This month’s issue of Foreign Policy sees an adapted extract from Paul Collier’s new book War, Guns and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places. 

Read the full article here:

The old rulers of the Soviet Union were terrified of facing contested elections. Those of us who studied political systems presumed they must be right: Elections would empower citizens against the arrogance of government. And with the fall of the Iron Curtain, elections indeed swept the world. Yet democracy doesn’t seem to have delivered on its promise. Surprisingly often, the same old rulers are still there, ruling in much the same old way. Something has gone wrong, but what?

To answer this question, I put myself in the shoes of an old autocrat—say, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak—now having to retain power in a “democracy.” What options do I face? Hard as it is to bear, I have to be honest with myself: My people do not love me. Far from being grateful for the wonders that I have achieved, they may increasingly be aware that under my long rule our country has stagnated while similar countries have transformed themselves. There are even a few cogent voices out there explaining why this situation is my fault. I shake my head in disbelief that it has come to this, seize my gold pen, and start listing my options. I decide to be systematic, in each case evaluating the pros and cons…

 

…In the average election held among the bottom billion poorest of the world’s population, despite the fact that voters usually have many grounds for complaint, the incumbent “wins” a healthy 74 percent of the vote. In elections with particularly weak restraints, it is an even healthier 88 percent. Somehow or other, incumbents in these societies are very good at winning elections.

The dread shown by the Soviet authorities to any form of competitive election has confused us into thinking that achieving a competitive election is in itself the key triumph. The reality is that rigging elections is not daunting: Only the truly paranoid dictators avoid them anymore.

Listen to Paul speaking about new book Wars, Guns and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places on the latest installment of Development Drums. 

In his new book, Wars, Guns and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places, Paul Collier investigates the violence and poverty in the countries at the bottom of the world economy that are home to a billion people. He argues that pressures to introduce partial democratic reforms may have been counterproductive and that this may have increased the risk of political violence. He argues for 3 key policy measures that the rich world should implement to reverse the declining fortunes of these countries.

This excellent regular (and relatively new) podcast by Owen Barder cover topics ranging across aid, poverty and development policy. Previous episodes have included discussions of aid and the implications of both the Obama administration and the financial crisis for developing countries. Guests have included Simon Maxwell of the ODI, Shanta Devarajan, Chief Economist of the World Bank’s Africa Region, and Oxford University’s own Adrian Wood and Ngaire Woods. You can access this episode’s mp3 directly here otherwise you can listen here or subscribe to the podcast via iTunes here.

International business was just getting seriously interested in Africa when the global recession came along and shifted mindsets back into wariness. Is the return to caution a recovery from a brief phase of irrationality? Was the passing phase of interest the appropriate response to changing circumstances? I will argue that just as business has been globally guilty of irrational exuberance, in its attitude to Africa it is now in danger of ‘irrational caution’.

Africa is being affected by the global recession, but the effects are distinctive. Unlike more developed regions it is not suffering from cardiac arrest due to an imploding financial core. Its financial sector is generally sound and unexposed. The main way it is being affected is through the fall in commodity prices. This has punctured the bonanzas but prices are still at levels comfortably above those of the 1990s.