Centerfield: Democracy and Violence

March 24, 2006

Democracy and Violence

The assumption in much political science literature and, obviously, within the Bush Administration, is that of the "democratic peace," i.e., that democracies are inherently peaceful, or at least that they do not fight each other. But, in this article in The National Interest, two political scientists, Edward D. Mansfield and Jack Snyder, argue that encouraging premature democratic transitions can be extremely dangerous.

These episodes are not just a speed bump on the road to the democratic peace. Instead, they reflect a fundamental problem with the Bush Administration's strategy of forced-pace democratization in countries that lack the political institutions needed to manage political competition. Without a coherent state grounded in a consensus on which citizens will exercise self-determination, unfettered electoral politics often gives rise to nationalism and violence at home and abroad.

Essentially, their argument is that leaders and potential leaders in states without strong institutions are likely to use extreme nationalism first to attract support and then to hold the country together. Thus, they claim that elections in such states are "an ethnic census, not a deliberation about public issues." And this problem is worse the earlier the elections come during the process of democratization. They give a number of examples, including Yugoslavia, Pakistan, and Africa, where early democratization led, not to peace, but to mobiliation of ethnic groups, leading to violence and, in some cases, mass murder.

They do not believe that the Islamic countries will be different.

Many Islamic countries that figure prominently in the Bush Administration's efforts to promote democracy are particularly hard cases. Although democratization in the Islamic world might contribute to peace in the very long run, Islamic public opinion in the short run is generally hostile to the United States, ambivalent about terrorism and unwilling to renounce the use of force to regain disputed territories. Although the belligerence of the Islamic public is partly fueled by resentment of the U.S.-backed authoritarian regimes under which many of them live, renouncing these authoritarians and pressing for a quick democratic opening is unlikely to lead to peaceful democratic consolidations. On the contrary, unleashing Islamic mass opinion through sudden democratization might raise the likelihood of war.

They reject the notion that external powers can successfully provide the ingredients for a stable democracy, absent previously existing institutions (i.e., Japan and Germany). Moreover, when an external power tries to bring democratic rule, it often ends up working through local elites whose support is based upon "traditional authority or ethnic sectarianism." This increases the risk of the kind of sectarian split that fuels violence. They worry that the same thing is happening to the U.S.

The United States risks falling into the same trap as it tries to promote democracy in the wake of military interventions. In Iraq, the United States must rule through Shi'a clerics and Kurdish ethnic nationalists. In Afghanistan, as a second cousin of President Hamid Karzai stated on the eve of the September election, the newly elected Parliament "will have tribal leaders, warlords, drug lords" alongside the new democrats. And this is the view of an optimist.

They do not argue that we should not try to promote democracy, but that it is better promoted through positive inducements (e.g. EU membership) and should work in tandem with developing liberal institutions. They suggest that the United States and Europe should work together to promote stable democracy because each has strengths and weaknesses.

Premature democratization (through elections) is dangerous.

The danger is not just that the transition will be chaotic and violent, but also that anti-democratic groups and ideas will be mobilized and will become a long-lasting fixture on the political scene, as in much of former Yugoslavia and the Caucasus. Out-of-sequence, incomplete democratization often creates an enduring template for illiberal, populist politics--for example, the cycling between military dictatorship and illiberal democracy in Pakistan, the theocratic populism of Iran, and ethnic tyrannies of the majority in many transitional states. These political habits, once rooted in ideologies and institutions, are hard to break. Once an ethnic nationalist movement takes hold in a fairly literate society with a politically active population, that identity almost always becomes a permanent fixture of the political landscape. It is better to strengthen state institutions that can serve as the basis for an inclusive, civic form of national loyalty before spurring popular political action that could, in their absence, play into the hands of exclusionary ethnic national movements.

It's rather pointless now to talk about whether invading Iraq was an appropriate way to bring democracy (assuming that was the goal) because that horse has left the barn. And I doubt that this Administration is about to embark on any more crusades to bring democracy at the point of American bayonets. But I think this article has some cogent points to make, to both liberals and conservatives, that think democracy will automatically equate to peace and stability. Even the kind of democracy promotion of which the authors approve must be addressed carefully and must recognize that the dynamics of democratic transition are different in the rest of the world than they were in the 18th and 19th century United States. Democracy often means quite different things to Americans than it does to Muslims, Africans, etc.

Posted by MW Schneider at March 24, 2006 02:40 PM

Comments

The opinions of theorizers are always interesting, but what about the opinions of the folks whose throats are under the boot of an oppressive autocrat? They should count too.

Is there a good basis is for assuming that a cycling between illiberal democracy and military dictatorship is

1.caused by premature democracy,

or 2. that such a cycle must be enduring?

Might such cycles be an often necessary stage for nations not yet ready, like striking a match over and over until it truly ignites?

I wouldn't dismiss for a second that the probability of a new democracy becoming self-sustaining is a function of a given cultures preparedness/receptiveness.This doesn't seem worth questioning. Some peoples are bound to be more ready than others.

What I question is the basis for arguing that trying too early is worse than encouragement via "positive enducements." The hallmarks of this alternative seem to be
• a largely laissez-faire policy of little direct interference
• positive inducements/engagement, like trade, cooperative programs, various "club" memberships
•quite a bit of tolerance of undemocratic shortcomings, which may be connected by the autocrat in question with an extreme reluctance to force regime change

How great is the record of such programs? How's our sample size? Seems to me that they have a less than stellar record and are in fact open to abuse when a clever autocrat has the skills and balls to game the system, to say one thing, and then to do another. The open question is "what ultimately leads a nation to make a transition to genuine representative democracy?"

IMO, autocrats and theocrats are VERY likely to interpret these more laisssez-faire policies offering inducements as a good sign of a lack or true will. They don't appreciate it, they take advantage of it. So very much of my experience and study of history tells me that power is very seldom given, it's far more often taken.

The aphorism often used to support inducements is "you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar." Fine, but who wants to catch flies? I hate flies. I want to get rid of the flies or at least marginalize them, so that we can have a decent picnic.

There are any number of autocratic and theocratic regimes round the globe. The nations under the yoke of these hard-ons may be able to change for the better of their peoplein spite of the husseins, komeinis, and other assorted strongmen and mullahs, but they won't do so because of them.

Bottom line: it's a waste of time to indugle in a spat between those who think sticks are better than carrots and those who think carrots are better than sticks. If I give Bush credit for anything in the run up to the Iraq invasion, it's that he called out the UN for having consistently failed to show a willingness to ever use the stick of forceful regime change.

If you utterly dismiss the possibility of using the stick on the stubborn unmoving mule, you have NO strategy to go to if the mule is smart enough to realize that he can just sit there and keep eating carrots. The carrot-giver goes away sometimes, but eventually he comes back. You never really have to move, you just have to stand up sometimes to give the carrot-giver hope that this time you really will move.

Posted by: bk at March 24, 2006 03:24 PM

countries that lack the political institutions needed to manage political competition.

Ah, this sounds familiar. Of course, when I heard it they generally substituted "n**gers" for "countries".

Why should an Arab society be innately incapable of democratic reform when western former dictatorships seem to be able to manage?

Posted by: BrianOfAtlanta at March 24, 2006 03:26 PM

Brian of Atlanta,

Before you make ridiculous comments like this, please actually read the article. This has nothing to do with inherent racial capability for democracy. The article made very clear the difference between former Soviet satellites--most of whom had a previous history of established institutions--and many Third World countries that have no such institutions. It's got nothing to do with inherent attributes but with institutions. You might as well say, why not build a baseball stadium in the middle of Africa to encourage economic development. After all, Africans aren't inherently incapable of supporting a baseball team. They never said Muslim countries were "innately incapable" of democratic reform; they simply said that many Muslim societies were fragmented along ethnic lines in a way that made early elections likely to lead to violence. And it wasn't limited to Muslim countries. That seems indisputable.

Brian Keegan,

You make a lot of good points. The only thing I would argue really is that democracy is not a panacea if the goal is to bring about a more peaceful world. And, I agree with you that the US often supported authoritarian regimes under the guise of "guiding" them gradually to democracy. On the other hand, if you look at some of the countries that eventually have become stable democracies, eg. South Korean and Taiwan, they evolved toward democracy relatively slowly.

I also think it's one thing to say we will depose a dictator because he's a threat to our security or even because he is oppressing his people. It's another thing to do it bring democracy at the point of a gun. Those are two different things (albeit obviously complimentary at times.)

But it seems to me that the point of the article is that establishing elections as the INITIAL cornerstone of democratic transition in countries without established civil institutions is likely to lead to instability and violence. I don't think the authors ever say that promoting democracy itself is an unworthy goal.

But,IMO, the Bush policy is based on several points. First, that the ability of democracy to take root is independent of civil institutions or cultural attitudes, or, alternatively, that military force can establish the necessary conditions for a stable, democratic polity, and, second, that elections themselves will lead inevitably to stable and peaceful democracies. I think those propositions are open to question.

Posted by: Marc at March 24, 2006 04:21 PM

I am a political science Ph.D. candidate and this is one of the topics that I study. The democratic peace says that two democracies will not go to war against each other. There have never been two democracies to go to war against each other - that is the strongest finding coming out of the international relations literature. However, democracies are just as prone to go to war as non-democracies (if anything, slightly more likely to fight).
The problem with Iraq and democracy is that a nation in transition to democracy is the most dangerous type of state with regard to civil war or other internal problems. Democracies are stable and good, but the transition is rough. The transition must be accompanied by the norms and principles of democracy. Without those, institutions will not succeed. That is the problem that practitioners and academics have found in the last 15 years.

Posted by: Charlie at March 27, 2006 02:43 PM

And, in all fairness, Charlie, the biggest criticisms of Bruce Russett and Michael Doyle's liberal democratic peace theory are that: it doesn't control for "democracy" as the only variable to turn "actual war" into a "near miss" (that is, that simple geography, collective security, and Realist theory might all provide better explanations for the enduring peace); that the definition of what constitutes a "liberal democracy" is shaped to eliminate "democratic" states that have gone to war with other democracies (the US in the Civil War and Imperial Germany being the two most cited examples); and that the conditions of peace may simply be a matter of coincidence based on the fact that in any given year, any two states are not at war with one another (democracy or otherwise).

But the arguments in the National Interest (and in their recent book) are by no means new. Mansfield and Snyder have indeed been arguing that states in a democratizing transition are actually more prone to go to war than other states since at least 1999.

Posted by: Bobby at March 28, 2006 12:59 AM

Centerfield

A Weblog of Centrist Voices in American Politics

March 24, 2006

Democracy and Violence