THE DEMOCRATIC ILLUSION

THE DEMOCRATIC ILLUSION
Johan Galtung

MAY 2008 (IPS) - Democracy is about people choosing leaders who are accountable to the people. So, what kind of leaders do we choose? In the Western democracies, they are not too impressive, writes Johan Galtung, professor of Peace Studies and founder of TRANSCEND, a global peace and development network.

Each country has a "deep culture and deep structure" that guides it, sedimented in the collective mind and history. The United States, doomed to lead the Good against the Evil, stopped the time machine at the end of World War II with U.S. hegemony at a peak, intent on eliminating all challengers of the status quo. Take China, a subtle deep culture of good in evil and evil in good, but which stopped the time machine millennia ago with China as the Middle Kingdom surrounded by Barbarians.

Add Russia's deep culture of the sleeping giant with periodic bursts of energy, or India's, the cradle and crossroad of civilisations, and we have four pathologies more dangerous than any individual president. Better a crazy head of state of a country that finds its equitable place in the world as one among others than the normal leader of a crazy nation.

/NOT FOR PUBLICATION IN AUSTRALIA, CANADA, NEW ZEALAND, CZECH REPUBLIC, IRELAND, POLAND, UNITED STATES, OR UNITED KINGDOM/ (END/2008)