HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019248.jpg

BREAKING DOWN DEMOCRACY: Goals, Strategies, and Methods of Modern Authoritarians

outcome of elections. They need to hold votes to validate their rule, but they also recognize the risk involved, as elections remain a potent instrument of democratic renewal even in deeply troubled societies.

The events of late 2014 and 2015 include vivid reminders of the power of the ballot. In Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country and largest economy, voters who were fed up with governmental complacency, terrorism, and graft rejected the incumbent president, Goodluck Jonathan, and elected Muhammadu Buhari to replace him. In Myanmar, a huge turnout produced an overwhelming victory in parliamentary elections for longtime opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD), a remarkable turnaround in a country that until recently ranked among the world’s most repressive.

Voters in Sri Lanka ousted their increasingly authoritarian and divisive president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, in favor of Maithripala Sirisena. Upon taking office, Sirisena immediately overturned some of Rajapaksa’s repressive policies and began repairing relations with both the country’s Tamil minority and the international community. And in Argentina, opposition candidate Mauricio Macri won the presidency by defeating the nominee of incumbent Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who with her late husband, Néstor Kirchner, had dominated the executive branch for over a decade. Combined with a victory for the democratic opposition in Venezuela’s parliamentary elections, Macri’s victory may have been the beginning of a rollback of Latin America’s populist movements, which had previously made impressive gains across the region.¹³

Voters in these countries retained faith in the democratic process even after experiencing hardship after hardship, including military rule (Myanmar), civil war and authoritarian rule (Sri Lanka), a terrorist scourge (Nigeria), economic collapse and political repression (Venezuela), and economic setback and unaccountable government (Argentina). They prevailed despite, in some cases, an electoral playing field tilted sharply against the opposition; in other cases, a history of political violence; and in still other cases, apprehensions about what lies ahead when dictatorships give way to normal politics.

Some of these voters were also rejecting political figures who had publicly disdained the world’s democracies and drawn closer to authoritarian powers like Russia, China, and Iran. They were willing to listen to candidates who talked about the rule of law, freedom of expression, and the right to be free of payoffs and bribes, and they were unimpressed by those who blamed every step backward on foreign plots.

There will always be dictators and would-be leaders for life who grow overconfident, lose touch with the mood of their people, and fail to do what it takes to ensure victory at the polls, as apparently occurred in The Gambia in late 2016. But the rest can be expected to learn from such mistakes and invest the necessary resources in a false mockery of democratic suffrage.

1. Arch Puddingtion, “The Rise of Virtual Elections,” Freedom at Issue, October 10, 2014, https://freedomhouse.org/blog/rise-virtual-elections.
2. Freedom in the World 2016 (New York: Freedom House, 2016), https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-world-2016.
3. See, among others, Steve Rosenberg, “Russian Media’s Love Affair with Trump,” British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), November 2, 2016, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37837432.
4. Javier Corrales, “Autocratic Legalism in Venezuela,” Journal of Democracy 26, no. 2 (April 2015): 37–51, http://www.journalofdemocracy.org/sites/default/files/Corrales-26-2.pdf.
5. “Ethiopia,” in Freedom in the World 2016.
6. “Russia,” in Freedom in the World 2016.
7. “Venezuela,” in Freedom of the Press 2015 (New York: Freedom House, 2015), https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/2015/venezuela.
8. “Whoever Wins the American Presidential Election, Russia Comes Out Ahead,” Economist, November 8, 2016, http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21709892-americas-campaign-has-served-vladimir-putins-purpose-discrediting-democracy-whoever-wins.
9. Neil MacFarquhar and Ivan Nechepurenko, “Aleksei Navalny, Viable Putin Rival, Is Barred from a Presidential Run,” New York Times, February 8, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/08/world/europe/russia-aleksei-navalny-putin.html?_r=0.
10. Farid Guliyev, “End of Term Limits,” Harvard International Review, February 28, 2009, http://hir.harvard.edu/end-of-term-limits/.
11. “Belarus,” in Freedom in the World 2011 (New York: Freedom House, 2011), https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2011/belarus.
12. “Ethiopia,” in Freedom in the World 2016; “Ethiopia,” in Freedom in the World 2011 (New York: Freedom House, 2011), https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2011/ethiopia.
13. “Anxious Dictators, Wavering Democracies,” in Freedom in the World 2016.

14

HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019248