Good Governance
In the spring of 2008, SPIEGEL published a series of articles on the future of democracy. At the time, the concept was at the center of a philosophical and even moral debate. US President George W. Bush had declared the democratization of the world a political objective he was prepared to push through militarily, if necessary, just as he had in Iraq. Several governments, including Germany's, refused to follow him down this path.
The democratization of non-democratic nations is still politically divisive, but the global economic crisis has brought a practical consideration to the forefront that strikes at the heart of established democracies: Independent of the abstract form of a government, how good are the results that it achieves or, in other words, how well have leaders mastered their craft?
The debate raging among politicians and political scientists centers on a term known as "good governance." Five years after the outbreak of the financial and debt crisis, SPIEGEL is considering in a series of articles how good the leaders of four selected countries are at detecting and solving problems.
Using Rio de Janeiro as an example, the first in the series describes how Brazilian governments have managed to invalidate the seemingly irrefutable laws of globalization. The Chinese city of Lanzhou shows the practices that have turned China into a superpower in the second article. A third report, from the US, pinpoints the weaknesses plaguing the system of "checks and balances" that has been in place for more than 200 years. The final piece, on the exemplary European nation of Denmark, explains how governments and their citizens can cooperate.
Western Powers Under Pressure
American political scientist Charles Kupchan claims that there is a "mismatch between the growing demand for good governance and its shrinking supply," putting Western powers under pressure. He says it's no coincidence that the political systems in the US, Europe and Japan are all discovering their limits almost simultaneously. Their traditional tools, such as their currency control instruments, have repeatedly proven to be powerless when faced with the sheer might of global financial groups. Likewise, democratic governments, which rely on the approval of their electorate, "have proved far better at distributing benefits than at apportioning sacrifice." Worse still, many likeminded Western democracies no longer see eye-to-eye on how to solve global problems, from climate change to the isolation of Iran.
The politically savvy citizens of the West have been quick to recognize their governments' weaknesses. Why, they wonder, can speculators put the economies of certain countries under so much pressure that some, like Spain, have unemployment rates above 50 percent among those younger than 25? Why is the wealth disparity in industrialized nations now greater than ever? Why does it take longer to replace an old railway bridge in Pittsburgh than to construct the world's highest building in Dubai? "A crisis of governability has beset the Western world," Kupchan writes.
But are other systems any better? Even countries where the government doesn't need to seek re-election at regular intervals haven't been spared from the consequences of the economic crisis, and they too are increasingly being called to account for their actions. China's growth, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao admitted, is "unstable, unbalanced, uncoordinated and unsustainable." Until relatively recently, the economically battered West still hoped to tap into the bulging state coffers of the monarchies along the Persian Gulf. But these states are now having difficulties themselves. The Arab Spring has challenged the legitimacy of these regimes, and just like other autocratic governments, they are more concerned with trying to hang onto power at present than with saving the global financial system.