When you bring a nation back from the dark night of terror, you have to do it step by step. On December 15, the Iraqi people will elect the leaders who will lead the nation for the next several years. But, as Amir Taheri writes, the big problem comes later. It comes when the new government sets the economic framework for the new nation.
The trouble is that the Iraqi people cannot imagine anything other than a distributionist Soviet-style state.
It is important for the Iraqis to realize that they can’t build a Western-style democracy based on a Soviet-style economic model: A key condition of genuine democratization is the creation of a robust and self-confident private sector. Yet that is something that most members of the new Iraqi leadership reject, both by ideology and personal calculations. Almost all want to be chiefs and patrons distributing favors on behalf of the state and buying support for themselves.
Of course, this kind of attitude isn’t confined to Iraq. Many people in the United States, both politicians and ordinary voters, cannot see beyond the idea of the national government as a dispenser of benefits and favors.
The Iraqis have an advantage. They are not entering the world of democracy as pioneers struggling on an unexplored frontier. We humans know pretty well how a prosperous economy based on democratic capitalism works. It works best when you minimize privilege and subsidy, keep government interference and the size of the public sector down. It needs a robust court system defending private property against the power of the great special interests.
It is a truth that the peoples in the democratic countries have struggled with for over a century. Welcome to the club, Iraqis.
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