like to make a few comments that economic development at the barrel of a gun, where large swathes of population in China was killed, one child policy, where especially baby girls were being abandoned or strangled, I don’t think this is a good argument to say that a form of government that has brought some economic development also by cooking their books most of the time, is a good argument to say that democracy is not always a good solution.

NIK GOWING: One more view here, please.

MALE AUDIENCE: Hi. So I’m for democracy and for the motion, which I don’t regard as a contradiction at all.

ROSEMARY HOLLIS: Thank you.

MALE AUDIENCE: You’re very welcome. This point may have been covered already, but I only thought of one question.

NIK GOWING: Well, don’t duplicate it.

MALE AUDIENCE: Well, I’ll ask the question very quickly, which is if you guys were to form a sort of government consultancy, given the explosive growth we’ve seen in China over the last 25 years, would you go back 25 years and recommend to that government that they should actually vote in a democracy?

NIK GOWING: All right. Three questions there, Martin. Particularly, you’ve got a very short time to answer them, but give us the idea of your thoughts, please, there.

MARTIN JACQUES: Well, the first question was, would I stand in the way of the development of a representative democracy in China? No, I wouldn’t, if that’s what the Chinese want to do. If you’re suggesting that that’s a likely scenario in anything like the next 20 or 30 years, I think you’re wrong.

And linking this with the last question, the fact is that I would say that probably the kind of government they’ve had in China over the last 30 years, since 1980, since Deng Xiaoping, has served the Chinese much better than, for example, the kind of democracy that they’ve got in India. It is true. It is true. And a lot of female babies have been killed in China, especially in the countryside. By the way, exactly the same things happened in India. This is not about democracy and authoritarianism. This is about traditions in backward societies.

NIK GOWING: Right. Andriy?

ANDRIY SHEVCHENKO: I would just add that I strongly believe that the added value of democracy is universal across the world. And I could hardly imagine good arguments why some countries should be deprived of civil rights or some other basic things. And in general, when I hear about some special ways for a specific country, when we hear about this idea of sovereign democracy, a very special way, usually it’s just a cover for some very bad things and not that good things. Ruthless corruption, terrible crimes, and fear of rulers to lose the power. That’s what sometimes stands behind those nice words.

NIK GOWING: Andriy, let me ask you, though, specifically about your country where there’s a referendum on Crimea. What’s your view about that? Is that democratic?

ANDRIY SHEVCHENKO: Well, we have another brilliant example of referendum to compare the Crimean referendum with. It’s the Scottish referendum you’re going to have in this country. And I feel the difference. So in this country, you have a good public debate on the issue, and I think it’s done in the consent of different sides. In the Crimea, they have changed the question three times in six days. They have changed the date of the referendum three times in six days. There is no list of voters. All the Ukrainian channels are turned off in the peninsula. Is it really a referendum?

So if we talk about minorities under democracy or without democracy, that’s another good thing to discuss. The way we see the referendum in Scotland and the way we see the referendum under non-democratic rule of Russia.

IAN BREMMER: Potemkin democracy is not democracy. Let’s be clear. We can have a vote. A vote does not mean that we’re creating legitimacy, that we’re creating government by the people. I think one thing that has suffused this discussion so far has been that we fetishize growth.

NIK GOWING: What do you mean by that?

IAN BREMMER: Authoritarian states can be good because they can drive more growth, they can create more jobs, they can build the economy. Growth is not the only thing that matters in the world. There’s no question that China grows a hell of a lot faster than India. What Martin will lead you to believe is that means that their system is clearly superior.

You know what? If there’s a massive shock in China and there’s a massive shock in India, the likelihood that the Indian system stays stable as opposed to the Chinese leadership is reasonably high. Furthermore, the likelihood that we’ll see that kind of shock in China compared to India is reasonably high too. In a global environment that is massively more uncertain and volatile and unstable, we will stop fetishizing growth, we will start paying more attention to resilience, and that is why democracy continues to be the system that we should be aspiring towards.

NIK GOWING: Martin?

MARTIN JACQUES: Well, I suppose if you come from one of the richest countries in the world, and certainly the most powerful country in the world, then to say we’re fetishizing growth is…

ROSEMARY HOLLIS: a luxury, right?

MARTIN JACQUES: That’s to put it mildly. I mean, quite frankly, and I’m amazed that you can speak like that. If you are a poor country, if you are a poor people, then the importance of growth is absolutely fundamental to changing your circumstances. I say I won’t accept your argument in relationship to this. I think that this is absolutely crucial.

NIK GOWING: Rosemary Hollis.

ROSEMARY HOLLIS: Well, I have a similar point. And actually, Egypt did not collapse in the face of its experiment with democracy and the election of a president that the army took against. And as, actually, Ian himself has argued, the army never went anywhere. That’s an institution, that’s a stable one, and it didn’t come out of democracy.

NIK GOWING: But it’s a near-bankrupt state, Egypt, at the moment.

ROSEMARY HOLLIS: And democracy is not going to create the jobs that the Egyptians want from any government. This is the point. It’s irrelevant democracy, to whether Egyptians get jobs or not.

NIK GOWING: Right. Let’s hear some more voices, please, from the middle. Tell me which way you’re voting, please.

MALE AUDIENCE: I started for the motion, but now I’m swaying in between. And it seems that democracies often crumble when they’re faced with a 50-50, whether that’s because of votes or a split. And this is due to sometimes split in ethnicities or ideologies. And as history has shown, when they’re faced with a split, they normally lead in a divide, like happened in Ireland, now Korea, and now it’s happening in Ukraine.

NIK GOWING: So your question?

MALE AUDIENCE: Do we have to accept this divide if democracies are faced with a 50-50?

NIK GOWING: Thank you. Okay, over there.

MALE AUDIENCE: This is a question for Mr. Shevchenko. You’re on the platform speaking in support of the virtues of democracy, and I wanted to know what your observations were or how you felt about your opponent, if you like, Mr. Yanukovych, as I understand it, a democratically elected leader, being deposed in what some people would regard as an undemocratic way.

NIK GOWING: Elected in 2010. Andriy, reply, please.

ANDRIY SHEVCHENKO: Well, he was the first president in the country who gave the direct order to shoot into his own people. And when he finally realized the consequences of that decision, I think he was done as a politician. So I like the definition of democracy which Ian presented to us. What was done by Yanukovych, it was definitely not by the people and for the people.

NIK GOWING: But you accept that he was democratically elected three years ago, four years ago now.

ANDRIY SHEVCHENKO: Of course, and moreover, as I said, we see a lot of democratically elected leaders who do crazy things. We see Mr. Putin, who at some point won kind of a democratic election, and now we see that after destroying all the democratic institutions, he has the power to do any kind of decisions which mean clear problems for his nation.

NIK GOWING: Do you think Russia is a democracy?

ANDRIY SHEVCHENKO: No, it’s not. And I think the terrible things which we are witnessing now, when Russia is taking the world back into the Cold War era, is exactly the consequence of losing the democracy in this country.

NIK GOWING: Even though he was elected in an election?

ANDRIY SHEVCHENKO: Absolutely.

NIK GOWING: Please. Just tell me which way you’re voting, please.

FEMALE AUDIENCE: I’m slightly torn in the middle. We heard from the proposition that actually what really mattered for a government was how much power it has. But what we didn’t hear was any analysis of how having the people backing you gives you more power, not only on the international stage with international relations, but also within your own country when you’re sort of standing up to global corporations and stuff. And I was wondering whether they should offer us any discussion on that.

ROSEMARY HOLLIS: Can I immediately swing in? If you look at, I believe it’s 800 million Indians will be voting in their election coming up, or at least are entitled to vote. Over 800 million. Where is India at the international bodies like the United Nations Security Council? If numbers and democracy count, or did count, for your weight in the world about decisions that affect the fortunes of everybody in the world, the democracies don’t get in there, the big ones. It’s a little one like this one.

NIK GOWING: Right, let’s get some more. Who’s got the microphone, please? Don’t tell me which way you’re…

MALE AUDIENCE: I was against the motion. If democracy isn’t the best form of government, what is? Because I don’t feel you should criticise something which you have no solution to.

ROSEMARY HOLLIS: Benign dictatorship.

NIK GOWING: Could you just say that again?

ROSEMARY HOLLIS: What’s the best alternative? Benign dictatorship. We would all love it.

IAN BREMMER: Until you don’t. Until you don’t.

NIK GOWING: Please.

FEMALE AUDIENCE: I’m kind of still in the middle, but I wanted to pick up on something Martin said to Ian when he said it’s easy to say a comment about growth when, you know, you’re not from a poor country. And in light of that, I just want to ask the whole panel how well equipped we even think we are to have the discussion when we actually have no representation from nations from Africa, South America or Asia, for instance.

MARTIN JACQUES: I think this is a very, very important remark. Very, very important remark indeed. An observation. I agree with you.

NIK GOWING: Andriy,

ANDRIY SHEVCHENKO: I would also add that if you look at the data on, let’s say, on the African countries, there is a clear correlation between democracy and economic development. And once again, I strongly believe that the added value of democracy is a universal thing across the world. I cannot find a reason to deprive one or a different nation from the same standards that we are usually applying to the world which we usually refer to as the Western world.

ROSEMARY HOLLIS: And I would say that it is not the norm to act democratically.

NIK GOWING: Who’s got it at the back? The microphone, please.

MALE AUDIENCE: I’m undecided, but I’m leaning towards against. Let’s all talk about China tonight. I’m Chinese. I was born in Beijing. And I’ve lived there for 13 years and I lived here for 12 years. So I’ve experienced both systems.

NIK GOWING: Which do you prefer?

MALE AUDIENCE: Well, like I said, I’m undecided, but I’m against the motion now. So for me, coming from here, the definition of democracy, what I experienced is the ability to have an opinion, the ability to be able to see with a degree of transparency what the government’s doing, and to hear both sides’ arguments, even if you don’t like either. So that, for me, is my experience of what a democracy is.

So while I may accept that democracy is not always the best form of government for China, given our history and tradition, will the panelists accept that democracy is eventually the best form of government?

NIK GOWING: Right. I now have the results of what you have decided, having listened to this debate, this Intelligence Squared debate in London about democracy.

I remind you about the motion; democracy is not always the best form of government. I remind you how you were thinking when you first came into this hall. Before the debate, 44% of you hadn’t made up your mind. For the motion, 38%. Against the motion, 18%.

Well, almost everyone who didn’t make up their mind at the beginning has now made up their mind. Only 3% of you have not decided. That means 40% of you have made up your mind.

And I have to report that, after the debate, those voting for the motion were 39%. Against the motion, 58%.

By any measure, by any measure in this democratic voting system, it was a huge swing. So congratulations to those, Ian and Andriy, who swung all of you, 40% of you, in their direction, and commiserations to those proposing the motion, Rosemary and Martin. I’m afraid you lost.

Our thanks to the speakers, to the audience, all of you here at the Cadogan Hall in London, in what’s been a fascinating debate with a remarkable swing. My thanks to Intelligence Squared as well for making all this possible. Goodbye from me, Nick Gowing, and everyone here in London. Bye-bye.

For Further Reading:

Israel, Russia, China, Iran: The World in Conflict: Walter Russell Mead (Transcript)

The Natural Order of Money: Roy Sebag (Transcript)

Days of Noah & Lot: Derek Prince (Transcript)

Bill Nye Debates Ken Ham (Full Transcript)

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