I could
not think of a more interesting place to examine the effects of ethnic politics
than the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I looked up the results of the most
recent presidential election, 11/28/2011, and it seems just from examining this
small amount of information how ethnic fractionalization has made it next to
impossible for citizens outside of the president’s party to mobilize against him.
Josef Kabila Kabange received just about 50% of the votes, while 10 other
parties split up the rest- one party,UDPS-Tshisekedi, received 32% of the votes
(AfricanElections). The vast expanse of territory and sheer number of ethnic
groups in this region has always intrigued me from a political stand point,
especially contemplating how ethnic fractionalization has hindered elections in
this state. I’ve always thought that elections provide an incredible
opportunity to measure emerging democracy, and doing so in the Congo which
boasts over 250 ethnic groups is helpful to understand why our western model of
democratization doesn’t make sense in Africa. I feel that anybody interested in
political science should definitely be interested in enhancing our
understanding of democratization beyond three waves and income models. Considering
the results of the DRC’s latest legislative elections I felt discouraged about
the prospects for a completely free state emerging within the next few years.
However, when I checked out the DRC in Polity, it appears as a “trending
democracy”, transitioning from a complete autocracy in the 60’s to just one
step away from a beginning democracy in 2010. FreedomHouse paints a much
different picture, measuring the political and civil liberties of citizens in
the DRC to be extremely limited. To make sense of these academic models in a
practical sense I checked out some news articles from around the 2011
elections. Aljazeera reported on December 8, 2011 that the city was completely deserted
(see picture below) as citizens awaited the results of the extremely contested
election. The central business district was shut down as millions just stayed
home from work because the tensions surrounding the elections were so high.
Though citizens could go out and
freely vote, they didn’t even feel safe enough to venture out of their homes in
anticipation of the results, which seems like a huge red authoritarian flag to
me. I believe this is very important in contemplating potential outcomes for
the 2016 presidential elections, and the present state of democracy in the
state. By 2016 any number of the parties outside of the President’s could
theoretically coordinate against him and achieve a greater number of votes;
making it much harder for the president to resist stepping down peacefully. However
given the role ethnic fragmentation has played in the development of parties in
this state, the coordination of separate parties into one seems very unlikely and
perhaps is a great indicator of future democracy in the state. At this time I think
what policymakers in this region need to focus on is reducing ethnic
fragmentation between the political parties, but I hope as I explore this
region in greater depths this semester I come to a better understanding of what
that would entail.
So why is it that people were scared to come out of their houses while the votes were being counted? Are opposition to the president's rule being discouraged with violence from voting? It's surprising to me that a country ranked as so authoritarian by different organization still allows people to vote for opposition group. It would interest me to find out whether the president's regime has policies to fractionalize the country, or if it is merely the split of different ethnic groups that makes party unity unachievable.
ReplyDeleteI believe it was because though democracy had been alluded to with the multi-party elections, it was not truly felt within the citizens. Many journalists posing any type of alternative to the incumbent ended up missing- which I feel defintely did not go unnoticed by the citizens. That's an interesting questions you pose, I've been contemplating the same.
DeleteI think the fact that citizens were so terrified to leave their houses is exactly indicative of how authoritarian the state is. Although many indexes measure freedom/democracy by whether or not the state allows citizens to vote, this type of tight control is completely characteristic of an authoritarian regime. It is a clear and absolute manipulation of power on the part of the state. They were clearly successful in this instance, citizens opposed to the incumbent were (largely) too frightened to openly express themselves.
ReplyDeleteI think Emily's assertion that looking at these type of indicators ("red flags" as she says) is essential for forecasting future political paths, in this case, the 2016 DRC presidential election.
I absolutely feel the same Sam.
ReplyDeleteEmily-
ReplyDeleteGreat job and nice responses in the comments.