Democracy Dies Not Just in Darkness

What history and the Middle East teach us about liberty’s fragility

It is a comforting idea that democracy is the natural endpoint of political evolution. Many in the West speak of democracy not just as the best form of government, but as humanity’s inevitable future. Yet history suggests otherwise. Democracy, especially the liberal kind we celebrate today, is a recent, fragile experiment—not a universal recipe for human flourishing.

As someone from the Middle East, I have seen firsthand how weak the association between democracy and stability can be. The global rise of authoritarianism today reinforces a harder truth: democracy is not humanity’s destiny. It is the exception, not the rule.

For most of human history, democracy was virtually absent. Before World War I, the world’s major powers—Britain, France, Russia, Germany, the Ottoman Empire, and Japan—were monarchies or empires. Even constitutional monarchies largely reserved power for a narrow elite.

The United States is often celebrated as an early harbinger of democracy, but for much of its history, voting rights were limited to white, landowning men. Women, minorities, and the poor were excluded for generations. Broad-based participatory democracy is a 20th-century phenomenon, not an ancient tradition.

Some like to trace democracy back to ancient Athens or the Roman Republic. But Athenian democracy was radically exclusionary, and Rome was less a democracy than a wealthy oligarchy. These early examples offer little inspiration for modern liberal democracy, especially in terms of protecting individual rights.

So, if democracy is not our natural state, how did it arise? The answer lies in a unique and unlikely convergence: industrialization, mass literacy, technological innovation, and the collapse of old empires. Western democracies benefited from economic prosperity, strong institutions, and cultural habits that prized individual autonomy and tolerance—rare and hard-won conditions.

Even then, democracy was often spread less by popular demand than by external pressure or force. Postwar Germany and Japan became democracies only after American military occupation. During the Cold War, democracy was advanced not always by free choice, but by geopolitical necessity, and sometimes coercion.

Democracy, far from being an inevitable outcome, grew in particular soils under very specific circumstances. And where those conditions are absent, democracy struggles or fails.

If democracy were humanity’s destiny, we would expect it to grow stronger over time. Instead, authoritarianism is resurging. Hungary openly embraces illiberalism. India faces rising religious nationalism and erosion of civil liberties. Even in the United States, faith in democratic institutions is declining, populism is rising, and polarization is paralyzing governance.

Democracy contains within itself the seeds of its own undoing. Majority rule can slide into tyranny without strong institutions and cultural norms. Citizens can elect leaders who dismantle democratic safeguards. Freedoms can erode incrementally, often with the consent of the electorate itself.

History offers grim reminders. Venezuela’s descent into dictatorship began with democratic elections. Nazi Germany rose through the mechanisms of democracy. Democracy is not self-repairing. It demands more than laws and votes—it demands virtues like tolerance, restraint, and respect for limits on power—virtues that cannot be legislated or guaranteed.

As an Arab, my view of democracy is shaped by more recent and painful experiences.

In the Middle East, democracy often means not freedom or prosperity, but instability, civil war, and suffering. The collapse of regimes in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen led not to flourishing democracies, but to bloodshed, sectarianism, and humanitarian disaster. The Arab Spring, once celebrated as a democratic awakening, mostly left behind failed states and stronger autocracies.

Meanwhile, the Gulf monarchies—Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait—have delivered relative stability, economic growth, and rising living standards without adopting liberal democracy. Even non-oil monarchies like Jordan and Morocco have provided more stable governance than their republican neighbors.

To many in the Middle East, democracy is not an abstract ideal. It is associated with civil collapse. People prize security and opportunity far more than abstract political freedoms, especially when "freedom" appears to bring chaos.

This does not mean Arabs are somehow anti-democratic. It means that in societies where institutions are weak, divisions are deep, and external interventions are common, the democratic experiment is fraught with dangers too often ignored by idealistic outsiders.

Western policymakers chronically underestimate how traumatic the past two decades have been for the region. "Democracy promotion," regime-change wars, and political experiments have left deep scars. For many Middle Easterners, a flawed but functioning government is preferable to the gamble of a sudden democratic transition.

This is a lesson that extends beyond the Middle East. Wherever democracy has flourished—from postwar Europe to parts of East Asia—it has done so with enormous support: economic, institutional, and cultural. Without these supports, democracy can falter.

If we treat democracy as inevitable, we grow blind to its fragility. We misjudge foreign societies, create unrealistic expectations, and mishandle interventions. We also grow complacent at home, assuming that institutions will defend themselves even as the habits that sustain them—tolerance, individual responsibility, a culture of dissent—wither away.

Democracy is a noble achievement. It is better than tyranny, better than endless coups and warlords. But it is neither the default state of humanity nor a permanent guarantee. It is an experiment. And experiments can fail.

History offers no assurance that free societies will endure. Human nature—easily seduced by demagogues, easily divided by fear—certainly does not guarantee it.

If we truly value democracy, we must stop assuming it is destined to win. We must defend it—not with arrogance or missionary zeal, but with humility, vigilance, and an appreciation for how rare and delicate it really is.

Democracy must be earned, preserved, and renewed. It does not run on autopilot. It does not spread on demand. And it can disappear more easily than many would like to believe.

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