Is the West Wobbling on its Democratic Pedestal?

Abstract

The West has been arguing for decades that the Developing World and Post-Soviet World should be democratic.  It argues that democracy is the best form of government and that countries around the world should embrace democracy or face certain kinds of punishment such as a reduction in development aid.  It is not the purpose of this paper to argue the benefits of democracy over other forms of government but instead to argue that, with democratic norms under attack in much of the West, that the West is no longer in a moral position to claim to be the promoters of democracy internationally.  This paper will discuss events, laws, and actions by Western Countries that are inimical to democracy and argue that if the West wants to regain what it sees as the democratic moral high ground it must alter its policies to being more democratic itself.