I don’t know enough about Pakistan to have an educated opinion on Musharraf’s decision to toss out the supreme court justices. Maybe this is an awful selfish decision that puts Musharraf’s interests above that of Pakistan. Maybe it is tough choice based on the realization that too much democracy would take the country in the wrong direction. I have no real clue. Frankly I’m sorta surprised that a government that seized power in a coup has allowed as many independent institutions as it has.

However, I find the assumption made by every US media source and public speaker that lack of democracy is ipso facto a violation of human rights or at least a bad thing to be totally fallacious. A quick look at the history of democracy will show that democracies have inflicted a great many injustices and often failed to bring about the improvements in individual welfare and protection from violence that we desire. In fact the economist magazine actually had a plausible analysis suggesting that democratic elections in Africa actually correlated with poor outcomes.

Democratic (or more accurately republican) government requires a great many prerequisites to successfully function. Not only does there need to be a strong civil service tradition in place to allow the government to function properly without strong top down control (including resisting attempts to corrupt future elections) but also a populace that is sufficiently educated to make reasonable decisions. Whether or not these conditions have been sufficiently met in any particular place to make democracy preferable to the other options is a very complex question that shouldn’t just be brushed under the rug with ra ra democracy rhetoric.