I often hear people speak of democracy as the next, or the final, inevitable stage of human social development. Its inevitability is usually justified not by describing power relations that result in democracy being a stable attractor, but in terms of morality - democracy is more "enlightened". I don't see any inevitability to it - China and the Soviet Union manage(d) to maintain large, technologically-advanced nations for a long time without it - but suppose, for the sake of argument, that democracy is the inevitable next stage of human progress.
The May 18 2012 issue of Science has an article on p. 844, "Ancestral hierarchy and conflict", by Christopher Boehm, which, among other things, describes the changes over time of equality among male hominids. If we add its timeline to recent human history, then here is the history of democracy over time in the evolutionary line leading to humans:
- Pre-human male hominids, we infer from observing bonobos and chimpanzees, were dominated by one alpha male per group, who got the best food and most of the females.
- Then, in the human lineage, hunter-gatherers developed larger social groups, and the ability to form stronger coalitions against the alpha; and they became more egalitarian.
- Then, human social groups even became larger, and it became possible for a central alpha-male chieftain to control a large area; and the groups became less egalitarian.
- Then, they became even larger, so that they were too large for a central authority to administer efficiently; and decentralized market-based methods of production led to democracy. (Or so goes one story.)
There are two points to observe in this data:
- There is no linear relationship between social complexity, and equality. Steadily-increasing social complexity lead to more equality, then less, then more.
- Enlightenment has nothing to do with it - if any theory makes sense, it is that social equality tunes itself to the level that provides maximal social competitive fitness. Even if we agree that democracy is the most-enlightened political system, this realization says nothing about what the future holds.
I do believe "progress" is a meaningful term. But there isn't some cosmic niceness built into the universe that makes everything improve monotonically along every dimension at once.
First, this belongs in Discussion.
Second, "progress" is more like the dialectic helical spiral, so beloved by Marxists, with various manifestations periodically revisited, albeit each time on a different level. Democracy works for a time, then it is replaced by a monarchy or an oligarchy or anarchy, then back again, though hopefully in a more "evolved" form (whatever it means). In that sense, I agree, thinking of democracy as the final form of government is rather short-sighted.
Third, the idea of democracy currently has a feel-good halo, probably due to Western (British?) influences, so nearly all dictatorships still bill themselves as democracies. One can imagine that this fad will pass and something else comes into vogue, such as "responsible corporate governance at a state level", and every government, democratic or not, will try to pretend that they are run like a corporation. Then the prevailing wisdom will be that the corporate model is the final stage of "human social development", until that fad, too, passes.
This is a big reason behind Main being so boring. Old style Ovecoming Bias posts never make it into main any more and when they do they are never promoted.