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Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. February 2, 2017. Xinhua SIPA USA/PA Images. All rights reserved.

Since the early 1990s, political elites have enthusiastically embraced the values and practices of democracy in the Americas. At the international level, this enthusiasm translated into collective commitments to defend democracy against its enemies, through specific instruments added to the legal frameworks of the regional organizations existing in the region. The tendency has continued in the new millennium as new organizations - such as the Union of South American Nations (Unasur) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) have also committed themselves to assist and, if necessary, to sanction those countries in which democracy is breached.

Liberal intellectuals and politicians were quick (maybe too quick) to interpret these regional developments as further proof of the consolidation of democracy in the western hemisphere. Yet, it is worth taking a more careful look at this phenomenon, especially in a phase in which illiberal democracies, competitive authoritarian and truly authoritarian regimes seem to be coming to stay, at least for a while, alongside traditional democracies in the Americas and in Europe.

Which democracy should be protected?

There is no single, uncontested definition of what democracy is. As we showed together with Carlos Closa and Pablo Castillo in a study published by the EU-LAC Foundation, the understanding of what democracy is varies a great deal between and within regional organizations. Negotiating among 28 national governments (in the European Union) or 35 (in the Organization of American States, OAS) what democracy means and, conversely, which types of actions constitute a democratic breach can be a daunting task. The solution found in most regional organizations in Latin America, but also in Europe, has been to keep the definition imprecise, thus making the collective commitment to democracy an incomplete contract.

Certainly, there are different degrees of imprecision, and there are also different ways of being imprecise. In the Americas, the Inter-American Democratic Charter of the OAS, for instance, stands out as a relatively precise instrument spelling out in several articles what democracy means. During the drafting of the Charter, there was a conflict between two conceptions: while most delegations defended the concept of representative democracy, the Venezuelan delegation strove for introducing the notion of participatory democracy. The former prevailed, but in a broad conception encompassing elements from the latter such as political participation, as well as other socially-progressive elements such as gender equality.

The instruments of the Andean Community (CAN), the Central American Integration System (SICA) and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) are far less precise. CANs Additional Protocol does not define democracy altogether. Yet, this was not an impediment to define the sanctions against non-democratic behaviour. SICA and CARICOM, in turn, are imprecise, not because they are too austere (like CAN) but, on the contrary, because they are too ambitious: these organizations list a large number of values and principles without explicitly connecting them to the definition of democracy or to explicit procedures about what to do when those principles are violated.

Imprecision may be considered an institutional shortcoming. Indeed, it is in many ways. However, it is also functional for those who must enforce those instruments, namely the national governments. Lets recall that unlike human right protection systems in which there are autonomous judicial institutions (e.g. the Inter-American Court of Human Rights), democracy protection rules are interpreted and enforced by the governments themselves. Hence, the incumbent governments enjoy a wide room for maneuver and discretion when rules are imprecise, and they can decide when and how to enforce them. Furthermore, the lack of precise rules paves the way for bringing power and ideological considerations to the negotiation table, as when Argentines and Brazilians decided to enforce democracy-protection rules and suspend Paraguay from Mercosur, while simultaneously approving the accession of Venezuela, hitherto blocked by the Paraguayan parliament.

Who is the victim, who is the offender

Democracy must be defended, but against whom? And who must be protected? Who embodies democracy? These issues are easier to solve in a human rights protection system, since there is a list of rights to be protected and because those rights are embodied in individuals that can resort to the judicial bodies with human right jurisdiction, national or international.

All this becomes significantly blurrier when we deal with the defense of democracy, not only because the definition is imprecise, but also because it is not clear who is the victim of a violation of democracy and to whom the victim (whoever he, she or it is) should resort for relief. If we analyze the design and the cases where the instruments for democracy protection in Latin America have been enforced, it is not hard to realize that there is a strong bias towards conceiving incumbent governments as the victims. This is largely explained by the fact that Latin American states are all presidential regimes, and also because of the long history of coups dtat in the region. As long as presidents have been democratically elected, any attempt to remove them by unconstitutional means is automatically considered a democratic breach. The Heads of State and Government (the executive branch) are therefore the natural victims, but what about the other branches of the State and the civil society organizations?

The bias towards the incumbent makes most regional organizations in the Americas prone to become government-protection rather than democracy-protection mechanisms as Carlos Closa and myself have argued elsewhere. That being said, the recent history of the region shows that this bias can take quite different forms depending on the political context. We can identify three distinct moments since early 1990s, when the first regional commitments to protect democracy were made: the liberal, the post-liberal, and the one we are entering now, which it is perhaps too early to baptize.

The liberal moment (1988-2001)

In this first juncture, most countries were exiting from military regimes (South America) or from civil war (Central America). The transition to democracy was underpinned by a wide pro-democracy international movement supported by the United States and the European Union, both engaged in promoting liberal democracy and liberal market economies in their respective backyards: Latin America and Eastern Europe. Democracy was the spirit of the time, and Latin American governments were happy to show off their democratic credentials in all possible forums, including regional organizations, which became clubs of democracies.

Determining who the victim was, and who the offender, was a relatively easy task during the liberal moment. Latin American governments believed that the victims of authoritarian backslidings were the new unstable democracies, such as Haiti, Paraguay and Bolivia. The governments of equally young democracies such as Argentina, Brazil and Chile considered their countries to be lands where democracy was already the only game in town, and they therefore supported the collective commitment to protect democracy in their unstable brother countries. The offenders of democracy were, of course, the military still politically active in these unstable democracies, and the collective instrument to protect democratic regimes took the shape of democratic clauses that were supposed to discourage ruthless generals from carrying out coups. The Protocol of Washington (OAS), the Protocol of Ushuaia (Mercosur) and the Framework Treaty on Democratic Security (SICA), the latter with a stronger security component, were cases in point of liberal instruments of democracy protection.

I would argue that the liberal moment ended with the adoption of the Inter-American Democratic Charter (OAS), hastily approved on 9/11, 2001. The Charter, in fact, was already inspired by a different type of offenders, such as Alberto Fujimori and his self-coup and therefore represents an institutional evolution compared to the previous democratic clauses.

The post-liberal moment (2002-2013)

Following Jos Antonio Sanahuja, we can call the decade that followed the adoption of the Democratic Charter post-neoliberal as it was characterized by governments ideologically at odds with the ones in the 1990s. Left-leaning governments came to office with political programs oriented to reforming, in a more or less radical way, established social and economic structures, thus fueling political opposition. Whereas in some cases opposition was canalized through institutional channels, in others it took the shape of traditional coups (e.g. Venezuela in 2002, Honduras in 2009, Ecuador in 2010). Yet, in other cases, political opposition took on a hybrid nature, neither fully respectful of institutional channels nor following the model of the traditional coup dtat, for which the democratic clauses had been designed (e.g. Nicaragua in 2004, Bolivia in 2005 and 2008, Ecuador in 2005, Paraguay in 2012).

Left-leaning governments contended that they had become the new victim of anti-democratic actions, especially under the subtle shape of a new threat: the so-called institutional or soft coups articulated by reactionary forces opposing social change. And left-leaning governments made their case, as they had indeed very good examples. They demanded and designed more adequate democratic clauses, better adapted to the new scenario. The Protocol of Georgetown (Unasur, 2010) and the Protocol of Montevideo-Ushuaia II (Mercosur, 2011) were designed to respond not only to flagrant coups, but also to the threat of breach against the democratic order - a category under which institutional coups could easily fit. More importantly, these new democratic clauses sharpened their teeth by providing a list of sanctions including not only the suspension from the organization, but also harsh economic and diplomatic sanctions against the states in which a coup hard or soft would take place.

The illiberal moment (since 2013)

The dead of Venezuelan President Hugo Chvez and the controversial election of his appointed successor Nicols Maduro open a new phase in the short history of collective democracy protection in Latin America. As it happened in the late 1990s with the neoliberal governments, the economic crisis (with the help of domestic mismanagement) is now eroding the political support of leftist leaders. As a consequence, centre-right governments are coming to power through elections (like Mauricio Macri in Argentina), or not (like Michel Temer, after the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff in Brazil).

Why is this period different from the previous ones? Not only because the arguable change in the ideological position of several key governments in the region but, more importantly, because the questions of who is the victim and who is the offender of democracy are being answered in a different way. Certainly, some left-leaning governments can still claim that they are being object of soft coups - like Nicols Maduro, who has been claiming this throughout his entire mandate. However, the Venezuelan crisis has shown that civil society can also claim to be the victim of the non-democratic behavior of an elected government, and resort to regional organizations to demand democracy protection.

As Andrs Malamud has convincingly argued, the list of proofs supporting Nicols Maduros authoritarian turn is long: the shutdown of press, the violation of civil and political rights, the imprisonment of political adversaries, etc. For more than two years after the election of Maduro, the regional organizations (especially the OAS and Unasur) were paralyzed in their incapacity to determine who is the victim: was it the elected government threatened by an orchestrated soft-coup? Or is it (some parts of) civil society, threatened by an increasingly authoritarian government? The OAS was quickly fended-off by Maduros government, while Unasur languished after an exhausting mediation process in which it was accused by many national and international actors of taking the governments side. This accusation reflects the already mentioned strong structural bias of Latin American regional organizations towards protecting the incumbent.

The pro-incumbent bias was challenged, though, when in July 2016 the general secretary of the OAS Lus Almagro, former foreign minister of Uruguay, initiated the procedures to activate the democratic clause of the organization against the Venezuelan government. Almagro began his intervention with a remarkable exhortation to the national representatives: The OAS must know today whether its Democratic Charter is a strong instrument to defend the principles of democracy, or if it is to be shelved in the archives of the organization. Please, have your say. Although the clause has not been applied to Venezuela so far, this intervention is of great significance since, without breaking the pro-incumbent bias, it has at least unveiled the tensions surrounding it.

Protecting democracy in illiberal times

What will be the future role of regional organizations as defenders of democracy in Latin America? One can suggest scenarios. We can certainly say that Latin American governments are not locked into any pre-established path towards democratic consolidation, as some liberal scholars suggested decades ago. The collective commitment to democracy took the form of a highly incomplete contract that left governments a wide space in which to accommodate future political uncertainty. Today, this uncertainty comes not only from the region, but also - and perhaps mostly - from outside. Whereas during the liberal moment democracy seemed to be the spirit of the time spreading from the US and Europe to the rest of the world, the contemporary political discourse in the US and in Europe is dominated by discussions concerning citizen inequality, the exclusion of minorities, and the return of racism and nativism as legitimate discourses in the public sphere.

The optimistic scenario involves a process of gradual completion of the democratic-contract through instruments which define more precisely and widen the concept of democracy by accepting, for instance, that not only incumbents, but also the demos can be the victim of a violation of democracy committed by a democratically elected government. This optimistic scenario would imply, among other things, conferring a more relevant role to the supra-state bodies of the organization in deciding when and how to apply these mechanisms. During the liberal and the post-liberal moments, the governments worked out a basic consensus about the democratic commitment. This consensus will be hard to maintain in the years to come, as the ideological spectrum of governments becomes more heterogenous in the region and the US seem less interested in endorsing liberal values. However, in the optimistic scenario, this lack of basic consensus might offer an opportunity to come up with a more precise roadmap namely, higher precision in the definitions and rules and, perhaps, more delegation of competences from the governments to more independent bodies. Of course, this will only be possible if there is a regional leadership filling the gap that, at least under the last four administrations (including the current one), the US has seemed unwilling to fill.

The pessimistic scenario starts from the same premises but draws different conclusions. The lack of consensus and the emergence of cases of political distress that cannot be easily classified as coups, will inhibit governments in making use of the regional organizations and their democracy protection instruments. The fact that, for the first time since the OAS adopted a democratic commitment, a US government could be pursuing policies at odds with the organizations own definition of democracy shows the levels of uncertainty that the governments of the region, as well the regional organizations, are facing. And uncertainty together with a lack of an alternative leadership from a Mexico, too attached to the North, and a Brazil too domestically troubled, will most probably breed paralysis - in which case, the General Secretary Almagros warning might become real: the democratic clauses will be shelved in the archives of the organizations at least for a while.

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Defending democracy in Latin America but which democracy? - Open Democracy

More than 41 million Indonesians will get the chance on Wednesday to join the festival of democracy in the elections across 101 regions, but all eyes are on the Jakarta election, with much at stake for Indonesian democracy.

Analysts have said the electoral process in Jakarta will not only affect the capital but also the national political process gearing up to the 2019 presidential election, with political elites taking part in the three-horse race.

Candidate pair Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono-Sylviana Murni has former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Incumbent pair Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama-Djarot Saiful Hidayat has ruling Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) chairwoman Megawati Soekarnoputri, while Anies Baswedan-Sandiaga Uno has Prabowo Subianto, the archrival of President Jokowi during the 2014 election.

2017 Regional Elections: What's at stake?(The Jakarta Post/File)

Hendri Satrio, political expert from Paramadina University, said what happened in the 2014 presidential election with the rise of President Joko Jokowi Widodo from a governor to a president had given people strong reason to believe that the Jakarta election would play an important role on deciding the political climate in the next presidential election.

Hendri said even though the three candidates had promised not to be tempted by the opportunity to run for president, in politics anything could happen.

Just look at Jokowi, he said he did not want to run in 2014 but the facts show otherwise, he said.

Whoever wins the Jakarta gubernatorial election will change political play at the national level, but the Jakarta race is more than electoral politics because Ahok, a double minority with his Christian and Chinese-descent background, has opened a Pandoras box of sectarian sentiment.

A controversial figure with vocal supporters and haters, Ahok inspired two large rallies in which hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets. Led by firebrand clerics such as Rizieq Shihab of the Islam Defenders Front (FPI) and Bachtiar Nasir of the Family of Love Alliance (AILA), the rally participants demanded the prosecution of Ahok.

(Read also: Meet the faceless volunteers of electoral democracy)

Hendri said there was a possibility of uproar and more protests if Ahok retained his position. Conservative groups, he said, could exploit the blasphemy case and anti-Ahok sentiment for their own cause if Ahok won the election.

The Jakarta election has paved the way for public debate on the meaning of diversity, tolerance and democracy in Indonesia, with each camp claiming their own definition and concept.

While public debate online and offline has shown robust discussion, has the hullabaloo meant anything to Indonesian democracy?

A political scientist from the University of Indonesia, Dirga Adiansa, offered his insight about how the electoral process in Jakarta would improve Indonesias democracy, or not.

He said the Jakarta election showed democracy was merely treated as a process of electing a leader. It is only a vehicle for voters to voice their choice of leader, and convince others to choose the same one, Dirga said Tuesday.

Democracy, he said, should be about mapping common problems, voicing collective needs, aggregating residents interests, or a tool in which residents demanded what they should get and should not get from their leaders.

Jakarta gubernatorial candidate Anies Baswedan (center), his wife Fery Farhati Ganis (left) and daughter Mutiara Annisa Baswedan (right) show the ballots at the Cilandak Barat 28 polling station in Jakarta on Wednesday.(Antara/M Agung Rajasa)

The process today, with all the noise coming from voters publicly supporting and campaigning for their own champion, makes citizens forget that they should be critical of their leaders, he said.

There is nothing substantial [for democracy] in relation to such a process, said Dirga.

On Wednesday, more than 41.2 million people in seven provinces, 18 municipalities and 76 regencies will vote for their leader for the next five years. The

Rp 4.3 trillion (US$322.5) event will see 310 pairs contesting.

In Jakarta, a number of media outlets have announced they will show quick counts on Wednesday. Among them are The Jakarta Post, Net TV, Liputan 6, Kompas, detik.com and ANTV.

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Elections to define democracy's new course - Jakarta Post

By Jutarat Skulpichetrat | CHONBURI, Thailand

CHONBURI, Thailand The most senior U.S. officer to visit Thailand since a 2014 coup emphasized the importance of restoring democracy on Tuesday as he launched the annual Cobra Gold military exercise.

The United States scaled down its presence at Asia's largest annual multinational military exercise as one of the former U.S. administration's steps to pressure the junta.

With ties improving even before President Donald Trump took office, activists had voiced concern that Washington would put less focus on democratic change in a region where it faces an increasingly forceful China.

"We look forward to Thailand's re-emergence as a flourishing democracy because we need Thailand to be a strong and stable partner," said Admiral Harry Harris, head of U.S. Pacific Command, which covers about half the earth's surface.

"We need Thailand to get back to being the regional and global leader that it always has been."

Harris will later meet junta leader Prayuth Chan-ocha in Bangkok.

Harris's attendance was planned before the inauguration of Trump, whose policy moves on Asia are closely watched after signals of potential confrontation with China over trade and territory.

In the face of the U.S. measures to push for democracy, Thailand has strengthened military coorperation with China.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said the change in relations with Thailand marked a worrisome shift given the military's grip on power and the arrests of activists and opponents of army rule.

"It appears Pentagon policymakers are intent on using Cobra Gold as a way to reboot U.S. military engagement with their Thai counterparts," wrote John Sifton of the advocacy group in an opinion piece that first appeared in the Washington Post.

The Thai junta held a referendum last year on a constitution to allow a general election. It is expected next year.

On Tuesday, the military government was also due to start meetings with political groups on national reconciliation ahead of the election. Parties have welcomed the idea, but questioned whether the generals can be fair.

Thailand has hosted the Cobra Gold war games since they began in 1982. This year's event will be attended by more than 8,300 personnel from 29 countries. Among them will be about 3,600 from the United States.

(Editing by Matthew Tostevin)

SEOUL South Korea's special prosecutor's office said on Tuesday it would again seek a warrant to arrest Samsung Group chief Jay Y. Lee, a suspect in a graft investigation that may topple President Park Geun-hye.

ANKARA Turkey-backed rebels have largely taken control of the Syrian town of al-Bab from Islamic State militants, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Tuesday.

BEIJING Top Chinese officials need to "build a fence" to ensure neither they nor those around them abuse power, and must practice greater self-discipline, state media cited President Xi Jinping as saying as he drives home his anti-corruption message.

More:
US admiral stresses democracy at Thai war games - Reuters

HONG KONG A Hong Kong court found seven police officers guilty on Tuesday of beating a handcuffed pro-democracy activist during demonstrations in 2014, a rare incident of police brutality in the financial hub that triggered public outrage.

The 79 days of student-led protests paralyzed parts of Hong Kong and posed one of the greatest challenges to the central government in Beijing in decades.

But Beijing gave no grounds on demands for greater democracy and resentment among some residents of the city, which enjoys a significant degree of autonomy, has simmered ever since.

The trial centered on an incident on Oct. 15, 2014, at the height of the protests.

A group of police officers was filmed dragging a protester, Ken Tsang, to a dark corner by a pumping substation next to the protest site, where he was kicked and punched. The officers were later suspended from duty.

District court judge David Dufton said in a written summary that all seven officers were "guilty of assault occasioning actual bodily harm", but were found not guilty of the more serious charge of causing grievous bodily harm.

"The court was satisfied that by carrying Tsang to the substation where he was dumped on the ground and immediately assaulted, the only inference to draw was that Tsang was carried ... to be assaulted," Dufton wrote in a summary of the verdict.

Tsang, a social worker, suffered face, neck and shoulder injuries. He was handcuffed with plastic zip ties at the time, though the court heard he had earlier thrown some liquid at police.

Two senior officers among the seven convicted had not taken part in the assault directly, Dufton said, but should have been duty-bound "to prevent the commission of a crime, even by fellow police officers." Instead they had encouraged the others to carry out "unlawful personal violence" on Tsang, he added.

The seven men, who had pleaded not guilty, appeared in suits and ties and showed no emotion when the verdict was read. Several of Tsang's supporters cheered in the public gallery.

Outside the court, Tsang's supporters were heckled by a group of about 70 people who chanted "support our police".

The court did not give a date for sentencing. Under Hong Kong law, they could be jailed for up to three years.

Heavy-handed policing is rare in Hong Kong and the case triggered public outrage and deepened tension during the protests in which clashes occasionally erupted.

Tsang told Reuters he needed to consider the verdict before making a statement.

Hong Kong reverted from British to Chinese rule in 1997 under a "one country, two systems" formula that accords the city a degree of autonomy and freedom not enjoyed in mainland China.

China bristles at dissent, however, especially over issues such as demands for universal suffrage.

Many in Hong Kong are increasingly concerned about what they see as Beijing's meddling in city affairs. Unease about the city's future has stoked protests and has even led to calls for independence from China.

(Writing by James Pomfret; Editing by Robert Birsel)

SEOUL South Korea's special prosecutor's office said on Tuesday it would again seek a warrant to arrest Samsung Group chief Jay Y. Lee, a suspect in a graft investigation that may topple President Park Geun-hye.

ANKARA Turkey-backed rebels have largely taken control of the Syrian town of al-Bab from Islamic State militants, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Tuesday.

BEIJING Top Chinese officials need to "build a fence" to ensure neither they nor those around them abuse power, and must practice greater self-discipline, state media cited President Xi Jinping as saying as he drives home his anti-corruption message.

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Seven Hong Kong policemen guilty of assault on pro-democracy activist - Reuters

Is there really a Beijing Model of governance: authoritarian politics steering economic growth, diluting the appeal of the West's democracy and freedom? The ruler of China thinks so. He's focused on sticking around and seeing it triumph.

Xi Jinping is the first Chinese Communist leader to have been born after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. He did not study or spend early years abroad like most predecessors. Deng Xiaoping, who ruled in the 1980s, studied in France and the Soviet Union after World War I; Jiang Zemin, who ruled in the 1990s, studied in Philadelphia. Only Mao Zedong, prior to Xi, reached maturity before glimpsing the foreign world. For Mao, that meant Moscow; for Xi, born in 1953, it was a 1985 trip to the cornfields of Iowa. Is he then a nationalist, like some other recently installed world leaders?

Very much so. Xi knows grassroots China, county-level China, and province-level China. He lived in Henan, Fujian, and Zhejiang provinces as a local official, and in Shaanxi as a "family victim" of the zealous Cultural Revolution. Beijing, as well as the non-Chinese world, was a late stop for Xi. He's a local politician, newly endowed with global vision, now essential for a Beijing leader in light of China's rise. Unlike his brilliant premier, Li Keqiang, who is left to languish these days, Xi condescends to the West and thinks "small" countries in Asia should defer to "big" China.

Xi wants to reclaim the East China Sea (from Japan) and the South China Sea (from Vietnam, Philippines, and others) and push into Africa. He says the European Union, home of ancient Western civilization, is a natural partner for China, core of ancient Eastern civilization. This East-West pairing will shape "global governance," he implies. Never mind Uncle Sam.

The Chinese president and his advisers assert an intriguing interrelation between their internal politics and global trends. Besides challenging the West on Asia's oceans and in Africa's infrastructure, Xi has started a skirmish on its sacred home ground of democracy. A choice exists, he suggests, between election democracy (the West) and evaluation democracy (China and a growing list of others). The "China Dream" of Beijing's evaluation democracy will become the world's leading pattern of governance, he seems to believe, for it avoids chaos and corruption.

Evaluation democracy, a term coined by Chinese scholar Chen Fangren, is Eastern meritocracy. Leaders are chosen from a holy circle at the top, based on "virtue and ability." These officeholders must then listen to public opinion as it "evaluates" their performance from below.

The West's election democracy "requires only one-time consent by votes to form a government for the duration of its term," according to Chen; leaders are chosen by universal suffrage, but between elections they may or may not listen to grassroots views. When left-wing Americans lose an election, for example, their inclination is to pick up their marbles and turn to street politics, strikes, and litigation. In parallel fashion, some proud conservatives prefer purity on the sidelines to the compromises required for electoral victory.

Xi has used "the top" to co-opt Chinese public opinion since taking power in 2012. He has won praise by firing thousands of senior military and civil officials for corruption. He has laid out fresh domestic and foreign policy ideas, month after month, with a speed and confidence unmatched since Deng. He snipes at the West's messy "multiparty system," touting China's one-party system. Will this backfire on him, as it did on the once-cocky Soviet bloc?

As recently as a decade ago, Americans overwhelmingly favored election democracy, because of its fixed rules. Barack Obama's acerbic quip to Eric Cantor in early 2009, "Elections have consequences," when Democrats and Republicans argued about Obamacare, seemed like gospel. But today in the United States, across the Atlantic, and in Japan, Australia, and other democracies, constant and inaccurate polls, media barrages, the centrality of personality, and enormous sums of money have reduced faith in elections.

The Chinese scholar Chen finds the magic of evaluation democracy in 4,000 years of Chinese history. "Continuous consent to govern" allows emperors and politicians alike to "focus on proper results for the common good" and not the grand opera of multiparty struggles. "Average people" are too busy with their private lives to "take on the heavy burden" of selecting leaders "fit for office."

But continuous consent to rule in evaluation democracy has been (in Chinese history) and is (anywhere) tricky to pull off. In today's China, meddling by "retired" leaders is a major barrier to "citizen evaluation" of current leaders. Cronyism will have its pound of flesh. Chen fails to see how often power struggles creep into his dreamland of continuous consent. Thousands of years of Chinese politics have had, on a per-century basis, no less contention and violence than have centuries of politics in the United States. Chen clings to an ideal that in history worked only occasionally: He lamely admits China was "lucky to have good emperors" from time to time over millennia.

The Beijing Model, as I call the current no-elections version, "leaves the selection of a government to government leaders themselves, who have in-depth knowledge of each other" and know "what it takes to be an effective leader." This sounds like the objections raised inside Republican circles to outsider Donald Trump and Democratic circles to Bernie Sanders before the presidential election. It is a dualism, with a magical circle at the top and eruptions outside it, as old as Chen's 4,000 years of Chinese realpolitik and as young as John Quincy Adams's efforts to knife Andrew Jackson.

One frequent Chinese critique of Western elections flunked in 2016: "The rich always win." Actually, they don't. Nelson Rockefeller (1968) and Edward Kennedy (1980) did not become president despite overwhelming wealth; Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter, respectively, with far less money, beat them. Loser Hillary Clinton dramatically outspent winner Trump in November; the bubble of wealth burst in her hands as her coast-to-coast grin did service for policy ideas.

Electoral victory quite often goes to an "outside" or "common sense" candidate, whether good or bad, rather than a wealthy one. Few in the Beijing establishment understand this. Yet in 2016 the Chinese man and woman in the street had a different instinct, sniffing condescension at home and abroad. Anecdotal evidence, including from my own stay in September, indicates millions of "old hundred names" (lao bai xing, unnamed folk) favored Trump.

One Chinese adviser to Xi Jinping writes in a book I am editing that after communism's collapse, "East European countries chose the Western mode and allowed various interest groups to build their own parties. In China, however, political openness comes from the inside." Time will tell how far political openness that comes (and goes) from the top can proceed.

A workaday-style leader, Xi Jinping is amiable in manner, fresh in social policy, bleak in cultural policy, torn in economic policy between market forces and Communist supervision, and adventurist in foreign policy. It is a volatile cocktail. If the Beijing Model fails, Xi's descent would be a minor part of the crisis. But we must admit that hope for the Democratic World model under George W. Bush (which I shared) has shriveled. What remains? Certainly not Wilsonian idealism, either conservative or liberal in inspiration. Its revival in recent decades under Bush and Obama brought few benefits to U.S. interests.

Power politics under American leadership is what Donald Trump should pursue. Our foreign policy gurus chatter about a list of issues (North Korea has topped it for 11 frozen years). But our to-do list is utterly at variance with Beijing's shrewder realpolitik.

Today, for example, Xi Jinping is beaming at the EU and slightly smiling at the United States while squeezing Japan, Australia, Canada, and other U.S. allies. Details don't matter to Xi compared with this balance of power; thus China's bemused level-headedness over the phone chat between Trump and Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen, which sent America's not-so-very intelligentsia reaching for the bottle. The United States has never believed in, or been good at, multilateralism with Washington posing as one capital just like all the rest.

Nevertheless, the fixed schedules and term limits of election democracy lend a steady beat of certainty to our choice of leaders and policies. This otherwise messy sequence is surely better than the everlasting groping of so-called evaluation democracy. Our Sinologists exit Davos and the Council on Foreign Relations saying China is being integrated into the liberal international order. The Chinese elite in Beijing have different ideas.

Ross Terrill is chief editor of Xi Jinping's China Renaissance, forthcoming in Beijing, and the author of Mao, The New Chinese Empire, and Madame Mao. His next book is Mao as a Boy.

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Xi Jinping's Version of Democracy | The Weekly Standard - The Weekly Standard