Nairobi — The shambolic election we just witnessed in Sudan has raised an old question: Why are free and fair elections so rare in Africa?
In Sudan's case, a country dominated by a northern Arab elite in Khartoum, it conjures up a specific question explored by Larry Diamond in the January issue of Journal of Democracy in an article entitled "Why Are There No Arab Democracies?"
Diamond correctly points out that this has nothing to do with Islam, even though all Arab countries are also largely Islamic. Indeed, there are several countries like Indonesia, Senegal, and Singapore that are Islamic and democratic.
So it would seem that the democratic deficit is an Arab problem. To Diamond, oil is a very important explanation.However, there could be several other factors at work. I posted a comment on the Diamond article on another forum and a lively debate ensued.
My suspicion is that the desert has something to do with it. Nearly all Arab countries are desert countries, or large sections of them are semi-desert.
Countries that are near or surrounded by desert or semi-desert conditions tend to be illiberal.
Relevant Links
Water tends to be a scare resource in desert and semi-arid countries, and because of the shortage of arable land, there are few independent farmers.
For a majority of people in these countries, whether you eat or not is often mostly up to the government.
The fact that the government feeds most people either directly through food handouts or food subsidies, makes the central authority very strong, and people reluctant to challenge it.
One correspondent, Simon Wachira, took the argument further. Deserts, he noted, tend to have rich resources - oil in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Libya; water in Israel; cedar in Lebanon (although Lebanon has had democracy in the past and is not a classic Arab country).
As populations grow, groups that control these resources evolve into extremely powerful cabals because they are the only ones who have access to the single source of wealth. They become vested into maintaining the status quo, and therefore hostile to democracy.
In a fertile country, you can have 100 rich farmers each tilling their own land. That cannot happen in oil-only economies.
This might sound crazy and unresearched, but I think in countries - and regions - where camels, as opposed to cows, are important, you also tend to have illiberal politics.
A camel is a tough beast, which does not require a lot of close tending, like a cow would. You also don't need much co-operation from many people to keep your camel alive.
In the rural areas of the developing world, cows share communal watering holes and pasture, through which people learn to negotiate and co-operate.
Cows also teach restraint. If you let them wander into the neighbour's garden, there could be war. That makes one aware of limits and to respect other peoples' spaces.
These values and skills are learnt subconsciously, but in the end are very important give-and-take ingredients that are critical to liberal democracy. So it's not race, tribe, or religion that shape democracy.
It's the environment, stupid, to paraphrase former US president Bill Clinton.
Charles Onyango-Obbo is Nation Media Group's executive editor for Africa & Digital Media.
Comments Post a comment