No Democracy? No Money.
Dean
Captain's Quarters notes that for the first time, advocates of helping blighted Africa are starting to talk about the need for accountability and transparency in African governments.
Good. Almost all the money given to help African nations over the last several decades has done little or nothing to improve conditions there. There's a simple reason for this: tryants and thugs do not use the money wisely. When they don't squander it, they pocket it.
It remains astonishing to me that there are those who still act like somehow, democracy should way down on the priority list. After decade upon decade, and hundreds of billions in aide money, you'd think someone would have noticed by now that throwing more money at unelected tyrants in Africa is not very helpful. Unless the governments there are accountable--not just to us, but to their own people--giving those governments money isn't just a waste, it's downright criminal.
* Update * Don't miss this update on election politics in Ethiopia. Back in the 1980s, groups like "Live Aid" and "USA For Africa" sent huge sums of money and food to help starving millions in Ethiopia--almost none of which got to the starving masses because the vile and corrupt thug regime of the dictator Mengistu prevented it from happening. Rich westerners pat themselves on the back for "doing good" when almost no good was done at all.
Without democracy--the only thing that guarantees transparency and accountability--nothing can or will get better.
All Related Posts (on one page) | Some Related Posts:
- Freedom Rankings
- Defining "Democracy" and The Democratic Peace Theory
- No Democracy Has Ever Experienced A Famine: Part II...
- Comment of the Week: On Democracy
- No Democracy? No Money.
- No More Tyrants, Part II...
- Reforming the UN Step #1: No More Despots
- More on Democracy
- Islamic states want permanent seat on UN Security Council
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
I'm a freshman at the University of Illinois going for my Poli. Sci. Degree, as well as my history degree, so I have to take the Intro. to International Relations class. Not much I didn't already know came up, but when the topic of international aid organizations came up, our teaching assistant was insistant that authoritarian governments could spend money better than democracies because democacies were too cacophonous and couldn't focus on spending the money correctly. When I explained that a huge amount of the money spent on Africa has simply gone into Swiss bank accounts for dictators, she scoffed.
Maybe the worst part is that the class merely chirped in and agreed, because it was another of how spreading democracy was a fool's errand and it contradicted President Bush and dreaded neo-conservativism.
Everything old is new again.
I don't see how that works. Who's going to reelect a filthy stinking rich guy who presumably got that way by skimming a helluva lot of money off the national economy?
A good case in point is Chile's Augusto Pinochet, who was persuaded over a period of about a decade to slowly give up power--first by allowing an elected legislature he could veto, then by having a national referendum to ask whether he should stay on as dictator, and when he lost that (by only 55-45%) there was a transition of a few years while they built up to national elections and he got to keep a position as lifetime member of the Chilean Senate.
Bloodless revolution--and now Chile is a model for all of South America and, indeed, most of the world as a thriving liberal democracy. (And a model for Social Security reform too, by the way.)