Hyden (2006) African politics in a comparative perspective

This is a great book for someone who wants an overview on the current state of the field. Hyden wrote this book in an effort not just to summarize but to try and tie together the different threads of literature on African politics from the last 20 years. I have to say that at first i was really biased..in general I don't like reading books that start of with the author telling us that he watched Africa from above seriously! But is a great piece of work that is mainly  focused on 10 hot topics (my description not his). 

Why does Africa matter today?

1. Informal sector -It is the best place to study the role of informal institutions. Of course most of my examples are based on Zimbabwe but I am thinking of the role of the informal banking sector during the 2008 economic crisis. It is also interesting to think of corruption as an informal sector but does shape the way that goods and services are exchanged on the continent. 
1. Globalization has had a huge impact on the continent especially on the growing gap between the rich and the poor. I was reading an NYT article the other day on some big shot criminal turned businessman in SA who has these major parties in Sandton were the highlight of the night is him eating sushi of off the bodies of naked women. These parties easily run over $200, 000 in a country were some people can not afford basic amenities. The gap between the wealthy and the poor in Africa is growing at an alarming rate. One wealthy Chiyangwa a Zimbabwean businessmen a gave a tour of his more than 10 high class vehicles (I know nothing abut cars and could butcher the names if I tried). Along with globalization and the wealth disparities is it possible that Africa is a breeding ground for terrorism?
2. Africa’s geography- let us take another look at the continents geography and what that means for future economic and political development. Herbts developed an impressive theory which links the continents’’ woes to its geography.  He argues that the problems we see civil war etc are because the central government does not have control over their territories. Here Hyden suggests that the geography is important for three reasons
1. The continent is far from other parts of the worls explaining the late colonialism which he then links to poor development. I am sure most think the late colonialism is not such a bad thing because at least the continent retained much of its indigenous culture when compared to South America for example.
2. The climate and vegetation discouraged the movement of people namely discouraged Europeans who might have brought some knowledge etc
3. The main rivers the Nile, Congo, Niger and Zambezi which have been difficult to travel.
3. History – Hyden would like to remind us that Africa’s history does not begin with colonialism. According to Hyden the colonial period lasted from 1884-1960 but again the continent was not fully independent until 1994.
4. Africa’s economy- The continent is full of natural resources and yet the world’s bottom billion live in Africa (Collier). As I discussed earlier the continent has its share of wealthy people but the inequality compares only to Latin America. In more equal countries like Burundi and Rwanda everyone is equally poor. Globalization has skipped Africa and onto Asia the region remains economically marginalized. Part of it has to do with the politics of the region but I also the continent has not done enough to woo investors. There is a lot of money to be made in Africa.
5. The politics-All by two of the 48 sub-saharan countries are colonies (we all know the song from capetown to cairo….) so I won’t dwell too much on this. The puzzle is not so much with colonialism but what happened after independence. In the 1960’s the world as jubilant as country after country gained independence but what looked like promising democratic rule deteriorated into authoritarianism- we can talk of the big men rule here from Mobutu (whose name is always fun to say), Ggabango etc.  Multiparty politics did not do too well in the immediate years after independence. None or very few of the countries have programmatic politics were politicians campaign on policy issues and not identity politics. There is a major policy deficit on the continent and this is not due to some shortage of real policy issues but because it is less costly for politicians to use patronage or identity politics than talk about policy. The politicians on the continent have done too much politics and very little politics. The short film of friends at the bank details how economic decisions have become political decisions and that is really bad for economic growth.

The continent is now more dependent on external aid than ever before – we would expect that this dependency should be declining but clearly this has not been the case.

Hyden shares some gloomy stats with us here

1. 1999 one fifth of all Africans lived in a war torn country.
2. 28 wars were fought btwn 1970-2004
3. the Sudanese civil war cost over two million people , one million died in Rwanda in 1994, about half a million people died in the Angola civil war that lasted 27 years. 

Beatriz Magaloni (2006) Voting for autocracy (Mexico's PRI)

Week 5: Beatriz Magaloni (2005) Voting for Autocracy

This is another well-written book. A part of me wished I had been born earlier so that I would have written such an amazing dissertation but oh well. In our obsession with elections we have given very little attention to autocratic elections. What allows for the survival of hegemonic parties who stay in power for decades.  Part of the puzzle is why have elections in authoritarian regimes? Why did the PRI have elections? Why is Robert Mugabe calling for elections? Are the elections always fraudulent if not when do politicians use fraud and how do they calculate the benefits for doing so.

The first observation that she makes is that hegemonic parties do not win with small margins of the vote. In fact they are violating both the space and size laws (Laver and Schofield 1991). The size law states that parties will form minimal winning coalitions 50+1 enough to get major policies passed.  But in hegemonic governments they are aiming to win with over 60% of the vote enough to make sweeping changes that require a super majority. Evidence from the ME (Ghaddi, Lust-Okar) suggests that parties in the middle east want large majorities so that they can control constitutional amendments.  Magaloni argues that the PRI needed a super majority win to look strong and build voter confidence. Having a super majority makes it easier for the parties to distribute patronage i.e. jobs to their favored constituencies. If the PRI looked strong the opposition would not field strong candidates, the PRI could use their control of resources to co-opt the opposition as they have done and has been done elsewhere.

These parties don’t always use fraud, they will use it when the need it the most in the 1988 election the PRI clearly stuffed the ballot boxes. I do think that hegemonic parties might as well stuff the boxes because the opposition is most likely going to accuse them of stuffing the boxes wether or not they do this.

WHO supports the PRI-

They get their support from the voters who depend on them the most the rural voter and the poor voters who need government aid.

What does the NGO mean for todays hegemonic parties

-I think it’s great for them. Look at museveni he claims credit for work that the NGO’s are doing and just says well I brought them here.

I also think that unless the NGO’s are local they are not catering to the same client. NGO’s come back home and give their fancy reports and Museveni and co. claim the credit for mosquito nets delivered by the NGO.

The opposition

-       the opposition fails for a number of  reasons in these countries

1.     The ruling party can bring them into the fold. Look at MDC in Zimbabwe they have been given cars, houses, they are now part of the government and not the opposition

2.     They are not united. In Japan even though the LDP is the least popular party it is the most united it rarely splinters and yet opposition parties are breaking of left right and center.  The opposition in Zambia’s 1991 elections was great the formed the MMD an oversize coalition which guaranteed a win.

3.     They field weak candidates- they can not provide patronage, they can not make credible promises. Clever parties win when they are working with a dumb hegemonic party e.g. in Senegal instead of holding to name brand leaders the DP let them go and form their own party. The PRI was really good at punishing defectors or giving them things to stay happy, ZANU PF is another great example. The party formed from a coalition of two big parties post 1980 has pretty much remained intact whilst the opposition has splintered of.

4.     Resource poor – in most centralized clientelisti governments, parties have to be able to deliver pork. Without access to the state pots the opposition cannot do that.

5.     They have a limited view-they are only campaigning in urban areas. They have to expand their zone of influence go for an all country strategy.

Kalyvas (2006) The logic of Civil War

I highly highly recommend this book. Read it on your next vacation :) Actually maybe just on the plane ride to your vacation....

I am in love with this 700 page master piece. I love this book..probably for all the wrong reasons but I love love it. I know it is big and there are LOTS and LOTS of footnotes but I beg you to read them because you will learn something. This book taught me that there is always some great research around the corner and so I should always keep my eyes open as I travel the world, the city, the state whatever and open to learning. Kalyvas had to leave the US for two years due to some visa issue and found himself back home in Greece. I bet he was thinking Ohh crap what am I going to do. If it was me,  I would be thinking this is the end. Anyway, he got started on a project on studying the logic of civil war. Seriously, there is logic to civil war. I always thought it was just a bunch of people going at it or maybe for the diamonds. 

As some of you know I was born and raised in the beautiful country of Zimbabwe. What you might not know is that I spent half of my life at a tiny boarding school in Marondera..a farming city about 50K’s or so outside of Harare. Waddilove like many missionary schools during the chimurenga/ independence wars was a hot spot for both the rebels and Rhodesian forces. For the rebels it was a great place to recruit young men and women into the fight across the border in Mozambique and for the Rhodesian forces what better way to instill fear than by terrorizing teachers on the gov. payroll.  I don’t think either group was much nicer to the community but in the villages we always heard stories bout boys who went over and never came back. Girls who worked for both the rebels and Rhodesians. I actually think a lot more work needs to be done on the role of women in civil wars. But I digress… Naturally because of my years at Waddi I have become a civil war junkie…why the violence ????

The argument: Violence in a civil war is determined by the level of control that actors have on the regions. The more control that a group has the more they will use selective violence whereby they target certain individuals for some information that they want- think cutting people’s limbs short vs. long sleeve. When they have very little control they might use indiscriminate violence (burning an entire village just because they can) or to send a message to the nearby villages that they will kill them if they don’t switch sides.

At the same time citizens are also using actors for their own good. US soldiers in Iraq retell stories of being sent goose chases because neighbors are upset with each other over women or unpaid debts. Civilians are not always innocent victims in civil wars (rather sad don’t you think).

Violence is going to be highest in no man’s land. As both groups try to gain control they will use a lot of violence to do so.

After much bubbling here is the review:

Kalyvas examines the dynamics of internal wars by focusing on the micro level and by differentiating between the broad concept of civil war and the phenomenon of civil war violence. He shows that violence in a civil war can neither be reduced to irrational factors, such as strong emotions or illogical behavior, nor to pre-existing ideological cleavages. On the contrary, violence against civilians has its own rationale and logic.

Kalyvas attempts to find answers to three puzzles the variation in brutality, why civil war is violent and why previous studies have simply used endogenous explanations for civil war. The book has two goals: to build a theory of irregular war and micro foundational theory of violence. Kalyvas presents civil war as an exogenous shock (counter to traditional explanations)  and deals with violence as a dependent variable. His theory breaks civil war violence down into two basic categories. Indiscriminate violence is executed en masse without regard for the actions or preferences of individuals. In contrast, selective violence describes aggression directed towards individuals who are targeted based on specific information about their actions. Following this trend he sees violence as a rational act on both the part of the perpetrator and civilians. For him, violence is the end product of many individual rational actions by political actors and civilians, who work to fulfill their interests within a given territorial space. More specifically, Kalyvas argues that actors are aware that despite the effort and planning that goes into discriminate violence, it often proves to be counterproductive.  The rewards are little and unsatisfying. When armed groups in a civil war realize that that the incentives fostered by indiscriminate violence are against their interests, they replace it with selective violence. Although it is more expensive they are more likely to gain benefits from using selective versus indiscriminate violence.

His theory also suggests that violence is more likely to be used as a tool in contested areas than in controlled regions. In controlled regions that opposing side is aware that it will cost a lot more to change the hearts and minds of the people than in a contested area. It is also possible that the social networks in controlled areas are much stronger than those in contested areas were people are less likely to trust each other.  According to Kalyvas, the logic of violence unfolds as follows: the irregular warfare of civil war enables contenders to meddle and hide among the civilians. Hiding produces uncertainty and causes identification and communication problems. To overcome these obstacles, the competitors use violence to encourage active participation and denunciations from oppressed civilians. The stronger the actor’s control of the area, the higher the rate of collaboration and denunciations. Also, the higher the control, the less likely it is that the actor would resort to violence. Perhaps most controversially, Kalyvas predicts that the parity of control between the actors ‘is likely to produce no selective violence by any actors’ (p. 204).

A particularly enlightening argument in this book as to do with the role of civilians previously thought of as innocent victims caught in the crossfire. He argues that civilians will sometimes use violence for their own purposes in particular for revenge.  His argument intrigues me partly because I went to school in a part of the country that was both a guerilla stronghold and Rhodesian stronghold in Marondera, Zimbabwe during the second liberation struggle. Kalyvas’ explanations shed light on the relations between peasant women and both the Rhodesian and Guerilla forces. The women cooked for the guerillas and waited on the Rhodesian forces all at the same time. Conventional arguments on civil war to be very dichotomous the villains and the heroes, the innocent and the guilty, bad and good and yet the real scene of war is not so easily understood. The victims can themselves become perpetrators of violence or the perpetrators of violence are actually innocent civilians caught in between crossfire and have no choice but to kill.

It is also interesting that we always think of villagers as innocent victims and yet they are living in a war zone and obviously opinions about the war. It is interesting that the US army in Vietnam never considered how the villagers might feel about their presence in their country and the fact that they were losing children and family members everyday because of the war. But how does one conceptualize and operationalize violence that steams from revenge. I think revenge is probably a bigger driving force in the maintenance of most civil wars. I think it also creates the sense of helplessness where people feel as though it does not matter what they they could still get killed. This also feeds into collaboration people will probably just end up doing whatever ensures their safety the most without regard to the actual causes of war or maybe there really don’t know the causes of war to begin with. The same logic can be applied to collaboration any tense political environment, during the 2007 elections in Sierra Leone youth in rural areas killed people over rice not because this was somehow tied to the politicians but because they wanted the benefits i.e. rice. As Wilkinson argued politicians can unleash violence if they think that it will benefit them or their party and I think civilian participants will also choose sides based on the potential benefits.

The main weakness in the book is that although the theory is focused on civil wars, his testing is based on the foreign occupation of Greece during the World War II. He justifies his case selection by arguing that his case falls within the fairly broad definitions of civil war but I think he risks conceptual stretching. Furthermore, though the theory focuses on explaining the incidence of selective violence, this accounts for only half of the homicides in Kalyvas’ dataset (see Table 9.2 on p. 267). This suggests that indiscriminate violence deserves greater attention, even if it is harder to gain leverage on both theoretically and empirically. The book is well structured, the road maps are clear; I have never seen a better written book.

Elizabeth Woods (2003)Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador

I have to start of by saying our class had a hard time with this book. Professor Woods conducted amazing field wore she was in El Salvador on and off for ten years and has a lot of knowledge about the case BUT this is not the most organized book or the easiest to read. I think part of it is the grad school bias, we have been trained to think theory, methods, results, discussion but this is not the case in this very rich narrative. She is telling us a story about why some peasants became involved in the insurgency and others don’t. Especially telling is that the people who should have been involved, activists, community leaders, didn’t get involved, in fact most of them ran away and the people we least expect to get involved are the ones who led the revolution.  It is a great book, great maps- she had people draw maps by hand. I highly recommend reading this book but I think you will have to read it like an anthropological account and not as a political science text.  This is so you don’t get stressed out.

The book

Central Question: Why would people participate in activism when there is no clear individual again? As rational actors most people (as they do) should defect, they should not spend days at the Tahir square or fight landowners in El Salvador.  The reason most of us hate (d) group work was because of collective action problems so why would anyone consciously join a revolution where the biggest cost is the loss of life. Man! You could die for trying to fight Colonel Gadhaffi or since the revolution is coming anyway why should I go out there. Think potluck dinners- the people who bring NOTHING because they are sure someone is going to bring the 5 course meal.

Why do people in so similar circumstances act so differently or people who are so different act so similarly.

Wood’s argument goes against the conventional Olsen/Pokin grain that people will engage for both private and public gains.

It also goes against protection hypothesis –in most of these cases people are not getting a whole lot of protection during the war. The rebels and government are not looking out for their own goals (makes me sad).

Shared identity- the conventional literature suggests that people will only get involved if they are doing it with people with whom they share a similar identity. In El Salvador the indigenous community had disappeared. One of the maps actually shows that much of the land was now disserted and a lot of immigrants remained it is a UN of people. People were also not necessarily united- there was lots of competition to go out and grab a piece of land for your family.

So what explains the involvement? Path dependent explanations

1.     Participation

2.     Defiance

3.     Agency  

In Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador Wood explores the reasons why ordinary individuals participate in insurgencies. The book is motivated by the collective action literature which suggests that ideally people would prefer to enjoy the benefits of a movement without actually having had been a part of the movement. However, the puzzle in El Salvador and other post liberation struggle countries is that people especially those that one would expect to stand in the sidelines actually get involved in political movements. Wood argues that traditional explanations of revolutionary mobilization class struggle, political opportunity structures, solidarity peasant communities, the existence of social networks, relative deprivation and purely, rational self-interest fail to adequately account for the extent and timing of collective action on the part of the insurgents and their supporters. She develops instead an argument whereby ordinary citizens became involved in the insurgency out of moral obligation and perceived affective benefits that they would receive through participation. She argues that people participated because it had become a norm, people were showing defiance to oppressive regimes, pleasure in agency- pleasure in changing the system and “effectively asserting claim to land” (236).

Unlike the other books we have read thus far this is a purely qualitative research agenda. Woods conducted more than 200 interviews between 1987 and 1996. The majority of those sampled are campesinos-ordinary citizens who supply the guerrilla’s with food, water and information. Given the nature of the environment in which she was working the author did not randomly select her case study areas instead she chose areas of study based on four requirements accessibility, FMLN/military contested areas, economic diversity, and “manageable politically.” While this is not standard scientific procedure I think this is what researchers have to do when in hostile environment not only to ensure their own safety but that of the participants as well. The weakness is that the findings are only based on those areas studied but I think Woods does a good job of cross referencing her findings in El Salvador with those of works done in other parts of the world.

We do have to worry about selection bias in such studies because as Woods mentions sometimes people over exaggerate and human memories are fallible. Of course one way to get around this it to check against other sources but we can never be 100% sure about our results. Also, there is a difference I think between those who volunteered to be interviewed and those who did not. How does this difference influence her findings?

With regards to the structure of the book I think Woods did a poor job in setting up her argument. Sometimes the book reads like a history text, a novel and rarely a political science text. This is a weakness because the reader is constantly having to go back to the first few chapters to be reminded of the research question, theory and objectives which are not clearly laid out for the reader I actually think the first chapter should have summarized the problem, theory and pre-empted some of the findings. Whilst I appreciate the historical background it was a lot to handle in one book. 

Wilkinson (2004) Votes and Violence

Week 2: Wilkinson (2004) Votes and Violence

This book is also really great because they bring to the forefront real issues that affect elections in most parts of the world election violence! Why are elections so bloody in the rest of the world? What is it about elections that brings out the nut jobs, is there something wrong with us? The fear that filled the air in Zimbabwe in 2008, Sierra Leone 2007, Kenya 2008, Ghana we all exhaled deeply when the election was peaceful. Why isn’t this the status quo? Look at Ivory Coast the blood that has been shed since the elections. I was telling someone that I am planning a trip home to Zimbabwe in June and their reaction was “isn’t that during elections? Will you be safe?” I don’t understand. It is not just the developing world though but I think there is more of it there. I know people are always pointing out the faults of the US but I think elections are one place this country fully understands. I am not saying they are always on point there is always room to learn and improve but here and elsewhere losers admit to losing the election and go back to the drawing board. They do not bring out the guns (at least not always) and if they did the rule of law prevails.

Vicente and Collier (2010) discuss how violence has become an actual election currency. Anyway moving on to Wilkinson….

Argument: Violence is electronically engineered by politicians- this is a rational actor agent centered model. He suggests using evidence from elections in India that politicians (both the opposition and incumbent) will use violence if they think that they can get some votes by doing so.

Motivation :

-       Why does ethnic violence occur during elections (I think the focus on ethnic violence is a weakness because you have homogenous countries with tons of vio as well)

-       What causes the variation is violence? Why does violence occur at sometimes but not others?

-       The current focus in the literature was on that violence occurs but no one has asked why it happens.

-       What explains Hindi-Muslim violence in the Indian context

-       He wants to be able to explain not just violence but also peace –this book does a much better job of explaining peace since there is really only one case of violence in the dataset.

Variables

-       Dependent -The number of riots in a state in a month (during election season)-There is a danger of over counting when using this method

-       Independent- Electorally engineered violence –competitiveness of the election

The book review

In Votes and Violence Wilkinson argues that electoral violence is a political tool used by politicians if they think it will benefit them. Using India as a case study he finds that politicians have either prevented or incited violence when there were political gains to be had. In states where minority votes matter politicians prevent violence and in states where minority votes disadvantage political elites they will encourage violence.

What is the author’s answer to this question? Wilkinson’s main argument is that violence (especially during election season) is electronically engineered. Politicians will either stop or encourage violence if they think that it is to their advantage to do so. Using data sets from electronic returns, content analysis and interviews he finds that there is a relationship between the amount and length of violence and which parties win. The strongest part of the book is that instead of merely telling the reader what his argument is that the author addresses conventional explanations and such as state weakness, consociational and town-level socio-economic factors and points out their weaknesses as they relate to electoral violence. He argues that state capacity alone does not predict violence because at least in his Indian State case studies there was a lot of variation in levels of state capacity in states that experienced electoral violence and those that did not. He also argues that the type of government is not an important explanatory factor for electoral violence. With regards to the state capacity argument he finds that political elites use their access to the law enforcement officers to prevent or allow for violence to occur depending on whether such a move helps them win votes.

There is no relationship between the decision to use violence and state capacity, weak and strong states have an equal chance for electoral violence when we do not control for political incentives. Wilkinson’s argument is weakest when he addresses the argument on the type of government and how that relates to electoral violence. Unlike Lijphart he is arguing that India has in fact become more consociational despite the growing violence. I think that that he finds this relationship because he does not control for the stock effect of democracy or time and his study only dates back to 1995.I am sure that if he were to repeat his studies he would in fact find that the level violence has decreased as India’s democracy has become representative of the diverse groups.

The author does not do justice to economic explanations. His main argument is that in areas were the minority is important violence will be low and vice versa but what about the role of economy as a mitigating factor. As I read this I thought that business people are more likely to lobby politicians to prevent violence if it affects their profits thus we should see politicians in major business centers behaving differently to those in non-commercial states. Another weakness is that this is a very agent centered argument, which ignores other actors such as the media and voters themselves. Is it possible that the media might boycott a politician if he/she is suspected of using violence or can regular citizens also incite violence if they think it will gain political attention? There are also times when violence is not engineered by a politician but comes about as a response to social situations.

Wilkinson’s argument is strongest when he is explaining peace because his results show only one case of violence and more than 5 cases in which violence was presented. This I think this really informative and pushes against the conventional wisdom that politicians always want violence. His findings reveal that in most instances violence can backfire and politicians are aware of this which explains why most times violence was prevented.

The book is very well structured and easy to follow. The first two chapters set up the argument chapters three and four discuss past arguments, chapters five and six present his results and chapters seven and eight conclude the discussion with a look at generalizability and recommendation. Although this arrangement is very nice and easy to follow as I mention earlier it is also weak because we end up with weak chapter four which could have been included in three but for stylistic purposes was kept. Chapter eight is also a weak link not only because it is eight pages long but because it is not well built. I really appreciated chapter seven which takes the argument beyond India and chapter eight could have been weaved in. 

Daniel Posner (2005) Institutions and ethnic politics in African politics

My advisor really likes his book because in the Posner was his advisor and since in the academic world this makes him my grandfather I too like it but that does not mean that i hold some of my criticism for the book. Anyway let me start with what I like about the book and I will try my best to analyze this book in the manner of graduate students. A big pro- is that this is a very well written book-compare this to another great work that is very badly written Elizabeth Wood's book on insurgencies. The review is yet to come.

This book is about something that many of us who grew up in Africa have been saying for a long time and he engages the debate between the constructivist and primordial approach to ethnic identity- African ethnic identities are not static -they are not set and stone have their backing in history. Ethnicity is multidimensional- this book is very much constructivist in nature. In this path breaking book Posner accounts for when some ethnic identities become salient and important  politically and when they are not.

RQ: When does  politics revolve around one identity (ethnic or otherwise) vs. another. In his case study when does being Nyanja become a major political factor or another identity religious, regional, ivy league educated, liberal etc.

His goal is to improve our understanding on why some cleavages are more politically salient and others not so much. In an earlier work he discusses the impact of being chewa/Tumbuka in Zambia(minimal) and Malawi (high). He finds that in Zambia these groups work together politically for mutually beneficial policies because neither group is individually strong and yet across the boarder (literally) they fight like crazy and don't get along- he concludes here that this has to do with the fact that in Malawi the Chewa's and Tumbukas are the largest ethnic groups and therefore very important politically and each group can mobilize its people politically independent of the other. In short there is a lot at stake for these groups across the boarder.

The idea that some identities are important at some political periods is not unique to Africa...think back to 2008 when the goal of republicans was to label Obama as unAmerican--if he is not for us then he is against us is the idea.

Central argument: This is a very structural-institutional centered argument.

                           His argument is that institutions determine what identities become important during a           given election. He has some agent roots - politicians will also shape what identities become important. This has been found to be especially true in Kenya after the 1991 elections. Politicians in Kenya found it  beneficial to mobilize voters around ethnic identity issues (Barkan 1993)

Understanding the book chapter by chapter (Did I say just how well organized this book is..again read Woods and you will appreciate my enthusiasm)

Chapter two-provides the political history of Zambia formally Nothern Rhodesia-Posner traces how the important ethnic groups evolved under British rule whom he says used chiefs to reemphasize groups that would become important politically. This observation is similar the one made by Rene Lemarchard on Rwanda and Burundi. Larmarchrd argues that the Belgian officials played into local myths about Tusti’s being wiser etc and used that to provoke political tension between the groups.  Posner finds that identity politics is not really about the depth of the association but instead the incentives that voters are given to use that identity at a given point. The relative size of groups also matters –there are more advantages to being Bemba than to being Chewa in the Zambian political system.

In chapter 7 we get a neat example of how politicians politicize ethnic identities. Kasanda was accused of selling out his ethnic tribe the Bemba. On paper Kasanda was your ideal Bemba candidate related to some high profile Bemba politicians but his opponents accused him of wanting to give away their land to another tribe and he lost the election. Thus politicians are always thinking of what is the winning strategy- McCain never publicly his party members who said Obama was an Iraqi Muslim or implied that he was a terrorist because that was a winning strategy with his based.

Criticism

1.    Ecological fallacy- most of the study is based on rural findings and yet he generalizes the findings to the whole country and even continent. In urban areas I think identity does not matter as much. Politics is generally more competitive and promises of patronage are not going to cut it. Scheiner () found that in Japan the LDP can only legitimately use clientelistic means to secure the rural vote but not the urban vote.

2.    What happens when there are multiple candidates with the same identity? The inherent assumption in Posner’s book is that voters are always faced with a choice between candidates of their own identity group and those who are not. This might be the case for national elections but we don’t know how voters are making this choice at the local level in their own neighborhoods.

Lessons about fieldwork

1. He had access to lots of data- it is part luck, part being charming and having money.

Tilly Democracy, de-democracy and democratization

This month I have been mostly reading about the process towards democracy or away from. As most of you already know the literature on democracy is a confusing one but I think there are some basic points. Tilly (2007) attempts to explain that democracy is not a liner process that in fact countries go through democratization (suffrage and expansion of voting rights) and again through dedemocratization when those rights are taken away and the process continues. He argues here that there are 3 factors that are useful in explaining when each of the process will take place.

In this rich historical narrative and analysis Tilly offers a reinterpretation of the interwoven processes of democracy, democratization and de-democratization. His goal is to show  that the process of democratization is not an easy yes/no switch but instead it is a range of variations. Tilly theorized that for democracy to develop in any regime, change must occur in three areas:  the integration of trust-based social networks into public politics, the insulation of public politics from the major inequalities in society, and the reining-in of "autonomous centers of power”.  Beyond these three, other factors which also affect the process of democratization are the breadth of the population enjoying extensive rights, the equality of the population enjoying equal rights and obligations based on their ethnicity, and protection regarding the state’s arbitrary action with mutually binding consultation with bribes and threats on one end of the spectrum and all citizens enjoy due process clear benefits based on the category of the recipient on the other.

Tilly’s strength is that he wrote a book that is easy to understand and makes intuitive sense at many levels. However, while historical analysis is a great tool for investigation it is not as powerful to some extent as quantitative methodology for this kind of analysis.  The author meanders into discussions that do not necessarily support his arguments. For example, when discussing the role of social networks in 19th century America he does not present a counterfactual which would have shown that without social networks democracy would have failed instead he goes onto a discussion about networks in Argentina and Mexico.

Tilly defines democratization as a response to popular demands by the state. However, he does not discuss what happens to democracy when and if the popular demands are undemocratic. In today’s world of internet and unending news cycles the majority is whoever can shout the loudest and what happens when those loud voices are undemocratic.  Consider this; there were more than 2 million people marching for the resignation of Mubarak but in a country of over 80 million people what appears to be a majority at the Tahir square is a tiny minority. Pundits and scholars alike have argued that this is a popular movement but we have no idea if the other 70 plus million people wanted this. I am not arguing that this was an undemocratic move but I think given how easy it is to spread a message for those with the means popular is not always synonymous with democratic. Is it possible that at least in developing countries the urban voice is now the voice of the majority?  A good theory has to be able to present both sides of the argument and with stand simple criticism as has been presented here.

Tilly shows South Africa as a country with structural and  categorical inequalities that have slowed down the process of democracy leading the country on a path toward de-democratization. The debate on inequality is important but unlike Przeworski (2010), Tilly takes it as a given that democracy should result in social and economic equality. Social equality and political equality are different processes and the path to each of them is therefore not the same. Economic inequality in South Africa has a long history and I am not sure that it is fair to expect sweeping changes a decade or so after the change in political power. For a long time blacks in South Africa did not get the same level and kind of education as the whites and coloreds.  In order to rectify social inequalities a majority of people will need to be retrained and to so this will drain government resources. As things stand South Africa has the most advanced welfare system in the region and yet things remain unequal there. I am not sure that democracy should be expected to shoulder the burden of social inequality.

Another one of Tilly’s arguments is that a state needs to create strong institutions before it can be democratic. Alternatively he argues that weak states are more likely to de-democratize than strong or medium strength state. This is an argument that has face validity but Tilly does not explain how it is possible that we have strong undemocratic Middle Eastern States. Comparatively speaking African states are much weaker than Middle Eastern states and yet there is a stronger move towards democratization in African states than in Middle Eastern states. By 2004 44/48 Sub-Saharan states had held elections and in more than 2/3 of those countries they have continued to hold free and fair elections and the countries have on average higher Freedom House civil liberties rankings than comparable Middle Eastern states  (Jackson, Lindburg 2006, Ross)

While I like the book because it is easy to understand I think we also risk over using the term democracy. If every country is at sometimes democratic or de-democratizing does this mean there are no undemocratic countries?