Democracy without democrats: Mr. Kibaki should remember his old lessons

The wave of demand for democracy that swept through much of Africa in the early 1990s following the fall of the Berlin Wall left a number of observers puzzled. Many of the leaders of the pro-democracy movements were at some point in their past relatively senior members of totalitarian regimes that had ruled most parts of Africa since independence. The question the puzzled observers asked was: why did these old warhorses suddenly, and often later in life, become such strong advocates for democracy?

One theory had it that the elite clamor for democracy not because they believe in the right of each man and woman to chose their own government, but because democracy presents a reasonable (but by no means perfect) system by which to share power and the economic fruits of it. After decades of instability and economic decline under ex-president Moi, most of the elite – including Mr. Moi and his cronies, eventually – realized that they were in an untenable situation. The economic pie was shrinking yearly, leaving them unable to extract reasonable rents both for their own enrichment and to buy support from the various tribal networks on which they depended to remain in power.

Increased openness and respect for the rule of law would instead encourage investment and lead to a growing economy, which can be more usefully tapped for personal and political gain. And while democracy does not guarantee the ability to maintain power, you always have decent odds. Furthermore, should it not work out for you this time, the great thing with democracy is that you can always give it another shot the next. Again, there is no guarantee of success the next time around either, but there is always a chance. Politics moves away from a zero-sum game where winner takes all – which characterized Moi’s totalitarian political system – to a more fluid system, where when you are lucky enough to take power you do so of a larger economy. So democracy can make sense even when your motivation is largely extracting economic benefit. Thus you can have democracy without democrats.

This explains quite well, to me at least, the great embrace of democracy by Kenya’s political elite almost two decades ago. They did their sums, realized that the autocratic model was not sustainable over the long-run, and so chose to back the more unpredictable, but economically more viable, democratic one. Among these economic calculators was Mr. Kibaki, a long-serving vice-president under a totalitarian regime but one day leader of the Democratic Party of Kenya.

However, Mr. Kibaki seems to have forgotten a lesson which he once learned, and which even Mr. Moi seemed to eventually understand: economies under regimes that are not popularly elected do not do well. In which case, you are better off taking your chances with the democratic game, which offers no guarantee of maintaining power but which generally leads to greater economic prosperity and, importantly, the chance of coming back to power the next time around. If you subvert this system, investors flee, the economy declines, and politics moves back to the zero-sum, winner takes all system that existed under Mr. Moi. This system was proven unsustainable, which is why Mr. Kibaki exited it and found democracy instead.

Yet the Moi system seems to be making a comeback, with very dubious election results, instability and once again jittery investors. How long before the elite re-learn that this system did not and cannot work, and that democracy, with all its faults and unpredictability, is the only game that really does?