Perish the thought, Kenya needs no benevolent dictator
What you need to know:
- A society emerging from genocide or murderous regimes like Mengistu’s can be expected to embrace more moderate autocrats.
- Argentina has experimented with every shade of authoritarianism over the past century. Canada is as close to a model democracy as you are likely to get.
- The one exception to the banana republic syndrome is Costa Rica. The country is known for winning development accolades.
- Elections, however imperfect, have replaced coups and assassinations as the default method of changing governments, which have become more responsive to citizens’ needs.
Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes and a tolerable administration of justice; all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.
All governments which thwart this natural course, which force things into another channel, or which endeavour to arrest the progress of society at a particular point, are unnatural and, to support themselves, are obliged to be oppressive and tyrannical.
Like many of his writings, this observation made by Adam Smith in 1755 has stood the test of time.
But I am confronted by people protesting, sometimes quite angrily, that an excess of freedom under the current Constitution is undermining development. Some go further and assert that what Kenya needs is benevolent dictatorship.
Authoritarian instincts are not unusual. They are quite prevalent, particularly in the corporate world. Writing in the San Francisco Chronicle recently, Rachel Kleinfeld, a Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, observes: “The desire for benevolent dictatorship is not confined to developing nations. I hear it even more often from America’s business community and those working in international development—often accompanied by praise for China’s ability to ‘get things done’.”
NATIONAL CRISIS
What I find remarkable, in the Kenyan case, is that these sentiments are now expressed by erstwhile luminaries of the Second Liberation—people I was tear gassed with in the early 1990s and others I visited at the Industrial Area Remand Prison.
That someone who suffered under and fought against authoritarianism can turn around and say we need despotism, because his or her tribesman is in power, leaves us little choice but to concur with Smith’s compatriot, David Hume, that men often act knowingly against their interest.
The theory of benevolent dictatorship has been given credence by the rise of the “Asian Tigers” in the latter half of the last century, and the more recent meteoric rise of China. Nearer home, President Paul Kagame and former Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi are mentioned. But it is a deeply flawed paradigm.
First, consider historical context. The so-called benevolent dictatorships are regimes that came after a severe national crisis. South Korea’s followed the war that led to the partition of Korea into North and South.
Singapore gave up independence to join the Malaysian federation only to be ejected a few years later. The Malaysian Parliament voted unanimously — 270 for, zero against — to expel Singapore. That is traumatic. We need not belabour the tragedies from which the Kagame and Zenawi regimes emerged.
ARTEFACT OF HISTORY
But all these are dwarfed by China’s context. Deng Xiaoping’s celebrated economic reforms were preceded by Mao’s Great Leap Forward, the world’s deadliest development experiment. Launched in 1958 and abandoned four years later, the agrarian and industrial modernisation is estimated to have cost China between 18 million and 40 million lives.
Although the majority starved (even as China exported grain and rejected food aid), an estimated 2.5 million were beaten or tortured to death.
A society emerging from genocide or murderous regimes like Mengistu’s can be expected to embrace more moderate autocrats. Yoweri Museveni has been able to play this card in Uganda by constantly reminding the people of the chaos that they court by rejecting him.
Economic reforms are likely to be much easier to implement in such settings since there are no significant vested interests. These observations suggest that the “benevolence” of dictatorship is more an artefact of history than it is political agency.
The second flaw is the issue of counterfactual. To argue convincingly that benevolent dictatorship beats democracy in development, one ought to demonstrate that the countries in question would not have done equally well or better as democracies.
Since this is not possible, the next best thing is to ask whether there are comparable countries that emerged from despotism and did just as well economically. The two most obvious ones are Germany and Japan. Both were benevolent dictatorships of sorts before the Second World War. They were devastated by the war but emerged as democracies and leapfrogged other industrialised countries.
BANANA REPUBLIC
But the Americas are the better political laboratory. Other than being at extreme ends of the continent, Argentina and Canada are geographically and historically similar. Not surprisingly, they were in 1900 the 11th and 12th wealthiest countries in the world, with income per person of $2,750.
Today, Argentina is a middle income country with an earning per person of $15,000 (Sh1.3 million) and many well-known economic troubles. Canada, with a $50,000 (Sh4.4 million) income per person, boasts one of the world’s highest standards of living.
Argentina has experimented with every shade of authoritarianism over the past century. Canada is as close to a model democracy as you are likely to get.
Central America is the land of tropical splendour and colourful despots (think Manuel Noriega). Little has changed since American writer O. Henry coined the epithet banana republic a century ago. Honduras, for which he coined the term, has the highest murder rate, followed closely by its neighbours El Salvador and Guatemala.
Honduras and El Salvador famously went to war over a football match. Nicaragua and Panama have their colourful histories, too.
The one exception to the banana republic syndrome is Costa Rica. The country is known for winning development accolades. It was ranked first by the New Economics Foundation’s Happy Planet Index in 2009 and 2012. With only a middle income economy, it has one of the best health care systems in the world, reflected in a life expectancy of 80. What sets it apart? It has been a stable democracy since 1948.
IMPERFECT ELECTIONS
But the most compelling case for democracy in the development discourse is Africa. In 2000, The Economist carried a cover story titled “Africa: The Hopeless Continent”. A decade later, in 2011, it splashed: “Africa Rising”. What changed during the decade? Politics.
Between 1989 and 1998, 37 African countries adopted multiparty democracy. There were only three previously (Mauritius, Botswana and Gambia). The sub-continent held 68 multi-party elections during the decade, more than five times the number in the previous half a century of independence.
Of these, 16 were adjudged to be completely free, 31 partially free and 21 not free (ours are in the last category).
Elections, however imperfect, have replaced coups and assassinations as the default method of changing governments, which have become more responsive to citizens’ needs.
The political change dovetailed with economic reforms and globalisation, creating business opportunity in the context of much reduced political risk.
It is not like investors did not know that Africa was rich in natural resources before, it is just that the political risk was way too high. In short, peace, easy taxes and tolerable administration of justice are all a country needs.
David Ndii is the Managing Director of Africa Economics [email protected]
