Shortly before an invading army replaced his regime with anarchy, Saddam Hussein was “re-elected” as the leader of Iraq. This transparent sham of an election was Saddam’s attempt to demonstrate to the rest of the world his legitimacy as a duly elected, democratic ruler. The Iraqi despot — whose surreal campaign featured as its theme song Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You”* — won with something like 96 percent of the vote.
No one inside or outside of Iraq was fooled by this bizarre charade. No one regarded this as a free election. Saddam’s margin of victory served only as a measure of the man’s delusion. He apparently realized that 100 percent of the vote would make it too obvious that the game was rigged, so for the sake of “plausibility” he decreed a margin of dissent — yet his ego couldn’t bear for that margin to be larger than 4 percent. Old-school authoritarian rulers like Saddam just weren’t very good at creating an impression of democratic legitimacy.
Jonathan A. Becker, in “Putin and the Dawn of the New Authoritarians,” explores how Russian President Vladimir Putin and other leaders have become much savvier at wielding unchecked, unaccountable power while still maintaining the charade of legitimacy:
The New Authoritarians represent the antithesis of the revolutionary spirit that swept the world in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the Berlin Wall fell and communism collapsed.
While they pay lip service to democratic values, and assert a rhetorical commitment to freedom of expression in domestic and international forums, these leaders undermine democracy and openness by using administrative resources and the selective application of laws to perpetuate their rule. …
When issues of importance are at stake, particularly elections, they assert substantial control over the media and use television as a blunt instrument to prop up the regime and discredit its opponents.
To ensure control of television, the New Authoritarians use a variety of legal and regulatory mechanisms to ensure that stations are in the hands of the state or state sympathizers. Broadcast licenses can be revoked, the tax police can be called in and owners can suddenly face criminal proceedings for their business practices.
Television dominance is coupled with other actions designed to limit the activities of journalists. Journalists can find themselves the object of criminal defamation suits, even for relatively minor criticism of the regime. Their access to government officials can be restricted. They can be arrested — or worse.
Media restrictions are often supplemented by other actions that limit public communication. Opposition protests and rallies are banned or limited. Leaders can be detained or beaten. When all else fails, the New Authoritarians will resort to voting fraud. …
Even where leaders’ desire to retain power outweighs their commitment to the values they publicly espouse, they still wish to bask in the glow of democratic bona fides.
They would also prefer to use more subtle forms of electoral manipulation that the control of broadcast media can afford them — rather than resorting to outright fraud or violence.
This raises a host of interesting points, the most important of which may be that genuine democracy involves much more than majority rule through elections. Without a bill of rights guaranteeing equality under the law for everyone, including minorities, elections are meaningless.
By putting elections ahead of these rights — freedom of speech, freedom of the press, free assembly, free association, religious freedom, due process, etc. — the Bush administration’s efforts at “promoting democracy” have done more harm than good. Groups like Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders emphasize the universality of such rights as a prerequisite for democratic elections — a much more promising approach in the long run.
It’s also impossible — or at least incredible — for the Bush administration to promote such rights abroad while undermining them at home. Bush’s embrace of warrantless search and seizure, his declaration that due process and habeas corpus are conditional, and his employment of torture are all both morally wrong and illegal. But these things also subvert America’s ability to promote democracy abroad.
Subvert isn’t strong enough a word there. These things pervert America’s efforts at democracy promotion — they twist it into something else, something opposite. They turn America’s nominal support for democracy into a buttress for authoritarians new and old.
Becker’s analysis also provides a Diagnostic and Statistical Manual-style checklist for authoritarianism. Here are the characteristics Becker provides for authoritarian regimes:
Asserts substantial control over the media
Uses television as a blunt instrument to prop up the regime and discredit its opponents
Ensures that television stations are in the hands of the state or state sympathizers
Subjects journalists to defamation suits for even minor criticism of the regime
Restricts journalists’ access to government officials
Arrests journalists
Bans or limits opposition protests or rallies
Detains and beats opposition leaders
Maintains power through electoral fraud
Invokes threats to national security as a part of their general press crackdowns
Censors the Internet
The DSM might say that a regime that presents seven of these 11 symptoms could be diagnosed as suffering from a severe case of authoritarian disorder. Presenting only five symptoms might be a case of moderate authoritarianism. In either case, the resulting clinically significant distress or impairment of democratic liberties would require immediate treatment.
Becker’s key insight, I think, is that the New Authoritarians’ “subtle forms of electoral manipulation” can be much more effective than the blunt instruments employed by old-school authoritarians like Saddam Hussein or the thugs now controlling Burma. At the same time, these subtler tactics provide a veneer of plausibility to their claims of democratic legitimacy. The arrest, detention and beating of journalists and opposition leaders isn’t really necessary anymore. Nor is Saddam-style election rigging. If you can control what the electorate sees on TV, you’ll only need the slightest tweaking of electoral outcomes at the ballot box to maintain unchecked and unending power.
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* Yes, really. Bittersweet memories. Considering that along with reports that Osama bin Laden regards Whitney as The Greatest Love of All makes me wonder if Ms. Houston might, somehow, be the key to peace in the Middle East.
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