From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Mon Mar 23 2009 - 08:28:09 EST
Book Review: 'Wars, Guns and Votes'
Reviewed by Kenneth Roth
Published: March 23, 2009
These days no self-respecting government wants to present itself on the
world stage without the legitimacy of a democratic mantle. Elections are now
de rigueur, even if many a despot rejects the idea of actually abiding by
voter preferences. The result is an embrace of "democracy" by such
authoritarian leaders as Vladimir Putin of Russia, Robert Mugabe of
Zimbabwe, Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia, Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan, Umaru
Yar'Adua of Nigeria and Mwai Kibaki of Kenya. They all have used some
combination of violence, fraud and repression to ensure that elections do
not threaten their grasp on power.
They get away with this charade in part because the Western democracies that
might be expected to demand the real thing have economic and strategic
incentives to settle for farce. Rather than insist on the elements of
democracy that make it meaningful a free press, a vigorous civil society,
the rule of law, a fair and transparent process for counting ballots they
close their eyes to electoral travesty.
It has long been an article of faith that these pseudodemocracies are
inherently unstable. When citizens have no real opportunity to select their
leaders, grievances fester, and violence may be close behind. But it is one
thing to know of this phenomenon, quite another to prove it. In "Wars, Guns,
and Votes," Paul Collier has set out to bring empirical rigor to our
intuitions. A professor of economics at Oxford, Mr. Collier examines the
governments of what, in an earlier book, he called the "bottom billion"
the world's 58 most impoverished countries. He undertakes this daunting task
by summarizing an array of sophisticated economic and social science
research, all in a folksy, accessible style. For those who want statistical
chapter and verse, he refers readers to his Web site
(users.ox.ac.uk/~econpco).
Mr. Collier's primary conclusion: democracy, in the superficial,
election-focused form that tends to prevail in these countries, "has
increased political violence instead of reducing it." Without rules,
traditions, and checks and balances to protect minorities, distribute
resources fairly and subject officials to the law, these governments lack
the accountability and legitimacy to discourage rebellion. The quest for
power becomes a "life-and-death struggle" in which "the contestants are
driven to extremes." Mr. Collier's data show that before an election,
warring parties may channel their antagonisms into politics, but that
violence tends to flare up once the voting is over. What's more, when
elections are won by threats, bribery, fraud and bloodshed, such so-called
democracies tend to promote bad governance, since the policies needed to
retain power are quite different from those needed to serve the common good.
Ethnic identification in the multiethnic societies that predominate among
the bottom billion is a particular impediment. Leaders have no incentive to
perform well, Collier explains, if voters cast ballots according to ethnic
loyalty rather than governmental competence. Nor should we be fooled into
thinking that democracy is working just because voters turn out in large
numbers. Where identity politics prevail, "voting is likely to be primarily
expressive," like "wearing a football scarf." It doesn't mean voters have
faith that their ballots will lead to more effective government. Besides,
because news organizations in these countries are weak and objective
information scarce, citizens probably don't even know how well or how badly
their leaders are performing.
To flourish among the bottom billion, Mr. Collier says, democracy must
"gradually erode ethnic identities and replace them with a national
identity." Economic development helps, but in societies riven by ethnic
divisions, it can simply increase the stakes to be parceled out among the
different groups. According to Mr. Collier, what is essentially needed are
visionary leaders who can build identification with the nation as a whole.
The West's mistaken fixation with elections, according to Mr. Collier, has
mainly to do with lingering Cold War habits. The Soviet dread of the ballot,
he writes, "confused us into thinking that achieving a competitive election
is in itself the key triumph. The reality is that rigging elections is not
daunting: only the truly paranoid dictators avoid them."
Still, electoral shortcomings in these countries do not mean we should give
up on democracy altogether. It's the cheap imitation that should give us
pause. As Mr. Collier explains, "democracy is a force for good" as long as
it is more than a "facade."
Mr. Collier's analysis is filled with interesting statistical tidbits. For
example, coups tend to cost a country 7 percent of a year's income "not a
cheap way of replacing a government," he notes. And international aid, by
sweetening the honey pot, increases the risk of a coup by roughly a third
when aid amounts to 4 percent of the gross domestic product of a recipient
nation. Leakage from international development assistance finances some 40
percent of military budgets, yet military spending doesn't necessarily bring
peace. Quite the opposite. It can jeopardize peace by signaling to potential
rebels that the government "is planning to turn nasty."
But Mr. Collier's news is not all bad. If democracy (in its limited form)
tends to increase political violence in the poorest countries, the opposite
occurs once per capita income reaches about $2,700. These wealthier voters
apparently expect more responsive governments, and are prone to revolt if
their expectations are dashed. Since China recently passed this income
threshold, the statistics suggest that it risks increasing political
violence unless it democratizes.
The weakest part of "War, Guns, and Votes" occurs when Mr. Collier turns
prescriptive. At the most general level, his recommendations are
unexceptionable: because electoral competition promotes antidemocratic
practices if there is no other accountability, the governments of the bottom
billion need help to be made more accountable. Yet Mr. Collier's solution is
questionable. He proposes that Western governments declare they will accept
military coups if elections are not fair. This, he argues, would provide a
powerful incentive for leaders to allow meaningful balloting. But
legitimizing coups in this way also risks substantial bloodshed.
By contrast, if an elected leader follows agreed-upon rules, Mr. Collier
wants the West to guarantee his government against overthrow. It should be
pointed out that Mr. Collier does not support military interventions to stop
mass atrocities the killing in Darfur, for example which he somewhat
callously dismisses as "distracting fantasies." But his suggestion that
Western militaries might roam the world putting down coups, even if only
against genuinely democratic leaders, seems dangerous and naοve. Mr. Collier
suggests that interventions in small, less-developed countries would be
relatively easy for a military trained for such exercises "not another
Iraq." Recent experience would lead us to think otherwise.
Mr. Collier is better at responding to the objection that he is advocating
interference in other nations' internal affairs. Many of the governments of
the bottom billion, made sensitive by their colonial heritages, reject any
international pressure as an affront to their sovereignty. But as Mr.
Collier points out, these governments typically do not really have national
sovereignty, since they have yet to develop a national identity or national
institutions. They have only "presidential sovereignty" hardly the same
thing, and hardly worth defending.
Whatever one's feelings about Mr. Collier's recommendations, there is no
denying that he has made a substantial contribution to current discussions.
His evidence-based approach is a worthwhile corrective to the assumptions
about democracy that too often tend to dominate when Western policy makers
talk about the bottom billion.
Wars, Guns, and Votes Democracy in Dangerous Places By Paul Collier 255
pages. Harper/HarperCollins Publishers. $26.99.
Kenneth Roth is the executive director of Human Rights Watch.