Despots

All despots are not created equal.

Independence

Following independence (roughly 1960), most African countries adopted one-party states, with the party head or revolutionary general becoming president. Deftly playing off the West against the Soviet Union, some of these men enjoyed huge personal gains with few negative consequences--the aid money would continue to flow from one side or the other, and maintenance of power usually meant ensuring that the security forces got some kind of raise each year. How the broader economy did, or what the unemployment rate was, or whether your country faced famine was immaterial. Every presidential transition in sub-Saharan Africa between 1960 and 1990 involved the death or violent removal of the sitting president.

All that changed, sort of, in 1990. After balancing the seesaw for thirty years, African presidents found the balance tipped irrevocably toward the West. Within a year or two, new constitutions were written in most countries and opposition parties were discovered to no longer be threats to the State. And countries began to have elections for presidents who were now constrained, in theory, by the new constitutions they had been forced to adopt. But in the West, with strong written constitutions or thousand-year traditions to limit presidential action, underestimated the despots. They soon discovered that constitutions can be amended, supreme courts can be packed, opposition press can be silenced, opposition leaders can be disallowed from running, and, if necessary, elections can be stolen.

The gains were not all hollow, though. South Africa led the way with a free election (and largely peaceful presidential transition) with the election of Nelson Mandela in 1994. Ghana's big man, Jerry Rawlings, chose to enter retirement in 2000. And a handful of other countries (including Tanzania and Zambia) have successfully held elections that resulted in a change at the top. Ghana even held a successful close election last year, decided by just a few percentage points, which all parties eventually accepted.

But the failures are significant and make for depressing reading. Libya's Muammar Khadafi is the dean of African presidents, in power now for forty years. Zimbabwe's Mugabe is celebrating 31 years in power. Uganda's Yoweri Museveni is on 25. Cameroon's Paul Biya is on 27. Kenya's last election descended into chaos and tribal conflict. Rwanda's Paul Kagame, president since 2000, has been the power behind the state since 1994. Hosni Mubarak took power in 1981. And Omar al-Bashir, indicted by the ICC for war crimes, was just "reelected" in Sudan after 21 years in power. Most of these men have amassed enormous personal fortunes, and it is highly unlikely that anything but death would push them from power now.

Liberal Democracy

But it's not clear that vibrant democracy should be the goal. Over the past fifty years lots of countries have been non-democratic, either in lacking elections or lacking a credible opposition (Japan, Mexico, China, South Korea, SIngapore, Malaysia), and most have had dramatically better economic performance than their African peers. And, with the notable exception of China, most have eventually strengthened their democracies after long periods of big-man leadership. Holding a sham election doesn't appear to gain much for these countries' populations other than an increase in instability and the possibility of descent into tribal or ethnic chaos.

What seems to be important is not elections or presidential transitions, per se, but implementation of the rule of law, freedom of speech and the press, the ease of starting new businesses, lack of low-level corruption, et cetera. That is, emphasizing the liberal in the liberal-democratic dogma more than the democratic. This is not a new idea--Fareed Zakaria wrote a whole book about it a few years ago, and the idea has kicked around in academia for decades--but it does require a revolution in American foreign policy. George W. Bush made it a stated aim of American policy to strengthen democracy around the world yet repeatedly refused to criticize allies whose liberal records were weak. In the African context, democratic success stories--South Africa, Botswana, Ghana--went hand in hand with improvements in liberalism.

Corruption

One of the most devastating problems on a local level is corruption. Every country (including the United States) has some significant institutional corruption at the upper levels of the economy and political structures. That corruption has significant macro-economic effects--I don't have the numbers at hand but I suspect that you could pave a very large percentage of the dirt roads in Cameroon if Paul Biya were to spend his personal fortune on the task. But at the grass roots it's the local corruption that is most devastating.

I've been aware of bribes being paid on public transport dozens if not hundreds of times, but in Zanzibar, probably for the first time, I've seen bribes paid in the open. Last week we hired a taxi to take us across the island to an east-coast hotel, the driver had some problem with his vehicle and handed 500 shillings (about 40 cents) over to a police officer. When I lived in Cameroon there were often police checkpoints every ten or fifteen kilometers, so the transport drivers had to pay out large sums in bribes on every trip, with the costs being passed on to the passengers. The issue is minor for a tourist--forty cents won't break the bank--but for a farmer trying to get crops to market the extra cost can be devastating. This comes on top of the extra cost of traveling on poor roads with a high risk for accidents.

The contrast between Tanzania and Rwanda, in terms of this kind of low-level corruption, has been striking. Rwanda has billboards up decrying corruption; Tanzania has none. Rwanda has few or no police checkpoints (checkpoints were one of the primary tools used during the genocide to target fleeing Tutsis, so there may be come cultural aversion to them now) while Tanzania has many. We saw no bribes being paid in Rwanda, in Tanzania we have witnessed it openly on several occasions. Yet, while by most measures Tanzania is more "democratic" than Rwanda, I am almost certain that I would prefer to open a business in Rwanda than in Tanzania.

Policy

The implications for the United States are fairly straightforward. Emphasize human rights and freedoms more than elections. Deny aid dollars to countries with high corruption indexes. Impose travel bans on non-liberal leaders. Freeze their assets (that means you, Switzerland and France). Reward liberal leaders (Mo Ibrahim's leadership prize http://www.moibrahimfoundation.org/en is a worthy start). Enforce transparency in economic dealings with African governments by publishing trade terms, and by requiring corporations to disclose terms of agreement. Insist that governments fund and support anti-corruption campaigns (it would surely be simple for an auditor to ride around Zanzibar citing policemen who openly take bribes on the roads). With some luck and a bit of hard-headed thinking, then, the gains of the last twenty years can be extended during the next twenty.