Do Elections Help in Divided Societies?

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

The following countries have held parliamentary or presidential elections so far this year: Afghanistan, Algeria, El Salvador, Guinea-Bissau, Indonesia, Iraq, Libya, Malawi, Mauritania, Panama, Thailand, and Ukraine.

So what? you might remark. After all, that’s quite a rogue’s gallery.

Yet for many people, elections have become the sine qua non of democracy. Our television screens show us people lined up at polling stations, eager to cast their ballots, and commentators usually let us know how excited these voters are to “finally” have a say in the governance of their country.

But in fact, in states without a robust civil society, the rule of law, protection of human rights, and a political culture that tolerates diversity of opinion, elections may even exacerbate, rather than resolve, deep cleavages within the policy – even if they have been relatively free and honest.

In most such places, though, opposition parties often boycott what they consider to be a foregone conclusion; or, if they do contest the election, they invariably claim – usually correctly – that widespread fraud, intimidation, and other irregularities have rendered the result invalid. In many countries, furthermore, so many parties are in the running that no one ever wins a convincing mandate.

Also, only too often, governments brought to power are fairly quickly dispatched in coups (Thailand), or themselves become highly autocratic and sectarian (Iraq). Some countries seem to be in a permanent state of alternation between civilian and military-authoritarian  rule (Nigeria, Pakistan), or are such failed states, with component groups fielding their own armies, that elections are completely meaningless (Lebanon).

In yet others -- Central American oligarchies such as Guatemala and Honduras – incredible inequality makes for continuous political and criminal violence. Elections are irrelevant, held merely to please some foreign capital like Washington.

Political parties are typically simply the vehicles for non-democratic elements to gain control and impose their own brand of autocracy (and, not coincidentally, gain access to the state’s resources).

Elections can’t paper over issues of what political scientists Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan called problems of “stateness” in places where “there are profound differences about the territorial boundaries of the political community’s state and profound differences as to who has the right of citizenship in that state.”

These are matters relating to the very definition of the country and usually revolve around deep-seated class, ethnic, religious, and/or regional conflicts, often involving repression of aggrieved minorities without a share of power. Each group votes for its champion, so, as political scientist Donald Horowitz has written, elections are little more than a census count. Demographics neatly predict party support levels.

For example: Although Sri Lanka has never ceased to be an electoral democracy, the lack of genuine political power by the minority Tamils led to a vicious decades-old civil war in which tens of thousands of people were slaughtered. In pre-1974 Cyprus, ethnic bloc voting by Greeks meant that the Turks, with fewer people, could never hold power. It ended with partition.

In Africa, political violence broke out after the adoption of democracy in various countries, including Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, and Togo, as different ethnic and religious groups vied for power.

Such issues even affect states such as Canada, Spain, and the United Kingdom, and have led to violence, despite the fact that they are, unlike our earlier examples, robust democracies.

So, as author and journalist Robert Kaplan has observed, in many states without a genuine sense of national consciousness, what is left when authoritarian rulers are deposed are tribes, clans, and sects; they have now, for instance, become the most important actors in entities like Libya and Yemen.

Libyans went to the polls June 25 to elect a new parliament. But one of Libya’s most prominent human rights activists, Salwa Bugaighis, was assassinated in her home in Benghazi -- shortly after she had voted.

To make my point at its most basic level, ask yourself this: would you rather have lived in a colony without any internal self-rule at all, but with the rule of law, like pre-1990s Hong Kong, or in a sovereign state with “elections,” like Zimbabwe?

You know the answer.