Further thoughts on Rule of Law versus Democracy

I originally had written the following piece (see below) as a long comment to a thread on my buddy Vince Horn's site. But I never quite got around to posting it. The thread dealt with the question of leapfrogging--whether societies/individuals who enter a modernizing process later benefit bringing in the latest technologies and thereby skipping earlier ones. An oft-cited example is cell phones, say in parts of Africa, Latin America, and/or Asia. Societies that are modernizing in these parts of the world are by and large skipping land line technologies and going straight to cellular.

In integral terms, the argument boils down to whether these technological advances are holonic--does the cell phone transcend and include the land-line? And if so, to what degree does the higher degree of technological advance, accelerate the holonic evolution of the Interior Quadrants in a society, particularly the Communal Lower Left? If you read the comments, they focused mostly on the more technical issues of the technology, precise about language involved, and so on.

Its a very interesting discussion, one that is in some ways beyond my techincal understanding--I don't have all the context technically speaking of people like Coolmel, Vince, or Matthew.

Anyway, the post below was aimed in a slightly tangential direction: the absence, as I saw it, of intelligent discourse on the way in which culture actually is manifesting in many parts of the world and the deeper structural-evolutionary pressures inhibiting/advancing those movements.

Then I saw David Brooks' piece in today's NY Times (Note: Have you to be a member to read the article). So for those who don't have the chance to read it, I'll give a brief summary. Brooks discusses the recent presidential election of Evo Morales, an AmeriIndian--a member of the country's ethinc majority-market minority--the first such individual to hold the office in the country. As noted elsewhere, Morales is part of a rising leftist, socialist-leaning movement in Latin America: e.g. Lula in Brazil and of course Hugo Chavez in Venezeula.

Brooks explicitly identifies what I consider to be the most misunderstood aspect in American discussions of world events--that democracy does not inherently bring rule of law and market-integrated economics. This "belief" that democracy=freedom (see George Bush's) 2005 Inaugural Address is, as I have mentioned in multiple comments, a tenet of neo-conservatism (Think: Paul Wolfowitz & Bill Kristol, not Rumsfield, Cheney, Bush 43, and Condi who basically bought into it). As mentioned elsewhere, neo-conservatism has within its fold, a raging naive utopian liberalism. Democracy brings freedom is a mythic belief that does not stand up to reality.

[For a related discussion, see Matthew Dallman's intelligent discussion of integral as a new form of: conservatism. He unfortunately, I think, is still not making the distinction between an integral conservatism and neo-conservatism Here he discusses Robert Kaplan, one of the more neo-conservative writers of the day. In Integral terms, Kaplan uses a vision-logic cognitive injunction, to promote a discussion of the world in terms of red-meme tribal-egocentric warfare, which must be countered by imperial blue-meme (mythic) American power. Now Kaplan's discussion of the tribal state of the world are not inaccurate, just not the full story. Also Matthew cites (rightly) the heroism of the Iraqis in voting. The problem however is who are people voting for? Are they voting for a national Iraq, with rule of law, separation of judiciary-legistlative-executive functions, and a protection for minority rights? I have writen extensively about Thomas Barnett as a much more intelligent geopolitical thinker, who specifically critiques Kaplan for example]

So the US exports a naive version of democracy around the world, thinking that it will bring rule of law and integrated globalized markets. Brooks cites Amy Chua (who I discuss below) to correctly counter this ludicrous notion. What occurs in most instances is that a makert minority, and ethic minority--e.g. whites in Bolivia, who make up 3% of the population and own almost the entire economy--are voted out of office by demagogues who inflame the populace (Chavez is the master of this) and then go about overturning market economics. Now, I'm no fan of the mythic view of capitalism as solving all ills and bringing peace, wealth, and prosperity to the world. But state-run economics are even worse. To slightly amend Churchill's quotation: globalization is not a great form of economics, until you study all the alternatives. And from an environmental point of view, it was state-run communist regimes who causd the most ecological disaster on earth. Liberal democracies with integrated market economics go through an initial phase of modernization that causes ecological damage, but then if they make it through the transition period, decrease the population and clean up their environments.

Brooks talks about how the World Bank-IMF movements in Bolivia were only macroeconomic and therefore came to be controlled by the already established, connected, and educated white elites of Bolivia. Brooks correctly says that the problem was not the macroeconomics per se, but the lack of microeconomics. Microeconomics would meet the AmerIndian population on their own terms and actually give help in ways they need, instead of creating more wealth-infomration divisions as did the flawed IMF-World Bank policies. Microloans, MicroBanks, small business coaching, these have been very succesful around the world.

Vis a vis Iraq and the Middle East more generally the issue is not that Southwest Asians (Middle Easterners if you like) are inherently opposed to economic liberalization and/or democracy. What they do not want is American social, cultural norms. That is why the Muslim Brotherhood, who is wildly popular with the Egyptian populace, its leader recently supported the Iranian president's assertion that the Holocaust is a myth perpetrated by Western imperalists. That is, sad to say, a common view throughout the Arab world. Even among people with college educations.

Bush has put the US in a very difficult position. What he should be saying is we want rule of law (classical liberalism), instead he has opted (moronically in my view) for democracy promotion. Rule of law (even if harshly enforced at first) brings economic development, which creates a middle class who then clamors for more political freedom, and is the only sector in society who has the capacity to intelligently use democracy for worldcentric ends. Its, exactly how our country got to the position it has today.

The US supports Ayad Allawi, the secular Shi'ite with Sunni connections, for prime ministery. Exit polls show he will only gain somewhere in the range of 15% of the vote. If you took a demographic survey of that 15%, you would find, I almost guarantee it, that they would represent roughly the same socio-economic sector in society that the so-called Founding Fathers represented in the early US society. Recall the first we had a constitution that protected rights and only a slim minority voted (white, land-owning, upper class males). Or on the order of 15% of the colonial US population. Probably less, but you get the point.

So now, our government is stuck promoting democracy in regions where the individuals elected, if truly more democratic, would not represent US strategic interests...i.e. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan.

So the pro-Bush republicans think that Iraq will somehow be different than every other society in the history of the world--basically because we are there I guess. It took us basically 200 years to get adjusted to the transition, and still we have major problems in our country. And we expect Iraq to pull it off within 2-5 yrs.!!! The Republicans say it'll happen, the Democrats say it won't, therefore eject. But meanwhile, they all miss the point. It isn't democracy stupid. Its rule of law. And for Iraq, I'm very frightened of the possibilities. The issue, at this juncture, is whether the Shite-Sunnis will form together. The Kurds are going have Kurdistan, and they deserve it. Its just a matter of time. They are further proof of security first (the No-Fly-Zone), economic liberalization-->middle class who wants political establishment to be based in more rationalistic, pragmatic policies and not religiously-inspired idelogies. They've handled democracy well because they have the bedrock upon which to build.

The real question is the Sunni-Shi'ite link. Will the Shi'ite ever see the Sunni as anything other than Saddamists, the tormenters and murders of their families? Will the Sunnni ever see the Shi'ite as anything other than the collaborators with the Americans, as the face of their own political-social-cultural demise and backwardness? As the emblem of their own shame, projected outward?

Are they just building on the sand?


Anyway, here is the original comment that sparked some of these thoughts. In terms of the leapfrogging-LR issue, Wilber has said that the level of technology is the single most important determinent in the average mode of consciousness (LL) in a society (sub-society for that matter). Single most important factor, not only. And in average mode, not sub-average or above average. But again the technology will cause a communal-cultural shift only after a time lapse, however long. And only IF, there is security and the rule of law. The rule of law does not exist very much for the poor around the world, so legitimate economics can not proceed. Latin America has received a dis-eased version of globalization and rather than heal it and get a healthy version, there are elements that seek to simply thrown the whole thing out. In Asia, the trend is towards revived nationalisms (Japan, Taiwan, China) and tribal mentalities, all of which could threaten the economic advances made over the last couple decades.


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I think we haven't delved far enough into the dark side(s) of this issue. Vince you referenced possible negative outcomes, in fairly vague terms--things like chaos, and so forth. I’d like to see if we can flesh that out a bit.

The thread so far has centered around the more technical issue of in fact leapfrogging is a helpful category, and to what, if any, extent it would be transformative as opposed to merely translative.

I’d like to explore that technical discussion more in concrete terms, particularly in the context of the globalized economy and political-cultural scene. Now I'm not the techno-wiz that most of you are, but I agree with Coolmel that the concept of leapfrogging, when defined as cultures-nations who enter a technological phase later than others reap the benefits of getting the latest and best of the technology. Certainly this is historically accurate. The United States and Germany for example entered industrialization later England, and as a result, started off with the best equipment available at the time (2nd half 19th century) and for awhile outcompeted the British, who were locked into the older machinery. HOWEVER, and this is a big HOWEVER, in my book, England still overall won out economically because techno-economic progress is not simply a matter of creating more stuff faster than everybody else. There are so many other factors involved. Those other factors include business connections, military might, a capital-generating ethos (what Marx negatively called a fetish), and probably most importantly domestic rule of law.

To shift gears then to the world economic scene, as much as we can discuss that, given how enormous a topic it is, but some general comments anyway. The best book I’ve read on the subject is End of the Line: The Rise and Future Fall of Global Capitalism by Barry Lynn (editor at New America Foundation). Now this guy is not some wacko left-wing anti-globalizer. He used to be the Latin American bureau chief for the Economist—you can’t get more establishment than that I would say!!! Anyway, the core thesis is that with the dismantling of the Ford-era vertical industrial model, the world economy has gone into a dangerous phase, putting its faith and resources into an unsustainable model of outsourcing and offshoring.

I mention this argument because of Open Source tech and Peer-to-Peer as a model for spiritual development. The theory behind all these different paradigms, including the global economic structure, as far as I grasp them, is that by de-verticalizing and “flattening” discourse, economic transfer, technology, etc. more opportunities will be created worldwide, it will allow for greater competition, faster delivery of information, and allow greater collaboration worldwide. Why re-invent the wheel the worldover?

Now in certain limited cases, this theory has been proved (somewhat) accurate.

HOWEVER, and this is another big however, in many cases these models have resulted in massive negative unintended consequences. Take for example academia, where peer-to-peer, et.al, should be most conducive. Has this much dreamed about cross-fertilization taken place? Not very much. Mostly what occurs is that groups/individuals become so specialized in their research-knowledge they cease to be able to converse with one another or at least don’t have the time or desire to do so. We call this balkanization. And we know from experience, how much internecine warfare there is in academic, peace&justice, non-profit circles there are. Once someone finds a way to the scare economic-cultural resources of the postmodern, particularly in the United States, they almost always become instantaneously conservative and cliquish.

And in economics this process is even more dangerous. What has occurred Lynn argues is that firms so over specialize that economics is being balkanized. And what is worst, larger organizations, like Dell for example, who basically cobble together the products of other specialized firms, often exclusively contract with only one firm. So a firm in Taiwan specializes a sub-component piece of a microconductor, itself a sub-compenent of the computer. So what happens, if that firms facilities are burned down? Dell can’t make that piece.

Now the assumption, it seems to me, behind the more horizontal open-source, P2P vision, is that by spreading the net as wide as possible the entire structure will be much stronger. Leapfrogging allowing for the most up-to-date healthiest version of technologies to be installed as the medium for this transfer.

But what has happened, as in the example with developing markets and academia is that it creates more and more isolated sub-niches and neo-monopolization—or these technologies can be used that way it seems.

And from a socio-cultural point of view, take Amy Chua’s World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability. [Coolmel you’d like this one she’s Chinese Filipina, the Philippines is one of her prime examples]. She argues that the version of economics-politics being promoted by the United States (since at least Clinton, accelerated with Bush II) leads to ethnic minorities becoming market majorities all over the developed world. The poor ethnic masses then often rise up and seek to overthrow the ethnic minority rich cliques, leading both to ethnic cleaning and eventually to overthrowing market practice. Jewish oligarchs in post-Soviet Russia, Chinese throughout Southeast Asia, and Lebanese in parts of South America. She makes a very interesting argument that the West is itself an ethnic minority-market majority in terms of the rest of the world.

These ethnic minorities are balkanized, separated, often opaque and jealously inter-tribal, marrying only their own, keeping their economic wisdom and business contacts close to the chest. Of course as anyone who has ever been to the developing world and met such individuals they travel around with armed guards, have attack dogs on their roof, and so on.

Or The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else by Hernando DeSoto. Again these are not anti-globalization leftist tracts. These are middle-of-the-road people on the inside of globalization, who simply do not fall into pro-market ideologies. His argument overstretches at times, but the basic point is dead on. There is all sorts of capital—human, monetary, proprietary, cultural—in the developing world. But the majority have no means for legalizing this capital. DeSoto digs into some obscure legal maneuvers in the common law tradition of England to show how these legal precedents allow for the freeing up of capital to become itself both means and end. So leapfrogging in terms of cell phones or whatever can definitely occur in say Egypt, but those individuals have no legal means, no great job market, what are they going to talk on their cellphones about all day? As DeSoto notes, without legalization of the market, the poor/semi-poor of the world simply resort, as they always have done to shadow markets…black markets, Mafia, local wink-wink payoffs etc. (in integral terms “orange” market in red-meme tribal context). What are they going to do with all these “leapfrogged” means at their disposal when they can’t even insure their house or sell it on a market for God’s sakes?

DeSoto’s argument about how the poor/semi-poor simply revert to shadow markets for survival is a strong criticism of the view that there is automatically going to be revolution with increased technological capacity. The single greatest determinant of the average mode of consciousness in a Lower Left Quadrant certainly is the techno-economic base. The question Matthew raised is a good one, how much of leapfrogging technology is actually touching the base and how much is cosmetic? And even if such technology is striking the base, the Lower Right moves faster than the Lower Left. Any Right-hand technology can be used for any Left Hand motivation.

As I was saying earlier, with the British industrialization example, there is so much more unaccounted for capital (in all quadrants) that goes into real stability-transformation, that there is, in my mind, a helluva lot naivety in assuming cheaper more efficient technology=accelerating of global consciousness. It to me represents a bunch of undigested, unexamined, liberal postmodern hooey.

The argument about the Singularity could theoretically go in reverse. Taking into account balkanized-processes and unexamined-undocumented modes of capital, with ever-increasing speed of technological innovation, the poor could be further and further left behind. With all of the quadratic factors that must go hand-in-hand so the technological can stabilize, the amount of investment-education needed for these other quadratic factors might begin to totally outstrip the ability of any developing society to keep up. The technologies themselves might get incredibly cheap and can be sold to the Global South, but so what? If the technologies are maximized when used by the level of consciousness that created them (or higher), then the maximization process in the West may begin to exponentially explode.

We know that without governmental oversight, capitalism leads to massive gaps between the rich and poor. As the techno-economic base becomes more and more information-based, this knowledge resource in the West (and pockets of “modernity” throughout the rest of the world) may go way beyond our means.

Not to mention that the technology is being fused more and more with biology, then there are serious ethical questions about the future of our species.

The difficulty as all of the books cited point out is that the West had 300 years to modernize---modernized on its own schedule, depending on its own context. There was not real universal suffrage in West Europe and US until after World War II. And we go around spreading the ludicrous notion that democracy is inherently liberating. We assume democracies automatically vote in liberal constitutional rule-of-law governments (for the insanity of that notion see Fareed Zakaria: Illiberal Democracies., especially his thesis that the Western notion of secularism grew out of the experience of the rise of the Papacy as an institution separate from the governing structures of the day). In the same way our marketization was mostly controlled and taken in steps. And the version of markets we promote in the developing nations is the Wild f’ing West.

There are deep resentments and historical grievances from nations-societies being forced into modernization and all its discontents against their choice.

So, from my perspective, the main questions are not about this or that technology, new mode of communication, and so on, however important those may be, and they certainly are. The question is how can we come to a balanced appreciation-healthy criticism of our own road to modernity, and also actually be of service to others around the world. How do we balance giving expertise where in fact individuals have such expertise, but in a way that actually strengthens the local populace and ultimately entrusts their own development to them? Add to that the thorny question of while such countries undergo the tumult of advance, outside countries are rightly allowed to defend themselves from attack—in integral terms, the higher can not destroy the lower, nor allow the lower to destroy it. All that bracketed by the question of whether the “West” will allow non-Western forms of modernity to grow. Chinese modernity is not going to be atomized, individualized Western modernity. There will be deep structural affinities but not perfect deep structure 1:1 match, nor certainly in terms of surface manifestation.

I mention those books because I feel there is still a lot of unexamined assumptions in this so-called integral group. Mostly, it seems, people kinda carp and snipe on this one, instead of facing some healthy self-criticism head on. I think, and I’m as guilty of this as anyone, that we are still not acting like big boys and girls. Wilber’s integral philosophical system, to me, is like a set of keys that are supposed to open doors to intellectual and moral understanding. But instead of using the keys to unlock the doors and participate-learn about our world(s), we incessantly argue about the size, colors, shapes, make-model of the keys themselves.

Just to give an example, the book references are all validations of Ken’s writings of the dignity-disaster of modernity. He mentions there that the number one source of suffering in the world currently is what he calls the pressure-cooker shift from blue-orange (in Spiral language). Because the West forfeited its spiritual element, leaving only arts-moral-science, then eventually just science (infected with the lost spiritual element becoming scientism) plus its market-ideology, it is seriously messed up the deep perspectival grooves of the manifest world. The entire moment-to-moment patterned existence is structurally dis-eased. All of the other references above are variations upon that theme—I think they are required reading. That is, they give much more detailed information as to how that process is actually playing out in the world. Ken has given the overall vision of the fracture point that has led to these multiple later breaks. Without the overall panoramic vision, each of the aforementioned authors falls prey to absolutizing their own relative insights. Without the concrete display of this working, integral becomes (mis-used) wildly dis-embodied, de-politicized, and mostly translative.

I believe that integral is actually out to heal that fundamental structural dis-ease. That is what I think we have to daily remind ourselves of. From the Absolute nothing is wrong—dis-ease is only the shadow of the light. There will always be the poor, no doubt. But only relative praxis is actually going to heal that wound. That wound is the issue…without getting at that, at the source of the pain, then all others innovations however brilliant will be manipulated for profoundly questionable aims.

And if that all seems a bit dark on my part, I said at the beginning we should examine the shadow. I am simply saying that there are always unintended consequences to everything, no matter how well intentioned, and the key is to be vigilant, humble, and have a sense of humor-seriousness about the whole thing. Otherwise what the hell are we doing?