If democracy bloomed in Portugal, why not in the Mideast?

National Post, 28 April 2024

On the 50th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution, the 'third wave' provides hope for global democratization

Carnations and coups are not a common combination, but they were together in the streets of Lisbon in April 1974, and again this Thursday for the 50th anniversary of the coup that brought democracy to Portugal.

Younger officers in the Portuguese armed forces, principally frustrated by the toll of Portugal’s overseas colonial wars, staged a coup against the long-running regime of Antonio Salazar, who served as prime minister from 1932 to 1968. Salazar died in 1970, but his “Estado Novo” continued on until the 1974 coup.

A coup for democracy is an odd thing, perhaps even a contradiction in terms. In 1974, it was not clear what would follow the coup. The general population was enthusiastic, hence the Carnation Revolution, where the people put carnations in the barrels of the soldiers’ guns as a sign of support.

There was alarm that perhaps communism would follow, the coup leading to authoritarianism from the left replacing that from the right. Communists enjoyed significant popular support in the Mediterranean after World War II, including Italy, Spain and Portugal. In the event, the elections following the coup came off well, and moderate parties defeated the communists.

Salazar’s rule was often linked to his Spanish neighbour, Francisco Franco. Many historians consider that Salazar’s greatest accomplishment was to keep Portugal neutral during World War II. If Portugal had entered the war on the side of its British ally, Franco would have done so on the Axis side. Thus Churchill himself asked Salazar not to enter the war.

By the early seventies, regimes in Portugal and Spain had grown long in the tooth and were inclined to bare their fangs. But what would follow? Portugal’s opted for democracy, and Spain would take a similar path the following year. After Franco’s death in 1975, King Juan Carlos would manage the democratic transition.

Thus began the “third wave” of democratization. This year, when massively populous countries are having elections (e.g., India, Indonesia and the United States), it is easy to forget how fragile, and recent, democracies are. Consider that in 1942 there were only 12 democracies in the world.

The first wave of democracy began in the late 18th-century with the revolutions in American and France. As the French demonstrated, lofty slogans do not a democracy make. But even then, universal suffrage (meaning white males) took time to establish. By 1900, America, France, Britain, Canada, Australia, Italy and Argentina could be counted as democracies.

After the Great War and the dissolution of the Russian, German, Austrian and Ottoman empires, the first wave crested with about 30 democracies in the world. But tides come in and go out; the rise of Mussolini took Italy out of the democratic column. Democracy in post-Kaiser Germany would meet an even worse fate in Nazism.

Another war, another wave. After World War II, democracy was planted in Japan and Germany — but China and the expanding Soviet empire went into communist tyranny. The “second wave” was marked by decolonization, with India becoming the world’s largest democracy.

The third wave was something of a tsunami. Portugal and Spain went first, then in the 1980s came the Philippines. Call it the Rosary Revolution, where ladies praying the rosary stopped the tanks of Marcos, and drove him into exile. South Korea and Taiwan followed in Asia. Latin America went from having only three democracies in 1978 to having just two non-democracies (Cuba, Haiti) in 1995. The throwing of the evil empire onto the ash heap of history allowed Europe, both west and east, to breathe democratic air.

Samuel Huntington — before he became famous for The Clash of Civilizations – wrote The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. Huntington pointed out that three quarters of the third wave democracies were Catholic, led by Portugal. In some of those countries, faith could be considered peripheral to politics. But in others, notably the Philippines and Poland, democracy was a specifically Catholic achievement.

That was unexpected, as the consensus was that Catholic countries were unlikely to be successful democracies because Catholicism itself had a hierarchical structure, less “democratic” and individualistic than Protestantism. Huntington thought something hopeful was afoot if the third wave was a Catholic wave.

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