Elections can help, hurt democracy
By Ramesh Thakur
Special to The Daily Yomiuri
Friday, November 26, 2004

This has been a bumper year for elections that matter. In the world's most populous, Hindu-majority democracy, the governing coalition was thrown out and replaced by a Sikh prime minister and an Italian catholic widow as the power behind the throne, to complement a Muslim bachelor as president. Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, held its first direct presidential elections; the process and outcome discredited claims that Islam and democracy don't mix. In the world's most powerful democracy, President George W. Bush won a mandate that famously eluded him in his first term even as the election confirmed that he presides over a nation deeply and bitterly divided. And in Afghanistan, the world's most fledgling democracy, President Hamid Karzai succeeded in legitimizing his rule through elections and preparing the ground for a longer-term peaceful system of power-sharing arrangements.

Will the same happen in Iraq in January? Hopefully, but not necessarily.

An election by itself cannot resolve deep seated problems, particularly in a society deeply traumatized by conflict. According to a new United Nations University study of experience in several countries, ill-timed or poorly designed elections in volatile situations can be quite dangerous.* They risk producing the very opposite of the intended outcome, fuelling chaos and reversing progress toward democracy. They can exacerbate existing tensions, result in support for extremists or encourage patterns of voting that reflect wartime allegiances.

Benjamin Reilly of the Australian National University, one of the authors in the UNU study, argues that "Elections are a defining characteristic of democracy but the timing and method of electoral processes are critical. It is one of the perverse realities of postconflict elections that this lynchpin of the democratic process can also be its undoing." The important issue therefore is the circumstances in which elections help to build a new democratic order and under what circumstances they can undermine democracy and pave the way for a return to conflict.

 
The shape of post-conflict politics in most countries is determined by:

§       Timing. Should post-conflict elections be held as early as possible, so as to fast-track the process of establishing a new regime? Or should they be postponed until peaceful political routines and issues have been able to come to prominence?

§       Election mechanics: Who runs the elections? How are voters enrolled? What electoral formula is used?
§       Political parties. Especially in cases of weak civil society, political parties are the key link between masses and elites and play a crucial role in building a sustainable democratic polity.

Elections have become an integral element of many U.N. peacekeeping missions over the past decade. The reason is that the focus of most U.N. missions has shifted from pure peacekeeping to nation-building. Elections have also tended to mark the end-point and an exit strategy, providing a clear signal that the role of the international community may be coming to an end. The risk is that the domestic political need for an early exit strategy can determine the timing of the election rather than the best moment for maximizing positive outcomes.

Despite the growth of international electoral assistance since the end of the Cold War, elections have had mixed success in meeting the broader goals of democratization. In some cases, such as Namibia and Mozambique, they played a vital role in making a decisive break with the past. In others, such as Angola, flawed elections created more problems than they solved. And in Bosnia premature elections helped to kick-start the façade of democratic politics but also helped nationalist parties cement an early grip on political power.

It is still too early to judge how elections have influenced the peace-building process in other post conflict societies such as Kosovo, East Timor and Afghanistan. However, one of the most important lessons learned from recent U.N. missions is that imposing elections too early, for example while a country is still in conflict, can act as a catalyst for the development of parties and other organizations whose sole purpose is to help local elites keep a tight rein on power.

Because of this, in contrast to Bosnia, Angola and other countries, pressure was resisted to hold instant postconflict national elections in Kosovo, East Timor and Afghanistan. Instead, multiyear periods of political development were used to prepare the ground for elections as part of the much longer process of democratization. Variations in electoral procedures also can play a key role in determining whether political competition evolves along extremist or centrist lines, and hence in developing moderate and broad-based political parties.

Other contributors to The U.N. Role in Promoting Democracy explore the methods, effectiveness and controversies surrounding the United Nations' work in promoting and assisting democracy. Some even question why the United Nations should be involved in this task in the first place.

One of the principal driving forces behind the United Nations' work in support of democracy is its mandate to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war. The so-called democratic peace theory, supported by a study of wars over the past two centuries, concludes that while democratic states often go to war against non-democratic states, they generally remain at peace with each other.

In the final analysis, the United Nations and other players must decide how to balance the impulse and pressure for democracy with local realities. Whatever the balance, promoting and assisting democracy in postconflict situations is ambitious and sometimes hazardous. For the United Nations, the greatest pressure in the field comes from the inescapable priority to assure a certain level of security before democratization can take hold. Democracy needs a functioning state in which to operate and it needs security at least sufficient to allow a free and fair vote to take place. And its consolidation to the point of becoming self-sustaining also needs a robust market economy and a resilient civil society as essential props.



Thakur is the senior vice rector of the United Nations University in Tokyo. These are his personal views.

"The U.N. Role in Promoting Democracy: Between Ideals and Reality," edited by Edward Newman and Roland Rich, and published by the United Nations University Press in Tokyo, will be launched in New York on Thursday (Dec.2).