The Democratic Rollback

The Resurgence of the Predatory State

Larry Diamond

From Foreign Affairs, March/April 2008

Summary:  After decades of historic gains, the world has slipped into a democratic recession. Predatory states are on the rise, threatening both nascent and established democracies throughout the world. But this trend can be reversed with the development of good governance and strict accountability and the help of conditional aid from the West.

LARRY DIAMOND is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Co-Editor of the Journal of Democracy. This essay is adapted from his new book, The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World (Times Books, 2008), © Larry Diamond.

The most egregious predatory states produce predatory societies. People do not get rich through productive activity and honest risk taking; they get rich by manipulating power and privilege, by stealing from the state, extracting from the weak, and shirking the law. Political actors in predatory societies use any means necessary and break any rules possible in their quest for power and wealth. Politicians bribe election officials, attack opposition campaigners, and assassinate rival candidates. Presidents silence dissent with threats, detentions, show trials, and murder. Government ministers worry first about the money they can collect and only second about whether government contracts serve the public good. Military officers buy weapons on the basis of how large a kickback they can pocket. In such societies, the line between the police and the criminals is thin. The police do not enforce the law, judges do not decide the law, customs officials do not inspect goods, manufacturers do not produce, bankers do not invest, and borrowers do not repay. Every transaction is manipulated to someone's immediate advantage.

By contrast, sustainable democracy and development require active "civic communities," in which citizens trust one another and interact as political equals. In sustainable democracies, institutions of good governance -- such as impartial judicial systems and vigorous audit agencies -- induce, enforce, and reward civic behavior. The tendency toward corrupt governance and the monopoly of power is checked by the rule of law (both culturally and institutionally) and a resourceful civil society. As Putnam argues, people in such societies by and large obey the law, pay their taxes, behave ethically, and serve the public good not simply because they are public-spirited but because they believe others will, too -- and because they know that there are penalties for failing to do so.

ESCAPING THE PREDATORS

For democracy to triumph, the natural predatory tendencies of rulers must be restrained by rigorous rules and impartial institutions. Some fundamental innovations are necessary to transform closed, predatory societies into open, democratic ones. Proponents of democracy both within troubled countries and in the international community must understand the problem and pursue the necessary reforms if they hope to restore the forward momentum of democracy in the world. Citizens must build links across ethnic and regional divides to challenge elitist hierarchies and rule by strongmen. This requires dense, vigorous civil societies, with independent organizations, mass media, and think tanks, as well as other networks that can foster civic norms, pursue the public interest, raise citizen consciousness, break the bonds of clientelism, scrutinize government conduct, and lobby for good-governance reforms.

States must also build effective institutions in order to constrain the nearly unlimited discretion that predatory rulers enjoy, subject those rulers' decisions and transactions to public scrutiny, and hold them accountable before the law. This requires both vertical and horizontal accountability. The premier example of vertical accountability is a genuinely democratic election. But ensuring democratic elections requires a truly independent electoral administration capable of conducting all the necessary tasks -- from registering voters to counting votes -- with strict integrity and neutrality. Other effective forms of vertical accountability include public hearings, citizen audits, the regulation of campaign finance, and a freedom-of-information act.

Horizontal accountability invests some agencies of the state with the power and responsibility to monitor the conduct of their counterparts. No institution is more important than a countercorruption commission, which should collect regular declarations of assets from all significant elected and appointed officials. To be effective, such commissions need legal authority, professional staffs, vigorous leadership, and the resources to check the veracity of financial declarations, probe allegations of wrongdoing, impose civil penalties, and bring criminal charges against violators. Their work must be reinforced by ombudsmen; public audits of all major government agencies and ministries; parliamentary oversight committees to investigate evidence of waste, fraud, and abuse by executive agencies; and competent independent judiciaries capable of penalizing bribery and embezzlement. In at-risk democracies, these institutions often exist but do not function well (or at all) -- largely because they are not meant to. Typically, they either limp along, starved of resources and bereft of morale and serious leadership, or become instruments of the ruling party and investigate only its political opponents. Countercorruption agencies cannot make a difference unless they are independent of the government actors they are supposed to monitor, restrain, and punish.

Poorly performing democracies need better, stronger, and more democratic institutions -- political parties, parliaments, and local governments -- linking citizens to one another and to the political process. In shallow democracies, these institutions do not generate much citizen participation (beyond occasional voting) because the political systems are so elite-dominated, corrupt, and unresponsive. Reform requires the internal democratization of political parties through the improvement of their transparency and accessibility and the strengthening of other representative bodies.

It is not only the regulatory and participatory institutions of government that need strengthening. Effective democracy also requires improving the technical skills, resources, professional standards, and organizational efficiency of the state. Such improvements allow the government to maintain security, manage the economy, develop infrastructure, settle disputes, and deliver services such as health care, education, and clean water. Just as corruption erodes the basic functions of government, a feeble state drives people toward informal and corrupt networks to get things done.

Finally, reforms must generate a more open market economy in which it is possible to accumulate wealth through honest effort and initiative in the private sector -- with the state playing a limited role. The wider the scope of state control over economic life, the greater the possibility of graft by abusive and predatory elites. Reducing administrative barriers to doing business and implementing corporate-responsibility initiatives can address the supply side of the corruption problem. Strong guarantees of property rights, including the ability of owners of small farms and informal-sector workers to obtain titles to their land and business property, can provide the foundation for a broader institutional landscape that limits government corruption.