李世默：如果美国不做出改变，自由这个词就不配放在民主前面了

李世默：

今天我主要聚焦于民主这个话题，同时也讨论一下中国。在我看来，我们今天之所以讨论民主话题，是因为民主处于危险时期。有关民主陷入困境的传言遍地都是，刚刚马凯硕也提出了这样的说法。我希望“民主陷入困境”只是一条假新闻，但无情的现实和层出不穷的数据都显示民主的确陷入了困境。

根据"自由之家”今年发表的最新报告，全球范围内的民主水平在加速下降，报告还提到美国民主水平出现大幅下滑。瑞典V-Dem研究所的调查也显示全球民主水平在下降，耐人寻味的是，那些美国盟友国的民主水平下滑得最为严重。资深民主学者戴雅门(Larry Diamond)多年来一直在抱怨民主出现了倒退，最近甚至认为这种倒退已上升为危机。拜登今年暗示，中国认为“民主”无法战胜“专制”，而美国需要证明中国的判断是错的。拜登首次在国会联席会议上发表演讲时提到，当下的关键是证明民主制度会继续在21世纪发挥作用，并本着与“专制”国家竞争的目的行事。

我认为从这种言论中透露出的是一种绝望的心态。这让我想到了我小时候，那时文革刚刚结束，中国面临很多困难。当时领导人说时间紧迫，我们要证明社会主义比资本主义更管用。目前的情形同样令人困惑。

“阿拉伯之春”运动始发于突尼斯。我们都知道，在“茉莉花革命”发生前，突尼斯被归类为一个独裁国家。根据“自由之家”的数据，在2010年“阿拉伯之春”爆发前，突尼斯的民主状况极差，发生“茉莉花革命”后，该国被评为半自由国家，再往后，它就变为一个完全自由的国家。“自由之家”宣称突尼斯的“民主”获得了胜利。然而，突尼斯人民却生活在水深火热之中，他们痛恨这种民主。“自由之家”的数据显示突尼斯的民主状况出现了极大好转，但人民却在承受苦难。自由之家的观点与现实矛盾，突尼斯的状况究竟如何？

自由之家衡量突尼斯的民主水平 图源：自由之家官网

这是皮尤研究中心做的研究，但自2016年起他们就停止收集数据了。我不知道他们为什么停止收集数据，可能是因为这个数据让他们也挺尴尬的。从我读过的新闻报道来看，2016年之后突尼斯的状况愈发糟糕。现在的突尼斯又有新政权上台，我不知道这个新领导人能否带领国家走向成功，但这确实是一个重大转变，因为之前它太糟糕了。突尼斯曾经因“阿拉伯之春”始自于该国而被视作“阿拉伯之春的光辉典范”，它也是在阿拉伯之春中唯一取得成功的国家。现实与数据相互矛盾，这让我们感到极为困惑。

再回到即将于下周召开的民主峰会，中国不在受邀之列，但是世界上另外有110个国家和地区受邀参会，这些形形色色的国家有着非常迥异的历史发展脉络和经济文化现实。观察这110个国家和地区目前的疫情情况，我发现这些国家的人口加起来总共有44亿人，占全世界人口的56%。新冠病毒致死人数是420万，占全球因疫情死亡人数的83%。真遗憾，他们在控制疫情方面做得并不好。参加此次峰会的三个大国，美国的死亡人数为75万人，巴西为60万人，印度为47万人。美国和印度，分别以世界上最古老的民主国家和最大的民主国家自居。那么，“民主”到底出了什么问题？

我不是相关领域的专家，我不是戴雅门，但我想从一个商人的角度，提出一些个人见解。我研究了“自由之家”、V-Dem之类机构在评比各国民主状况时采用的衡量标准。有意思的是，我发现他们衡量的是一套特定的制度程序。令我印象深刻的是这些程序都是自由主义政体和自由主义社会独有的，比如说特定形式的选举和言论自由等，它们都属于自由主义价值观的范畴。在我看来，脱节之处在于它们也许并不是在衡量民主状况，而是在衡量自由主义的状况。他们是在衡量一种叫自由主义民主的民主形式，而且它们还只是在衡量这种民主形式里自由主义的部分。

我们知道民主的出现其实比自由主义要早了几千年。民主最早出现在古希腊，但当时的民主根本不是自由主义式的。很多学者声称中国的儒家思想里包含很多民主元素，但中国并不是一个信奉自由主义的国家。自由主义的民主是直到现代才出现的。在启蒙运动时期，洛克、孟德斯鸠、密尔等思想家提出了一些有关社会治理的革命性观点。而他们都是围绕着我们现在所称的自由主义价值观来构建这些观点的。这些价值观包括，个人是宇宙的中心，个人拥有自主权，私有财产神圣不可侵犯，通过程序正义来体现法治原则，所有这些价值观都转换成了我们所称的自由主义政治制度。

我今天提出一个猜想，当然它也可能是不正确的。我认为当下世界之所以出了问题，有没有可能是因为自由主义体制辜负了民主？而这就是所谓的病态民主？因为自由主义社会的确在过去一段时期引领了民主进步。我们应认可这一点，但如今自由主义已经不能服务于民主了。

我想提出的解决方案是，我们不能只用程序来衡量民主。“自由之家”、V-Dem等机构最关注的就是程序，只用程序来衡量民主，他们从不用结果来衡量民主。我是一个商人，从未有人这么向我推荐过股票，他说，你要买这个公司的股票，因为这个公司已经持续亏损20年了，而且技术糟糕没有客户，但这个公司的治理程序很完美，董事会开得很规范。就我而言，我根本不会买这家公司的股票。我认为我们应当考虑以结果为标准去衡量某个制度是否民主，这个制度能产出民主成果吗？

我不关心程序是什么。无论是自由主义的程序、伊斯兰国家的程序、还是中国的程序，这套程序能否产出民主成果？民主的真正目的必须是使一个国家的大多数民众在很长一段时期内感到满意，否则我们要这样的民主何用？如果民主的程序带来了不民主的结果，我们要这样的民主程序有什么用？如果通过选举持续选出没能力的领导人，我们要这样的选举有什么用？如果独立的司法只保护富人，我们要这样的司法独立有什么用？如果新闻自由和言论自由带来的是社会的分裂和失能，那要这样的自由有什么用？

我认为我们应该探索，至少应该在世界范围内进行对话，讨论如何通过结果来衡量民主。人民对治理方式是否满意？人们对未来乐观吗？社会是否有凝聚力？你比以前过得好吗？我在美国学习时，正值里根的第二个任期，他的竞选口号是“你们比4年前过得更好吗？”那么，你们过得更好了吗？你们的国家对子孙后代的投资足够吗？还是说他们只是在预支子孙后代的钱？一个来自北大的中国学者建议要有一个阶层流动指数，我认为其言之有理。你们的社会是否具有社会流动性？应该用这个指标来衡量你们的制度是否产生了民主结果。

被视为民主标志的选举，却让美国变得越来越对立。图为2021年1月6日美国国会山骚乱，来源：美联社

因此，我想借此机会建议在全球范围内掀起一番讨论。一位伟大的美国领导人（伍德罗•威尔逊）曾说过：“为保卫世界民主而战”。我现在认为，我们应该让世界享受到更好的民主。我们需要展开对话和讨论。我认为我们需要制定一套新标准来衡量民主。这套新的衡量标准对于发展中国家来说是尤为有益，因为过去几十年来他们受制于自由主义教条和机制，他们没有办法充分发挥本国的民主潜力，所以他们应探索新的方式去实现民主。

这样一套新衡量标准对于自由主义政体来说也是好事。自由主义体制之所以衰落正是因为没人挑战它们，没人按结果评价过它们。就好比它们去学校参加考试，但却没人给它们打分，很多美国学校的确在这么做，结果就是没人好好学习。

经典经济理论告诉我们，当垄断者被迫开始与人竞争时，他们的表现都不好，他们根本没能力竞争。自由主义社会几乎垄断了对民主的解释权，并且认为自己天生就是民主的。这对自由主义社会来说是危险的。我认为自由主义民主有成功的机会。同时，我也认为应该有多种形式的民主，它们互相之间可以展开竞争，从而让彼此变得更好。

对于中国来说，中国要积极参与到这样的民主探讨中来。在以往进行的全球民主大讨论中，中国的缺席令人沮丧，中国很少讨论民主议题，也不派学者出国研究民主理念。但如今，中国应该要更积极地参与民主讨论，而非自废武功。中国要审视自己在哪些方面做得成功，哪些方面有待改进，并形成新的民主衡量标准。

至于拜登政府，当他召开有110个参会者的民主峰会时，我想给他的主旨演讲提点建议，我当然知道他不会听我的，但我仍希望他会说，“让我们携手设立一些新目标，并以这些目标来衡量民主，看看五到十年后各个国家做的怎么样”。自由主义民主在衰落，出现了问题，但曾经获得过成功，特别是在20世纪的上半叶非常成功，大幅改善了人民生活，以至于很多国家，包括中国，都在冷战后效仿西方的政治实践，比如接受市场经济。

拜登应该说，不是所有的自由主义民主政体都是失败的。如果拜登难以承认中国也有成功之处，有可借鉴之处，觉得这样会让他丢脸，那也有很多成功的自由主义民主国家可供美国借鉴，比如瑞典、挪威、芬兰、新西兰等。这些国家的治理业绩都不错。首先，大的自由主义民主国家可以从这些小型自由主义民主国家身上学到些什么。如果现在他们还不采取行动做出改变，那么他们就危险了，也许自由这个词再也不配放在民主这个词的前面了。

Eric Li:

I want to focus more about democracy, and we’ll talk about China a little bit, too. You know, we are having this discussion seems to me at a precarious time for democracy. A lot of rumors swirling around the globe that democracy is in trouble. Kishore just summarized some of the rumors. I hope it’s fake news that democracy is in trouble, but the coverage has been relentless and data is mounting.

Freedom House, its most recent report this year, says global decline in democracy has accelerated. In addition, it says U. S. democracy has declined significantly. V-Dem in Sweden, also says their surveys show a global decline in democracy, interestingly, U. S aligned nations declined the most for some reason. Larry diamond, one of the most senior democracy scholars in the world, has been complaining about what he called democratic recession for many years, and recently he has just upgraded that to a crisis level. This year, none other than president Biden implied that the president of China is betting democracy can’t keep up with autocracy, and they must prove China wrong. In his address to the first joint session of Congress, he said that this point in history, is about whether or not democracy can function in the 21st century. He said, can we act in the framework needed to compete with autocracy？

And I must say, there’s almost like a whiff of despair in such proclamations. It reminds me of China. When I was grown up right after the Culture Revolution, we were in deep trouble，our leaders always saying that time is running out, we needed to prove socialism works better than capitalism. It’s a precarious moment, also a confusing moment.

Tunisia, is the country where the Arab Spring began. As we know, before the Jasmine Revolution, it was characterized as a dictatorship. According to the Freedom House, before the Arab Spring in 2010, this country was not democratic. After Jasmine Revolution, the scores have improved to partly free. Then it got even better, all green (free). According to the Freedom house, democracy is triumphant. Yet, the people in Tunisia are miserable, they hate it. As the numbers from Freedom House show improvements, significant improvements, the people of Tunisia are suffering. Their views are opposite. What is going on here？

This is from Pew’s research, and they stopped collecting data at 2016. I don’t know why, maybe it’s just too embarrassing. But my guess is after 2016, according to what I read in news reports, Tunisia’s situation had gone even much worse. And now we have a new regime, I’m not predicting whether this new leader will succeed or fail, I’m just saying there has been a big change, because it has been so bad. Tunisia was where Arab Spring began and was billed as a shining example of the Arab Spring, and later the only success story of the Arab Spring. This is very confusing, the data and the facts are very confusing.

Then, come back to the summit of democracy that’s about to take place next week, China is not on invite list. But 110 places were invited, very diverse group of countries, very different in historical development, culture and economics. I just ran the numbers, how they did with one of the most pressing crises of our times, the Covid-19 pandemic. These 110 invitees accounted for 4.4 billion population, which is 56% of the world’s population.They had 4.2 million fatalities, which is 83% of the world’s total. Unfortunately, these countries handled it badly. Three most prominent players in this group, The U.S. had 3/4 million deaths; Brazil, 610,000; India, 470,000. And by the way, the U.S and India, each respectively claim that one is the oldest democracy in the world, and one is the largest democracy in the world. So, what is going on with democracy？

I’m not an expert, I’m not Larry Diamonds, but I want to, from a businessman’s perspective, venture a diagnosis.I studied the methodologies that are being used by Freedom House, and V-Dem and those institutions when they evaluate democracies. And I found something very interesting, they only measure a particular set of institutional procedures. And these procedures strike me as very specific to liberal politics and liberal societies, certain kind of elections, freedom of press, just liberal values. It seems to me that the disconnect is, maybe they’re measuring liberalism, not democracy. They’re measuring one kind of democracy called liberal democracy, and at that they’re only measuring the liberal part.

We all know that democracy long preceded liberalism by at least a couple of thousand years. The democracy in ancient Greece was decidedly not liberal. And many scholars argue China’s Confucian values have a lot of democratic elements, but China is not liberal. Liberalism only exists, only was born at the onset of the modern era.During the enlightenment, a lot of great thinkers like Locke, Montesquieu, Mill, they proposed revolutionary ideas about how to govern human societies. And they centered around a set of values that we now call liberalism. The individual being the center of the universe, autonomous, private property was virtually sacred, a procedural take on the rule of law, and these values became political institutions that we call liberal institutions.

My hypothesis today, I could be wrong. My hypothesis is, is it possible the problem today is liberal regimes are failing democracy, and that is what is ailing democracy？ Because liberal society has led democratic progress in the world for some time. We’ve got to credit liberal societies for that, but now liberalism is failing democracy. I want to venture a solution, too. We can’t just measure procedures. If you look at V-Dem and Freedom House, they only measure procedures, the one thing they never measure is outcome, or result. I am a businessman. No one has ever come to me and pitched me a stock and say you’ve got to buy this stock because this company has been losing money for 20 years, the technology sucks, people are leaving in droves, they have no customer, but the company is really governed with great procedures, the board meetings are conducted beautifully. I won’t buy the stock, that doesn’t happen. I think we ought to consider measuring outcomes, is the system delivering democratic outcomes？

I don’t care what are the procedures.Are they liberal procedures or islamic procedures, Chinese procedures, is it delivering democratic outcomes？ Democracy’s normative end must be delivering satisfaction to a vast majority of the people over long duration, otherwise what are we in it for？ What good is a set of procedures if it result in undemocratic outcomes？ What good isan election If elections keep producing incompetent leaders？What’s goodabout judicial independence if it protects only the rich？ What’s so great about freedom of press, freedom of speech, if it leads to division and dysfunction in societies？

I think we should explore, we should have at least dialogue, discourse around the world about how to measure democracy by outcomes. Are the people satisfied with how they’re governed？ Are they optimistic about the future？ Is your society cohesive？ Are you better off than before？ When I was studying in the United States, it was President Reagan’s second term, “Are you better off than four years ago？” Are you better off？ Is your country investing enough for future generations？ Or are they just spending future generations money？ There’s a Chinese scholar in Peking University, who is suggesting that there should be a social mobility index. That sounds right to me. Is your society socially mobile, that should count as whether your systems generating democratic outcome.

So, I would like to use this opportunity to suggest a new discourse around the world. There was a great American leader (Woodrow Wilson) who said: Make the world “safe for democracy”. I think now we need to make democracy better for the world. We need to start a dialogue and a discourse. My suggestion is we need to develop new measurements.

New measurements are good, especially for developing countries, because a lot of developing countries in the past few decades, have been shackled by liberal doctrines and liberal institutions that they’re unable to develop their democratic potential. So they could explore new ways.I might say that new measurements will be good for liberal societies. Liberal regimes are failing because I think nobody’s challenged them, they never have been measured by outcome. Imagine if you go to school and you take tests, you never get grades, a lot of them in America these days, you’re not going to do well.

It’s basic economic theory that monopolies, when the monopoly is forced to compete, they don’t do well, they can’t compete. And liberal societies have pretty much monopolized interpretation of democracy that they take the democratic credentials for granted. That’s dangerous for liberal society. I think liberal democracy ought to have a chance of succeeding. I think there should be many forms of democracies and they can compete and the competition is better.

For China, I think China ought to actively participate in a new discourse on democracy. It’s disappointing that China has been absent in the global dialogue and discourse on democracy. China doesn’t talk about this, they don’t send people out to explore ideas of democracy. So China needs to actively participate, instead of ceding the ground, and they need to acknowledge their own successes and failures, and to develop new measurements.

For Mr. Biden, when he holds this big party with 110 invitees, I want to make a suggestion for his keynote speech, not that he’ll take any advice from me, but I think he should say that “let’s get our act together and set some goals and be measured by those goals, five years from now, ten years from now”. Liberal democracy is failing now, is in trouble, but liberal democracy succeeded before, especially in the second half of the 20th century, liberal democracy succeeded, beautifully delivered, amazing, unprecedented improvements in their people’s lives, to the point that so many countries, including China, after the Cold War sought to emulate a lot of the West’s political practices, like market economics.

Mr. Biden should say, not all liberal democracies are failing. If we can’t bring ourselves to say that maybe China is doing something right, we can learn, we’d lose too much face. But among the liberal democracies, there are those who are succeeding. Sweden, Norway, Finland, New Zealand, their numbers are pretty good. For a start, maybe big democracies could learn, liberal democracies can learn something from these smaller players. So if they don’t act now, they are in danger that liberal societies, the word liberal, will no longer deserve to be followed by the word democracy.

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