Democracies don't let people die

Tectonic plates in motion don't distinguish between democracies and autocracies, but the record shows that getting hit by an earthquake or cyclone in an authoritarian government is a high-risk proposition for the survivors. [Consider these examples...

• Communist China's Tangshan earthquake of 1976: 255,000 dead.
• Managua under Somoza 1972: at least 5,000 dead.
• Mexico City's 1985 earthquake under the PRI government: 9,500 dead.
• Soviet Armenia 1988: 25,000 dead.
• Iran, 2003: 31,000 dead.]

Common to all is that their governments never held real elections. In such places, after nature kills people, delay and incompetence kill the rest. Set aside idealism and the flowery rhetoric that must accompany a statement like the 2002 Bush Doctrine. The bottom line is accountability. In democracies, even poor or imperfect ones, public pressure, even outrage, pushes elected officials to act. In nondemocracies, the politicians don't give a damn because they don't have to.

There are no angels in politics. Absent accountability, though, a nation's people are at permanent risk. Democracy's greatest value may well be the average politician's cynical compulsion to survive the next election.

-- Daniel Henninger, online.wsj.com, 5/15/08