Nonviolent Resistance and Democratic Consolidation

Daniel Lambach, Markus Bayer, Felix S. Bethke, Matteo Dressler, Véronique Dudouet

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9783030393700
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030393717
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: African Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book argues that democracies emerging from peaceful protest last longer, achieve higher levels of democratic quality, and are more likely to see at least two peaceful handovers of power than democracies that emerged out of violent resistance or top-down liberalization. Nonviolent resistance is not just an effective means of deposing dictators; it can also help consolidate democracy after the transition from autocratic rule. Drawing on case studies on democratic consolidation in Africa and Latin America, the authors find that nonviolent resistance creates a more inclusive transition process that is more resistant to democratic breakdown in the long term.

© The Author(s) 2020

D. Lambach et al.Nonviolent Resistance and Democratic Consolidationhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39371-7_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Daniel Lambach¹ , Markus Bayer², Felix S. Bethke³, Matteo Dressler⁴ and Véronique Dudouet⁵

(1)

Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany

(2)

Institute of Political Science, University of Duisburg-Essen, Duisburg, Germany

(3)

Peace Research Institute Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany

(4)

Flemish Peace Institute, Brussels, Belgium

(5)

Conflict Transformation Research, Berghof Foundation Berlin, Berlin, Germany

Daniel Lambach

Email: [email protected]

Keywords

Nonviolent resistanceCivil resistanceDemocratic consolidationNonviolence

End Abstract

A Story of Three African Democracies

In 1989, the small West African country of Benin entered its 18th year of autocratic rule by the socialist single-party regime of President Mathieu Kérékou. The country had experienced a number of military coups in the 1960s and 1970s, including the one that brought Kérékou to power in 1972. Benin was then, as now, very poor—it has been on the United Nations’ list of Least Developed Countries since the list was first published in 1971. According to World Bank data, Benin’s literacy rate in 1992 (the closest year for which data was available) was just 27.2% of people aged 15 and above, compared to an average of 53.4% in sub-Saharan Africa. In short, Benin was just about the most unlikely place for democracy to emerge and take root.

But that is precisely what happened. Resistance to Kérékou’s socialist one-party regime germinated in the mid-1980s, mainly among student groups and university teachers. With the economic situation deteriorating and wages being paid irregularly, more and more of the urban population joined the ranks of the opposition and pushed Kérékou to liberalize the political system. Restrictions on the press and trade unions were lifted in 1988, but protests continued unabated. The year 1989 saw huge nonviolent demonstrations and strikes. By December, Kérékou was left with no option but to announce the end of Marxism–Leninism as the state ideology and to call for the appointment of a National Conference . The National Conference worked out a new constitution, installed a provisional government, set out a timetable for democratic elections and paved the way for Benin’s ‘renouveau démocratique ’—its democratic renewal.

Kérékou was voted out of office in 1991, but the first extraordinary event of Benin’s nascent democracy took place in 1996. The Beninese voted out the first democratic government of Nicéphore Soglo in favour of Kérékou. Soglo’s economic policies had been met with widespread disapproval and he alienated many voters when he tried to pass the 1994 budget via executive decree—a move that was blocked by the constitutional court. From 1996, regular and peaceful turnovers of power were to become a feature of Benin’s democracy. The presidential elections in 2016 were the sixth of their kind and resulted in the fourth handover of power. Benin passed Samuel Huntington’s famous ‘two-turnover test’, whereby democracies are seen as consolidated after the second electoral turnover, in 2006 when Kérékou had to leave office at the end of his two-term limit.

That constituted the second extraordinary event. Leading up to 2006, rumours had been spreading that Kérékou would seek a third term in office. But the constitutional consensus reached by the National Assembly had remained highly valued by the population, and people took to the streets under the slogan ‘touche pas à ma constitution’—‘don’t touch my constitution’. The same thing happened in 2016, when Kérékou’s successor, Thomas Boni Yayi, also sought to circumvent the two-term limit. Again, citizens rushed to the defence of the constitution using the same slogans and banners as in 2006, with an even broader coalition this time.

Benin, this small, impoverished country with a chequered past of military rule and one-party autocracy now has an unbroken history of democracy that is about to celebrate its 30th anniversary. And it is not that this 30-year history has been easy. Far from it, democracy in Benin has been threatened time and again, but it has proven to be remarkably resilient in spite of weak state institutions and a fragmented party system, thanks mostly to the pro-democratic attitudes and activist stance of Beninese civil society.

Compare this with Liberia and Guinea-Bissau, two other small West African countries. In 1989, Liberia too was poor and had a history of single-party dominance and military rule. But instead of a peaceful revolution, it experienced a violent insurrection by the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) led by Charles Taylor. The NPFL quickly attracted support from a disaffected populace while the Liberian state, weakened through decades of autocratic misrule by President Samuel Doe and his predecessors, was unable to quash the rapidly growing insurgency. In July 1990, a decisive victory for the NPFL seemed at hand but a Nigerian-led military intervention by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) prevented it from capturing the capital, Monrovia. Six years of stalemated conflict and a dozen failed peace agreements later, the Nigerian leadership and Taylor reached a compromise deal to introduce a caretaker government followed by presidential elections, which Taylor and the still fully armed NPFL would go on to win with a decisive majority.

But Taylor’s accession to the presidency in 1997 did not bring peace. Taylor ran the country like a kleptocracy for the benefit of himself and his closest supporters. There was no reconciliation or reconstruction and society’s wounds were left to fester. In 2000, militias mobilized against Taylor, whose government proved to be no more capable of counter-insurgency than its predecessor. By 2003, with the militias advancing on Monrovia, Taylor agreed to go into exile in Nigeria. This paved the way for a UN-supervised peace process, backed by a large contingent of peacekeepers, that led to democratic elections in 2005 and 2006. Democracy has held since then, even as each new election tests the stability of the new regime.

Estimates of casualty figures from the first Liberian war (1989–1996) vary between 150,000 and 250,000 people dying on and off the battlefield (Ellis 2006, pp. 312–316), with a smaller number in the second Liberian war (2000–2003). According to official statistics of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, during the mid-1990s there were up to 800,000 Liberian refugees in the neighbouring countries of Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Côte d’Ivoire, plus an estimated one million internally displaced persons. Given that the pre-war population was only about three million, these are staggering numbers. The Liberian economy was devastated and the country has needed massive injections of aid to finance the recovering state apparatus.

Guinea-Bissau, like Benin, had been run by a socialist regime that had come to power in a military coup. Under the leadership of João Bernardo Vieira, the Revolutionary Council governed through the only party, the Partido Africano para a Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde (PAIGC), for 14 years. Faced with a worsening economic crisis and abandoning socialism, Vieira started to liberalize the regime in 1991, legalizing the activities of opposition parties. The first multiparty elections were held in August 1994. Vieira narrowly won the presidential election and the PAIGC retained control of parliament.

But democratization did little to assuage social and economic grievances or to mediate elite power struggles. The post-transition Vieira government was tainted by corruption, patronage, and economic stagnation. Finally, in 1998, the army chief of staff Ansumane Mané deposed Vieira after a bloody 11-month civil war that necessitated the deployment of ECOWAS and UN peacekeepers. And even though Mané’s military junta appointed a transitional government afterwards and Guinea-Bissau has had no fewer than five multiparty elections since then, it has never managed to attain even a semblance of political stability. There have been successful coup d’états in 2003, 2009, and 2012, plus an unsuccessful attempt in 2011. Vieira returned to power in the 2005 elections but was assassinated while in office during the 2009 coup. Politics in the country is characterized by political factions in government and the military engaging in all-out power struggles. Civil society, especially in rural areas, is weak and disenfranchised, preferring to keep its distance from the state (Forrest 2003).

Benin, Liberia, and Guinea-Bissau represent three different ways of democratizing a country. In Benin, democratic transition was forced upon the regime through large-scale nonviolent resistance. In Liberia, the government was toppled by armed insurrection, with democracy only coming about via a mediation process under heavy international pressure. In Guinea-Bissau, democracy, such as it was, was installed top-down by the incumbent authoritarian government. Comparing these three modes of transition shows that events leading up to and during transition will affect the long-term viability of democracy for years or even decades to come.

The first point is that transition without popular mobilization robs democracies of some of their lifeblood. In cases like Guinea-Bissau, citizens and civil society are mostly demobilized and have little leverage over the government. The political, military, and economic elites retain their perks and veto positions. Democratic reform is shallow and vulnerable to military or executive coups. In contrast, revolutions, whether violent or peaceful, can constitute a vibrant and capabl...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Theory
• 3. Statistical Analysis
• 4. Mechanisms
• 5. Inching Towards Theory
• 6. Conclusion
• Back Matter