Алистер Смит - The Dictator's Handbook - Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics

But what happens if the money dries up?

Take a look back at Figure 7.1, where we graphed Egypt’s foreign aid receipts through 2010. US aid to Egypt has been dropping as Egypt’s peace with Israel has aged and matured. The drop in aid has been substantial and that means Egypt’s former president, Hosni Mubarak, found himself in a weaker and weaker position when it came to buying the loyal support of the military. The global economic slowdown had compounded the importance of aid for the Egyptian regime. With money drying up, a chance was created for a rebellion against his government. And, indeed, in early 2011, Mubarak, facing a poor economy and decreased aid receipts, also faced a mass rebellion.

When autocrats lack abundant resources they have a more difficult time managing the people. First and foremost, leaders must pay their essential backers or they will be gone. Leaders without adequate revenues from aid, natural resources, or borrowing must obtain them by encouraging the people to work and by taxing them. Unfortunately for leaders, many of the public goods that increase productivity also improve the people’s ability to coordinate and, therefore, protest. Further, because the leader needs the tax revenues the workers provide, such protests are more likely to be met with concessions than in a resource-rich nation or one with huge cash reserves.

The factors that lead to rebellion are relatively uncomplicated. How much a leader does to enhance the welfare of the people by providing public goods determines the desire of the people to rebel. The level of freedom determines the ease with which they can act upon these desires by taking to the streets.

Yet, though high levels of either factor are in evidence in a host of countries around the world, protests remain rare. They require a spark.

Shocks Raise Revolts

Shocks that trigger protest come in many forms. On rare occasions protests happen spontaneously. But more often it requires an event to shake up the system and trigger protest. At the collapse of the Soviet Union and other communist states in Eastern Europe in 1989, contagion played a major role. Once one state fell, the people in the surrounding states realized that their state was perhaps no longer invulnerable. Free elections in Communist Poland triggered protests in East Germany. When it became clear that security forces would not obey East German leader Erich Honecker’s order to break up demonstrations, the protests grew. Successful protest in Germany spawned demonstrations in Czechoslovakia, and so on. As each state fell, it provided a yet stronger signal to the peoples of the remaining communist states. The states fell like dominos. And each was suffering from a poorly performing economy, so that the East European dictators could no longer assure private advantages to their supporters. Quite the contrary, they had been reduced to a state in which many of their henchmen understood it was better to abandon the dictator than go down in a blaze of glory with their failed regimes. Much the same story repeated itself in the Middle East in 2011. As Tunisia fell, the people of Egypt realized that their leader might also be vulnerable. So contagious was the belief that rebellion could succeed that the once rock-steady Middle East quickly became fertile ground for mass movements. People in Bahrain, Jordan, Yemen, Syria, Libya, and elsewhere tried their luck.

A massive natural disaster, an unanticipated succession crisis, or a global economic downturn that drives the autocrat’s local economy to the brink or beyond the brink of bankruptcy can also provide a rallying cry for protesters. Other shocks can be “planned”; that is, events or occasions chosen by an autocrat who misjudges the risks involved. One common example is a rigged election.

Dictators seem to like to hold elections. Whether they do so to satisfy international pressure (and gain more foreign aid), to dispel domestic unrest, or to gain a misleading sense of legitimacy, their preference is to rig the vote count. Elections are nice, but winning is nicer. Still, sometimes the people seize the moment of an election to shock the incumbent, voting so overwhelmingly for someone else that it is hard to cover up the true outcome.

Liberia’s Sergeant Doe was foolish enough to hold an election. In doing so, he provided the impetus for protest that he was lucky to survive. In 1985, Thomas Quiwonkpa challenged Samuel Doe after it took weeks for Liberia’s electoral commission to “count” the votes. Perhaps Quiwonkpa took the commission’s dalliance as a sign of popular support and equally a sign of the commission’s lack of support for him. As his insurgency approached the capital, Monrovia, the masses took to the streets against Doe’s government. Unfortunately for them, Doe’s essential supporters remained loyal. The costs of protest became very real. Doe’s soldiers killed hundreds in retribution.

In post-Soviet Eastern Europe, “legitimizing” elections helped to promote citizen uprisings. Rather than sustaining the regimes in power, elections created the opportunity to replace them. In 2004, the incumbent Ukrainian leader, Leonid Kuchma, having served two terms, decided, perhaps to the surprise of his essential backers, to respect the two-term limit and retire. His chosen successor was Viktor Yanukovych. The runup to the election looked like it came straight out of a John Le Carre spy novel, with the leading opposition candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, allegedly poisoned with dioxin, which left him horribly disfigured.

In the first round of the elections in October each of the leading candidates received about 39 percent of the vote. This necessitated a runoff election on November 21, in which the official results differed greatly from exit polls. Even before the second round presidential runoff was complete, Yushchenko called for the people to take to the streets. The electoral commission declared Yanukovych the winner. However, protests mounted and the security forces withdrew. Eventually the Supreme Court ruled that given the high level of fraud, another ballot was needed. Yushchenko then won the election handsomely.

Coalition dynamics play a key role in explaining why the security forces allowed the people to take to the streets. The president was changing. Although the retiring incumbent, Kuchma, backed Yanukovych, he could not ensure core supporters within the security forces that they would be retained after the transition. As we saw with Louis XIV and many others, newly empowered leaders, even when they have been chosen by their predecessor, are wise to shake up their coalition, bring in their own loyalists, and dump many of their predecessor’s erstwhile backers. The security forces, being uncertain whether they would keep their long-run privileges, declined to attack the masses, hedging their bets about who would be more likely to reward them. Without force to control the masses on the street, Yanukovych’s supporters deserted. The people brought Yushchenko to power, but an essential factor in their willingness to take to the streets was the apparent lack of support for Yanukovych by the security forces.

Sometimes the shocks that spark revolt come as a total surprise. Natural disasters, while bringing misery to the people, can also empower them. One frequent consequence of earthquakes, hurricanes, and droughts is that vast numbers of people are forced from their homes. If they are permitted to gather in refugee camps, then they have the opportunity to organize against the government. You see, refugee camps have the unintended consequence of facilitating free assembly. Earthquakes, storms, and volcanoes can concentrate large numbers of desperate people with little to lose. They also can substantially weaken the state’s capacity to control the people.

On the morning of September 19, 1985, a large 8.1 magnitude earthquake occurred on the Michoacan fault in the Pacific Ocean about 350 kilometers from Mexico City. Mexico City is geologically vulnerable as it was built on the soft foundation of the remains of Lake Texcoco. The clay silts and sands that make up the lake bed plus the soil’s high water content led to liquefaction (wherein the ground behaves like a liquid) during the earthquake. The city was also built in the absence of democratic rule, so few building codes had been enforced. As a result, the distant quake caused enormous devastation throughout the city. The death toll is highly disputed, but is thought to be between 10,000 and 30,000 people. An additional 250,000 were made homeless. The government did virtually nothing. Left to rescue themselves, the people formed crews to dig for survivors and organized refugee camps.