Via Counterpoint last week I heard about the new book by Paul Collier entitled Wars, guns and votes. Collier, an African specialist, is concerned about solutions rather than simply investigating problems. Discussing his ideas about solutions really requires reading the book. I found his ideas about how power, poverty and level of economic development relate to democracy and authoritarianism intriguing.
What Collier found in brief outline is that below a per capita GDP of $2,700 the adoption of democratic forms actually leads to more violence, civil strife, corruption and indeed civil war than democracy.
Above that level authoritarian forms of government are more likely to lead to strife. Beware China which passed that level some little while ago. On this list China comes in at $6,000. There are 59 countries below $2,700.
Democracy is quite popular in the “poor billion” but Collier says that rigging elections is distressingly easy.
I found the ideas of building a national identity as against ethnic or tribal identities intriguing.
It seems to me that when economic development reaches a certain point the state begins to have genuine options about instituting services for the general good. Below that level, with the general situation hopeless, the temptation of securing scarce resources for a narrower group or collection of individuals seems overwhelming. Internal capital accumulation also becomes easier. Special programs can be considered to address the problems of disadvantaged groups. The state can provide nurturing services as well as providing the institutions necessary for justice, law and the reserve power to preserve civil peace.
There are quite a few reviews on the net. I found the best was in the New York Times. Here’s an excerpt:
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.”
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.
Of the rest The Independent may be worth a look. Collier also has his own site.
It is interesting to contemplate whether democracy is able as a political form to meet the challenge of climate change. Ronald Wright in his Masey Lectures back in 2004 argued that in fact democracy was our only hope. In the past elites have chosen to look after their own interests to the exclusion of the many when the situation became serious. Unfortunately for them, they couldn’t continue to retain their privileged state without looking after the masses on whom their wealth and position depended.
But perhaps a necessary condition is building an identity the includes the whole human race and respects the right of other species to survive in manner to which they have become accustomed.
Not everyone likes his statistical approach: http://postconflicted.blogspot.com/2009/05/whither-causation.html
and see http://blogs.nyu.edu/fas/dri/aidwatch/2009/05/top_10_reasons_to_test_war_gun.html
There are 59 countries below $2,700.
A counterexample, but a big counterexample: India. Now it’s just above the cut-off at $2800; it would have been a lot lower 10 years ago (even when correcting for inflation).
Funny old country – being the poor multi-ethnic place it is, India should have had its first coup in the 50s if Collier’s thesis holds true. Yet 61 or 62 years after independence, it keeps ticking along as a democracy; it even held elections over the last couple of weeks.
I wonder how easy it is to institute democracy in a place that’s rife with tribal emnity (courtesy of the British empire a lot of times)?
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I also wonder whether we’re going to see democracy emerging China soon. There’re liberals in the politburo who envisage a transition some time in the next decade but there’s also a small but significant ‘return to Mao’ cult as well.
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And they’re about to learn the downside of Capitalism. Or are they?
Well, I suppose I should keep an open mind – just being featured on Counterpoint doesn’t mean that something is automatically wrong…
Tom, that’s interesting. Not everyone likes his proposed solutions either.
Down and out, I was thinking of India too. But he’d say there always exceptions, as he does with Indonesia’s ability to establish a national identity.
Helen, yes, sometimes Counterpoint has some good segments if you can ignore the attitudes and tone of the hosts. And even if Collier’s thesis is wrong, it’s neat and is likely to be accepted by many.
‘It seems to me that when economic development reaches a certain point the state begins to have genuine options about instituting services for the general good’
This is wrong. Basic healthcare and education are available for a very low price, particularly education which is human capital intensive (therefore as everyones poor the cost is low). Plenty of poor economies have succeeded in provided basic services in the past, see costa rica, kerala in India, china etc. Low income is not an insurmountable impediment to the provision of basic services.
That makes sense, stuart.
Brian, you’re assuming that the only solutions to climate change come by government fiat, that we all have to wait around for a Five Year Plan and then join a Re-Education Session on how we can all and each Do Our Bit. This is the exact opposite to the message by those who don’t sit around idly wondering about climate change and tacking it onto unrelated articles, namely that competing views and different emphases are not necessarily bad things, and that denialists need not be insurmountable.
Democracy hasn’t come easy to anyone, inside Africa or beyond it. From the grifters at Brimbank to the Eurocrats stirring up apathy and imposing it, it’s a journey rather than a destination and the idea that it should be a) trashed or b) deemed “too hard” and oh, lets talk about climate change.
Weakest book review in the history of books, Africa and anything else. How about those Sharks eh, or have we tired of throwing in a red herring just before the end of our posts?
Andrew E, that’s pretty snarky as I perceive it. There are so many misunderstandings that I’ll leave it for now. Just to say, in case that’s what you mean, that my post wasn’t intended to be a review. I don’t review books I clearly haven’t read.
I think the problem re. climate change is that democracy cannot cope with issues that wont really hit us for a number of decades. Most of those that will be affected dont get a vote (and arent even born). Young people at the moment are hugely in favour of action on climate change, as they know that it will directly impact them, but its an intergenerational issue and as such will be hard to address.
Also Andrew E, climate change is clearly a government issue, being the biggest case of market failure in history.
I think it’s Andrew talking to his neighbour over the fence and 192 nations meeting at Copenhagen in December and just about everything in between.
If as Gwynne Dyer suggests one of the early manifestations is going to be irresolvable food crises and national conflicts over water, let alone mass migrations, it has the potential to go very pear-shaped. What we don’t need is a largish rogue state or a state that can’t honour the international agreements it signs up to because of internal division.
It is a brave person who tries to create order from the mess that is Africa. It is easy for us to forget that the civilising (modernising, detribalising) of Europe took many hundreds of years. Africa is just part way down that road. Africa’s path has not been an easy one as it has been used by the northern cultures as a source of human (and animal) slaves for thousands of years, and very agressively in the last few hundred. And the peoples of Africa have been brutalised in the most horrific ways by history’s scourges such as
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_II_of_Belgium
, and the French were just as bad. And it is still goes on
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/may/13/trafigura-ivory-coast-documents-toxic-waste
, and just as the abused child becomes the abuser, horrors such as
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Kony
carry the trauma forward. So considering the historical backdrop that frames Africa, Collier is brave to attempt to make some sense of that troubled land. I imagine that his conclusions are more relevent to Africa today than they are to the rest of the world .
I remember another observation made of Mexico, which summised that given 80% literacy, freedom of speech, and 20 years (give or take some), you get democracy.
We can only try to make order from the chaos.
Young people at the moment are hugely in favour of action on climate change, as they know that it will directly impact them, but its an intergenerational issue and as such will be hard to address.
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Oh yes they are hugely in favour of it, whilst at the very same time, they casually throw tons of garbage onto the streets leaving nearby bins half empty cause it’s, like, soooo far to walk.
There’s a legitimate question as to whether democracy can cope with climate change, given the long timelines involved. What isn’t really in question is that authoritarian systems can’t.
Check out the dictatorships of the world. Any of them doing anything about Climate Change? Well China is making some efforts, but that is about it. On the other hand, you have the example of the Maldives – a dictatorship sat on its hands for 30 years, then you get the first democratic government and within months they’re taking action, both to halt their contribution to the problem, and to protect their people from it.
One would wonder whether there is a connection with corruption in there somewhere.
Gross corruption leads to increasing differentials between the haves and have nots – presumably one driver of dissatisfaction.
When the have nots have so little that they have nothing to lose and perhaps something to gain out of A Kalashnikov’s little invention, AND a cogent story to morally support their use of said invention – it does tend to complement Collier’s approach.
Having looked at the links provided by Tom D @ 1 it still seems to me that as a generalisation it may be said that poor nation states do not provide a setting conducive to genuine democracy.
Also empty or fake democracy in poor states is not conducive to development.
On climate change, back in late 2007 I read two reports on security and climate change. One, an American report by competent people, was pessimistic about democratic forms holding up even in advanced economies. In the EU there was an automatic assumption that the other countries would abandon The Netherlands if it suffered significant inundation.
The German report was assuming an increased risk of state failure in poorer countries and suggested a proactive effort to shore up and strengthen those countries economically and politically in advance.
Neither group, it seemed to me, had much expertise in political science, sociology or development economics, however.