Education

Once you understand the difficulty of the transition from ruling by the smart minority to democracy, the implication is obvious: The malfunction of democracy is not the problem of Chinese or Africans or any other ethnic group. The argument this group of people does not deserve a democratic system does not hold. It is a problem of education – or the lack of it.

In other words, when most of the people in a country do not have the chance of receiving an appropriate education, a sudden transition to a democratic system with general election would not work. These people have little idea about what to choose, and easily fall to the trap of bribery. That’s what happened in most Asian and African countries after they stopped being a colony and claimed independence.

PS. Japan is a notable exception because free education was provided to all children from the early phase of Meiji Restoration – quite some years before the system of election was introduced.