In this modern age we like to believe that all nations are capable of progressing to Scandinavian levels of state perfection. Sure Denmark and Norway aren't perfect but they’re an awful lot closer to perfection than say Somalia or the US.
But is this optimistic assumption really true?
Policy makers, political theorist and other people that make a living from the promise of being able to fundamentally reform developing countries would like to make us believe that it is.
But I don’t agree. I would posit that countries are indeed trapped by their own history, and virtually none escape.
In fact, I cannot think of a single modern state that has truly and completely departed from its traditional norm without a major change in ethnicity or being ruled by long period of time by a domineering colonial power, or in the case of the Arabian oil giants, having a huge supply of free money underneath their feet.
Why?
Well, I think we can all agree that cultural background is the largest single factor how a political system fares in a given country.
Cases of poorly matched political systems are abundant. Just in the last decade, democracy has been forced upon nations whose cultures are completely incompatible with it, and thus have resulted in complete trainwrecks of governments.
So then if political system’s success or failure in a given country is linked with culture, what is culture linked with?
Well, culture is, by definition, the result of historical events and conditions on a given ethnic group.
Ethnicity is pretty firm and fixed. Short of genocide, mass exodus, or mass intermarriage, the ethnicity of region will likely remain inert.
And major fundamental cultural changes in a given ethnicity are at best rare and incredibly slow.
So we come to the conclusion that short of a major change in the ethnic makeup of a given region, its effectiveness with a given (or ANY given) political system will remain unchanged.
In other words, successful nations with a proven record are usually perennial successful regardless of their political system (with the exception of extreme forms like North Korean communism, which usually prove short lived). And unsuccessful nations are perennial unsuccessful, regardless of their political system.
Now, I can see the responses already:
“What about China, South Korea, Argentina, or Italy and Greece?”
China, South Korea, and all the other “Asian Tigers” were all once successful countries prior to the modern period. Their failure to modernize in the Industrial Age was not so much a failure as a lack of exception success. East Asia was doing just fine by the standards of the past millennia. Their return to success in the postwar period is nothing more than a return to a historical norm.
Italy is not inhabited by ethnic Romans anymore, just as Greece is not inhabited by ethnic ancient Greeks. Expecting either country to match the exploits of people who weren’t even their ancestors is silly.
Argentina’s failure in the latter 20th century is more a case of not having enough data to set expectations. Argentina’s initial success was due mainly to the fact that it was largely “virgin”. It’s the only South American country with no significant native population prior to European colonization. So the abundant resources were easily exploited by the Spanish and German settlers. It’s like having massive oil reserves under your feet; it doesn’t take much to do well. Argentina as it is now is likely to be Argentina for the foreseeable future, unexceptional among other Latin American nations.
If you can think of another counter-example, let me know, we'll discuss.