tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/political-elites-17311/articlespolitical elites – The Conversation2023-07-26T20:05:46Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2101892023-07-26T20:05:46Z2023-07-26T20:05:46ZMisinformation is rife and causing deeper polarisation – here’s how social media users can help curb it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539132/original/file-20230725-21-zu95a3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many Australians believe the nation is more politically polarised and divided <a href="https://www.edelman.com/trust/2023/trust-barometer">today than in the past</a>. It’s a divide that has long plagued the United States, but new data show it is increasingly eroding nations’ unity, shared goals, and wellbeing all over the world, including in Australia. </p>
<p><a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/isj.12453">Our research</a> suggests the spread of misinformation on social media is part of the problem. For example, we showed participants <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/30/us-covid-vaccine-doses-biden-trump">misinformation claiming</a> that the “Biden administration lost 20 million COVID vaccines”. In fact, the Biden administration <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/30/biden-covid-vaccine-states-463953">searched</a> for these vaccines because the distribution system established by the Trump administration failed to track the full route they travelled. But this didn’t matter: seeing this misinformation made people angry and polarised their attitudes towards the government.</p>
<p>Surprisingly, responses of anger and polarised attitudes occurred regardless of whether individuals were supporting or opposing the Biden administration and its response to COVID. We found similar results when exposing people to information that may be accurate, but contains extreme partisan viewpoints.</p>
<p>One might assume people would simply dismiss such information as baseless and avoid engaging with it. But our research has revealed a disconcerting trend: these misleading narratives can attract even more attention and interaction than accurate and less extreme information.</p>
<p>Data on the role of misinformation in driving political polarisation remains scarce. However, our findings might not be surprising given the growing awareness of misinformation’s pervasive impact on society. As misinformation continues to shape public debate, the repercussions of a highly polarised society, including
political gridlock and social unrest are increasingly felt. </p>
<p>It is a complex problem that needs a multifaceted solution that includes changing how we engage with information.</p>
<p>So, what do we need to look out for?</p>
<h2>Misinformation from political elites</h2>
<p>Although misinformation often originates from individuals and private citizens, public figures and political elites also spread misinformation and fuel political polarisation. </p>
<p>Public figures and political elites may wield even greater influence as they are often perceived as trusted sources. <a href="https://mitsloan.mit.edu/press/new-mit-sloan-research-identity-cues-social-media-shows-its-not-just-what-said-who-says-it-matters">Research</a> has demonstrated that the “who” behind a social media post can sometimes hold more significance than the “what” in determining our engagement with content.</p>
<p>During the COVID crisis, many false claims and rumours originated from public figures. <a href="https://www.skynews.com.au/australia-news/voice-to-parliament/pauline-hanson-claims-indigenous-voice-is-australias-version-of-apartheid-in-speech-aimed-at-lidia-thorpe-and-albanese/news-story/2d988413c54d81ba0cb9c55f19d9cffa">More recently</a>, One Nation Senator Pauline Hanson claimed the Indigenous Voice was “Australia’s version of apartheid”. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-voice-isnt-apartheid-or-a-veto-over-parliament-this-misinformation-is-undermining-democratic-debate-205474">The Voice isn't apartheid or a veto over parliament – this misinformation is undermining democratic debate</a>
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<h2>The media are in on it too</h2>
<p>Information from partisan media outlets might not be strictly false, but these outlets often skew their reports to disparage opposing viewpoints. In the United States, extreme partisan viewpoints are expressed by media outlets such as Breitbart and AlterNet. In Australia, many media outlets overwhelmingly express conservative or liberal viewpoints too.</p>
<p>For example, instead of discussing the Voice to Parliament referendum in a neutral manner that shows the strength and weaknesses of the “yes” and “no” campaign, these outlets mainly focus on one side. Often they not only report in a partisan manner but also support false claims from political elites. </p>
<p>Although fact-checking could assist journalists in identifying false claims, many tend to concentrate solely on whether the statements made by political elites align with the views of their audiences. In this way, they facilitate an even wider spread of misinformation leading to further political polarisation.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/journalists-reporting-on-the-voice-to-parliament-do-voters-a-disservice-with-he-said-she-said-approach-204361">Journalists reporting on the Voice to Parliament do voters a disservice with 'he said, she said' approach</a>
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<h2>What does that mean for Australians?</h2>
<p>Our research focused on sources of misinformation and extreme partisan information in the United States. However, the findings also have important implications for public political debate in Australia.</p>
<p>With the looming Voice referendum, the significance of this matter cannot be overstated. Indeed, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/feb/05/albanese-says-indigenous-voice-next-step-in-reconciliation-and-opponents-trying-to-start-a-culture-war">Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has argued</a> the referendum comes at a time of increasing polarisation, when democracy needs to be protected. </p>
<p>The choices made by citizens during this referendum could be heavily swayed by the information they consume on social media platforms. This means awareness around these dynamics and fundamental change in how we consume information has never been more important. </p>
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<h2>What next, then?</h2>
<p>Curbing political polarisation needs to come from a variety of stakeholders, including social media platforms, policymakers, and educators. Social media platforms have implemented many changes throughout the years. </p>
<p>However, it appears that sensationalism is still prioritised over accuracy. While content moderation can be a dangerous tool, deprioritising potentially damaging content can serve as a first line of defence against misinformation and political polarisation. </p>
<p>At the same time, non-profit organisations and educational institutions can initiate programs that develop digital literacy and a <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-a-voice-campaign-marked-by-confusing-competing-claims-theres-a-better-way-to-educate-voters-206193">shared understanding of responsible engagement online</a>. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-is-it-legal-to-tell-lies-during-the-voice-referendum-campaign-209211">Why is it legal to tell lies during the Voice referendum campaign?</a>
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<h2>We need to change too</h2>
<p>It’s important that social media users do their part too. Social media users need to use their greater awareness around misinformation to change how they consume and engage with information. This change can include consuming less content but engaging more critically with it and relying on multiple sources. </p>
<p>Especially when dealing with highly emotional content, users should step back and take some time before making a decision to share or otherwise engage with it. Using the tools that social media platforms provide is just as crucial. Such tools include, for example, <a href="https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/community-notes">X’s community notes feature</a>, which allows users to see or provide additional context to information they encounter.</p>
<p>Social media platforms can facilitate the spread of misinformation and a resulting increase in political polarisation. But the power to fuel this vicious cycle lies firmly in the palms of their users.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210189/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>New research shows misinformation from political ‘elites’ can be particularly toxic. We all need to do our bit to stop it.Jason Weismueller, Doctoral Researcher, The University of Western AustraliaPaul Harrigan, Associate Professor of Marketing, The University of Western AustraliaRichard L. Gruner, Associate professor, The University of Western AustraliaShasha Wang, Senior lecturer, Queensland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1952202022-11-28T12:27:46Z2022-11-28T12:27:46ZEast African Court of Justice – what it is and what its powers are<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497004/original/file-20221123-14-81cjvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Kenyan judicial nominee to the East African Court of Justice, Charles Nyachae, is sworn in before a summit of regional leaders in Kampala in 2018.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kenya Presidential Communication Service</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Martha Karua, the running mate of Raila Odinga, the losing candidate in Kenya’s 2022 presidential election, continues to dispute William Ruto’s <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/9/5/kenyas-supreme-court-upholds-rutos-win-in-presidential-election">slim victory</a> over him. According to the <a href="https://nation.africa/kenya/people/martha-karua-3813480">politician and lawyer</a>, the Kenyan electoral commission and the country’s supreme court </p>
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<p>failed Kenya’s democracy and infringed on the human rights of Kenyans when they ratified President William Ruto’s win. </p>
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<p>This is why she <a href="https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2022-11-04-details-of-karuas-petition-at-east-african-court-of-justice-over-ruto-win/">intends</a> to bring the matter before the East African Court of Justice. </p>
<p>As the judicial organ of the East African Community, the court was set up in 2001 to ensure the adherence to law in the interpretation and application of and compliance with the treaty that binds the regional bloc of seven countries. These are Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda.</p>
<p>For everybody concerned with the progress of regional integration, challenging Kenyan presidential elections in the regional court is good news. It is not necessarily about what the court will say about the quality of the elections, but about the decision’s long-term implications. </p>
<p>Every decision sheds light on the regional bloc’s basic values. Case law shows countries how to live up to those values. And a high-profile case creates awareness of the court’s mandate and mission.</p>
<p>The regional court needs and deserves public attention. Unlike most of the regional institutions in Africa, it hasn’t been captured by political elites. It is a court of the people with a broad jurisdiction. </p>
<p>Initially, the regional court limited itself to <a href="https://www.eacj.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Plaxeda-Rugumba-2010-8-judgment-2011.pdf">declarations of treaty violations</a>. With time, it moved to order <a href="https://www.afronomicslaw.org/2019/10/22/east-african-court-of-justice-a-midwife-of-the-political-federation-the-new-case-law-on-the-remedies-awarded-by-the-court">more robust remedies</a>, such as compensation for aggrieved parties. It also started instructing governments to take certain actions to remedy violations. </p>
<p>I have studied the development of the East African Court of Justice over the last few years. My view is that the court has been a keen promoter of the rule of law, democracy and human rights. It has also challenged the elitist legacy of regional integration in East Africa and shaken up the top-down decision-making processes in the East African Community. The court did so by engaging with civil society and national judiciaries, thus bringing the regional bloc closer to the people.</p>
<h2>A court of the people</h2>
<p>The East African Court of Justice is a very accessible court. Any person who is a resident of the bloc can file a petition – <a href="https://www.eacj.org/?page_id=33">the treaty</a> calls it individual reference (Article 30). Anybody can challenge treaty violations in the court directly without first engaging their national authorities or courts. There is no need to demonstrate any personal interest in the outcome of the case – it can be filed in the public interest. </p>
<p>The court has encouraged individuals to use it through a generous approach to the litigation costs. There are no filing fees and even a losing applicant does not have to pay any instruction fees to the state’s attorney general.</p>
<p>Moreover, the court has gone to great lengths to be physically closer to the people. Even though it is seated in Arusha, in northern Tanzania, there is no need to travel there to file a case. The court operates an electronic filing system and is establishing sub-registries in all capitals of the bloc. It’s also holding hearings in national judiciaries’ court stations across the region.</p>
<p>The court did not decide a single case in the first couple of years of its existence. As the cases finally started coming in the mid-2000s, the court experienced a backlash which limited its accessibility. In 2007, Kenyan politician <a href="https://www.eacj.org/?cases=application-no-01-no-02-of-2010-appellate-division">Anyang’ Nyong’o and 10 other applicants</a> brought a petition about flawed processes of election to the East African Legislative Assembly. The court agreed with the applicants. </p>
<p>It was apparently inconceivable to the national governments that the court they had created would dare to oppose them. Politicians rushed to put the court in its place. They introduced the time frame for individual references, making it harder to approach the court.</p>
<h2>What cases are most common?</h2>
<p>Cross-border trade disputes make up only a few of the court’s cases. In one <a href="https://africanlii.org/ea/judgment/east-african-court-justice/2018/71">case</a>, a private company won US$20,000 as compensation for Burundi custom authorities unlawfully seizing a truck carrying perishable goods.</p>
<p>Awarding of damages is, however, a new practice. The majority of cases concern violation of the bloc’s values, most notably the commitments to the rule of law and human rights. A <a href="https://www.eacj.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/NO._1_OF_2007.pdf">groundbreaking judgement</a> was handed down in 2007 in the James Katabazi case. A group of treason co-accused in Uganda had been rearrested after being granted bail by their country’s court. The regional court denounced the rearrest as a violation of the rule of law.</p>
<p>Other cases followed. For example, the East African Court of Justice has <a href="https://www.eacj.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Plaxeda-Rugumba-2010-8-judgment-2011.pdf">ruled</a> against secretive detention without trial of a Rwandan army officer accused of committing crimes against national security. And it <a href="https://www.eacj.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Referene-No.2-of-2017.pdf">ruled</a> in favour of the Media Council of Tanzania against legislation which granted a government minister sweeping powers to </p>
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<p>prohibit or otherwise sanction a publication of any content that jeopardises national security or public safety.</p>
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<p>But what is interesting in the context of the upcoming petition from Kenya is an <a href="https://www.afronomicslaw.org/2020/11/30/eacj-first-instance-court-decides-martha-karua-v-republic-of-kenya-the-litmus-test-for-eacj-jurisdiction-and-supremacy">earlier judgement</a> – in 2020 – in favour of Martha Karua. After unsuccessfully contesting a gubernatorial seat in Kirinyaga, she filed an electoral petition with Kenyan courts. It was dismissed on procedural technicalities and she was never heard on the merits. According to the <a href="https://www.eacj.org/?cases=martha-wangari-karua-v-the-attorney-general-of-the-republic-of-kenya-2-others">East African Court of Justice ruling</a>, Kenya violated the right to access justice, and hence the principle of the rule of law. </p>
<h2>Only as strong as its partners</h2>
<p>The court holds great potential for justice in the region, but it is only as strong as its partner states allow it to be. The partner states are under treaty obligation (Article 38) to implement the court’s judgements without “undue delay”. If a state fails to do so, the applicant can go back to the court, since the failure to implement a judgement is in itself a rule of law violation, a violation of the treaty and contempt of court. </p>
<p>The enforcement of a judgement depends ultimately on the given state’s commitment to the rule of law. And <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHBZkMgWpQk">as stated</a> by the former Kenyan chief justice, David Maraga, it is herein that the greatness of any nation lies.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/195220/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tomasz Milej does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The East African Court of Justice has been a keen promoter of the rule of law, democracy and human rights.Tomasz Milej, Professor, Department of Public Law, Kenyatta UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1825812022-07-27T12:00:17Z2022-07-27T12:00:17ZAn antidemocratic philosophy called ‘neoreaction’ is creeping into GOP politics<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470364/original/file-20220622-44261-k6jyri.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=529%2C324%2C6649%2C4476&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">J.D. Vance, who won Ohio's GOP Senate primary, calls neoreactionist Curtis Yarvin a friend.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/vance-a-republican-candidate-for-u-s-senate-in-ohio-speaks-news-photo/1240188584?adppopup=true">Drew Angerer/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election were brazenly antidemocratic. Yet Trump and his supporters nonetheless justified their actions under the dubious pretense <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-speech-election-north-carolina-b1860537.html">of preserving American democracy</a> – as a matter of getting the vote right, of reversing voter fraud. </p>
<p>There’s a good reason they took this approach. Authoritarianism <a href="https://www.voterstudygroup.org/publication/follow-the-leader">has long been rejected across the political spectrum</a>. Democrats and Republicans routinely lob insults like “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2016/10/12/politics/paul-lepage-donald-trump-obama-dictator/index.html">dictator</a>” or “<a href="https://freebeacon.com/politics/olbermann-i-probably-owe-an-apology-to-george-w-bush/">fascist</a>” to describe politicians of the other party who are in power.</p>
<p>But in recent months, a strand of conservative thought whose adherents are forthright in their disdain for democracy has started to creep into GOP politics. It’s called “neoreaction,” and its leading figure, a software engineer and blogger named <a href="https://medium.com/@charles_91491/analysis-on-the-dark-enlightenment-and-of-curtis-yarvin-mencius-moldbug-160c6151366a">Curtis Yarvin</a>, <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/inside-the-new-right-where-peter-thiel-is-placing-his-biggest-bets">has ties</a> to at least two GOP U.S. Senate candidates, along with Peter Thiel, a major GOP donor. </p>
<p>In my years <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/George-Michael-8">researching the far right</a>, I see this as one of the more significant developments in right-wing politics. Someone who calls himself a monarchist isn’t being relegated to the fringes of the internet. He’s being interviewed by Fox News’ Tucker Carlson and has U.S. Senate candidates repeating his talking points.</p>
<h2>A political philosophy is born</h2>
<p>In 2007, Yarvin launched his blog, “Unqualified Reservations.” Writing under the pseudonym Mencius Moldbug, he produced a prodigious corpus of political philosophy. </p>
<p>In his writings, Yarvin cites his political influences. They include the 19th-century political philosopher <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13569317.2022.2026906">Thomas Carlyle</a>, who disdained democracy and thought it could too easily veer into mob rule; American 20th-century political theorist <a href="https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2017/02/james-burnhams-managerial-elite/">James Burnham</a>, who became convinced that elites would come to control the country’s politics while couching their interests in democratic rhetoric; and economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe, who, in his 2001 book “<a href="https://mises.org/library/democracy-god-failed-1">Democracy: The God That Failed</a>,” wrote of how all organizations – irrespective of size – are best managed by a single executive. </p>
<p>Yarvin is perhaps best known for his concept of “<a href="https://graymirror.substack.com/p/a-brief-explanation-of-the-cathedral?s=r">the cathedral</a>” – his term for the U.S. ruling regime. <a href="https://graymirror.substack.com/p/a-brief-explanation-of-the-cathedral?s=r">Yarvis argues that</a> virtually all opinion-makers, most notably those in academia and journalism, are essentially “reading the same book.” <a href="https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/the-cathedral-or-the-bizarre">In an essay for Tablet Magazine</a>, Yarvin wrote that what’s often characterized as the “marketplace of ideas” is actually a “monoculture” that props up an oligarchy.</p>
<p>The cathedral is self-reinforcing: Individual journalists and professors are rewarded when they follow the ruling ethos. Those who do otherwise risk being punished or at the very least face diminished career prospects.</p>
<p>Another important neoreactionary figure is <a href="https://tripleampersand.org/nick-land-accelerationism/">Nick Land</a>, whose main contribution to the philosophy is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/11/accelerationism-how-a-fringe-philosophy-predicted-the-future-we-live-in">the concept of accelerationism</a>. In essence, accelerationism is based on <a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/1980/0423/042334.html">Vladimir Lenin’s notion</a> that “worse is better.” The Russian revolutionary maintained that the more chaotic conditions became, the greater the likelihood that his Bolshevik party could accomplish its goals.</p>
<p>Analogously, <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-are-white-supremacists-protesting-the-deaths-of-black-people-140046">right-wing accelerationists</a> believe that they can hasten the demise of liberal democratic governments by stoking political tension.</p>
<h2>Smashing the cathedral</h2>
<p>Both Yarvin and Land believe that gradual, incremental reforms to democracy will not save Western society; instead, a “hard reset” or “reboot” is necessary. To that end, Yarvin has coined the acronym “RAGE” – Retire All Government Employees – as a crucial step toward that goal. The acronym is reminiscent of former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/top-wh-strategist-vows-a-daily-fight-for-deconstruction-of-the-administrative-state/2017/02/23/03f6b8da-f9ea-11e6-bf01-d47f8cf9b643_story.html">vow to deconstruct the administrative state</a>.</p>
<p>Yarvin advocates for an entirely new system of government – what he calls “<a href="https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Neocameralism">neocameralism</a>.” He advocates for a centrally managed economy led by a monarch – perhaps modeled after a corporate CEO – who wouldn’t need to adhere to plodding liberal-democratic procedures. Yarvin <a href="https://quillette.com/2022/06/11/curtis-yarvin-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/">has written approvingly</a> of the late Chinese leader <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/9780815737254_ch1.pdf">Deng Xiaoping</a> for his pragmatic and market-oriented authoritarianism. </p>
<p>While not explicitly fascist, Yarvin’s worldview does, at times, appear to have a fascistic bent. As the historian Roger Griffin <a href="https://www.libraryofsocialscience.com/ideologies/resources/griffin-the-palingenetic-core/">once argued</a>, the essence of fascism was a nationwide process of death and rebirth. Yarvin’s rhetoric of “reboots” and “hard resets” evokes the imagery of national renewal.</p>
<p>Moreover, though he maintains that he is not a white nationalist, he <a href="https://www.inc.com/tess-townsend/why-it-matters-that-an-obscure-programming-conference-is-hosting-mencius-moldbug.html">has echoed</a> racist views like the belief that white people, on average, have higher IQs than Black people.</p>
<h2>Follow the money</h2>
<p>Though neoreaction has long eschewed involvement in electoral politics, it seems to be be gradually penetrating mainstream right-wing spaces. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2007/04/case-against-democracy-ten-red-pills/">Yarvin is said</a> to have helped popularize the “<a href="https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/red-pill-prince-curtis-yarvin">red pill</a>” meme in alt-right subcultures. Pulled from the 1999 film “The Matrix,” to take the red pill is to no longer live under the spell of delusion. In the context of politics, it means breaking free from the spell of liberal orthodoxy.</p>
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<p>In September 2021, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_8aT3pQo_I">Yarvin made an appearance on</a> “Tucker Carlson Today,” during which he explained the concept of the cathedral. When Yarvin called himself a monarchist, Carlson didn’t bat an eye. </p>
<p>Then, in May 2022, Vanity Fair <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/inside-the-new-right-where-peter-thiel-is-placing-his-biggest-bets">reported on the relationship</a> among Yarvin, GOP megadonor and venture capitalist Peter Thiel and U.S. Senate candidates J.D. Vance and Blake Masters. </p>
<p>Thiel, who <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/the-libertarian-logic-of-peter-thiel/">is often described as a libertarian</a>, holds views <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/09/20/peter-thiel-book-facebook-trump-jd-vance-blake-masters-josh-hawley-513121">that can appear to be contradictory or mysterious</a>. Reporter Max Chafkin, who wrote a biography of Thiel, <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/09/20/peter-thiel-book-facebook-trump-jd-vance-blake-masters-josh-hawley-513121">told Politico in September 2021</a> that the investor has an authoritarian streak – “a longing” for a “more powerful chief executive.” </p>
<p>Thiel, like Yarvin, has expressed frustration with American democracy. As far back as 2004, <a href="https://uvcygnus.com/peter-thiel-the-straussian-moment/">Thiel lamented</a> that “America’s constitutional machinery” prevents “any single ambitious person from reconstructing the old Republic.” In 2013, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur <a href="http://distributedweb.care/posts/who-owns-the-stars/">invested</a> in Yarvin’s firm, the Tlon Corp., best known for developing a decentralized personal server platform. And <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/josephbernstein/heres-how-breitbart-and-milo-smuggled-white-nationalism">according to Yarvin</a>, he and Thiel watched the returns of the 2016 U.S. presidential election together.</p>
<p>During the 2022 election cycle, Thiel <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/543242-billionaire-peter-thiel-gives-10-million-to-super-pac-backing-potential-jd/">has donated more than $10 million</a> to super PACs supporting Vance and Masters, who also serves as the president of the Thiel Foundation.</p>
<p>Vance, who won his primary in June, is perhaps best known for his memoir, “<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-chattering-classes-got-the-hillbilly-elegy-book-wrong-and-theyre-getting-the-movie-wrong-too-150937">Hillbilly Elegy</a>.” Though Vance <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/23/jd-vance-ohio-senate-trump-comments-516865">once denounced Trump</a>, he has since embraced the former president <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/inside-the-new-right-where-peter-thiel-is-placing-his-biggest-bets">and now calls</a> for a “De-Ba'athification program” for the civil service – a reference <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2013/3/12/iraqs-de-baathification-still-haunts-the-country">to the purging of Saddam Hussein’s loyalists</a> after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. He cites Yarvin <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/inside-the-new-right-where-peter-thiel-is-placing-his-biggest-bets">as a friend and mentor</a>.</p>
<p>Yarvin, meanwhile, has given $5,800, the maximum amount allowed for individual contributions, <a href="https://jewishinsider.com/2022/06/blake-masters-arizona-senate-livejournal/">to Blake Masters’ Senate campaign</a>. Masters, for his part, has echoed one of Yarvin’s maxims – “RAGE,” or “Retire All Government Employees” – <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/inside-the-new-right-where-peter-thiel-is-placing-his-biggest-bets">on the stump</a>.</p>
<p>To be fair, neither Masters nor Vance has called for the dismantling of U.S. democracy. Yet they espouse a brand of apocalyptic rhetoric that depicts a governing system on its last legs. “Psychopaths,” Masters earnestly explains <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1atFzbwVqSs">in one web ad</a>, “are running the country.”</p>
<p>The current order, Vance proclaimed <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/05/jd-vance-ohio-trump-carlson-comments-fentanyl-hillbilly-elegy/">in a podcast interview</a>, will meet its “inevitable collapse.” </p>
<p>“There’s this guy, Curtis Yarvin, who has written about some of these things,” Vance added.</p>
<h2>Democracy in crisis</h2>
<p>Why might neoreactionary ideas be gaining currency among right-wing candidates and donors? </p>
<p>Trump’s electoral success <a href="https://www.bu.edu/articles/2022/are-trump-republicans-fascists/">illustrated the acute dissatisfaction</a> the American far right has had with the establishment wing of the Republican Party. </p>
<p>But more broadly, <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/06/06/public-trust-in-government-1958-2022/">public trust in government</a> has eroded to the point where only 2 in 10 Americans say they trust the federal government to do the right thing. <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/1597/confidence-institutions.aspx">A Gallup Poll</a> published on July 5, 2022, found that only 7% of Americans had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in Congress – the legislative body’s lowest recorded rating in 43 years of polling. A Monmouth University poll released that same day reported that <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/3546548-88-percent-say-us-is-on-wrong-track-survey/">88% of Americans</a> believe the U.S. is on the wrong track. And in a July 2022 New York Times/Siena College poll, <a href="https://dnyuz.com/2022/07/13/as-faith-flags-in-u-s-government-many-voters-want-to-upend-the-system/">58% of those polled</a> said the government needs major reforms or a “complete overhaul.”</p>
<p>With confidence in government at historic lows, a window opens for other ideologies to seed the political imagination. Neoreaction <a href="https://www.axios.com/2021/06/25/americas-continued-move-toward-socialism">is but one of them</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182581/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>George Michael does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The explicitly anti-democratic movement seems to have the ear of a major GOP donor – along with at least two GOP front-runners for the US Senate.George Michael, Professor of Criminal Justice, Westfield State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1816372022-05-04T14:32:39Z2022-05-04T14:32:39ZWhat cattle conflicts say about identity in South Sudan<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459430/original/file-20220425-66366-1i3rnm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An armed man guards cattle in a village in South Sudan.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Simon Maina/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In March 2022, <a href="https://www.eyeradio.org/makuei-appeals-for-calm-as-govt-promises-to-remove-cattle-from-magwi/">violent clashes</a> between farming communities and cattle herders broke out in Eastern Equatoria State, South Sudan. It was the latest incident in months of cattle-related violence in the area, which is in the country’s southern region. </p>
<p>Dinka Bor herders from the neighbouring Jonglei State were pushed south into Eastern Equatoria’s Magwi County after floods submerged grazing lands. In just days, however, farmer-herder conflict <a href="https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/following-conflict-between-farmers-and-herders-magwi-unmiss-steps-patrols">displaced</a> more than 14,000 people. </p>
<p>The Equatoria region hosts South Sudan’s capital, Juba. It is inhabited by more than 30 different ethnic groups, most of them farmers. It was the birthplace of the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-14019208">southern rebellion</a> against Sudan’s Khartoum. Economically, it is the strongest region of South Sudan, with immense agricultural potential. </p>
<p>However, the <a href="https://jhumanitarianaction.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s41018-018-0030-y">militarisation</a> of cattle raiding since the 1990s has led to frequent eruptions of violence. These raids were originally regulated by cultural authorities. But political <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/south-sudan/popular-struggles-and-elite-co-optation-nuer-white-army-south-sudan-s-civil-war">elites</a> have armed ethnic groups to advance their interests, leading to a proliferation of guns in the region.</p>
<p>Today, the presence of Dinka herders in Equatoria is used to project historical and ideological disagreements about state structure and identities in South Sudan. </p>
<p>As a result, what looked like local, inter-communal violence between farming host communities and displaced herders in March led to heated national debate. The Equatoria caucus in South Sudan’s Transitional National Legislative Assembly held a joint press conference to condemn the Magwi attacks. </p>
<p>The importance given to the Magwi conflict can be seen as the result of irreconcilable visions of the state by Equatorian and Dinka elites in South Sudan. My PhD <a href="https://www.politics.ox.ac.uk/person/francois-sennesael">research</a> into Equatorian political identity traces how these visions emerged. </p>
<h2>Equatoria as a resistance identity</h2>
<p>More than an administrative territory, Equatoria is a context-dependent idea. It is, first, a fragile, unfinished <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/horn-africa/south-sudan/b169-south-sudans-other-war-resolving-insurgency-equatoria">political identity</a>. It is used as an umbrella term to attempt to unify heterogeneous political elites coming from the colonial-era Equatoria province. </p>
<p>Equatorian leaders have been asking for more <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/horn-africa/south-sudan/b169-south-sudans-other-war-resolving-insurgency-equatoria">autonomy</a> to run their own affairs. Its leaders feel marginalised at the national level, which is heavily tilted towards the predominant <a href="https://africanarguments.org/2013/12/what-is-tribalism-and-why-does-is-matter-in-south-sudan-by-andreas-hirblinger-and-sara-de-simone/">Dinka and Nuer</a> ethnic groups.</p>
<p>Unlike the creation of a <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/I/bo11913256.html">Kalenjin political identity</a> in Kenya, the Equatorian political identity has struggled to become a reality. It has a weak popular base and no political party. Its more prominent leaders have been <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-23816191">co-opted</a> into government.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-south-sudans-attempts-at-peace-continue-to-fail-126846">Why South Sudan's attempts at peace continue to fail</a>
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<p>Second, for many regional elites in Juba, the term Equatoria represents a political project: federalism. These elites want to create political space for their region in the power-sharing agreement between Dinka and Nuer elites. </p>
<p>This was not always a priority for them. </p>
<p>Equatoria as a political identity emerged in the 1970s as a consequence of the perceived <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328639494_Why_Equatoria_Region_in_South_Sudan_may_opt_to_secede">political marginalisation</a> of its elites. Members of this group had previously defined themselves first as South Sudanese. They defended unity as long as they were in power. </p>
<p>However, they began to warn of a growing Dinka nationalism when Abel Aleir was appointed head of the autonomous region of Southern Sudan <a href="https://www.ohioswallow.com/book/South+Sudan">in 1972</a>. </p>
<p>Equatoria as an identity of resistance gained momentum alongside the <a href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/huria/article/view/198498">ethnicisation of politics</a> in the 1970s. The presence of Dinka cattle herders in the predominantly farming region became the proxy through which political grievances were expressed. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://paxforpeace.nl/what-we-do/publications/the-legacy-of-kokora-in-south-sudan">Kokora system</a> – the redivision of Southern Sudan into three provinces at the request of Equatorian elites in 1983 – was primarily a way to expel the Dinka and their cattle from Equatoria. </p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/sudans-deep-state-still-poses-a-threat-to-the-democratic-process-130243">Sudan's deep state still poses a threat to the democratic process</a>
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<p>My interviews in Juba found that the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-14019208">war against Khartoum</a> – which was started by the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement in 1983 – is still perceived primarily as an anti-Equatoria movement led by Dinkas, rather than as a liberation movement. As a result, for Equatorian elites, the history of liberation and the roots of South Sudanese identity are contested. </p>
<h2>Challenging central rule</h2>
<p>Following power-sharing agreements in 2015 and 2018 <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/horn-africa/south-sudan/270-salvaging-south-sudans-fragile-peace-deal">after years of war</a>, Dinka and Nuer politicians divided major political positions largely among themselves. </p>
<p>The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement has emphasised the importance of ‘South Sudan-ness’ to foster a sense of national unity. Claims for institutional and political autonomy from the central state are viewed as <a href="https://sudantribune.com/article50197/">threats</a> to the young state. </p>
<p>While Equatorians have been speaking of regionalism, the liberation movement has labelled it “localism” to emphasise how contrary to the idea of nation it is. </p>
<p>Yet Equatorians have <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/horn-africa/south-sudan/b169-south-sudans-other-war-resolving-insurgency-equatoria">long felt marginalised</a> within the South Sudanese political system. They have also been blamed for trying to <a href="https://sudantribune.com/article50197/">divide the country</a>. </p>
<p>Additionally, an unsuccessful attempt to <a href="https://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/2021-04/sr_493-conflict_and_crisis_in_south_sudans_equatoria.pdf">form an alliance</a> with the Nuer in 2016 and implement a federal system gave birth to radical Equatorian factions calling for secession. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/peace-in-south-sudan-hinges-on-forging-a-unified-military-force-but-its-proving-hard-181547">Peace in South Sudan hinges on forging a unified military force: but it's proving hard</a>
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<p>This discussion is somewhat performative in the sense that Equatorians’ ultimate ambition is not to create their own state, but rather to be included within existing structures. Yet, demands for federalism are high. Equatorian elites portray it as the only system that could liberate them from what they see as Dinka domination. </p>
<p>As a result, Equatorian elites have used cross-border cattle-related violence to call for a hardening of internal boundaries. It has also been used to challenge centralised power. </p>
<p>The defence of Equatorian farmers represents a much-needed unifying cause for a grouping divided by internal disagreements on whether to cooperate with the government or not. </p>
<p>The government has also been accused of <a href="https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/analysis/2022/1/5/why-return-displaced-people-thorny-issue-South-Sudan">arming herders</a> to target populations that are not inclined to support its actions. This is becoming more prevalent as politicians get ready for <a href="https://sudantribune.com/article256604/">potential elections</a> in 2023. </p>
<p>The Equatorian political identity draws on existing fault lines of culture and historical memory. If the feeling of marginalisation persists, however, a strong movement could establish a community with separatist aspirations. This could endanger efforts to stabilise the world’s youngest nation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/181637/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Francois Sennesael receives funding from the Richard Stapley Educational Trust and a Santander Academic Travel Award (University of Oxford) for this research. </span></em></p>The idea of what it means to be South Sudanese is not universally accepted in the young nation.Francois Sennesael, DPhil Candidate, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1814892022-04-25T13:07:39Z2022-04-25T13:07:39ZDemocracy loses its glow for South Africans amid persistent inequality<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459044/original/file-20220421-34130-bucler.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Students chanting slogans during a protest in Johannesburg in 2021.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Michele SPATARI/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Africans believed that the introduction of democracy in 1994 would transform their lives for the better through equality of opportunities. This hasn’t happened. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.sabcnews.com/lack-of-jobs-income-inequality-remain-a-sore-point-in-sa-as-world-celebrates-workers-day/">Socio-economic inequality and job scarcity</a>, as well as unequal opportunity to quality education have created a view that democracy has not delivered a better life for all.</p>
<p>The country celebrates 28 years of democracy at a time when democracy <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13510347.2020.1807517?journalCode=fdem20">is under threat globally</a>, in the context of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/sep/09/inequality-is-it-rising-and-can-we-reverse-it">growing inequality</a> and <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/04/29/many-across-the-globe-are-dissatisfied-with-how-democracy-is-working/">mistrust</a> in democratic institutions.</p>
<p>Increasingly, scholars focus on <a href="https://fee.org/articles/what-is-democracy-worth/">what makes democracy valuable</a> amid its decline. This is important given the global rise in <a href="https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-03606858/document">populist</a> and <a href="https://freedomhouse.org/report/nations-transit/2021/antidemocratic-turn">anti-democratic politics</a> and <a href="https://www.idea.int/news-media/news/democracy-faces-perfect-storm-world-becomes-more-authoritarian">authoritarianism</a>. </p>
<p>The Human Science Research Council’s <a href="http://www.hsrc.ac.za/en/departments/sasas">South African Social Attitudes Survey</a>, conducted annually, show that South Africans are increasingly dissatisfied with democracy. In 2004, when the country celebrated a decade of democracy, 59 % were satisfied with democracy. Now only 32 % are satisfied with how democracy is working in South Africa. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459096/original/file-20220421-20-9w8qp4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459096/original/file-20220421-20-9w8qp4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459096/original/file-20220421-20-9w8qp4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459096/original/file-20220421-20-9w8qp4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459096/original/file-20220421-20-9w8qp4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459096/original/file-20220421-20-9w8qp4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459096/original/file-20220421-20-9w8qp4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Democratic Satisfaction.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Constructed from the Human Science Research Council South African Social Attitudes Survey</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Are South Africans giving up on democracy, as <a href="https://afrobarometer.org/sites/default/files/publications/D%C3%A9p%C3%AAches/ab_r7_dispatchno372_are_south_africans_giving_up_on_democracy.pdf">some</a> are asking. And what’s to be made of some <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-constitutional-democracy-debate-echoes-of-an-inglorious-past-180802">political elites</a> who are speaking out against the value of the country’s constitutional democracy?</p>
<p>After almost three decades of democracy, it is important to ask: What meaning do South Africans attach to the idea of democracy? This is important considering that democracies endure when there is an intrinsic commitment to democratic values and principles, even during economic hardship.</p>
<p>Based on my <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=tTozDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA29&lpg=PA29&dq=The+great+democratic+disillusionment?:+perceptions+of+the+South+African+dream+of+1994&source=bl&ots=Cuzeb7md4C&sig=ACfU3U19T3PgfHLlivVGwvrVYzZ1TPUyqA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi-sv6C5qT3AhVDY8AKHS4nCtgQ6AF6BAgUEAM#v=onepage&q=The%20great%20democratic%20disillusionment%3F%3A%20perceptions%20of%20the%20South%20African%20dream%20of%201994&f=false">research</a>, as well as the results of recent surveys, it’s clear that there is a sense of disempowerment among South Africans, most notably among young people. This sense of disempowerment is premised on the view that their voice, life choices, and sense of freedom are undermined by a lack of equality of opportunity. </p>
<p>This inequality of opportunity is seen as a form of continued oppression informed by the view that the quality of life has not necessarily improved for most South Africans. </p>
<h2>Views of democracy</h2>
<p>South Africans attach an instrumentalist value to democracy. This is evident in the views that <a href="https://theconversation.com/study-shows-young-south-africans-have-no-faith-in-democracy-and-politicians-118404">democracy does not deliver</a>, most notably among the youth. Democracy is valued more because of delivering socio-economic goods such as social welfare, housing, and income grants. They don’t necessarily view <a href="https://www.ijr.org.za/2020/10/05/the-state-of-south-africas-democracy-key-insights/">democracy as having intrinsic value</a> as the best political system to achieve a just society based on human rights, dignity, freedom and equality. </p>
<p>In other words, they value democracy based on what it can do for them, not because they believe it is the best form of government. This is evident in the growing levels of <a href="https://afrobarometer.org/sites/default/files/publications/Dispatches/ad474-south_africans_trust_in_institutions_reaches_new_low-afrobarometer-20aug21.pdf">institutional mistrust</a> and <a href="https://www.kas.de/documents/261596/10543300/The+South+African+non-voter+-+An+analysis.pdf/acc19fbd-bd6d-9190-f026-8d311078b670?version=1.0&t=1608">growing political disengagement </a> from formal democratic processes like voting.<br>
This creates a weak foundation for the sustainability of the country’s democracy in that in times of economic hardship, the legitimacy of democracy as a political system declines in the public view. Therefore, democracy becomes ‘illegitimate’ because it cannot deliver social and economic goods to create equality of opportunity. </p>
<p>It is not surprising that citizens place a high value on equality as an essential democratic principle given that South Africa is still the <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/03/09/new-world-bank-report-assesses-sources-of-inequality-in-five-countries-in-southern-africa">most unequal society globally</a>.</p>
<p>Why do South Africans hold a strong instrumentalist attachment to democracy? The answer may lie in the expectations of what freedom and democracy meant in 1994, when apartheid came to an end. </p>
<h2>Tales of despair</h2>
<p><a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=tTozDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA29&lpg=PA29&dq=The+great+democratic+disillusionment?:+perceptions+of+the+South+African+dream+of+1994&source=bl&ots=Cuzeb7md4C&sig=ACfU3U19T3PgfHLlivVGwvrVYzZ1TPUyqA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi-sv6C5qT3AhVDY8AKHS4nCtgQ6AF6BAgUEAM#v=onepage&q=The%20great%20democratic%20disillusionment%3F%3A%20perceptions%20of%20the%20South%20African%20dream%20of%201994&f=false">My research</a> shows that the ‘Dream of 1994’ was the restoration of human dignity, something centuries of settler colonialism and apartheid had denied the black majority. Indeed, asked what 1994 meant for them, an interviewee said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I was very happy. I felt extremely happy because this was the first time that black people gained freedom … And it made me feel free as a person as well. Even just strolling around I felt free; I didn’t have to be so conscious around white people. There was no longer any fear … I felt good, really good. What I was thinking. I was thinking that now we are free. That you can talk with everybody, you can walk with everybody. You know, that you can be friends with everyone that you want to be friends with. I thought that now that the party {the ANC} would take over, they’d know what we had gone through then.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Equality of opportunity was an essential characteristic of what the ‘Dream of 1994’ meant for South Africans. An interviewee reflected:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Talking of expectations, because I grew up in that old era, in that old regime. So my intention was, should Nelson Mandela be free, we would be living in a free country … our expectations were that we would gain free education and that there’d be lots of jobs, that everyone would be employed, things like that. And that everyone would have his or her own house, things like that … and those were the things that we expected, which I expected.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The sense that freedom and democracy remain an illusion was more palpable among the youth. An interviewee said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I think, in my own opinion for those who lived before 1994, their aim of freedom was to free Mandela, then after it was to have their own black government. But for me, who was born in 1987, the word freedom for me is still an idea … the reason I say that is because for me the word freedom is too big for South Africa. If education was free, then I would say yes, we have freedom.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Historical patterns</h2>
<p>South Africans see a continuation of historical patterns of exclusion and marginalisation where equality of opportunity is not a lived reality for many. And, given that South Africans may continue to delegitimise democracy on the basis that it has not delivered on the expectations of the Dream of 1994, stronger populist and anti-democratic rhetoric are likely to take root in the future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/181489/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joleen Steyn Kotze receives funding from the National Research Foundation.</span></em></p>South Africans are increasingly dissatisfied with democracy because of its failure to address inequality.Joleen Steyn Kotze, Chief Research Specialist in Democracy and Citizenship at the Human Science Research Council and a Research Fellow Centre for African Studies, University of the Free StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1731082021-12-06T12:42:52Z2021-12-06T12:42:52ZQuotes from Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth that resonate 60 years later<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/435618/original/file-20211203-21-axlnf1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Frantz Fanon</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Franz Fanon, the Martiniquan born psychiatrist, committed Algerian revolutionary and Pan-African thinker, died 60 years ago on December 6, 1961 just after the publication of his last book, The Wretched of the Earth. To mark this 60th anniversary, Nigel C. Gibson has just published his collection, <a href="https://darajapress.com/publication/fanon-today-the-revolt-and-reason-of-the-wretched-of-the-earth">Fanon Today: The Reason and Revolt of the Wretched of the Earth</a>. He discusses some important quotes from Fanon’s global classic</em>.</p>
<p><strong>Space</strong></p>
<p>In the first chapter of <em>The Wretched of the Earth</em>, ‘On Violence,’ Fanon describes colonialism as a system of absolute violence that can only be opposed through violence. He references South Africa as he powerfully describes the colonial world expressed in space:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The colonist’s sector is built to last…a sector of lights and paved roads, where the trash cans constantly overflow with strange and wonderful garbage, undreamed-of leftovers…The colonist’s sector is a sated, sluggish sector, its belly is permanently full of good things.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In contrast, the colonised sector,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the shanty town, the Medina, the reservation…[is] a disreputable place inhabited by disreputable people. You are born anywhere, anyhow. You die anywhere, from anything. It’s a world with no space, people are piled one on top of the other, the shacks squeezed tightly together. The colonised’s sector is a famished sector, hungry for bread, meat, shoes, coal, and light.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He then adds an important measure of decolonisation,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If we examine closely this system of compartments…its ordering and its geographical layout will allow us to mark out the lines on which a decolonised society will be reorganised.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Fanon rocked the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/all-african-people-conference-held-accra-ghana">All-African Peoples Conference</a> in December 1958 when he raised the issue of violence in contrast to Kwame Nkrumah’s nonviolent “positive action” agreed upon by many delegates. The following year Fanon became ambassador to Ghana and by then the crucial problem for Fanon was the lack of ideological clarity among leaders, regardless of their position on violence and nonviolence.</p>
<p><strong>The rationality of revolt and the philosophy of organisation</strong></p>
<p>The centrality of the “rationality of revolt” to a “new politics” is highlighted by these two quotes, from the end of chapter 2 and the beginning of chapter 3.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The insurrection proves to itself its rationality and demonstrates its maturity every time it uses a specific case to advance the consciousness of the people in spite of those within the movement who sometimes are inclined to think that any nuance constitutes a danger and threatens popular solidarity.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/435573/original/file-20211203-21-flosvh.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/435573/original/file-20211203-21-flosvh.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435573/original/file-20211203-21-flosvh.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435573/original/file-20211203-21-flosvh.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435573/original/file-20211203-21-flosvh.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1114&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435573/original/file-20211203-21-flosvh.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1114&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435573/original/file-20211203-21-flosvh.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1114&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
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</figure>
<p>If the rationality of revolt becomes the material force of revolution where “violence represents the absolute line of action,” the “new politics is in the hands of…[those] who use their muscles and their brains to lead the struggle for liberation”.</p>
<p>But it is the cowardice and apathy of the “elite” and their “incapacity” to “rationalise popular practice” and “attribute it any reason” that leads to the postcolonial tragedy.</p>
<p>It was not only the leaders who were subject to Fanon’s anger. He was brutally honest in his criticism of the revolutionary militant:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It sometimes happens at meetings that militants use sweeping, dogmatic formulas. The preference for this shortcut, in which spontaneity and over-simple sinking of differences dangerously combine to defeat intellectual elaboration, frequently triumphs.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He calls the militant’s logic shocking and inhuman.</p>
<p><strong>The nationalist bourgeoisie and their organisation</strong></p>
<p>Given that he was writing at a moment when more than half of Africa had recently gained independence, his critique of the nationalist middle class and nationalist parties reads like a script which has been repeated over and over:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Privileges multiply and corruption triumphs…Today the vultures are too numerous and too voracious in proportion to the lean spoils of the national wealth. The party, a true instrument of power in the hands of the bourgeoisie, reinforces the machine, and ensures that the people are hemmed in and immobilised.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>At the same time, wary of the rising xenophobia and chauvinism in newly independent West African nations, Fanon argues that national consciousness is not in fact nationalism. Rather, national consciousness “enriched and deepened into humanism…is the only thing that will give us an international dimension.” For him the building of a nation has to be “accompanied by the discovery and encouragement of universalising values.”</p>
<p><strong>A new humanism</strong></p>
<p>Those universal values are expressed in the four-page conclusion to <em>The Wretched of he Earth</em>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>So, comrades, how is it that we do not understand that we have better things to do than follow Europe?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Fully cognisant of the fact that neocolonialism can wear a Black or Arab face, Fanon is critical of how newly independent African countries, even when they used the language of socialism, didn’t do much more than follow Europe’s model, looking to take over the colonial apparatus – its states and institutions – for their own interests. Fanon considered this a product of the crisis of thought, the lack of a philosophy of liberation.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>That same Europe, where they were never done talking with humanity, never stopped proclaiming that they were only anxious for the welfare of humanity. Today we know with what sufferings humanity has paid for every one of their triumphs of the mind.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Fanon rejects the humanism proclaimed in Europe. Based on colonisation, exploitation, slavery and violence, European humanism dehumanises. And so “We must find something different”. He rejects what is central to European humanism, profit and the reduction of the human to outputs in production.</p>
<p>“If conditions of work are not modified,” he adds, “centuries will be needed to humanise this world which has been forced down to animal level by imperial powers”. He’s saying, humanising the world means rethinking everything, “work[ing]out new concepts… and setting afoot a new humanity”.</p>
<p><strong>Time as the space for human development</strong></p>
<p>Fanon envisioned time akin to Karl Marx’s great phrase, as “space for human development”.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The sense of time must no longer be that of the moment or the next harvest, but rather that of the rest of the world.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Humanising the world means creating a new conception of time, the time to create a new society.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We have realised that the masses are equal to the problems which confront them…experience proves that the important thing is not that three hundred people form a plan and decide upon carrying it out, but that the whole people plan and decide even if it takes them twice or three times as long. The fact is that the time taken up by explaining, the time ‘lost’ in treating the worker as a human being, will be caught up in the execution of the plan.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Rather than top-down the plan should come from “the muscles and the brains of the citizens” because “people must know where they are going, and why”. In the early pages of <em>The Wretched of the Earth</em> Fanon speaks of those dehumanised beings who become historical protagonists through the struggle.</p>
<p>This is just the beginning, the work of humanising the world does not end there, in fact by the end of the book it is clear that while this remains a crucial turning point because consciousness, let alone material reality, are not changed overnight. Mental and physical liberation has to be ongoing after the colonists had been kicked out. The “new society”, the liberated “new person” – collectively, socially, and individually – has to be consciously and intentionally developed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/173108/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nigel Gibson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Fanon was brutally honest in his criticism of militants and Africa’s post-independence elites.Nigel Gibson, Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, Emerson CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1711452021-11-29T14:09:31Z2021-11-29T14:09:31ZWhat stands in the way of a new South Sudan post-conflict constitution<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434149/original/file-20211126-19-1g91cc1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Women march with placards calling for peace and their rights on the streets of South Sudan's capital, Juba, in 2018.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">BULLEN CHOL/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Sudan became an independent country following a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/South-Sudan/Sudanese-independence-and-civil-war">long armed struggle</a> to break away from Sudan. At a <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-12317927">referendum</a> in 2011, millions voted in favour of secession, creating Africa’s <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/southsudan/overview#1">55th independent state</a>. Since then, the nation of 11 million has been governed under the <a href="https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/South_Sudan_2011.pdf">Transitional Constitution</a>. </p>
<p>The process of drafting what is referred to as a ‘permanent’ constitution started in 2012. But it was interrupted by the conflict of 2013 and then again in 2016. The conflict was eventually defused by an <a href="https://docs.pca-cpa.org/2016/02/South-Sudan-Peace-Agreement-September-2018.pdf">agreement</a> between the warring parties in 2018.</p>
<p>South Sudan is, therefore, <a href="https://blog-iacl-aidc.org/spotlight-on-africa/2021/9/13/dilemmas-of-constitution-building-in-post-conflict-south-sudan-7kh5x">yet to draft</a> a constitution that the country’s population can call its own. This is unlikely to take place so long as obstacles to effective people’s participation remain. These include the slow implementation of the <a href="https://www.jmecsouthsudan.com/index.php/reports/rjmec-quarterly-reports">2018 agreement</a> which is the mainstay of peaceful coexistence. There is also large number of displaced people who have <a href="https://www.unrefugees.org/emergencies/south-sudan/">fled the country</a>, and the lack of civic freedoms to ensure participation without threat or intimidation. </p>
<p>The challenges of people’s participation in constitution building processes is one of the main obstacles facing the country. In this article, we propose three broad recommendations to remove such barriers to effective people’s participation in building their democratic future. </p>
<p>First, the unity government should prioritise grassroots reconciliation after the devastating conflicts of 2013 and 2016. This is a precondition to meaningful people’s participation in constitution building. </p>
<p>Second, the government in collaboration with development partners, should facilitate the return and resettlement of all internally displaced people and refugees. </p>
<p>Third, the government should prioritise implementation of law reforms that allow freedom of expression which is a necessary democratic safety valve.</p>
<h2>People as sovereigns in constitution building</h2>
<p>People’s voices in constitutional design are the bedrock of political legitimacy. This is even more so in divided nations, where the coming together of its various and often antagonist constituencies requires trust and confidence building. Achieving this through constitutional design requires a transparent process in which all feel included. </p>
<p>The 2018 agreement acknowledges the centrality of people’s sovereignty on whose consent a viable state may emerge. It stipulates that the ‘permanent’ constitution shall be based on <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/6dn3477q3f5472d/R-ARCSS.2018-i.pdf?dl=0">‘supremacy of the people of South Sudan’</a>. This is also affirmed under article 2 of the Transitional Constitution.</p>
<p>The 2018 peace agreement also puts in place mechanisms to engage the people of South Sudan in crafting their governance framework. It provides for a timetable in which the National Constitutional Review Commission is to </p>
<blockquote>
<p>facilitate phased and multi-faceted public consultations, receive and analyse inputs and submissions from public and conduct civic education. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Whilst these plans are plausible, they are not sufficient to effectively capture all South Sudanese voices. To be legitimate, the ‘permanent’ constitution must overcome three main barriers to popular participation: </p>
<p><strong>Uprooted and displaced risk exclusion</strong></p>
<p>The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that ‘<a href="https://www.unrefugees.org/emergencies/south-sudan/">4.3 million people have been displaced in South Sudan</a>’, with two million living as refugees in neighbouring countries. These are Sudan, Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda and Kenya. This represents almost half of the country’s population uprooted by the conflict, and who are in desperate need to return home and participate in rebuilding their communities. </p>
<p>Of the more than 2 million internally displaced people, 200,000 are sheltering in United Nations <a href="https://unmiss.unmissions.org/unmiss-protection-civilians-poc-sites-update-no-280-22-28-may-2020">protection sites</a>.</p>
<p>When one adds the ever-growing ranks of South Sudanese voluntarily leaving the country, it is conceivable that the large majority of people might be excluded from the process. </p>
<p><strong>Climate of fear</strong></p>
<p>It is true that even in situations where there is peace and democratic governance, not everyone participates in the constitution building process. Some simply disengage, others are challenged by demands of the process of participation, such as language barriers and distance to and from consultation venues. Others could even voluntarily disengage from the process because they may have lost hope. </p>
<p>Added to this is the fear instilled in ethnic minorities owing to the shrinking civic space and bulldozing role of militarised groups whose voices continue to prevail over everyone else.</p>
<p><strong>Simmering conflict and division</strong></p>
<p>The 2018 peace agreement has not fully ended the conflict in South Sudan. Ragtag groups <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/africa_south-sudan-focus_5-killed-south-sudan-road-attack/6204039.html">continue to engage</a> in military confrontation with government forces. There is also frequent inter-communal violence that continues to displace communities. The agreement’s <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ijtj/article-abstract/14/3/585/5892418?redirectedFrom=fulltext">transitional justice mechanisms</a> – which include a Truth Commission – put forward to promote peace and justice have not been implemented. This has left local peace efforts captive to political influence by elites that are yet to truly reconcile.</p>
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
<p>The conflict that erupted in 2013 and again 2016 was only arrested through a formal agreement in which parties agreed to cease hostilities and formed a national unity government. But communities remain unreconciled and divisions among them run deep. Yet a meaningful participation of people cannot take place in conditions of insecurity, intimidation and antagonism. Peace-building at grassroots should, therefore, be prioritised.</p>
<p>Constitution building in South Sudan is about redefining the future of the country and its peoples. It is, therefore, imperative that all people participate in this process. The government should facilitate the return and resettlement of its displaced population. They can then participate not just as individuals, but as members of a community with shared aspirations.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/171145/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Trust and confidence-building are vital in divided nations where various and often antagonist constituencies are brought together.Dr J Geng Akech, PhD candidate, University of PretoriaMagnus Killander, Professor, Centre for Human Rights in the Faculty of Law, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1665922021-09-01T14:41:55Z2021-09-01T14:41:55ZBook predicts ANC’s last decade of political dominance in South Africa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/417818/original/file-20210825-27-7fp7to.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The governing ANC is losing its political hegemony. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Yeshiel Panchia</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The declining political dominance of South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) has increasingly attracted scholarly attention <a href="https://journals.co.za/doi/abs/10.25159/0256-8845/2486">since 2009</a>. Political analyst Ralph Mathekga’s new <a href="https://www.loot.co.za/product/ralph-mathekga-the-anc-s-last-decade/vjvm-7311-ga40">book</a>, <em>The ANC’s Last Decade: how the decline of the party will transform South Africa</em>, is a welcome addition. </p>
<p>The ANC’s electoral fortunes have steadily declined in the last three national elections; <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/27756284?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">2009 (65%)</a>, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/27756284?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">2014 (62%)</a> and <a href="https://www.elections.org.za/NPEDashboard/App/dashboard.html">2019 (57.50%)</a>. But, since the 2016 <a href="https://www.elections.org.za/lgedashboard2016/leaderboard.aspx">local government elections</a> saw the party lose some of its former strongholds, including four major metropolitan municipalities, the question has shifted from whether to when the party will lose power at the national level. </p>
<p>This book is one of the few researched publications bold enough to offer specific timelines for the end of the ANC’s dominance. Mathekga puts this at 2024 or 2029.</p>
<p>Throughout the 17 chapters of the book, he expertly combines his journalistic and academic writing flair to educate the reader, especially the lay and uninformed, about the ANC. He offers insights into its grip on South African politics and development, and what the country would look like in a possible future without the party that led the struggle for freedom.</p>
<p>In essence the book argues, quite persuasively, that the ANC is on a downward slide from power. This could provide new opportunities for political reform and development in the country. But, it also comes with uncertainty as the state and society compete for dominance over the development agenda.</p>
<h2>Fatal flaw in the ANC’s DNA</h2>
<p>The book – from chapter one through to the end – is an interesting read of the good, bad and ugly of South African politics. </p>
<p>Chapter one provides an historical overview of the ANC, focusing on what the author calls “the fatal flaw in the giant’s DNA”. This is a culture of <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/248962959_The_Lack_of_Internal_Party_Democracy_in_the_African_National_Congress_A_Threat_to_the_Consolidation_of_Democracy_in_South_Africa">“democratic centralism”</a>, which is a consequence of its history. Chapter 17 predicts and describes “a strange new world” of South Africa without a hegemonic political party.</p>
<p>The book engages with a number of the factors that explain dominant party decline globally, and contextualises them.</p>
<p>It’s a subject fellow political scientist Hakeem Onapajo and I <a href="https://journals.co.za/doi/abs/10.25159/0256-8845/2486">explored, idenfitying a number of factors</a> that result in the demise of dominant parties. These include opposition coordination, institutional or electoral reforms, high levels of corruption and gross abuse of office as well as factional conflict in the dominant party. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/factionalism-and-corruption-could-kill-the-anc-unless-it-kills-both-first-116924">Factionalism and corruption could kill the ANC -- unless it kills both first</a>
</strong>
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<p>The book focuses on corruption and factionalism, which in my view, the ANC needs to kill before they kill the ANC. </p>
<p>Mathekga traces the ANC’s struggles with governance in a liberal democracy to its failure to transform from a liberation movement to a political party after 1994, when it assumed power. </p>
<p>He argues that the vagaries of the liberation struggle, which heightened when the ANC was banned for <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/722941">30 years from 1960 to 1990</a>, tended the party towards <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/248962959_The_Lack_of_Internal_Party_Democracy_in_the_African_National_Congress_A_Threat_to_the_Consolidation_of_Democracy_in_South_Africa">“democratic centralism”</a>, that made it more autocratic and thus</p>
<blockquote>
<p>ill-suited for the demands of a liberal democratic system of governance.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Relatedly, the centralisation of decision-making perpetuates an elitism that excludes the ordinary people the ANC purports to represent. This, despite pretentions to representing their will through the argument that decisions flowing from the branches reflects “the collective” will. </p>
<p>It is an elitism that is not transparent or accountable, at least at the individual responsibility level. This constitutes the bane of the ANC and thus South African politics.</p>
<h2>Conflating party and state</h2>
<p>The second important point the book makes is that the ANC conflates the party and state. This has the deleterious effect of reducing South Africa to the ANC and its shenanigans. </p>
<p>It is the basis of the third critical point of the book; putting a timeline to when the ANC will lose power, and how that will change South Africa. </p>
<p>In essence, the country’s fortunes are tied to what happens in the ANC. This is a reality all South Africans must contend with. It is why every South African should read this book.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/417813/original/file-20210825-23-13lg5b6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/417813/original/file-20210825-23-13lg5b6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/417813/original/file-20210825-23-13lg5b6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/417813/original/file-20210825-23-13lg5b6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/417813/original/file-20210825-23-13lg5b6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1115&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/417813/original/file-20210825-23-13lg5b6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1115&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/417813/original/file-20210825-23-13lg5b6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1115&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>As pointed out in the last three chapters, South African politics is evolving from below, and shifting towards a more competitive political system. New critical actors (ordinary people and civil society) are working the system to force political accountability and meaningful change.</p>
<p>Also, horizontally, the <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/constitution/saconstitution-web-eng-09.pdf">chapter 9 institutions</a> – which protect the country’s democracy – and the judiciary are emerging as centres of power that successfully challenge executive and legislative excesses or silences in ways that foster a separation of power that works in the public interest. </p>
<p>As Mathekga aptly contends, this also comes with associated risks for the country’s survival and development. For one, it will result in fragmentation and cleavages along ethnic, racial, and class lines which exacerbate the disruptive tension between extremist identity politics, and populist nationalism.</p>
<p>Also, the ANC’s responses to its waning dominance, which include a tendency to resort to “a quasi-dictatorship under the guise of a developmental state”, pose a threat to democratic consolidation. For example, Mathekga contends that the mooted establishment of <a href="https://www.cogta.gov.za/index.php/2021/05/10/what-is-the-district-development-model/">district development councils</a> aimed at consolidating and coordinating service delivery across municipalities, extends the ANC’s hold on municipalities the same way as it seeks to restructure state institutions to extend its hold on the country, and counteract its declining political power. </p>
<p>In my view, consensus-driven leadership such as the one favoured by President Cyril Ramaphosa is critical to dealing with the political and socio-economic fragmentations bedevilling South Africa. For good effect, this should be combined with what German political philosopher and historian Jan Werner Muller calls <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/icon/mom037">“constitutional patriotism”</a>. This is a set of beliefs and dispositions that promote a liberal democracy.</p>
<h2>Maintaining hegemony</h2>
<p>Mathekga concludes with the point that the ANC “will remain a force to be reckoned with”. He also argues that it “will not go quietly into the night”. </p>
<p>This is not far-fetched considering the opportunities the ANC has to devise new strategies to maintain its hegemony. These include exploiting a fragmented political space and weak opposition. </p>
<p>Indeed, exactly when its reign will end rides on what the party does or does not do between now and its elective conference <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2020-11-28-this-is-rubbish-jessie-duarte-on-slate-putting-her-forward-as-sg-at-anc-2022-elective-conference/">in 2022</a>.</p>
<p>For example, if Ramaphosa reemerges as its president and carries on quietly separating the party from the state, including building consensual leadership, he could get broad-based support to win <a href="https://www.eisa.org/wep/southafrica.htm">the 2024 elections</a>. This will be boosted by his upping the gear in the fight against corruption.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/precarious-power-tilts-towards-ramaphosa-in-battle-inside-south-africas-governing-party-158251">Precarious power tilts towards Ramaphosa in battle inside South Africa's governing party</a>
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<p>Reforming the economy to improve access, appropriating and <a href="https://theconversation.com/factionalism-and-corruption-could-kill-the-anc-unless-it-kills-both-first-116924">redistributing land without hurting the economy</a>, and creating jobs for teeming unemployed young people will also work in the ANC’s favour.</p>
<p>Finally, if Ramaphosa makes significant inroads in internalising democracy and debate in the ANC, which can produce a successor that is acceptable both within the party and other centres of power in society, such a candidate would win the 2029 elections. That would take the ANC to a new decade of dominating South Africa’s political landscape. </p>
<p>There are a lot of ifs. But it shows the extent to which the fortunes of South Africa are tied to the ANC.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/166592/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Isike does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Exactly when the ANC’s reign will end rides on what the party does or does not do between now and its elective conference in 2022.Christopher Isike, Professor of African Politics and International Relations , University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1655692021-08-16T17:58:06Z2021-08-16T17:58:06ZA brief history of the long-standing mistrust between the French people and the elites<p>The history of contemporary France can be viewed through various prisms, but one of the most relevant is that of the tumultuous relations between the people and the elites.</p>
<p>In the long stretch of history from the Revolution of 1789 to the present day, moments of communion between them are rare: the <a href="https://parcoursrevolution.paris.fr/en/points-of-interest/20-the-festival-of-the-federation">Fête de la Fédération of 1790</a> (the predecessor of Bastille Day), the <a href="https://histoire-image.org/fr/albums/revolution-1830-trois-glorieuses">July Revolution of 1830</a>, the <a href="https://ehne.fr/en/encyclopedia/themes/political-europe/1848-european-people%E2%80%99s-spring/1848-european-people%E2%80%99s-spring">Spring of 1848</a>, the political truce known as the <a href="https://www.elysee.fr/en/raymond-poincare">Sacred Union in 1914</a>, the post-war <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Raymond-Poincare">Poincaré government from 1926 to 1928</a> and the return to power of Charles de Gaulle in <a href="https://www.elysee.fr/en/charles-de-gaulle">1958</a>.</p>
<p>All of these rare moments <a href="https://www.franceculture.fr/emissions/le-cours-de-lhistoire/les-elites-en-temps-de-crise-34-des-elites-si-peu-populaires-de-lancien-regime-a-nos-jours">followed serious crises</a> – that of the absolute monarchy in the 1780s, the reactionary turn under Charles X, the blindness of King Louis-Philippe and his main minister François Guizot in the 1840s, the uncertain entry into World War One, the painful exit from it, the crisis of the Fourth Republic and the Algerian War. Even then, it’s impossible to speak of total unanimity in the nation: there were always resisters, outcasts and scapegoats among the people and within the ranks of the elites.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Lire cet article en français</em>: <strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/breve-histoire-dune-longue-defiance-entre-le-peuple-francais-et-les-elites-159153">Brève histoire d’une longue défiance entre le peuple français et les élites</a></strong></p>
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<p>These enchanted parentheses almost always closed quickly, either because the new leaders did not manage to resolve the crisis at hand, or because the people felt they were not being understood, the hopes they had placed in the elites betrayed. Sometimes, the elites or a counter-elite help to close the parenthesis more quickly. Rarely did they benefit from their own success in the long term.</p>
<h2>The elites always come out on top</h2>
<p>France has undergone thirteen major political changes since 1789, and yet there have been very few major changes to the country’s elite, despite an undeniable but slow process of democratisation.</p>
<p>The sequence from 1815 to 1848 is particularly emblematic. Only those who paid a certain amount of tax were eligible to vote and run in elections, and the gap between the “legal country” and the “real country” was very wide. Out of 29 million French people in 1816, there were just 90,000 voters and 16,000 eligible to run.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396646/original/file-20210422-23-1v01tfg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396646/original/file-20210422-23-1v01tfg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396646/original/file-20210422-23-1v01tfg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=778&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396646/original/file-20210422-23-1v01tfg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=778&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396646/original/file-20210422-23-1v01tfg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=778&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396646/original/file-20210422-23-1v01tfg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=978&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396646/original/file-20210422-23-1v01tfg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=978&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396646/original/file-20210422-23-1v01tfg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=978&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Casimir Perier by Louis Hersent, Château de Versailles, 1827.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_Perier#/media/Fichier:Perier,_Casimir.jpg">Louis Hersent -- chateauversailles.fr/Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The landed gentry who had dominated the Restoration were swept away by the July Revolution of 1830, carried out by the bourgeoisie with the help of the Parisian people, but the latter quickly became frustrated. The July Monarchy relied mainly on high ranking civil servants and business owners – symbolically represented by the regime’s first two heads of government, two bankers: Jacques Laffitte and Casimir Perier.</p>
<p>In February 1848, the monarchy and its great notables were <a href="https://www.persee.fr/doc/rhmc_0048-8003_1966_num_13_3_2919">overthrown</a> in their turn by the petty bourgeoisie and the Parisian people. The latter were once again soon frustrated. Following a conservative turn in the government and a series of victories in legislative elections, the ruling elites of yesterday were returned to power by 1849.</p>
<h2>The origins of mistrust</h2>
<p>Mistrust of the elites is not specific to France, as shown by the populist victories of the past ten years in Great Britain, Italy, Eastern Europe and the USA. People largely distrust their leaders because of the results of globalisation, the remoteness of supranational institutions, the power of big tech companies and the associated economic and social crises from all of the above. The fact that they have been made a spectacle of by the media for the past 40 years and the hypercritical gaze of social networks do nothing to help matters.</p>
<p>But the French mistrust comes from much further back: it starts with a centralised and over-inflated state, an all-powerful bureaucracy, the almost exclusive training of the elite in the same <a href="https://theconversation.com/democratiser-les-grandes-ecoles-pourquoi-ca-coince-154247">select institutions</a> and a tendency to intellectualise problems which, sometimes, simple common sense would allow to be better addressed.</p>
<p>And while France seemed to go against the tide of populism by electing Emmanuel Macron over Marine Le Pen in 2017 – admittedly on the promise of a new world, new faces and new practices – distrust was not long in resurfacing on a large scale, as witnessed by the gilets jaunes movement, the massive strikes in response to pension reform or, more recently, the protests against the vaccine pass.</p>
<h2>New crisis, new training ground</h2>
<p>At each major crisis in post-Revolutionary French history, the people have questioned the role of the institutions that train the members of the elite.</p>
<p>France’s “grandes écoles” – its most prestigious academic institutions – were created during the <a href="https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-01366484/document">French Revolution</a>. In 1800, the Conseil d’État was founded to act as a nursery for the senior civil service, and in 1848 the meritocratic École Nationale d’Administration (ÉNA) was established, but quickly abolished to return to the previous system of nepotism and clientelism.</p>
<p>The École Libre des Sciences Politiques (today known as Sciences Po) and the <a href="https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cole_sup%C3%A9rieure_de_guerre">École Supérieure de Guerre</a> were set up in the aftermath of the 1870 Paris Commune, and after the Second World War, ÉNA was refounded at the same time as the Institutes of Political Studies and the corps of civil administrators.</p>
<p>Today, in response to the gilets jaunes protests, Emmanuel Macron has decided to abolish ÉNA, which has become more and more cut off from the reality of French life over time. Macron, a graduate of the school, announced it would be replaced by an Institute of Public Service – designed to be more socially open and more adapted to the needs of France.</p>
<p>The search for scapegoats within the elites is also a very French trait: today, the ÉNA graduates known as “enarques”; under the Revolution, the aristocrats and the priests; at the end of the 19th century, parliamentarians and Jews; in 1914-18, the war profiteers; in the 1930s and under the Vichy regime, once again the parliamentarians, the Jews and the <a href="https://www.challenges.fr/france/les-200-familles-mythe-persistent_718692">“200 families”</a>. Always, the rich.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395744/original/file-20210419-23-3b7n74.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395744/original/file-20210419-23-3b7n74.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395744/original/file-20210419-23-3b7n74.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395744/original/file-20210419-23-3b7n74.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395744/original/file-20210419-23-3b7n74.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395744/original/file-20210419-23-3b7n74.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395744/original/file-20210419-23-3b7n74.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘ The High Bank versus the Nation. PCF poster stigmatising bankers François de Wendel, Eugène Schneider, Jean de Neuflize and Édouard de Rothschild (1937 cantonal elections). zoomable=</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deux_cents_familles#/media/Fichier:La_Haute-Banque_contre_la_Nation._Pour_l'application_int%C3%A9grale_du_programme,_votez_communiste.jpg">Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A very French paradox</h2>
<p>The mistrust of the elites may have a long history in France but today, in an age of extreme media coverage and immediacy, the associated <a href="https://passes-composes.com/book/277">defeat of intelligence</a> is worrying. Genuine intellectual debate all too often disappears in favour of ersatz ideas dominated by the one-track thinking and the politics of offence.</p>
<p>What a long way we have come from the Enlightenment, where Rousseau said to d’Alembert: “What questions I find to discuss in those you seem to be solving” and even from the great disputes between <a href="https://www.lexpress.fr/culture/livre/sartre-aron-destins-croises_809968.html">Jean-Paul Sartre and Raymond Aron</a>.</p>
<p>The disappearance of one of our greatest intellectual journals, <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2020/09/04/avec-la-fin-de-la-revue-le-debat-c-est-l-intellectuel-francais-qui-disparait_6050912_3232.html">Le Débat</a>, shows the extent of <a href="https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2021/04/ROBERT/63008">the impoverishment of thought</a>.</p>
<p>The French people are far from blameless in all this: don’t we get the elites we deserve, especially since the introduction of universal suffrage?</p>
<p>This is the conclusion of some foreign observers, including that of American scholar Ezra Suleiman, who has long studied this country. He <a href="https://www.grasset.fr/livres/schizophrenies-francaises-9782246705017">diagnoses</a> “a schizophrenic tendency” among the French to demand everything and its opposite: an aspiration for hierarchical power that must be exceptional, infallible and virtuous on the one hand, and a passion for equality, a desire for proximity to the elites, and a thirst for freedom on the other.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165569/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eric Anceau ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>France has undergone thirteen major political shifts since 1789, and yet there have been very few major changes to the country’s elite.Eric Anceau, Maître de conférences en histoire, Sorbonne UniversitéLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1579532021-04-22T12:26:09Z2021-04-22T12:26:09ZMoney alone can’t fix Central America – or stop migration to US<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396089/original/file-20210420-21-nrprby.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=13%2C17%2C2982%2C1971&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Children play in Las Flores village, Comitancillo, Guatemala, home of a 22-year-old migrant murdered in January 2021 on his journey through Mexico.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/children-play-during-the-wake-of-marvin-tomas-a-guatemalan-news-photo/1231727366?adppopup=true">Johan Ordonez/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>To stem migration from Central America, the Biden administration has a US$4 billion plan to “<a href="https://joebiden.com/centralamerica/">build security and prosperity</a>” in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador – home to more than <a href="https://migrationpolicy.org/article/centralamerican-migrants-unitedstates-2017">85% of all Central American migrants</a> who arrived in the U.S. over the last three years.</p>
<p>The U.S. seeks to address the “<a href="https://joebiden.com/centralamerica/">factors pushing people to leave their countries</a>” – namely, violence, crime, chronic unemployment and lack of basic services – in a region of <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-central-america-gangs-like-ms-13-are-bad-but-corrupt-politicians-may-be-worse-86113">gross public corruption</a>.</p>
<p>The Biden plan, which will be partially funded with money diverted from immigration detention and the border wall, is based on a sound analysis of Central America’s dismal socioeconomic conditions. As a <a href="https://lacc.fiu.edu/news-1/2018/the-future-of-the-americas-by-president-luis-guillermo-sols/">former president of Costa Rica</a>, I can attest to the dire situation facing people in neighboring nations. </p>
<p>As a historian of Central America, I also know money alone cannot build a viable democracy. </p>
<h2>Failed efforts</h2>
<p>Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador comprise Central America’s “Northern Triangle” – a poor region with <a href="https://insightcrime.org/news/analysis/2020-homicide-round-up/">among the world’s highest murder rates</a>. </p>
<p>These countries need education, housing and health systems that work. They need reliable economic structures that can attract foreign investment. And they need inclusive social systems and other crime-prevention strategies that <a href="https://theconversation.com/forced-migration-from-central-america-5-essential-reads-98600">allow people to live without fear</a>. </p>
<p>No such transformation can happen without strong public institutions and <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-central-america-gangs-like-ms-13-are-bad-but-corrupt-politicians-may-be-worse-86113">politicians committed to the rule of law</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396091/original/file-20210420-17-17fdrpu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Protesters hold Guatemalan flags and posters alleging corruption fo the president" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396091/original/file-20210420-17-17fdrpu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396091/original/file-20210420-17-17fdrpu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396091/original/file-20210420-17-17fdrpu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396091/original/file-20210420-17-17fdrpu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396091/original/file-20210420-17-17fdrpu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396091/original/file-20210420-17-17fdrpu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396091/original/file-20210420-17-17fdrpu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Guatemalans call for the resignation of President Alejandro Giammatei, whom they call corrupt, Nov. 21, 2020, Guatemala City.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/protesters-gather-to-stage-a-protest-against-the-president-news-photo/1229722669?adppopup=true">Fabricio Alonzo/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Biden’s aid to Central America comes with strict conditions, requiring the leaders of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador to “undertake significant, concrete and verifiable reforms,” including with their own money. </p>
<p>But the U.S. has <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25661224?seq=1">unsuccessfully tried to make change in Central America for decades</a>. Every American president <a href="https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/jfk-in-history/alliance-for-progress">since the 1960s</a> has launched initiatives there. </p>
<p>During the Cold War, the U.S. aimed to counter the spread of communism in the region, sometimes militarily. More recently U.S. aid has focused principally on strengthening democracy, by investing in everything from the judiciary reform and women’s education to agriculture and small businesses.</p>
<p>The Obama administration also <a href="https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/IN10237.pdf">spent millions on initiatives</a> to fight illegal drugs and weaken the street gangs, called “maras,” whose brutal control over urban neighborhoods is one reason migrants say they flee. </p>
<p>Such <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-cutting-central-american-aid-going-to-help-stop-the-flow-of-migrants-118806">multibillion-dollar efforts</a> have done little to improve the region’s dysfunctions.</p>
<p>If anything, Central America’s <a href="https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=theconversation.com+central+america+climate+change&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8">problems have gotten worse</a>. COVID-19 is <a href="https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2020/12/15/na121720when-it-rains-it-pours-pandemic-and-natural-disasters-challenge-central-americas-economies">raging across the region</a>. Two Category 5 hurricanes <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/06/world/americas/migration-honduras-central-america.html">hit Honduras</a> within two weeks in late 2020, leaving more than 250,000 homeless. </p>
<p>Some experts have been calling for a “<a href="https://fpif.org/central-america-needs-a-marshall-plan/">mini-Marshall Plan</a>” to stabilize Central America, like the U.S. program that rebuilt Europe after World War II. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A girl sits in a muddy, destroyed school chair on muddy, messy ground" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396053/original/file-20210420-19-oxteu6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C15%2C5236%2C3292&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396053/original/file-20210420-19-oxteu6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396053/original/file-20210420-19-oxteu6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396053/original/file-20210420-19-oxteu6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396053/original/file-20210420-19-oxteu6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396053/original/file-20210420-19-oxteu6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396053/original/file-20210420-19-oxteu6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hurricanes Eta and Iota flooded Honduras in late 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/girl-sits-on-a-school-chair-destroyed-during-hurricanes-eta-news-photo/1230539934?adppopup=true">Orlando Sierra/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The Costa Rica counterpoint</h2>
<p>To imagine a way out of Central America’s problems, the history of Costa Rica – <a href="https://2009-2017.state.gov/outofdate/bgn/costarica/88435.htm">a democratic and stable Central American country</a> – is illustrative. </p>
<p>Costa Rica’s <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Understanding-Central-America-Global-Forces-and-Political-Change/Booth-Wade-Walker/p/book/9780367361709">path to success</a> started soon after independence from Spain in 1821. </p>
<p>It developed a coffee economy that tied it early to the developing global capitalist economy. While other Central American countries fought prolonged civil wars, Costa Rica adopted a liberal constitution and invested in public education. </p>
<p>Costa Rican democracy <a href="https://dsc.duq.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2090&context=dlr">strengthened in the 1940s</a> with a constitutional amendment that established a minimum wage and protected women and children from labor abuses. It also established a national social security system, which today provides health care and pensions to all Costa Ricans.</p>
<p>These reforms <a href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/149238774.pdf">triggered civil war</a>. But the war’s end brought about positive transformations. In 1948, Costa Rica <a href="https://www.revistas.una.ac.cr/index.php/ri/article/view/7153">abolished its military</a>. No spending in defense allows Costa Rica to invest in human development.</p>
<p><iframe id="SfjaE" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/SfjaE/4/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>The country also created a credible electoral system to ensure the legitimacy of elected governments. </p>
<p>Over the next seven decades, consecutive Costa Rican governments <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2513832?seq=1">expanded this welfare state</a>, developing a large urban and rural middle class. Already a trusted U.S. ally when the Cold War began, Costa Rica was able to maintain progressive policies of the sort that, in other countries, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/washington-has-meddled-in-elections-before-92167">American government</a> viewed as <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-socialism-became-un-american-through-the-ad-councils-propaganda-campaigns-132335">suspiciously “socialist.”</a> </p>
<p>Today, Costa Rica invests nearly 30% of its annual budget in public education, from kindergarten to college. Health care represents around 14.8% of the budget. </p>
<p>The U.S. is not a draw for Costa Ricans. Instead, my country has itself received <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-rise-of-anti-immigrant-attitudes-violence-and-nationalism-in-costa-rica-73899">hundreds of thousands of Central American migrants</a>.</p>
<h2>Predatory elites and authoritarian politics</h2>
<p>The migrants are fleeing political systems that are broadly repressive and prone to militarism, autocracy and corruption. In large part, that’s because many Central American countries are dominated by small yet powerful economic and political <a href="https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2021/04/03/the-influence-of-central-american-dynasties-is-ebbing">elites, many dating back generations</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396114/original/file-20210420-23485-4i1gzl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A police officer in full SWAT gear with a machine guns stands outside a small store on a city street as people walk by" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396114/original/file-20210420-23485-4i1gzl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396114/original/file-20210420-23485-4i1gzl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396114/original/file-20210420-23485-4i1gzl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396114/original/file-20210420-23485-4i1gzl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396114/original/file-20210420-23485-4i1gzl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396114/original/file-20210420-23485-4i1gzl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396114/original/file-20210420-23485-4i1gzl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A decade of militarized policing in El Salvador has not meaningfully improved safety.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/member-of-the-tactical-squad-of-the-national-police-stands-news-photo/1204305708?adppopup=true">Aphotografia/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These elites benefit from the status quo. In the Northern Triangle, they have <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/03/26/biden-rethinks-central-america-strategy/">repeatedly proven unwilling</a> to promote the structural transformations – from more equitable taxation and educational investment to agrarian reforms – that could end centuries of oppression and deprivation. </p>
<p>During the Cold War, they quashed popular revolutions pursuing such changes, often <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/01/trump-and-el-salvador/550955/">with U.S. support</a>.</p>
<p>Biden’s Central America plan requires the active participation of this “predatory elite,” <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/03/26/981284187/predatory-elite-also-bear-the-blame-for-migrant-crisis-juan-gonzalez-says">in the words of Biden adviser Juan Gonzalez</a>.</p>
<p>Gonzales told NPR in March that the administration would take a “partnership-based approach” in Central America, using both “carrots and sticks” to push powerful people who may not share the U.S.’s goals to help their own people. The U.S. will also enlist local human rights organizations and pro-democracy groups to aid their cause.</p>
<p>Its too early to know if the expected partnerships with Central American leaders will materialize. </p>
<p>The Salvadoran president recently <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/international/americas/547176-el-salvador-president-refuses-to-meet-senior-us-diplomat-report">refused to meet</a> with Biden’s special envoy to the Northern Triangle. Honduras’ president <a href="https://insightcrime.org/news/honduras-president-drug-conspiracy/">is named in a U.S. criminal investigation</a> into his brother’s alleged drug-smuggling ring.</p>
<p>Still, without the U.S. resources being offered, Central America’s troubles will persist. Money alone won’t solve them – but it is a necessary piece of an enormously complicated puzzle.</p>
<p>[<em>The Conversation’s Politics + Society editors pick need-to-know stories.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/politics-weekly-74/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=politics-need-to-know">Sign up for Politics Weekly</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/157953/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luis Guillermo Solis was the president of Costa Rica from 2014 to 2018.</span></em></p>Biden’s $4 billion plan to fight crime, corruption and poverty in Central America is massive. But aid can’t build viable democracies if ‘predatory elites’ won’t help their own people.Luis Guillermo Solis, Distinguished Professor, Director of the Kimberly Green Latin American and Caribbean Center, Florida International UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1246842019-10-16T09:19:57Z2019-10-16T09:19:57ZTunisia’s new president Kais Saied has a big job to wrestle the country back from its political elites<p>The election of Kais Saied, a 61-year-old former law professor and political outsider, to the Tunisian presidency was not surprising: he represents the Tunisian ideal of how the ruling class should be. The size of the vote in his favour was impressive. He won 73% of the vote in the second round run-off, with more than 3m Tunisians voting for him.</p>
<p>Saied represents a version of the Tunisian reformist, a political stereotype that has long been <a href="https://www.cairn.info/revue-d-histoire-moderne-et-contemporaine-2009-5-page-14.htm#">integral to Tunisian identity.</a> In his <a href="https://www.leaders.com.tn/article/28189-abdelhamid-largueche-kais-saied-plebiscite-president-la-vertu-comme-enjeu-politique">ill-defined political project</a>, he plans to alter the Tunisian political system by decentralising its power structures and introducing more direct democracy. This will be an arduous task that will attempt to reverse a process of centralisation that has been going on for more than 500 years. </p>
<p>At the same time, his views in <a href="https://www.leaders.com.tn/article/28189-abdelhamid-largueche-kais-saied-plebiscite-president-la-vertu-comme-enjeu-politique">recent public debates</a> left many moderate Tunisians flabbergasted, especially when he claimed that he did not hold the idea of <a href="https://www.leaders.com.tn/article/28189-abdelhamid-largueche-kais-saied-plebiscite-president-la-vertu-comme-enjeu-politique">equality between men and women</a> in high esteem, or when he rejected questions about the <a href="https://www.leaders.com.tn/article/28189-abdelhamid-largueche-kais-saied-plebiscite-president-la-vertu-comme-enjeu-politique">rights of minorities</a>. </p>
<p>These contradictions create inevitable perplexities, especially when Tunisia’s two elected institutions – parliament and the president – seem to have two different and sometimes opposed political projects.</p>
<p>The presidential election followed parliamentary elections on October 6, in which preliminary results <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/20191009-islamist-inspired-ennahdha-party-leads-tunisia-election-initial-results-show">show the moderate Islamist party, Ennhada,</a> will be the largest party. Ennhada <a href="https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-tunisia-election-islamists/moderate-islamist-ennahda-backs-saied-in-tunisias-presidential-run-off-idUKKBN1W42VA">backed Saied</a> in the second round of the presidential election. </p>
<h2>Insecurity and corruption</h2>
<p>Saied takes over a country facing a complicated future. Extremist organisations continue to threaten foreigners and Tunisian national interests. Border instability is putting a strain on the security forces, while social protests, often spontaneous, continue to impact life, especially in the capital, Tunis.</p>
<p>Families continue to resort to <a href="https://www.liberation.fr/planete/2019/09/24/pauvrete-en-tunisie-realites-et-illusions_1753369">loans to save the day</a>, while many believe that the sums swallowed up in palaces or prestige constructions, would be better invested in building industries. According to a survey by Transparency International released in August 2019, <a href="http://www.ansamed.info/ansamed/en/news/sections/generalnews/2019/08/02/tunisia-corruption-on-the-rise-transparency-international_d22dc8d7-f7a5-451b-930a-49c0f7ff2675.html">67% of Tunisians perceived that corruption had worsened</a> in the past year. </p>
<p>This trend, of elites enriching themselves, is reminiscent of the aftermath of Tunisia’s independence in 1956, when Habib Bourguiba, Tunisia’s first leader after independence, and his elite accessed power. This same trend repeated itself under the presidency of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and it has not disappeared. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/tunisie-comment-la-corruption-gangrene-le-pays-91294">Tunisie: comment la corruption gangrène le pays</a>
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<p>Many Tunisian politicians neglect the economic and social issues <a href="https://www.arab-reform.net/publication/tunisias-upcoming-challenge-fixing-the-economy-before-its-too-late/">affecting the country</a>. Worryingly, this shows the political class is unable to transform the needs of the population into real policies. Tunisians are no longer willing to be bought with short-term policies, such as the <a href="https://www.alternatives-economiques.fr/tunisie-a-lheure-comptes/00090425">increase of salaries and pensions</a> that happened on the eve of these elections. The ruling party’s candidate didn’t make it to the second round of the presidential run-off.</p>
<h2>Entrenched relationships</h2>
<p>There is a considerable risk that Tunisians may continue to be hostage to a political class more motivated by personal gain than by the republican and democratic ideals that permitted the country to gain independence, and that were reiterated during the 2011 Jasmine revolution.</p>
<p>The logic of the Tunisian political class lies in horsetrading with Europe for help in reducing the threats of terrorism and immigration. But all this keeps the Tunisian population in a perpetual state of insecurity. </p>
<p>In reality, it looks like the old setting of colonial rule in Tunisia might be rebadged and maintained by today’s crop of politicians. The discourse of the Tunisian political class does little but repeat the previous agreements with Western powers that were renegotiated when Tunisia gained independence. </p>
<p>There continues to be a focus <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNEDXUMzeaA">by political elites</a> on the need to support democracy in Tunisia because that’s what Europe needs and expects. According to this argument, the equation is simple. Poverty and unemployment inevitably produce terrorism and emigration, and if Europe doesn’t want to receive immigrant groups and doesn’t want to be harmed by terrorism, it should provide the potential to stabilise Tunisian democracy through a strong economy.</p>
<p>This is a logic that both Bourguiba and Ben Ali used to push forward their own personal interests, including within Tunisia’s security system, by getting economic and political support. After the fall of Ben Ali in 2011, there was then a redistribution of power within the security system, with the establishment of new strongholds of power by newly emerging lobby groups.</p>
<p>But today, Tunisia’s security apparatus continues to be almost byzantine in its <a href="https://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/SR304.pdf">complexity and secrecy</a>. The ongoing implementation of intelligence reform in Tunisia is a difficult task involving great political and security dangers. But this is perhaps an issue that Saied should make his own priority. Failing to do so would inevitably risk leaving once again a restricted minority controlling the security apparatus’s power to influence domestic politics, with considerable and predictable consequences.</p>
<p>For now, it’s difficult to predict whether the new president will be able to truly emancipate Tunisia from its past, revolutionising the political system and changing its power structures away from the lobby groups.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/124684/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Omar Safi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Parts of Tunisia’s political discourse look a lot like its colonial past.Omar Safi, Teaching Fellow, University of PortsmouthLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1251032019-10-14T10:19:09Z2019-10-14T10:19:09ZRepublicans have more political leeway to impeach Donald Trump than they think<p>Former Republican senator Jeff Flake made headlines recently when he <a href="https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/09/27/jeff-flake-at-least-35-gop-senators-would-impeach-trump/3792866002/">declared</a> that he knew of “at least 35” Republican senators who would support ousting Donald Trump from office if their votes were taken in a secret ballot. In the debate over the president’s impeachment, this means that what’s stopping many Republicans on Capitol Hill from rejecting Trump isn’t their conscience – but instead fear of political backlash. Yet is this fear actually warranted?</p>
<p>The answer is crucial because of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/24/us/politics/impeachment-trump-explained.html">how impeachment operates</a>. Even if Democrats – who hold a majority in the House of Representatives – can vote to impeach the president without Republican support, they can’t gain the two-thirds majority necessary in the Senate to remove Trump from office without significant Republican backing. </p>
<p>Conventional wisdom is that Republican leaders would pay a hefty price from conservative voters for turning on the president in a public way. According to <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/203198/presidential-approval-ratings-donald-trump.aspx">Gallup</a>, for example, Trump’s approval rating among Republican voters stood at a strong 87% in late September. And a <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1L-XRdXdqB2Rd0ImdcMC2yoCG8Nh-2rhdZN9xlbZaRqM/edit#gid=0">Washington Post-Schar School</a> poll in the first week of October revealed that 71% of Republican voters disapproved of launching a formal impeachment inquiry.</p>
<p>Yet even amid what appears like stalwart support for Trump among his notoriously loyal base, there’s reason to think that congressional Republicans have more leeway to mutiny than they think. For one thing, a key lesson from Watergate is that public opinion can <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/09/25/how-the-watergate-crisis-eroded-public-support-for-richard-nixon/">change abruptly</a> in the heat of an impeachment inquiry. As new revelations emerged about President Richard Nixon’s crimes, his approval ratings tumbled.</p>
<p>Even more important, however, is what we know about the preferences of Americans – and how politicians can get them wrong. Recent research on US politics suggests that political elites, including elected officials, often misread their voters by thinking that they’re more conservative than they in fact are. As a consequence, Republican leaders may be overestimating the extent to which the public wants them to defend Trump.</p>
<h2>Misperceiving the US electorate</h2>
<p>In a 2018 study, for example, political scientists David Broockman and Christopher Skovron <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/bias-in-perceptions-of-public-opinion-among-political-elites/2EF080E04D3AAE6AC1C894F52642E706">surveyed</a> more than 3,700 state legislators to see if they really knew how the public felt about a broad range of policy issues, including gun control and abortion. They found that not only did politicians think voters were more conservative than they were, but Republican officials were most prone to mis-estimations. My own ongoing analysis with my colleague Jonathan Monten also reveals that, at the national level, political elites perceive the public as more supportive of Trump’s <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-trump-means-by-america-first-11546992419">“America First”</a> agenda than it really is. </p>
<p>Ultimately, political elites are swayed by anecdotes. This can be problematic, as Broockman and Skovron observe, if certain groups are disproportionately vocal in espousing their view. Political scientists Theda Skocpol and Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, for example, show in their <a href="https://terrain.gov.harvard.edu/files/terrain/files/the-koch-network-and-republican-party-extremism.pop-sept2016.pdf">research</a> that this has been most true of conservatives in recent years. Right-wing activists, from wealthy donors such as the Koch family and its network, to those on talk radio, have projected power that far exceeds their actual numbers.</p>
<p>With this in mind, it’s true that most Republican voters don’t want Trump impeached. Yet that hardly means they’re as united as many politicians perceive or that they’d vote against congressional Republicans in the next election for turning on the president. It could also be that pro-Trump views against impeachment are only weakly held – or at least highly malleable.</p>
<h2>A unique case?</h2>
<p>A possible caveat, of course, is that Trump might not conform to “normal” political rules. The so-called <a href="https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-schiller-trump-economic-campaign-2020-20190604-story.html">“Teflon president”</a> has already proven stunningly resilient – even in the face of <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/trump-administration-conflicts/">scandal after scandal</a>. So perhaps conservative voters would revolt if congressional Republicans betrayed Trump by supporting right-wing challengers in the primaries, or by not turning out to vote at all in 2020. Yet, Republican leaders won’t know unless they try, and it seems just as likely they’d win moderate votes by standing up to the president.</p>
<p>In the coming weeks, congressional Republicans might ask themselves whether they’d really face the kind of political reprisal for supporting the impeachment of Trump that they fear. It could be that, on the whole, the American electorate isn’t only much less conservative than Republican leaders perceive – but also much more open to showing an embattled president the door.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/125103/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thomas Gift does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Are Republican leaders overestimating the extent to which the public wants them to defend Donald Trump?Thomas Gift, Lecturer of Political Science and Director of the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) Programme, UCLLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/961482018-05-07T13:51:26Z2018-05-07T13:51:26ZKenyatta-Raila pact will only herald real change if promises are followed by action<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217790/original/file-20180504-166903-18s5nga.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta (left) and opposition leader Raila Odinga.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> EPA-EFE/Stringer</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In his state of the nation address to parliament last week Uhuru Kenyatta made a rare <a href="https://www.nation.co.ke/news/politics/I-am-sorry--says-Uhuru-Kenyatta--in-new-unity-plea-/1064-4541806-xiq0ajz/index.html">personal apology</a> for Kenya’s roughneck election campaign. Cheered by both sides of the House, he urged support for the national reconciliation he and opposition rival Raila Odinga have championed since a <a href="https://www.nation.co.ke/news/politics/Uhuru-Kenyatta-and-Raila-Odinga-handshake/1064-4379964-os1fhtz/index.html">pubic show of unity</a> in March. Julius Maina asks Gabrielle Lynch about the hotly debated questions.</em></p>
<p><strong>What is the context in which Kenyatta and Raila closed ranks?</strong></p>
<p>Kenyatta and Odinga’s handshake on 9 March 2018 came in the wake of a protracted dispute over Kenya’s 2017 elections. Following the polls last August, opposition leader, Odinga, and the National Super Alliance (NASA) <a href="http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/Key-lessons-for-election-team-as-Kenyans-return-to-ballot-/440808-4079934-roelpv/index.html">successfully petitioned</a> Kenyatta’s re-election. But they then boycotted a fresh election in October on the basis that the election would simply be stolen once again. This decision was understandable, but it left Kenyatta to win in October with 98.3% of the votes cast.</p>
<p>But the fact that turnout fell from 79.5% of registered voters in August <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/4587b91e-bd82-11e7-9836-b25f8adaa111">to 38.8 %</a> ensured that the October polls failed to resolve the dispute. The turnout didn’t entirely discredit Kenyatta, but it was too low to give him the legitimacy he sought. And it reinforced a conviction among opposition supporters that - as in <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17531050802058286">2007</a> and <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17531055.2013.871182">2013</a> - the 2017 presidential election had been stolen from Odinga. </p>
<p>In this context, NASA rejected Kenyatta’s re-election and announced the formation of a <a href="https://www.kenyans.co.ke/news/24219-nasa-makes-another-move-after-forming-resistance-movement">National Resistance Movement</a>, <a href="https://www.nation.co.ke/news/Nasa-announces-boycott-of-some-products-/1056-4171976-36pbpmz/index.html">an economic boycott</a> and plans to <a href="http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/news/Kenya-opposition-to-form-Peoples-Assembly/2558-4163812-3jg792/index.html">form People’s Assemblies</a>. At the end of January 2018, Odinga was unofficially <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/thousands-of-kenyan-opposition-supporters-gather-to-swear-in-their-candidate/2018/01/30/fb7dfc62-05ba-11e8-8777-2a059f168dd2_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.e35bcec4c3e2">sworn-in</a> as the “People’s President”. </p>
<p>At the same time, the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/kenya-economy/update-2-kenya-economy-seen-rebounding-after-election-slowdown-idUSL8N1S22GO">economy took a hit</a> with many struggling even more than usual to buy food and pay bills and fees. </p>
<p>*<em>What are their declared goals and to what extent do they enjoy public support?
*</em></p>
<p>Amid this ongoing crisis, Kenyatta and Odinga held a meeting on 9 March, shook hands and issued <a href="https://www.nation.co.ke/news/Uhuru--Raila-joint-statement-in-full/1056-4335082-kjgc8u/index.html">a statement</a> on </p>
<blockquote>
<p>building bridges to a new Kenyan nation. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This statement set out a number of issues they said needed to be addressed. These included ethnic antagonism and competition, the need to include all communities in governance and development, security and the problem of divisive elections. The stated objective was to build a strong and united nation. But there was very little detail on how this would be achieved.</p>
<p>Since then, Odinga was invited to speak at the country’s annual <a href="https://www.kenya-today.com/devolution/h-e-raila-odinga-speech-at-the-fifth-devolution-conference-in-kakamega">devolution conference</a> and a team of 14 advisors was announced <a href="https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/article/2001278633/14-advisors-to-lead-uhuru-raila-building-bridges-initiative">to steer national dialogue </a>. </p>
<p>Most recently, Kenyatta used his <a href="https://www.nation.co.ke/news/politics/Uhuru-full-state-of-the-nation-address/1064-4541100-gqbp50z/index.html">state of the nation address</a> to apologise to any Kenyans he had hurt and to call for reconciliation. Critically, he clarified that, by reconciliation, he did not mean agreement on all matters, but constructive and respectful disagreement and debate.</p>
<p>The vast majority of Kenyans appear to support these goals: stability, security, inclusive development and an ability to speak and be heard are the very things that most people crave. But many are sceptical. This is <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2018/03/15/dont-believe-the-kenyatta-odinga-handshake-hype-kenyans-are-still-on-their-own/?utm_term=.43ddb8bf1988">not the first time</a> that an election crisis in Kenya has ended with a handshake and people are waiting to see what “building bridges” means in practice. </p>
<p>While the majority appear to be happy that the immediate crisis has come to an end and the economy can begin to recover, many fear that this is an elite pact that has more to do with coalition politics ahead of 2022 than it does with ordinary Kenyans.</p>
<p>A significant number of opposition supporters also clearly feel betrayed. In reaching this deal, Odinga seems to have gone behind the backs of his NASA partners. NASA’s commitment to fight injustice also raised hopes that change would be forced through. For some, this hope has turned to <a href="https://www.theeastafricanreview.info/op-eds/2018/04/14/this-is-what-its-cost-us/">frustration and anger</a>, which currently has no obvious outlet. </p>
<p><strong>Who is to blame for Kenya’s recurring dance with death?</strong></p>
<p>The blame for Kenya’s divisive ethnic politics is often placed squarely at the door of the country’s political elite. This is not without reason. Politicians tend to mobilise support among their own ethnic groups and against the assumed spokesmen of other ethnic groups. They have also sometimes incited hatred and <a href="http://kenyalaw.org/Downloads/Reports/Commission_of_Inquiry_into_Post_Election_Violence.pdf">organised violence</a>. </p>
<p>But it’s too simplistic to just blame the country’s political elite. </p>
<p>Discussions of blame should start with a history in which a <a href="https://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/tjrc/">violent and unpredictable colonial state</a> was inherited largely unchanged by a post-colonial elite until a new constitution was passed in 2010. It is a history that has encouraged the emergence of ethnic strongmen and fostered a sense that one is more likely to gain if <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/17531055.2013.844438">one of “your own”</a> is elected. </p>
<p>The flip side is to fear exclusion and marginalisation if a collective quest for political power is unsuccessful.</p>
<p><strong>What are the chances of Kenyatta and Raila achieving success?</strong> </p>
<p>It depends on what you mean by success and for whom. The pact between them has helped to dampen a confrontational political mood. It has paved the way for other <a href="https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/article/2001279034/mps-in-mass-handshakes-as-uhuru-apologises">displays of reconciliation</a>. It may also lead to a more concerted commitment to devolution, and to some more investment in opposition areas, as Kenyatta becomes increasingly concerned with his legacy. But it’s too early to tell what this means for political realignments ahead of 2022. </p>
<p>More importantly, such an elite pact can’t change Kenya’s political culture, further strengthen the country’s institutions, or address the deep rooted sense of injustice and marginalisation that many Kenyans share. Success on those fronts requires time and a complex mix of concerted political will, substantive political and economic change, and new popular expectations of the political elite.</p>
<p>On the other hand, failure to address a sense of marginalisation will ensure that the memories of 2017 fuel a sense of a biased and violent state, and of injustice for many. It is thus understandable that many are sceptical. It’s also important that pressure is brought to bear to ensure that promising words are followed by action.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/96148/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gabrielle Lynch received funding from the UK Economic and Social Research Council under grant ES.L002345.1.</span></em></p>The majority of Kenyans appear to be happy as President Uhuru Kenyatta and opposition leader Raila Odinga’s pledge to “build bridges.”Gabrielle Lynch, Professor of Comparative Politics, University of WarwickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/900752018-01-22T11:29:35Z2018-01-22T11:29:35ZTrump goes to Davos: 4 books he should read on first trip to gathering of global elites<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202727/original/file-20180122-110100-xro742.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">This unassuming, snowy town becomes home to the global elite for a few days each year. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Markus Schreiber</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>For the first time <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2000/01/29/economy/davos_clinton/">since 2000</a>, a sitting American president <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/a3d696b4-f565-11e7-88f7-5465a6ce1a00">is attending</a> the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting, which takes place in Davos, Switzerland, from Jan. 23-26. </p>
<p>The invitation-only gathering is basically a who’s who of the global elite: business heads, current and past world leaders, well-connected celebrities and academics. They make business deals in hallway meetings and at parties and hobnob in program sessions that seek to tackle global problems such as <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2619213/the-richest-eight-tycoons-on-the-planet-are-worth-as-much-as-the-poorest-3-6-billion-people-oxfam-claims/">poverty</a>, <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2007/01/climate_change_/">climate change</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jan/22/refugee-crisis-dominates-downbeat-davos-2016">refugee crises</a>.</p>
<p>In many ways, the Davos crowd and its interests are the epitome of what Donald Trump’s populist base reviles. Although the Davos neophyte is wealthy and powerful like many of the other attendees, Trump with his coarse manners and protectionist policies may find an unsympathetic audience.</p>
<p>Davos, already an inherent contradiction of elites purporting to change the world from which they have profited, will become even more of a paradox with Trump’s attendance. As such, the American president could surely use a primer on the gathering to prepare him for the <a href="https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/01/20/world/politics-diplomacy-world/trumps-trip-davos-sets-clash-cultures/">clashes sure to come</a>. </p>
<p>As a business and humanities <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10551-017-3538-y">scholar</a> who has seen Davos <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-michaelson-phd/davos-2012_b_1245312.html">up close</a>, I recommend he pack four books for his transatlantic flight, as a strange but sure way to diminish his culture shock.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202725/original/file-20180122-110097-1mzxsc4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202725/original/file-20180122-110097-1mzxsc4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202725/original/file-20180122-110097-1mzxsc4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202725/original/file-20180122-110097-1mzxsc4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202725/original/file-20180122-110097-1mzxsc4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202725/original/file-20180122-110097-1mzxsc4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202725/original/file-20180122-110097-1mzxsc4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Klaus Schwab is deferentially known as ‘Professor Schwab.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Markus Schreiber</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Sanatorium for the elite</h2>
<p>Before the mountainside village of Davos became synonymous with the most powerful networking meeting in the world, it was more well-known as a destination for respite from ailments acquired in the world below. </p>
<p>Thomas Mann’s 1924 novel “<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/107311/the-magic-mountain-by-thomas-mann/">The Magic Mountain</a>,” in which a German travels to a sanatorium in Davos intending to visit a cousin for a few weeks but ends up staying seven years, provides an apt metaphor for the World Economic Forum.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202747/original/file-20180122-110106-iew0ox.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202747/original/file-20180122-110106-iew0ox.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=956&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202747/original/file-20180122-110106-iew0ox.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=956&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202747/original/file-20180122-110106-iew0ox.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=956&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202747/original/file-20180122-110106-iew0ox.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1202&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202747/original/file-20180122-110106-iew0ox.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1202&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202747/original/file-20180122-110106-iew0ox.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1202&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
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<p>Just as the man is convinced that only the rarefied air of the Alps – far from the cares and concerns of his regular life – can cure his apparent ailments, the forum operates in a similar way, with the elites gathering in former sanatoriums turned luxury hotels to dissect and diagnose the problems of the world below. </p>
<p>Founder and Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab convened the first gathering of what was then known as the European Management Forum in 1971, drawing around 500 business leaders and academics to Davos to free them from the distractions of the day-to-day world. This year, more than 3,000 <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/01/whos-coming-to-davos-2018/">participants</a> are expected to show up.</p>
<p>Mann’s literary masterpiece should remind Trump that the confines of exclusive settings like Davos, the White House and his beloved Mar-a-Lago both literally and figuratively isolate decison-makers from the very people whose problems they are ostensibly trying to solve.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202728/original/file-20180122-110103-htqjnu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202728/original/file-20180122-110103-htqjnu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202728/original/file-20180122-110103-htqjnu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202728/original/file-20180122-110103-htqjnu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202728/original/file-20180122-110103-htqjnu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202728/original/file-20180122-110103-htqjnu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202728/original/file-20180122-110103-htqjnu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Davos used to be know primarily for its sanatoriums. Many have now become luxury hotels, such as the Hotel Schatzalp.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Capitalism and power</h2>
<p>While the forum’s <a href="https://www.weforum.org/about/history">original goal</a> was to introduce U.S. management practices to European executives, it quickly began to promote a theory of business sharply at odds with the American focus on <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1970/09/13/archives/a-friedman-doctrine-the-social-responsibility-of-business-is-to.html">maximizing stockholder wealth</a>.</p>
<p>This 20th-century form of capitalism perhaps can be best summed up by four books deemed by some, including <a href="https://weforum2010.sched.com/event/3b4o/reading-leaders-minds">at least one panel of Davos participants</a>, as “classics of business literature”: Niccolo Machiavelli’s “<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1232/1232-h/1232-h.htm">The Prince</a>,” Sun Tzu’s “<a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Tzu/artwar.html">The Art of War</a>,” Adam Smith’s “<a href="http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN.html">The Wealth of Nations</a>” and Charles Darwin’s “<a href="http://darwin-online.org.uk/EditorialIntroductions/Freeman_OntheOriginofSpecies.html">On the Origin of Species</a>.”</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202748/original/file-20180122-110081-10fjibf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202748/original/file-20180122-110081-10fjibf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202748/original/file-20180122-110081-10fjibf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202748/original/file-20180122-110081-10fjibf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202748/original/file-20180122-110081-10fjibf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1140&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202748/original/file-20180122-110081-10fjibf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1140&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202748/original/file-20180122-110081-10fjibf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1140&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
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<p>This survival-of-the-fittest vision of business evokes Trump’s <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/trump-housing-collapse-228708">own economic thesis</a> and policies, such as <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/trump-housing-collapse-228708">when he said</a>, “hoping for a housing collapse is just smart business sense.” In this view, capitalism is about predator and prey, powerful and the powerless. </p>
<p>In contrast, “Professor Schwab” – as he is deferentially called – was an early proponent of what is known as <a href="http://stakeholdertheory.org/">stakeholder capitalism</a>. This theory considers businesses <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2008-01-01/global-corporate-citizenship">corporate citizens</a> that earn their license to operate by serving social prosperity and working with government, and <a href="https://widgets.weforum.org/history/1973.html">by 1973</a> had become the “Davos manifesto.”</p>
<p>A novel that could help Trump begin to see the purpose of capitalism and power in a new light would be “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41445156">The Reluctant Fundamentalist</a>” by Mohsin Hamid. Set around 9/11, it’s a suspenseful depiction of a meeting between an unidentified American and a Pakistani man who has become disaffected with the U.S. The novel raises uncomfortable questions about how capitalist predators who abuse their power risk becoming the prey of social upheaval and terrorism.</p>
<h2>Status symbols</h2>
<p>The broad stakeholder focus of Davos shows that at its heart, it aims to promote an inclusive brand of economics and politics. So how can it stay true to this mission when everything else about the event – its admission criteria, its hospitality and even its remote location – is about as exclusive as you can get? </p>
<p>That irony is made plainly visible by the Forum’s complex badging system. The badges that attendees wear reinforce a strict social <a href="http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/01/19/davoss-status-levels/">hierarchy</a> that smacks of the very castes that the gathering’s agitation against <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/archive/inequality/">inequality</a> and other economic ills seems intended to diminish.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202749/original/file-20180122-110094-9jm0mu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202749/original/file-20180122-110094-9jm0mu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=818&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202749/original/file-20180122-110094-9jm0mu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=818&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202749/original/file-20180122-110094-9jm0mu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=818&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202749/original/file-20180122-110094-9jm0mu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1028&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202749/original/file-20180122-110094-9jm0mu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1028&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202749/original/file-20180122-110094-9jm0mu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1028&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>Davos is a social science laboratory of who’s “in.” You are your badge, the colors of which enable other delegates to judge whether or not you are worth talking to. In a world of elites, white-with-blue badges are a nose above the rest.</p>
<p>The badges on participants’ bellies function like the stars in Dr. Seuss’ “<a href="http://seuss.wikia.com/wiki/The_Sneetches">The Sneetches</a>.” In the children’s book, some of the bird-like creatures who inhabit the world have green stars while others do not. Those with stars discriminate against the ones without until the latter get tattoos that make them all equal. Miffed at their loss in status, the ones born with the stars have them removed to regain their elitism.</p>
<p>The picture book conveys in a compelling way the absurdity of status symbols, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-07-19/trump-cares-about-looking-good-not-doing-good">something</a> the president <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/25/opinions/what-does-trump-care-about-dantonio/index.html">tends to care about a lot</a>. “The Sneetches” shows how these superficial and arbitrary caste systems may do more to reinforce the problems of existing hierarchies than to change and fix them.</p>
<h2>‘America first’ and the powerless</h2>
<p>Trump’s press secretary <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/09/politics/president-donald-trump-davos/index.html">characterized</a> his decision to attend the meeting as a chance “to advance his <a href="https://theconversation.com/trumps-america-first-echoes-from-1940s-59579">America first</a> agenda with world leaders.” </p>
<p>Such rhetoric – and the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/a-year-of-trumps-america-first-agenda-has-radically-changed-the-us-role-in-the-world/2018/01/20/c1258aa6-f7cf-11e7-9af7-a50bc3300042_story.html">inward-looking nativist policies</a> that have resulted – is diametrically opposed to <a href="https://www.weforum.org/events/world-economic-forum-annual-meeting-2018">Davos’ theme</a> this year, “Creating a Shared Future in a Fractured World,” which criticizes “divisive narratives” and a disregard for “shared obligations.”</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202750/original/file-20180122-110113-e8fdgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202750/original/file-20180122-110113-e8fdgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=914&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202750/original/file-20180122-110113-e8fdgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=914&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202750/original/file-20180122-110113-e8fdgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=914&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202750/original/file-20180122-110113-e8fdgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1149&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202750/original/file-20180122-110113-e8fdgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1149&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202750/original/file-20180122-110113-e8fdgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1149&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
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</figure>
<p>In the spirit of sharing, if I could choose one more book for Trump to read on the trip, it might be Imbolo Mbue’s 2016 novel, “<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/251547/behold-the-dreamers-oprahs-book-club-by-imbolo-mbue/9780525509714/">Behold the Dreamers</a>.” The story is about a Cameroonian immigrant who becomes a chauffeur for a Lehman Brothers banker shortly before the bank’s – and the financial system’s – collapse. </p>
<p>It reinforces the three key ethical lessons that the other items on the reading list introduce while offering a fourth: that America is as dependent upon the work of new immigrants as it is on the old money of Wall Street bankers. By reading “Behold the Dreamers,” Trump may learn that immigration should be a negotiation among equally worthy and human parties, not the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-attacks-protections-for-immigrants-from-shithole-countries-in-oval-office-meeting/2018/01/11/bfc0725c-f711-11e7-91af-31ac729add94_story.html?utm_term=.3494fd2e543a">powerful wielding authority</a> over the vulnerable.</p>
<p>If only Trump could get over his <a href="https://newrepublic.com/minutes/133566/donald-trump-doesnt-read-books">distaste for books</a> and read them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90075/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Michaelson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A business and humanities scholar advises the president to pack three novels and a children’s story for his long transatlantic flight to Switzerland aboard Air Force One.Christopher Michaelson, Professor of Ethics and Business Law, University of St. ThomasLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/880232017-11-23T11:29:45Z2017-11-23T11:29:45ZWill Mnangagwa usher in a new democracy? The view from Zimbabwe<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196100/original/file-20171123-18012-fj36hx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Emmerson Mnangagwa, President-elect of Zimbabwe.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Filckr/UN</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Zimbabwe has a new leader. Robert Mugabe is out. His former ally turned rival, Emmerson Mnangagwa, is in. What now?</p>
<p>After <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2017/nov/21/zimbabwe-celebrates-as-mugabe-resignation-announced-in-pictures">ecstatic celebrations to mark Mugabe’s resignation</a> thoughts have began to turn to what comes next. Mugabe may have exited the political scene, but it remains dominated by the same political party – <a href="http://www.thezimbabwemail.com/politics/dont-need-opposition-zanupf-business-chinamasa/">Zanu-PF</a> – that sustained his rule.</p>
<p>Moreover, the country’s president-elect, <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-41995876">Emmerson Mnangagwa</a>, is hardly a breath of fresh air. Having held a series of cabinet positions under Mugabe, and served as first vice president between December 2014 and <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-41914768">his sacking in November 2017</a>, he looks more like a force for continuity than change.</p>
<p>As a result, talk in Harare quickly turned to what kind of leader Mnangagwa will be, and the system of government that would best serve ordinary Zimbabweans.</p>
<h2>The fork in the road</h2>
<p>My conversations with people on the streets of the capital, Harare, about the political system the country needs suggests that two distinct camps are emerging: those who want elections to be held as soon as possible, and those who say the polls should be postponed and a <a href="https://www.thisdaylive.com/index.php/2017/11/16/zimbabwe-moves-to-set-up-interim-govt-as-mugabe-is-apparently-ousted/">transitional government</a> established.</p>
<p>Both of these options have genuine “pros” but also strong “cons”. As is so often the case, there is no perfect answer that solves all problems.</p>
<p>It is understandable that many Zimbabweans want a period of calm and orderly government after the twists and turns of recent weeks, and believe that it would be better to form an inclusive government that would feature representatives of all of the main political parties – a kind of <a href="https://www.academia.edu/6446844/Power_Sharing_in_Comparative_Perspective">power sharing</a> in all but name.</p>
<p>Even though I have consistently argued in favour of the value of <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/democracy-in-africa/3FFB8B40059192D449B77A402ADC82A1">democracy and elections in Africa</a>, I have to admit that the “transitioners” have some viable arguments.</p>
<p>The most obvious is that a period of stability and more consensual government might facilitate much needed reform of the economy and also the wider political and legal system. After all, rival parties are unlikely to come to agreement on these issues if they are immediately thrust into an <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304387803001329">election campaign</a>.</p>
<p>The “transitioners” also have a point when it comes to democracy. Few people in Zimbabwe believe that it’s possible for elections to be <a href="https://erczim.org/">free and fair</a> if they are held between July and August next year, as currently scheduled. Given this, and the current divisions within the opposition, a rush to elections is likely to result in a convincing victory for Zanu-PF under problematic circumstances.</p>
<p>A transitional arrangement would allow for much needed <a href="http://www.zesn.org.zw/wp-content/_protected/publications/publication_265.pdf">electoral reforms</a> to be put in place, creating the potential for a better quality process and a more consensual outcome later on.</p>
<h2>Testing the Crocodile</h2>
<p>But there is also another camp that wants to see Mnangagwa, popularly known as <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/special-features/zimbabwe/who-is-emmerson-the-crocodile-mnangagwa-12013101">The Crocodile</a>, to face an election as soon as possible. </p>
<p>Just like their counterparts in the “transitioner” camp, “electioneers”, have some strong arguments. Whatever one wants to call Mnangagwa’s rise to power – from <a href="https://www.thezimbabwean.co/2017/11/mnangagwa-coup-mphoko-missing-chipanga-now-custody-warrent-arrest-mzembi/">a coup</a> to an <a href="http://www.chronicle.co.zw/dont-meddle-in-zanu-pf-affairs-vp-mnangagwa/">internal party squabble</a> – it is clear that it has not been a high quality democratic transition. And while it is clear that the overthrow of Mugabe was hugely popular, we don’t know if the same applies to a Mnangagwa presidency. An election would settle that question.</p>
<p>It would also give the new government a popular mandate to undertake <a href="https://www.dailynews.co.zw/articles/2017/10/14/zim-needs-bold-economic-reforms-us-envoy">economic reforms</a>, whoever wins power. This could be important to the success of the reform project, because things are likely to <a href="https://www.newsday.co.zw/2016/12/2017-looks-gloomier-zim/">get worse</a> before they get better, and the country’s economic medicine may prove to be a bitter pill to swallow.</p>
<p>Holding elections would also do one thing that postponing them will not; it will test the commitment of the new government to democratic norms and values from the get-go. One of the main reasons that Zimbabwean elections have been poor quality is that <a href="https://www.theindependent.co.zw/2017/03/24/zanu-pf-revives-rigging-machinery/">Zanu-PF and the military</a> have intervened to make sure this was the case. As another friend put it, “If they are really committed to doing the right thing, they can do it right away and the elections will not be too bad”.</p>
<h2>Learning from the past</h2>
<p>“Electioneers” are also motivated by scepticism that an inclusive transitional government would get much done. Both Zimbabwe and Kenya have had power-sharing governments in the recent past, and while they both introduced new constitutions they also saw high levels of corruption and limited <a href="https://www.academia.edu/6446844/Power_Sharing_in_Comparative_Perspective">security sector reform</a>. They also both led to elections that were denounced by opposition parties as being <a href="https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2016/12/24/2-million-votes-used-to-rig-2013-election-raila_c1478146">unfree and unfair</a>.</p>
<p>It’s fair to ask: why would it be different this time?</p>
<p>The question is particularly pertinent given the current composition of parliament. Because Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change boycotted a <a href="https://www.dailynews.co.zw/articles/2016/05/04/mdc-upholds-poll-boycott-stance">series of by-elections</a> on the basis that they would not be free and fair, it has lost many of the seats it won in 2013. As a result, any transitional arrangement that deferred elections and “froze” the current parliament for the next three years would have a big legislative advantage to Zanu-PF.</p>
<p>It is also important to keep in mind that economics cannot be divorced from politics: Zimbabwe’s current economic difficulties stem precisely from an unaccountable political framework that ignored the interests of the people. Given that recent events have <a href="http://solidaritypeacetrust.org/1776/zimbabwe-caught-between-the-croc-and-gucci-city/">emboldened the military</a> and given them an even stronger voice within government, this is a pressing concern.</p>
<p>Deferring electoral reforms in order to focus on economic recovery may therefore prove to be a self defeating strategy.</p>
<h2>Next steps</h2>
<p>Ultimately, the form of government that evolves in Zimbabwe will not be a product of popular dialogue. One of the distinctive features of this process is that for the most part it has been conducted behind closed doors by a <a href="https://www.thezimbabwean.co/2017/11/zimbabwean-not-coup/">small elite</a>.</p>
<p>Don’t be fooled by the pictures of tens of thousands of people marching on Saturday – all sides have invoked popular support, but none have actually <a href="http://www.thezimbabwemail.com/opinion/press-statement-army-gives-update-negotiations-mugabe/">encouraged ordinary people</a> to say what they want, or given them a seat at the table. This is a worrying sign if strengthening democracy is the long-term goal.</p>
<p>Recent <a href="http://bulawayo24.com/index-id-news-sc-national-byo-122715.html">public statements</a> by the main parties at the time of going to press suggests that they are not converging on an interim administration, and so the “electioneers” may get their wish. That could still change because <a href="http://www.thezimbabwemail.com/main/mdc-calls-mnangagwa-repent-join-big-tent/">talks are ongoing</a> and both sides would gain something from a delay. But if it doesn’t the people will be able to have their say on how they want their country to be run.</p>
<p>Of course, voting will not actually equate to “having a say” unless the country’s new leader follows through on his promise to build a “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/22/emmerson-mnangagwa-to-be-sworn-in-as-zimbabwes-president-on-friday">new democracy</a>”, and the ruling party can kick the habit of a lifetime. Watch this space.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88023/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nic Cheeseman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>After the fall of autocratic ruler Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe faces a difficult choice between the stability of a transnational government or a potentially divisive election contest.Nic Cheeseman, Professor of Democracy, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/846202017-09-27T17:03:03Z2017-09-27T17:03:03ZEconomic inequality lies behind growing calls for secession in Nigeria<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187777/original/file-20170927-24154-141spub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Women carry goods across a makeshift bridge in the Ilaje slum in Lagos. Widening inequality is fuelling tensions across Nigeria.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Finbarr O'Reilly</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The rise of ethnic and religious nationalism in Nigeria in the last decade has led to such high levels of tension that it’s prompted people to ask if it will <a href="https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-03-10/roots-nigerias-religious-and-ethnic-conflict">survive as a country</a>. Or if Nigeria is on the brink of another <a href="http://dailypost.ng/2017/09/03/nigerian-christians-warn-another-civil-war/">civil war</a>. </p>
<p>What’s behind the growing tensions is <a href="https://www.oxfam.org/en/even-it-nigeria/nigeria-extreme-inequality-numbers">unequal</a> distribution of the country’s wealth. Inequality has caused mistrust among ethnic groups. This, in turn, has led to conflict and violence. </p>
<p>Nigeria has in fact been at war with itself for some time – a war that has become intensified in the last two decades. </p>
<p>A number of events illustrate this. For instance, militancy in the oil rich Niger Delta region started after the 2003 general elections where arms and ammunition were purchased by some politicians and handed to young people in an attempt to influence the elections. But after the elections, many young Nigerians, angered by high rates of unemployment, turned the weapons against their sponsors and the <a href="http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/nigerias-oil-war-who-are-niger-delta-militants-1520580link">Nigerian state</a>. </p>
<p>Another example is the role played by the Oodua Peoples Congress, a group that advocated for an autonomous region for the Yoruba speaking southwest Nigeria. The congress started its agitation in 1994, a year after the annulment of the 1993 presidential election won by M.K.O Abiola, a member of the Yoruba ethnic group. Their dominant message was the alleged marginalisation of the <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2003/02/28/oodua-peoples-congress-opc/fighting-violence-violence">Yoruba ethnic group</a>.</p>
<p>And in 2009 the Boko Haram insurgency erupted after <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2009/aug/06/mohammed-yusuf-boko-haram-nigeria">the brutal murder</a> of Mohammed Yusuf, an Islamic cleric based in Maiduguri who had started a movement seven years earlier to push for an end to corruption and action against inequality. He also supported Islamic practices in the northeast region of Nigeria. Yusuf was arrested by the police and died in custody in 2009. Many members of his sect immediately staged a peaceful protest. Protests later became violent when they started targeting police offices and police posts across the North. </p>
<p>Now there is a resurgence of opposition in Biafra. It echoes back to 1967 when the then military governor of the Eastern region of Nigeria, Col. Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu declared the Igbo speaking East independent from Nigeria. This followed Igbos in the North being targeted after the first military coup d'etat that ended Nigeria’s first republic. The 1966 coup, mostly led by military officers from the Igbo speaking east of Nigeria, was perceived by many in the North to have specifically targeted and killed many Hausa/Fulani politicians from the Northern region. </p>
<p>Economic inequality cannot be separated from the root of all these developments. Nigerians are frustrated because they can see <a href="https://www.oxfam.org/en/even-it-nigeria/nigeria-extreme-inequality-numbers">economic inequality growing at a faster pace than ever before</a> and no one seems to be doing anything about it. </p>
<p>Will these agitations lead to an outright war in the scale of the 1960s civil war? There is no categorical answer to that. But I doubt that there will be another civil war on the scale of 1967-1970, although there may be large scale violence. </p>
<h2>A history of violence</h2>
<p>Violence has always been part of the history of economic and political marginalisation in Nigeria. </p>
<p>Examples can be drawn from the mass violence that led to the 1967-70 civil war as well as the ethno-religious violence of the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and the 2000s. These included the <a href="https://www.onwar.com/aced/chrono/c1900s/yr90/fnigeria1992.htm">Zango Kataf conflict</a>, <a href="https://rlp.hds.harvard.edu/faq/maitatsine-riots">Maitatsine riots</a> in the North between 1980 and 1985, the Agbekoya farmers uprising in the West 1968-70, the first iteration of the resurgence of Biafra by the Ralph Uwazuruike-led <a href="https://www.ecoi.net/local_link/31666/262387_de.html">Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra in 2000</a> and the national protests against the annulment of the June 12, 1993 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1993/07/07/world/rioting-in-nigeria-kills-at-least-11.html?mcubz=1">presidential election</a> won by Chief M.K.O. Abiola. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187684/original/file-20170926-19342-1843y70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187684/original/file-20170926-19342-1843y70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187684/original/file-20170926-19342-1843y70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187684/original/file-20170926-19342-1843y70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187684/original/file-20170926-19342-1843y70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187684/original/file-20170926-19342-1843y70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187684/original/file-20170926-19342-1843y70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A 2003 picture of current Nigeria President Muhammadu Buhari with Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu who led the failed Biafran secessionist war in the 60s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">REUTERS/Howard Burditt</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many of these mass actions started as protests against perceived injustice. But they were aggravated by the forceful response of the Nigerian government. The protests all paralysed state activities. But none threatened the survival of the Nigerian state more than the oil related conflicts in the Niger Delta. </p>
<p>Beginning with the state murder of Niger Delta rights activist <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1993/07/07/world/rioting-in-nigeria-kills-at-least-11.html?mcubz=1">Ken Saro Wiwa in November 1995</a> and crystallising in the insurgency against oil corporations and the state, protest action in the Niger Delta have affected the production and sale of oil which is the mainstay of the <a href="http://www.africafocus.org/docs06/nig0608.php">Nigerian economy</a>.</p>
<h2>How Nigeria got here</h2>
<p>The resurgence of ethno-religious protests in Nigeria can be traced to the fact that wealth circulates among a small group of elites. Although they come from all ethnic and religious <a href="https://economicconfidential.com/editors-pick/12-people-who-control-nigerias-economy/">groups</a>, they resort to fanning ethno-religious sentiments when they feel there’s a threat to their wealth. Cries of marginalisation becomes the dominant cry when they’re out of power. </p>
<p>The election of President Muhammadu Buhari in 2015, triggered new tensions. This is because he is considered a member of the Northern elite. Immediately after his election protests began supporting self-determination or secession by various groups from the South. These included the <a href="http://dailypost.ng/2017/09/23/biafra-police-dare-ipob-members-protest/">Indigenous People of Biafra</a> in the South East as well as groups such as the <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/20/niger-delta-avengers-who-they-are-and-what-they-want.html">Niger Delta Avengers in the South-South</a>. </p>
<p>Control of Nigeria’s oil resources in the Niger Delta always comes into the mix. Recent clashes involving the Biafra group in Port Harcourt – capital city of oil rich Rivers State – must be understood in that context. It is no surprise that once again, the Niger Delta is at the heart of the current clamour for secession just as it was between 1966 and 1970 when oil extraction started taking root in Nigeria. </p>
<p>But there are important differences between today’s protests and those staged earlier in Nigeria’s history. The main ones include the fact that people are mobilised differently, and the way in which information is disseminated and consumed. </p>
<p>News travel faster than it used to and unfounded rumours spread like wildfire. Fuelling the tensions is the fact that hate speech is rife. The state is as guilty as the agitators. Voices of reason and objective analysis are lost in the noise especially now that everyone with a smart phone has become a ‘journalist’. In the confusion, the road to anarchy looms large over Nigeria. </p>
<h2>What’s to be done</h2>
<p>An inclusive economic and political system is the only solution. The current public discourse is focused on political restructuring along ethnic lines. The calls for a political arrangement where major ethnic groups will have control over their geographical areas as well as resources therein might help. The danger is that rather than unify Nigeria, it would further divide the country along <a href="http://leadership.ng/2017/06/30/politics-intrigues-behind-restructuring-debate/">ethnic and religious lines</a>.</p>
<p>What’s missing in the conversation is the fact that the environment for violence and oppression of most Nigerians has come about because of the way in which the country’s economy is structured. The elitist economy cuts across all ethnic groups. The disenfranchisement, marginalisation and exploitation defy ethnic colouration. </p>
<p>For restructuring to be meaningful, Nigeria must create an inclusive economic and political system where ethnic and religious affiliation will no longer be a defining factor in economic and political participation. What Nigerians need, and are clamouring for, is a country that will accommodate them regardless of ethnic or religious creed. Political, religious and ethnic tolerance is the key to economic and political success, therefore economic and political inclusivity must account for greater tolerance for it to be effective.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84620/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Omolade Adunbi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Protests are raising tensions in Africa’s most populous country, with agitators and federal troops clashing on the streets. But is Nigeria on the brink of another civil war?Omolade Adunbi, Associate Professor of Afroamerican and African Studies, University of MichiganLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/789672017-06-27T14:57:44Z2017-06-27T14:57:44ZChina tops US and UK as destination for anglophone African students<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175161/original/file-20170622-11971-1w6bqoy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">More and more African students head to China each year to study.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">REUTERS/Bobby Yip </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The surge in the number of African students in China is remarkable. In less than 15 years the African student body has grown 26-fold – from just under <a href="http://old.moe.gov.cn//publicfiles/business/htmlfiles/moe/moe_850/201001/xxgk_77826.html">2,000</a> in 2003 to almost <a href="http://www.moe.gov.cn/jyb_xwfb/gzdt_gzdt/s5987/201604/t20160414_238263.html">50,000</a> in 2015. </p>
<p>According to the <a href="http://data.uis.unesco.org/">UNESCO Institute for Statistics</a>, the US and UK host around 40,000 African students a year. China surpassed this number in 2014, making it the second most popular destination for African students studying abroad, after France which hosts just over 95,000 students. </p>
<p>For years, these numbers have remained untranslated in the online archives of the Chinese Ministry of Education. But a <a href="https://breezegeography.wordpress.com/2017/06/23/stats-on-international-students-studying-in-china/">recent initiative</a> by Michigan State University researchers to translate them introduces the reports to a wider audience.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175324/original/file-20170623-21202-15uwna8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175324/original/file-20170623-21202-15uwna8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175324/original/file-20170623-21202-15uwna8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175324/original/file-20170623-21202-15uwna8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175324/original/file-20170623-21202-15uwna8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175324/original/file-20170623-21202-15uwna8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=713&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175324/original/file-20170623-21202-15uwna8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=713&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175324/original/file-20170623-21202-15uwna8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=713&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">China has overtaken the UK and US.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Not only have these reports revealed the growth in China-Africa ties. They also make it possible to compare China’s international education trends in a global context. </p>
<h2>China’s targeted focus</h2>
<p>Chinese universities are filled with international students from around the world, including Asia, the Americas, Europe and Oceania. The proportion of Asian international students still dwarfs the number of Africans, who make up 13% of the student body. But this number, which is up from 2% in 2003, is growing every year, and much faster than other regions. Proportionally more African students are coming to China each year than students from anywhere else in the world.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175325/original/file-20170623-22683-hrxogr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175325/original/file-20170623-22683-hrxogr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175325/original/file-20170623-22683-hrxogr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175325/original/file-20170623-22683-hrxogr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175325/original/file-20170623-22683-hrxogr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175325/original/file-20170623-22683-hrxogr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175325/original/file-20170623-22683-hrxogr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175325/original/file-20170623-22683-hrxogr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The proportion of African students at Chinese universities is steadily growing.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This dramatic increase in students from Africa can be explained in part by the Chinese government’s targeted focus on African human resource and education development. Starting in 2000, China’s <a href="http://www.focac.org/eng/">Forum on China-Africa Cooperation</a> summits have promised financial and political support for African education at home and abroad in China.</p>
<p>Since 2006, China has set scholarship targets to aid African students coming to China for study. For example, at the most recent 2015 summit, China pledged to provide <a href="http://www.focac.org/eng/ltda/dwjbzjjhys_1/hywj/t1327961.htm">30,000 scholarships</a> to African students by 2018. </p>
<p>Although China stopped publishing regional scholarship data in 2008, our data analysis using the 2003-2008 data to generate scholarship estimates suggests that this target is on the way to being met. China seems to be upholding the pledges made towards African education. </p>
<h2>Mutual Benefit - in education and business</h2>
<p>For the Chinese government, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/china-africa-students-scholarship-programme">providing education</a> to Africans is an extension of <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7722/j.ctt2tt1tp">China’s soft power</a> – cultivating the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2013/apr/29/africa-future-leaders-china-aid-programme">next generation</a> of African scholars and elites. The experience that these students get in China can translate into a willingness to work with China and view China’s internal or external policies favourably in the future. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175191/original/file-20170622-12015-e600oh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175191/original/file-20170622-12015-e600oh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175191/original/file-20170622-12015-e600oh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175191/original/file-20170622-12015-e600oh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175191/original/file-20170622-12015-e600oh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175191/original/file-20170622-12015-e600oh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175191/original/file-20170622-12015-e600oh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Providing education to Africans is an extension of China’s soft power on the continent REUTERS/How Hwee Young/Pool.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But what do African students gain in return? <a href="http://china-africa.ssrc.org/">China-Africa scholars</a> have <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14767724.2012.750492">found</a> that students head to China for many reasons. Some simply go to pursue an education that is affordable, even without a scholarship, while others go for the chance to develop business connections or learn the language of a country presumed to be a rising power. </p>
<p>Based on <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266296514_African_Students_in_China">several</a> <a href="http://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/70764">surveys</a>, most students tend to be enrolled in Chinese-language courses or engineering degrees. The preference for engineering may be due to the fact that many engineering programs offered by Chinese universities for international students are <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266296514_African_Students_in_China">taught in English</a>. </p>
<p>The quality of education has received mixed reviews. Some studies have shown that African students are <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/614089/summary">generally</a> <a href="https://journals.co.za/content/ifepsyc/12/2/EJC38604">satisfied</a> with their Chinese education, as long as they can overcome the <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/smi.978/full">language barriers</a>. <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14767724.2012.750492">Others</a> found that even if students were not impressed with their education, they appreciated the <a href="http://www.sais-cari.org/data-china-africa-trade/">trade</a> and <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Chinas-Engagement-with-Africa-David-Dollar-July-2016.pdf">business</a> opportunities that a Chinese education made available to them back home. </p>
<h2>The next generation</h2>
<p>It’s difficult to know exactly which African countries are sending the most students to China. These details are not kept by the Chinese Ministry of Education. But the statistics from <a href="http://is.tsinghua.edu.cn/publish/is/9281/2014/20141223111837219723176/20141223111837219723176_.html">Tsinghua University</a> provide an insight. In the 2015-2016 academic year, the majority of the university’s 111 African students came from Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Morocco, Eritrea, and Cameroon – slightly favouring East Africa. </p>
<p>African students in France <a href="http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20130705203103913">overwhelmingly come from</a> francophone West Africa. If Tsinghua’s profile holds true for the larger African student body in China, it means China is an increasingly important player in the education of countries outside of West Africa. </p>
<p>Due to Chinese visa rules, most international students cannot stay in China after their education is complete. This prevents <a href="https://theconversation.com/stemming-reverse-brain-drain-what-would-make-foreign-students-stay-in-the-us-39148">brain-drain</a> and means that China is educating a generation of African students who – unlike their counterparts in France, the US or UK – are <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7722/j.ctt2tt1tp">more likely</a> <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266296514_African_Students_in_China">to return home</a> and bring their new education and skills with them. </p>
<p>It’s still too early to tell how these new dynamics might be shaping geopolitics on the continent.</p>
<p><em>Note: The original, untranslated Chinese Ministry of Education reports are available as follows: <a href="http://www.moe.gov.cn/publicfiles/business/htmlfiles/moe/moe_850/201001/xxgk_77826.html">2003</a>, <a href="http://www.moe.gov.cn/srcsite/A20/moe_850/200502/t20050206_77817.html">2004</a>, <a href="http://www.moe.gov.cn/publicfiles/business/htmlfiles/moe/moe_850/201001/xxgk_77808.html">2005</a>, <a href="http://www.moe.gov.cn/publicfiles/business/htmlfiles/moe/moe_850/201001/xxgk_77799.html">2006</a>, <a href="http://www.moe.gov.cn/publicfiles/business/htmlfiles/moe/s3124/201002/82570.html">2007</a>, <a href="http://www.moe.gov.cn/publicfiles/business/htmlfiles/moe/s3124/201002/82571.html">2008</a>, <a href="http://www.gov.cn/gzdt/2010-03/22/content_1562026.htm">2009</a>, 2010, <a href="http://www.moe.gov.cn/publicfiles/business/htmlfiles/moe/s5987/201202/131117.html">2011</a>, <a href="http://www.moe.gov.cn/jyb_xwfb/gzdt_gzdt/s5987/201303/t20130307_148379.html">2012</a>, 2013, <a href="http://www.moe.gov.cn/publicfiles/business/htmlfiles/moe/s5987/201503/184959.html">2014</a>, and <a href="http://www.moe.gov.cn/jyb_xwfb/gzdt_gzdt/s5987/201604/t20160414_238263.html">2015</a>. The Ministry archives were missing reports for 2010 and 2013. Student numbers for these years were calculated using the percent-growth reported in 2011 and 2014 reports, respectively.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78967/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Victoria Breeze receives funding from the National Science Foundation as part of a Graduate Research Fellowship. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nathan Moore does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Newly translated Chinese Ministry of Education records shine light on China’s shifting place in the global higher education landscape.Victoria Breeze, PhD Candidate in Geography, Environment, and Spatial Sciences, Michigan State UniversityNathan Moore, Associate Professor of Geography, Michigan State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/709482017-01-10T09:02:13Z2017-01-10T09:02:13ZThe meritocracy is a smokescreen for inherited privilege<p>The politics of naming – who is called what by whom – can be used as a weapon, something we saw a great deal of in 2016 against a backdrop of the rise of populism generally. Sometimes it felt absurd: billionaires “taking back control” from “elites” was one narrative in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/2016-us-presidential-election-23653">US election campaign</a>, while during the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/brexit-9976">Brexit debate</a> in Britain we heard that Britain had heard enough from “experts” who were dismissed by Michael Gove, a government minister and leading advocate for Brexit, as elitist. </p>
<p>The subtext in both these debates centred upon a view that education and expertise constitute a new aristocracy which is just as exclusionary as an aristocracy of birth.</p>
<p>So there was a delicious sense of irony in a piece by Toby Young in <a href="http://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/01/how-todays-ruling-class-use-meritocracy-to-stay-at-the-top/">The Spectator</a> recently. Young sees “meritocracy” – a term coined by his father Michael, later Lord, Young – as the new ethos adopted by today’s ruling class. He believes is has been used to legitimise privilege as the outcome of individual talent, skill and effort rather than the result of birth or education. Young sees the contemporary economic landscape as embodying the situation described by his father’s satirical 1958 account. </p>
<p>For Young, the piece was a way of bashing civil servants such as the former ambassador to the EU, <a href="https://theconversation.com/ivan-rogers-resignation-in-febrile-brexit-britain-it-seems-even-public-servants-are-fair-game-70840">Ivan Rogers</a>, whose recent resignation sparked such a furore and raised questions about <em>who is really running the country</em> – the faceless meritocrats or we, the people. </p>
<p>So what is “meritocracy”? The word is most usually defined as “a society governed by people selected according to merit”. The Oxford dictionary goes on to provide <a href="https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/meritocracy">a helpful elucidation</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Britain is a meritocracy, and everyone with skill and imagination may aspire to reach the highest level.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Young (the senior) came up with the new word for the title of his essay <a href="https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/polopoly_fs/1.155163!/file/philosophicalcritique.pdf">The Rise of the Meritocracy</a> – a satire which describes a future where merit, expertise and intelligence reign supreme over previous divisions of social class assigned by birth.</p>
<p>But his son has come to see sees “meritocracy” as exclusionary:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The well-to-do have seized upon the trappings of meritocracy as a way of legitimising and perpetuating their privileged status </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Young (the younger) may have something there. Contemporary sociological and economic research backs his claims. Economist Thomas Piketty’s phrase “<a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/2014/03/french-revolutionary">meritocratic extremism</a>” refers to how many of the wealthiest today justify their privilege through recourse to their hard work and educational credentials.</p>
<h2>Branded gentry</h2>
<p>The week after Brexit I attended an “arts week” at an ancient British public school. While it shall remain nameless, I spent much of my time thinking about how I should characterise for the purpose of my research the young adults, their parents and friends who were my hosts. </p>
<p>Observing the virtuosity of 18-year-old jazz aficionados, young bakers who produced cakes to rival Mary Berry’s, and budding composers giving us renditions of Shakespeare sonnets set to original music which sounded reminiscent of Mumford & Sons, my host asked: “What is the biggest difference you’ve noticed in the arts of the public school system?” I responded: “The professionalism. No one at my school would have apologised for the absence of another pupil because they were double booked to play in Jools Holland’s band.”</p>
<p>This ethos of professionalism, an adjunct of meritocracy, was something emphasised in my book <a href="http://www.palgrave.com/gb/book/9781137509604">Elites, Race and Nationhood: The Branded Gentry</a>. I make a claim that echoes of the past exist today giving rise to an elite who may be termed a “branded gentry”. </p>
<p>A landed gentry existed in a society which assigned class by birth, and the next generations inherited the capital which made this possible – generally land. The capital which young elites today inherit is the ability to brand themselves effectively and control their human capital in much the same way as their landed forebears did: their names have more equity, more investment, more sway than yours or mine. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/its-not-nepotism-its-life-in-our-parallel-universe/">Giles Coren</a> – son of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2007/oct/19/pressandpublishing.television">Fleet Street aristo Alan</a> – is what I mean by branded gentry, whereas his brother-in-law, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/10051110/Alexander-Armstrong-Dont-blame-us-for-being-rather-posh.html">Alexander Armstrong</a>, is proper landed gentry. </p>
<p>At the public school arts week, my hosts remarked upon how “cosmopolitan” the school is nowadays – sons and daughters of French professors, Russian oligarchs, Nigerian billionaires, Chinese business elites, and so on. I emphasise this point because, on speaking to them, you’d be forgiven for assuming their first language to be “<a href="http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds/find-out-more/received-pronunciation/">Received Pronunciation</a>” English. </p>
<p>What is cosmopolitan in this elite is that they are citizens of everywhere and nowhere. Despite coming from a number of different backgrounds and breeding, they are all similar: moneyed and educated. Meritocracy is really another name for the professionalisation of elite positions – seemingly removing traditional barriers of entry while erecting new ones that favour the already-established.</p>
<p>So when you hear someone refer to their professionalism, merit or hard work, it’s generally an attempt to divert attention from their inherited privilege. They are saying they deserve their position because of their individual performance – despite the reality that individual accomplishment almost always lags behind inheritance, accumulated wealth or contacts, and educational credentials.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/70948/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel R. Smith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It’s a nice idea: a society where people are judged on merit alone. But it remains a fiction.Daniel R. Smith, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Anglia Ruskin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/674212016-11-02T07:36:07Z2016-11-02T07:36:07ZPopulism and democracy: Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde?<p><em>These comments on the topical subject of populism have been gathered by the University of Sydney’s <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a> and its <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures-14603">Democracy Futures</a> team. SDN is a global network of researchers, journalists, activists, policy makers and citizens concerned with the future of democracy. The comments form part of a longer series on populism on <a href="https://theconversation.com/we-the-people-the-charms-and-contradictions-of-populism-63769">The Conversation</a>.</em></p>
<p>Populism is everywhere on the rise. Why is this happening? Why are the peddlers of populism proving so popular? Are there deep forces driving the spread of their style of politics, and what, if anything, has populism to do with democracy? Is populism democracy’s essence, as some maintain? </p>
<p>Is the new populism therefore to be welcomed, harnessed and “mainstreamed” in support of more democracy? Or is populism on balance politically dangerous, a cultish recipe for damaging democracy by bringing to life what George Orwell termed the “smelly little orthodoxies” that feed demagogy, big business and bossy power?</p>
<p>As US voters consider whether to vote for Donald Trump, and Filipino citizens live with the fall-out of Rodrigo Duterte’s populist rhetoric, scholars from China to Brazil to Australia analyse the phenomena behind populism’s ascent in 2016.</p>
<p><strong>John Keane, University of Sydney</strong></p>
<p>Ancient Greeks knew democracy could be snuffed out by rich and powerful <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/aristoi"><em>aristoi</em></a> backed by demagogues ruling the people in their own name. They even had a verb (now obsolete) for describing how people are ruled while seeming to rule. They called it <a href="http://www.johnkeane.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/jk_democracy_violence_heart_june2010.pdf"><em>dēmokrateo</em></a>. It’s the word we need for making sense of the contradiction that cuts through contemporary populism. </p>
<p>Populism is a democratic phenomenon. Mobilised through available democratic freedoms, it’s a public protest by millions of people (<a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/demos">the <em>demos</em></a>) who feel annoyed, powerless, no longer “held” in the arms of society. </p>
<p>The analyst <a href="http://icpla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Winnicott-D.-The-Theory-of-the-Parent-Infant-Relationship-IJPA-Vol.-41-pps.-585-595.pdf">D W Winnicott</a> used the term to warn that people who feel dropped strike back. That’s the populist moment when humiliated people lash out in support of demagogues promising them dignity. They do so not because they “naturally” crave leaders, or yield to the inherited “<a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=BODdpZCvvrQC&pg=PA369&lpg=PA369&dq=foucault+fascism+in+all+of+us&source=bl&ots=w2Vmnz4ubo&sig=hty2fBhyy6Ns2vbhYAIdJ8xz3o4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjYl7-MlPjPAhXrqlQKHWPlCgwQ6AEILjAD#v=onepage&q=foucault%20fascism%20in%20all%20of%20us&f=false">fascism in us all</a>”.</p>
<p>Populism attracts people because it raises their expectations of betterment. But there’s a price. In exchange for promises of popular sovereignty, populism easily mass produces figures like Napoleon Bonaparte, Benito Mussolini, Viktor Orbán and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. </p>
<p>And in contrast to the 19th-century populist politics of enfranchisement, today’s populism has exclusionary effects. The <em>dēmokrateo</em> of it all isn’t stoppable by anodyne calls for “dialogue”, or false hopes populism will somehow burn itself out. What’s needed is something more radically democratic: a new politics of equitable redistribution of power, wealth and life chances that shows populism to be a form of counterfeit democracy. </p>
<p>Once upon a time, such political redistribution was called “democracy”, or “welfare state”, or “socialism”.</p>
<p><strong>Benjamin Moffitt, Stockholm University</strong></p>
<p>If there’s one thing we need to do in response to <a href="http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=25175">populism’s triumphant return</a> to the global political landscape, it is this: stop shaking our heads and feigning shock. Media pundits, mainstream parties, pollsters and experts of various stripes are continually dazed by populists’ success – think Donald Trump, Brexit, Pauline Hanson, Rodrigo Duterte - but these are not weird one-offs: these events are happening across the globe. </p>
<p>Why now? There are at least five central factors. “The elite” is on the nose, for good reason, in many parts of the world. The shifting media landscape favours the simple, headline-grabbing, dramatic message of populists. Populist actors have become increasingly savvy and increased their appeal over the past decade. Populists have seized the crisis-ridden moment, and have been remarkably successful at not only reacting to crises, but actively aiming to bring about and perpetuate a sense of crisis. Finally, populists have been very effective at exposing <a href="https://theconversation.com/populism-and-democracy-friend-or-foe-rising-stars-deepen-dilemma-39695">the deficiencies of contemporary democratic systems</a> across the globe. </p>
<p>So let’s drop the surprise, the shaking of heads in disbelief, the paralysis brought on by continually asking ourselves “how can this be?” It’s now time to acknowledge that populism is a central part of contemporary politics.</p>
<p><strong>Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser, Diego Portales University</strong></p>
<p>Whether we like it or not, populists around the world are posing legitimate questions about the state of democracy. Many citizens feel betrayed by mainstream political forces. To a great extent, this can be explained by the growing influence of unelected bodies. </p>
<p>Although elected leaders can take important decisions, their room for manoeuvre is increasingly limited by unelected institutions, which in theory are autonomous and contribute to the provision of public goods. However, nothing precludes that unelected bodies run amok or side with powerful minorities. </p>
<p>Consider the way <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/fix-money-in-politics/473214/">the US Supreme Court has intensified the role of money in politics</a>, or the failure of the European Union to force the financial sector to pay its fair share of the costs of the recession. </p>
<p>Populists are real experts in politicising these and other issues ignored by the political establishment. This is why policy makers and scholars need to avoid falling into the populist trap: portraying themselves as the good and smart fighters against bad and stupid populists. The best way of dealing with populists is to engage them in honest dialogue and to propose solutions to the problems they seek to politicise.</p>
<p><strong>Jan Zielonka, University of Oxford</strong></p>
<p>Ruling elites in the Western world have recently identified a convenient scapegoat explaining all their failures: they call it populism. </p>
<p>The future of America, Europe or Australia, they say, would be bright if not for a bunch of populists destroying all the good work done by (neo-)liberals. These distasteful populists propose simple solutions to complicated problems. They use moralistic rhetoric, make unrealistic promises and launch unfair personal attacks on their opponents. They demonise the elite and idealise ordinary people, setting the latter against the former. Populists manipulate the confused and uninformed electorate. They make it difficult for the elite to govern in a rational and effective manner. </p>
<p>The story is too devious to be true. There’s nothing wrong with simple solutions if they are just, efficient, and based on democratic procedures. <a href="http://sociologyindex.com/moral_rhetoric.htm">Moralistic rhetoric</a> is used by the ruling elite itself on a daily basis: remember <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/1988810.stm">the “axis of evil”</a> on the eve of the 2003 Iraq invasion? </p>
<p>Smearing opponents and making empty promises are the daily bread and butter of mainstream politicians. And what is wrong with implementing the will of the people? Aren’t elections a means of defining citizens’ preferred policies, and not just a beauty contest of politicians? Mainstream elites, centre-left and centre-right today presume that government is a kind of enlightened administration on behalf of an ignorant public. Yet their political practices betray their proclaimed liberal ideals: they tolerate rampant inequality, spy on citizens, torture prisoners, and invade other countries. </p>
<p>The borders between democracy and autocracy, civility and barbarity have become blurred. No wonder voters are searching for alternatives. Ruling elites should look at themselves in the mirror before blaming others.</p>
<p><strong>Takashi Inoguchi, University of Niigata Prefecture</strong></p>
<p>John Maynard Keynes’ <a href="http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf">Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren </a> (1930) speculated that in one hundred years productivity would so increase by leaps and bounds that most of humanity would no longer need to work. The economic problem of how to produce and allocate goods and services, and how to distribute money, would cease to exist. Economics would lose its <em>raison d’être</em>. </p>
<p>Although, as Keynes predicted, productivity has risen, economic policy has obviously not reduced the need for work, or consumption. Understandably, American political economists came to argue that recent employment growth and per capita income increases would <a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/03/doug-sosnik-memo-2016-is-over-213753">explain</a> more or less which US presidential election candidate would win. No more!</p>
<p>What we witness today is not the end of economic policy but the beginning of populism. People the world over are now allured by the folksy slogans of populism, which raises the question: why didn’t Keynes imagine the thriving of populism after the death of economics? </p>
<p><strong>Thamy Pogrebinschi, Social Science Research Centre Berlin (WZB)</strong> </p>
<p>The concept of populism is highly contestable, but clarifying the difference between its left-wing and right-wing variants is both the best and the worst starting point for making sense of its contours. </p>
<p>Populism is not an ideology. Yet populism of the left and populism of the right produce different sets of ideas, identities and effects. Populism can be so politically empty that it joins forces with ideologies as different as socialism and nationalism. Populist discourses can thus favour exclusion, or inclusion. </p>
<p>The experiences of Latin America and Europe illustrate this difference well. In <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/6802448">Latin America</a>, populism has tried to include workers and middle class citizens socially dislocated by capitalism. In <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/europe/2016-06-03/rise-populism-europe">contemporary Europe</a>, populism is attempting to exclude people dislocated by wars, and by capitalism in different parts of the world. </p>
<p>In both cases, however, the appeal to popular sovereignty exposes the deep tension between democracy and capitalism. We should therefore care less about definitions, and ask the real question: is representative democracy now so overshadowed by capitalism that it is no longer able to make room for the popular sovereignty upon which it was founded?</p>
<p><strong>Ulrike Guérot, Danube University Krems</strong></p>
<p>Two hundred words on populism are barely sufficient to point out that a century ago, before populism became a swear word mostly directed at right-wing parties such as the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37274201">Alternative for Germany</a>, Hungary’s <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/10/12/447911182/a-race-to-the-far-right-in-hungarian-politics">Fides</a> and <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35014761">the Front National</a> in France, populism was the pride of social democracy. </p>
<p>The “<a href="https://sociologie.revues.org/2652"><em>classes populaires</em></a>” were important for left-wing leaders such as <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jean-Jaures">Jean Jaurès</a>, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leon-Blum">Léon Blum</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jules-Francois-Camille-Ferry">Jules Ferry</a>. These were men who cared for the people, especially exploited workers; they wanted to improve their lives. Caring was their key word. </p>
<p>Today, nobody seems to care for people. The European losers in today’s globalisation, people living, and failing, mostly in devastated rural areas, are mainly left to themselves. If they fail, due to lack of education and life chances, they’re told they are living in free societies, where everybody has the potential to succeed.</p>
<p>Hatred for democracy stems from the fact that opportunity remains a fiction for many people. Hence <a href="http://criticallegalthinking.com/2014/09/08/equaliberty-notes-thought-etienne-balibar/">Étienne Balibar’s</a> warning: since there’s no such thing as freedom without equality, the right to rebel and change a political order is a human right, especially when “equaliberty” and dignity are quashed. Populists know this.</p>
<p><strong>Wolfgang Merkel, Humboldt University</strong></p>
<p>From a normative standpoint, things are clear: cosmopolitans who uphold equality, global justice, ethno-religious tolerance and human rights cannot accept right-wing populism. Nationalism, chauvinism, ethno-religious intolerance are incommensurable with the values of an open and tolerant society. </p>
<p>Things are less clear when we try to explain the rise of right-wing populist parties. People who belong to the enlightened, cosmopolitan, middle and upper classes often argue that right-wing populism is the result of a demagoguery that is especially attractive to uneducated people from the lower classes. This explanation is not just inadequate; it bespeaks arrogant ignorance. </p>
<p>Right-wing populism in Europe has three causes: a general discontent with European integration; economic exclusion; and disaffection and fear of a large influx of migrants and refugees. Large swathes of the lower middle class complain of their exclusion from public discourse. The neo-liberal version of globalisation and the general failure of the moderate left to address <a href="https://theconversation.com/failing-union-of-capitalism-and-democracy-fuels-rise-in-inequality-27217">the distributive question</a> have created feelings of impotence and marginalisation among the lower classes. </p>
<p>Right-wing populism is thus a rebellion of the disenfranchised. The establishment parties have arguably committed serious political errors. It’s high time that they leave their fortress of normative arrogance and grant a democratic voice to the non-represented. If they fail to do so, right-wing populists will transform our democracies: they will become more parochial, intolerant and polarised.</p>
<p><strong>Yu Keping, Peking University</strong></p>
<p>Both the Chinese government and Chinese intellectuals are acutely aware of the phenomenon of populism, which last flourished here during the Cultural Revolution. In 1996, I <a href="http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/books/b9789004308770s022">urged Chinese policy makers</a> to prevent populism, which always tends towards extreme forms of plebeianism. Plebeian standards are seen as the ultimate source of legitimacy of all social and political dynamics. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143805/original/image-20161030-15728-jajdn8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143805/original/image-20161030-15728-jajdn8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143805/original/image-20161030-15728-jajdn8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143805/original/image-20161030-15728-jajdn8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143805/original/image-20161030-15728-jajdn8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143805/original/image-20161030-15728-jajdn8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143805/original/image-20161030-15728-jajdn8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143805/original/image-20161030-15728-jajdn8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Red Guards clamour for a view of Mao and wave copies of his little Red Book at a mass rally, Tiananmen Square, 1966.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">SCMP</span></span>
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<p>In its opposition to elitism, populism ignores, or radically negates, the vital role played by political elites in processes of social and political change and historical development. Populism instead advocates radical reforms, and deems ordinary people the only decisive force capable of promoting these reforms. The hopes, needs and emotions of the people are the origin and destiny of its concerns. By affirming their spirit and capacity for innovation, populism has a positive implication: it teaches us to pay attention to the historical role played by people. </p>
<p>But populism has its limits. Not only does it ignore the role played by elites in making historical progress, by emphasising the need for mobilising the general population, it also calls for absolute obedience to the passions and will of the people. That is why populism often manages to manipulate and control people in highly centralised ways. Populism can thus easily lead to autocracy, and to anarchy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67421/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Keane receives funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC). </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser receives funding from the Chilean Millennium Science Initiative (project NS130008).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Benjamin Moffitt, Jan Zielonka, Takashi Inoguchi, Thamy Pogrebinschi, Ulrike Guérot, Wolfgang Merkel, and Yu Keping do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Donald Trump is the latest example of populism’s return to the global political landscape. Nine scholars from seven countries examine the link between populism and democracy.John Keane, Professor of Politics, University of SydneyBenjamin Moffitt, Postdoctoral Fellow, Stockholm UniversityCristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser, Associate professor at the School of Political Science, Diego Portales UniversityJan Zielonka, Professor of European Politics, University of OxfordTakashi Inoguchi, President and Chairman, University of Niigata PrefectureThamy Pogrebinschi, Professor of Political Science, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.Ulrike Guérot, Professor and Director of the Department for European Policy and the study of Democracy, Danube University KremsWolfgang Merkel, Professor of Comparative Political Science and Democracy Research at the Humboldt University Berlin; Associate of the Sydney Democracy Network, University of Sydney; Director of Research Unit Democracy: Structures, Performance, Challenges, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.Yu Keping, University Chair Professor, Dean of the School of Government, Peking University, Peking UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/670352016-10-21T01:45:35Z2016-10-21T01:45:35ZCorporate America’s old boys’ club is dead – and that’s why Big Business couldn’t stop Trump<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142592/original/image-20161021-8852-1nt8hqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Do they still rule the world? </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Corporate board via www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>If corporate money controls our politics, as <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/campaign/271584-corporate-influence-on-politics-is-what-all-the-candidates-are">Bernie Sanders</a> and others have claimed, then how did the Republican Party – the <a href="https://theconversation.com/free-trade-is-once-again-tearing-apart-the-republican-party-57698">reputed</a> party of business – manage to nominate a candidate whom almost no one in Big Business supports? And why have so many been <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/05/06/major-corporate-sponsors-are-scaling-back-support-for-gop-convention.html">so silent</a> about it? </p>
<p>A recent article in the Wall Street Journal reports that <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/no-fortune-100-ceos-back-republican-donald-trump-1474671842">not one CEO</a> at a Fortune 100 company has donated to Trump’s campaign, whereas one-third supported Mitt Romney in 2012. Many in business have said privately that they are terrified of a Trump administration and the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/27/business/dealbook/trumps-a-businessman-wheres-his-business-backing.html?_r=0">possibility of trade wars and ballooning deficits</a>, yet few CEOs vocally oppose him. </p>
<p>So why isn’t a CEO social movement taking to the barricades against a Trump presidency? One possibility: To mobilize a movement, you need a social network, and CEOs no longer have one. </p>
<p>In other words, corporate America’s “old boys’ club” is dead. The question is: Is that entirely a good thing? As our research – and Trump’s rise – shows, not necessarily.</p>
<h2>Building the old boys’ club</h2>
<p>For <a href="http://soq.sagepub.com/content/1/3/301.short">most of the postwar era</a>, American corporations were overseen by a group of elite executives and directors who all knew each other or had friends in common. In 1974, <a href="https://ssrn.com/abstract=2061113">there were roughly 100 people</a> (all male and all but one white) who each served on five or more corporate boards. </p>
<p>Corporate America was controlled by an “old boys’ club.”</p>
<p><a href="http://soq.sagepub.com/content/1/3/301.short?rss=1&ssource=mfc">Social network analysis</a> shows that the board members of any two corporations were rarely more than three or four degrees of separation apart. A sneeze in one boardroom could have triggered a flu epidemic infecting more than 90 percent of the Fortune 500 within a few months.</p>
<p>Louis Brandeis, who served on the Supreme Court from 1916 to 1939, warned about this concentration of power in his 1914 book “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Other-Peoples-Money-How-Bankers/dp/1438285264">Other People’s Money: And How the Bankers Use It</a>.” To him, the network among corporate directors was an “endless chain” that served as the “most potent instrument of the Money Trust.” </p>
<p>In the 1950s, sociologist C. Wright Mills <a href="http://www.faculty.rsu.edu/users/f/felwell/www/Theorists/Essays/Mills2.htm">labeled</a> this group the “power elite,” interweaving business, government and the military, and subsequent researchers <a href="http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.soc.22.1.271">documented</a> how pervasive these ties were.</p>
<h2>The heyday of corporate influence</h2>
<p>President George W. Bush’s first cabinet may have been the <a href="http://jmi.sagepub.com/content/early/2008/05/06/1056492608316918">high-water mark</a> of the corporate network’s influence. </p>
<p>A few highlights: Before he became vice president, Dick Cheney served on the boards of Electronic Data Systems, Procter & Gamble and Union Pacific. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had previously been CEO of GD Searle and General Instrument and served on the boards of Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Gilead Sciences and Tribune Co. Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill was CEO of Alcoa and director of Eastman Kodak and Lucent Technologies. And Labor Secretary Elaine Chao was on the boards of CR Bard, Clorox, Dole, HCA Healthcare, Marine Transport, Millipore, Northwest Airlines, Protective Life and Raymond James Financial.</p>
<p>In all, the Bush cabinet was directly tied to 21 corporations, two degrees from another 228 and three degrees of separation from over 1,100 companies listed on Nasdaq or the New York Stock Exchange. No <a href="http://jmi.sagepub.com/content/early/2008/05/06/1056492608316918">administration in history</a> had as many direct personal contacts with corporate America.</p>
<p>Such network ties have a tangible effect on corporate actions. <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8683.1996.tb00144.x/full">Scholars found</a> that ideas about how to run a corporation spread from board to board through shared directors, just as fads and fashions spread through contact among people. Moreover, a number of studies showed that these connections shaped how corporations and their executives engaged in politics. For example, executives at companies linked together by shared directors <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674843776">tended to donate</a> to the same political candidates. </p>
<p>At the center of this network reigned a small, linked group of powerful executives – Wharton Business School professor Michael Useem <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Inner-Circle-Corporations-Business-Political/dp/0195040333">dubbed them</a> the “inner circle” – who came to share a common viewpoint about what was best for the long-term interests of American business as a whole. Serving on many boards, particularly big bank boards (which were bigger and often filled with well-connected CEOs), <a href="http://asq.sagepub.com/content/44/2/215.abstract%5D">gave this group</a> an expansive view of what was best for all of business and not just particular companies and industries. As <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2016-congressional-board-pay/">Useem’s work showed</a>, this group tended to be prominent in both business and civic life, often including corporate executives, leaders of nonprofit and cultural institutions and former government officials. </p>
<p>Being in regular contact with each other made concerted action possible, which helped them achieve their own aims but could also have positive societal benefits, such as <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-6486.2008.00785.x/abstract">organizing a successful Olympics bid</a>. It also gave the group the potential to influence government policy – for better or worse. </p>
<h2>The demise of the power elite</h2>
<p>This world of cozy, highly connected boards is now gone. </p>
<p>The JP Morgan Chase board in 2001 had 15 directors, and all but two of them served on other boards. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/03/us/william-h-gray-iii-pastor-and-lawmaker-dies-at-71.html">One director</a> served on eight boards including the bank itself, five held five seats each, and another five were on three or four. </p>
<p>Today, the bank’s <a href="https://www.jpmorganchase.com/corporate/About-JPMC/board-of-directors.htm">board consists of a dozen directors</a>, half of them retirees from prior corporate jobs. <a href="https://www.jpmorganchase.com/corporate/About-JPMC/ab-board-bio-jamesabell.htm">One serves on four boards</a>, <a href="https://www.jpmorganchase.com/corporate/About-JPMC/ab-board-bio-williamcweldon.htm">another serves on three</a>. The rest are on just one or two. </p>
<p>For the corporate network as a whole, by 2012, only one director sat on five major boards (compared with about 100 who sat on that many or more in 1974). </p>
<p>So what killed the inner circle? The <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Managed-Markets-Finance-Re-Shaped-America/dp/0199691924/">corporate scandals</a> of the early 2000s and the <a href="http://www.soxlaw.com">Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002</a> were the precipitating factors. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://ssrn.com/abstract=2061113">our research</a> shows, before these events, serving on many boards was a source of prestige, and the largest corporations courted well-connected directors. But after the scandals, being a well-connected director became suspect. </p>
<p>For example, in 2002, Forbes published an article <a href="http://www.forbes.com/2002/08/06/0806directors.html">that profiled</a> the five directors with the most S&P 500 board seats, asserting that they were too overstretched to provide adequate oversight. In 2004, Institutional Shareholder Services, which advises large institutional investors on corporate governance, <a href="http://www.kattenlaw.com/files/20195_ISS%20Updates%20Proxy%20Voting%20Policies%20Effective%20Feb%201.pdf">began recommending</a> that its clients vote against directors who served on too many boards. </p>
<p>Within a few years, the inner circle had disintegrated.</p>
<h2>From group think to kingmakers</h2>
<p>Did the demise of the inner circle stop the 1 percent from dictating policy? Well, not exactly. </p>
<p>Each individual in the corporate elite still wields considerable influence. But as sociologist Mark Mizruchi <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Fracturing-American-Corporate-Elite/dp/0674072995">has pointed out</a>, they now tend to do so as individuals pursuing their own idiosyncratic agendas rather than as a group. Think <a href="http://fortune.com/2016/09/20/donald-trump-donation/">Sheldon Adelson</a> or the <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/koch-brothers-network-focusing-gop-senate-trump-42851965">Koch Brothers</a> rather than the <a href="http://businessroundtable.org">Business Roundtable</a>. </p>
<p>This has not been altogether a good thing.</p>
<p>When a single network connected corporate America, executives were forced to listen to opinions from a range of peers. And although the group skewed Republican on average, individual directors held a range of political opinions.</p>
<p>The most well-connected leaders converged on a preference for more moderate candidates and policies and often ended up donating to both parties’ candidates, <a href="http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/428817">not just one</a>. The support of this group was useful, if not absolutely essential, for potential presidential candidates, and it is hard to imagine that a putative anti-establishment candidate like Trump would have passed muster. </p>
<p>The dense web of connections allowed the inner circle to police the corporate ranks and present a unified, middle-of-the-road message to policymakers. <a href="https://ssrn.com/abstract=2061113">Our own research</a>, forthcoming in the American Journal of Sociology, finds that board ties are now too sparse to provide a means for business executives to forge common ground.</p>
<p>CEOs today rarely serve on two or more boards, and, as a result, they no longer have monthly opportunities to hear what peers who support another point of view might think. Those board connections turned out to be a force for political moderation, and <a href="https://www.weforum.org/events/world-economic-forum-annual-meeting-2016/">annual gatherings in Davos</a> are not enough to replace them.</p>
<p>American politics has arrived at a millennial inflection point. While Mills and his fellow critics lambasted the well-connected corporate inner circle for furthering their own interests over those of the majority of society, we now see that the alternative may be dysfunction and an inability to find common ground. </p>
<p>Extremists in every corner of the political universe can gather power by targeting well-heeled funders like Adelson on the right and George Soros on the left. In this new world, compromise is frowned upon. </p>
<p>While we don’t want to return to a world where a handful of powerful white men held rule over corporate America and by extension the nation, we may benefit from building structures that operate like board ties previously did, acting as a force for compromise and moderation. </p>
<p>To hold together, American society may require new institutions that connect a broad and diverse spectrum of business and nonprofit leaders to each other, forcing individuals to consider the views of their peers.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67035/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jerry Davis has contributed to Hillary Clinton's campaign.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Johan Chu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>While few would bemoan its end, the club fostered strong ties among the titans of Corporate America and ensured moderate candidates and policies. Its death has led to more extremism.Johan Chu, Assistant Professor of Organizations and Strategy, University of ChicagoJerry Davis, Professor of Management and Sociology, University of MichiganLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/579172016-04-19T04:31:51Z2016-04-19T04:31:51ZThe problem with Western activists trying to do good in Africa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119147/original/image-20160418-1266-692tg9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">There are shortcomings in celebrity led campaigns against "conflict minerals" such as the one in which US actress Robin Wright is involved</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/vY8iw6JaN0/?taken-by=robingwright&hl=en">Robin Wright's instagram</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In recent years Western advocacy groups have achieved unprecedented success in mobilising Europeans and North Americans behind a <a href="http://www.enoughproject.org/conflicts/eastern_congo/conflict-minerals">“conflict minerals”</a> campaign to help end the conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). </p>
<p>They have also attracted strong criticism, both internationally and in the DRC, for the perceived negative impact of their work.</p>
<p>Over the past three years I have been working on a documentary, <a href="http://www.wewillwinpeace.com/">“We Will Win Peace”</a>, which is part of this critique.</p>
<p>As one local activist told us during the making of the film, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The advocacy led by these organisations, we hadn’t understood the goal, as Congolese … If we had been informed before of their intentions, we could have done something.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Similarly, speaking to a group of small-scale rural cultivators, one said </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We didn’t understand what was happening or why such a decision had been made … No-one explained to us what was going on.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So what was the goal, and what is going on?</p>
<p>It is important not to conflate the work of all DRC-focused advocacy organisations under the same umbrella. But central to the success of the <a href="http://www.enoughproject.org/conflicts/eastern_congo/conflict-minerals">“conflict minerals”</a> campaign was the emergence of a dominant narrative that placed Western consumers at the heart of the solution. </p>
<p>A key element of the storyline is that armed groups in the eastern DRC are raping women to access and control mineral resources. If Western consumers exerted pressure on electronic giants like Apple and Samsung to stop buying these minerals, they could prevent rape and help end the conflict.</p>
<p>In the US, celebrities and sports stars are engaged by organisations such as the <a href="http://www.enoughproject.org/blogs/espn-features-packers-qb-aaron-rodgers-commitment-congo">Enough Project</a> and <a href="http://robinwright.org.es/robin-wright-at-stand-with-congo-gala-in-bermuda/">Stand With Congo</a> to help promote the campaign. The message appeals particularly strongly to student groups and middle- and upper-class liberals.</p>
<p>The campaign has led to policy successes in both <a href="https://www.globalwitness.org/en-gb/archive/dodd-frank-acts-section-1502-conflict-minerals/">Washington</a> and <a href="http://www.ictsd.org/bridges-news/biores/news/eu-commission-backs-voluntary-scheme-in-draft-conflict-minerals-law">Brussels</a>. The US policy – <a href="http://www.auditanalytics.com/blog/an-initial-look-at-conflict-minerals-dodd-frank-section-1502/">Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Act</a> – requires companies to reveal their supply chains when sourcing minerals from the eastern DRC or neighbouring countries.</p>
<figure>
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/111621365" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>The foundations of the “conflict minerals” campaign can be traced back to 2001. It was then that a United Nations panel of experts recommended an immediate embargo on the trade in minerals from the eastern DRC due to their systematic exploitation by armed groups as a means to <a href="http://repub.eur.nl/pub/79895/">finance their activities</a>. This was followed by numerous <a href="https://www.globalwitness.org/en-gb/campaigns/democratic-republic-congo/faced-gun-what-can-you-do/">NGO reports</a> pursuing a similar line of argument.</p>
<h2>Shortcomings</h2>
<p>But there are three shortcomings to the “conflict minerals” campaign that came out of this work.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>It misrepresents the causal drivers of rape and conflict in the eastern DRC; </p></li>
<li><p>It assumes the dependence of armed groups on mineral revenue for their survival; and </p></li>
<li><p>It underestimates the importance of artisanal mining to employment, local economies and therefore – ironically – security.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Compounding these shortcomings was a fatal flaw in the US legislation enacted in 2010. When Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Act was passed it was not possible for companies sourcing minerals from the eastern DRC to determine whether those minerals were or weren’t contributing to conflict.</p>
<p>As a result and due to confusion over the implications of the legislation, international buyers withdrew, and an <a href="http://www.sec.gov/comments/s7-40-10/s74010-324.pdf">effective mineral boycott</a> enveloped the region. The socioeconomic impact on Congolese living in this mineral-dependent region <a href="http://www.cgdev.org/publication/what%E2%80%99s-wrong-dodd-frank-1502-conflict-minerals-civilian-livelihoods-and-unintended">was severe</a>. </p>
<p>Today the policy solution pursued in the DRC by a range of foreign companies, NGOs and donors revolves around an expansion of the Congolese state into areas <a href="https://www.itri.co.uk/itsci/news/new-hope-for-conflict-free-minerals-from-north-kivu-drc">formerly beyond its control</a>. The aim is to establish and oversee mineral certification, traceability and validation systems that can attest to their “conflict-free” status.</p>
<p>Early evidence suggests this process is catalysing the previously lethargic formalisation of artisanal mining and, with it, the establishment of formal <a href="https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/5781683">land tenure agreements</a>. In doing so, it provides conditions that might be amenable to forms of state-led development that have eluded the region for so long. </p>
<p>But the establishment of property rights and formal titling unleashes new processes of dispossession, economic exclusion and <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301420712000104">social differentiation</a> built on pre-existing inequalities. Thus, such changes often benefit wealthy and powerful elites, and negatively affect the lowest classes of labour and already marginalised social groups.</p>
<h2>Dissonance</h2>
<p>Herein lies the main tension in the work of Western advocacy organisations, and the reason they invite critique: there is a heavy dissonance between their stated constituency and their actual constituency, or who they work for and who they work with.</p>
<p>Reading the reflections of the radical American organiser <a href="https://archive.org/stream/RulesForRadicals/RulesForRadicals_djvu.txt">Saul Alinsky</a>, it’s clear that he was always close to the constituency he worked for. He either lived in the community he was helping organise, or he had been invited in to help them pursue solutions to problems they themselves defined, to paraphrase <a href="https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2013/04/30/reclaiming-activism/">Alex de Waal</a>.</p>
<p>Yet the relationship between advocacy organisations headquartered in Western cities and their marketed constituency of marginalised and disadvantaged African groups is far more tenuous.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119110/original/image-20160418-1269-1rq0i5z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119110/original/image-20160418-1269-1rq0i5z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119110/original/image-20160418-1269-1rq0i5z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119110/original/image-20160418-1269-1rq0i5z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119110/original/image-20160418-1269-1rq0i5z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119110/original/image-20160418-1269-1rq0i5z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119110/original/image-20160418-1269-1rq0i5z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Informal miners dig for gold at an open pit in the DRC.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Finbarr O'Reilly</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One of the most striking elements during the making of the film was the difficulty of finding Congolese groups in rural and peri-urban areas who knew about and supported the “conflict minerals” campaign. This suggests a lack of engagement with the people who stand to be most directly affected by campaign outcomes.</p>
<p>Instead, many Western advocacy organisations use short visits to the DRC to work predominantly with government, business and other elites in national and provincial capital cities. The result is that the disruptive and contingent process of state-building and formalisation they engage in and promote often works against the very people they claim to represent.</p>
<p>And so organisations such as the Enough Project claim that <a href="http://www.enoughproject.org/reports/impact-dodd-frank-and-conflict-minerals-reforms-eastern-congo%E2%80%99s-war">progress is being made</a>, and critics counter that <a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/02/02/how-dodd-frank-is-failing-congo-mining-conflict-minerals/">harm is being done</a>. There is truth to both perspectives, but they are focused on different aspects of the same process. </p>
<h2>How to resolve the tension</h2>
<p>Western advocacy organisations could change how they market their interventions and talk about their work. Helping bring the state back into local development processes in peripheral countries such as the DRC is an entirely legitimate and valuable pursuit. Yet they may not want to do this because it will likely be difficult to mobilise people and funding around long-term and socially disruptive goals.</p>
<p>Alternatively, they could reorient their efforts to working with, not just for, the non-elites they use to promote their public image and in whose name they justify their external interventions. What their work would lose in structural impact, it would gain in honesty, legitimacy and local impact. The groups and classes of artisanal miners, peasants and other workers we spoke with would come to know more concretely who the organisations are. They would also provide more appropriate solutions to their own problems and struggles than the pursuit of overseas policy change, which fails to respond to their immediate needs.</p>
<p><em>A longer version of this article appeared in the <a href="http://roape.net/2016/02/16/western-advocacy-groups-and-conflict-in-the-congo/">Review of African Political Economy</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/57917/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ben Radley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The relationship between advocacy organisations based in Western capitals and their marketed constituency of marginalised and disadvantaged African groups is tenuous. What then, is the goal?Ben Radley, PHD Researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University RotterdamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/481832015-09-30T04:43:37Z2015-09-30T04:43:37ZWhat drives corruption in Malawi and why it won’t disappear soon<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96667/original/image-20150929-30970-1jtu5oe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Malawian President Peter Mutharika has promised to fight the corruption that has seen donors withdraw their support for his impoverished nation.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Eldson Chagara</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It is now two years since Malawi was rocked by its biggest government corruption scandal in history. The systematic looting of public coffers by civil servants, private contractors and politicians saw them steal <a href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/baobab/2014/02/malawi-s-cashgate-scandal">US$31 million</a> from government coffers. </p>
<p>It is estimated that about <a href="http://gppreview.com/2014/01/06/cashgate-shakes-malawi-and-donor-confidence/">35%</a> of government funds have been stolen over the past decade. The impoverished country’s national budget for 2013-14 was about US$1.3 billion (<a href="http://www.nyasatimes.com/2013/06/21/malawi-mps-approve-k630-5bn-national-budget-for-201314/">630.5 billion Kwachas</a>) at today’s exchange rate.</p>
<p>But has the country learnt anything from its biggest scandal that saw donors withdraw support?</p>
<p>The University of Malawi’s Blessings Chinsinga recently pointed out that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… efforts to root out corruption do not stick because the existing institutional milieu makes it almost impossible to introduce changes that can effectively stamp out corruption.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The observation is instructive in that the scandal spans two political administrations. Malawi was led by the late president <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=iIFwWH8aXFYC&pg=PA35&dq=President+Bingu+wa+Mutharika,+profile&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCoQ6AEwA2oVChMI9viuy5ecyAIVAUwUCh0eLQze#v=onepage&q=President%20Bingu%20wa%20Mutharika%2C%20profile&f=false">Bingu wa Mutharika</a> in 2004 and the scandal unravelled on the watch of <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2013-10-11-joyce-banda-sacks-cabinet-after-corruption-scandal">Joyce Banda</a> in 2013. </p>
<h2>Fertile ground for corruption</h2>
<p>A number of factors contribute to the current state of affairs.</p>
<p>There is no clear distinction between a party in power and government activities in Malawi, unlike in established democracies. In Malawi, the party in power is the de facto government.</p>
<p>In Malawi, a party in power calls itself <em>boma</em> (a government). Ordinary Malawians look at abuse of state resources by those in power as acceptable. It is almost impossible to tell a party in power from the government.</p>
<p>Even more serious is the fact that political parties in Malawi are not mandated to declare their <a href="https://eisa.org.za/wep/malparties3.htm">sources of funding</a>. This breeds corruption and fosters abuse of public resources. This is not unique to Malawi. But in countries like Botswana, hailed as one of the model democracies on the continent, they at least have a debate on <a href="http://en.starafrica.com/news/botswana-mps-adopt-political-party-funding-motion.html">political party funding</a>. Debates are also taking place in <a href="http://www.arabianjbmr.com/pdfs/NG_VOL_2_11/1.pdf">Nigeria</a> and <a href="http://www.hsrc.ac.za/en/review/hsrc-review-march-2013/in-search-of-a-newparty-funding-model">South Africa</a>, respectively the continent’s largest and second-largest economies. </p>
<p>Another contributing factor is that after 21 years of multiparty democracy, governance in Malawi remains heavily centralised. Although the country has been independent since 1964, it only became a democracy in 1994.</p>
<p>Until then, it had been a one-party state decreed by its first post-colonial leader Kamuzu Banda, who banned political parties. He became president for life in 1971. Since 1994, the country has had local government representation for only six years – from 1999 to 2004 and from 2014 to now. </p>
<p>The central government has been reluctant to relinquish some of its powers. The president makes even the smallest of decisions and undertakes mundane tasks that should be reserved for line ministries. This encourages a system of patronage.</p>
<p>Lastly, government contracts, tenders and board memberships all go to sympathisers of the party in power and not necessarily to the best bidder or the most competent applicant. Government sympathisers or ruling party members get contracts regardless of their levels of competence.</p>
<p>This unfairly benefits the incumbents and weakens opposition parties. Businesspeople are afraid of funding opposition parties because they could lose state contracts and other business opportunities.</p>
<h2>Scale and depth of corruption exposed</h2>
<p>Malawians have always known that corruption is <a href="http://www.nyasatimes.com/2015/08/02/corruption-worsening-in-malawi-survey-funded-by-irish-aid/">rife</a> in the country. But the sheer size of the Cashgate scandal, both in terms of the amount and the wide number of people involved, has shown how deeply rooted the problem is.</p>
<p>The involvement of the country’s political class in the scandal is in stark contradiction to their penchant for standing on political campaign podiums promising to fight corruption with all their might.</p>
<p>Most of the people implicated in the Cashgate scandal were either members of the then-ruling <a href="http://country.eiu.com/article.aspx?articleid=1253195309&Country=Malawi&topic=Politics&subtopic=Forecast&subsubtopic=Election+watch&u=1&pid=1093513093&oid=1093513093&uid=1">People’s Party</a> or its sympathisers.</p>
<p>There is an unwritten rule in Malawi that successful businesspeople align themselves with the governing party in order to protect their property and gain more contracts. </p>
<p>An aunt of Oswald Lutepo, thus far the main Cashgate <a href="http://mwnation.com/lutepo-slapped-with-11yrs-ihl/">convict</a> and serving 11 years in jail, was heard in court lamenting that her nephew was advised that he did not need to join politics as he was already a successful businessman and multimillionaire. At the time of his arrest Lutepo was deputy director of recruitment in the People’s Party.</p>
<p>The aunt’s lament is instructive: people join politics in Malawi mainly to make money. In terms of this logic, the 37-year-old Lutepo was already a millionaire. He should have stayed out of it. </p>
<p>But he could not escape the lure of more riches that flow from being close to those in power. He knew the unwritten rule for success in Malawi only too well: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>If you are unsuccessful, support the ruling party because this is where opportunities are. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Malawi is still learning to cope without support from donors and the jury is still out on whether it has learnt anything from its biggest scandal. A recent article in <a href="http://africanarguments.org/2015/09/03/malawi-wholl-remember-cashgate/">African Arguments</a> underlines the hopeless feeling that Cashgate has left among most Malawians:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Malawi’s self-enriching officials need to know they will be judged not just by an imperfect judicial system, but by generation upon future generation of their compatriots.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/48183/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jimmy Kainja does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Malawi appears to have learnt nothing from the biggest state corruption scandal that rocked the country two years ago, leading to donors withdrawing their support. The same conditions still remain.Jimmy Kainja, Lecturer in Media and Communications, University of MalawiLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/420202015-05-28T04:07:10Z2015-05-28T04:07:10ZThe missing middle of South Africa’s economic ladder threatens stability<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83124/original/image-20150527-4840-p5a5ve.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">There is a gaping hole in South Africa between those who are wealthy, and the working poor </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Unless South Africa’s persistent inequality is addressed, the country risks sliding into an accelerating downward spiral of rent seeking, cronyism and corruption. </p>
<p>Whether a downward spiral accelerates – or, alternatively whether a new burst of inclusive economic growth and political competition can unleash a revitalised virtuous circle – will depend on both the choices of political elites and the levels and quality of civic engagement.</p>
<p>While there have been <a href="http://www.goldmansachs.com/our-thinking/archive/colin-coleman-south-africa/20-yrs-of-freedom.pdf">significant gains</a> in the past 21 years of democracy, including a decline in absolute poverty from 28% of the population in 1996 to 11% today, there has been <a href="http://opensaldru.uct.ac.za/bitstream/handle/11090/770/2014_138_Saldruwp.pdf?sequence=1">little change in the economic power balance</a> of the country. </p>
<p>In comparison to other <a href="http://data.worldbank.org/news/2015-country-classifications">middle-income countries</a>, South Africa’s <a href="http://www.cssr.uct.ac.za/sites/cssr.uct.ac.za/files/WP%20321.pdf">inequality levels</a> are stark. The rich are super rich, the poor very poor and there’s a gaping hole in the middle. This is the greatest threat to stability.</p>
<h2>Comparisons with peer countries</h2>
<p>In many instances, such as government efficiency and control over corruption, South Africa is on par or performing better than its <a href="http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/mic">middle income</a> peers. South Africa’s performance is on a declining trend though in both government efficiency and control of corruption. </p>
<p>For our <a href="http://www.opensaldru.uct.ac.za/bitstream/handle/11090/770/2014_138_Saldruwp.pdf?sequence=1">working paper</a> we chose Brazil, Mexico, Thailand and Turkey as comparators. They have similar average incomes, medium-to-large population sizes, similar developmental challenges and resources to address them. </p>
<p>Where South Africa’s performance falls short of its comparators is in the gaping hole between those who are wealthy or just comfortably off on the one hand, and the working poor on the other hand.</p>
<h2>Skewed economic strata</h2>
<p>A comparison of the share of expenditure within each of the economic strata in
South African reveals a missing middle of the economy.</p>
<p>The top 15% of the population has a much higher share of expenditure in South Africa than those in peer countries. But below that we see a massive drop in spending capability. Below the top 25% of earners the share of expenditure of South Africans is sharply below that of any countries in the peer group.</p>
<p>Relative to other middle-income countries, South Africa’s households are thus
either (relatively) affluent or poor – with relatively few positions which provide a stepladder for moving incrementally from one economic stratum to another.</p>
<p>The sustainability of the democratic miracle of 1994 becomes worryingly uncertain if South Africa does not rectify this unbalanced combination of high earnings for highly skilled workers and owners of wealth, and high unemployment plus the very poor quality of jobs in the middle range of incomes.</p>
<p>Inclusive economic growth is key to ensuring South Africa’s democracy remains
on track. This is not an impossible dream. </p>
<h2>The problem with a social compact</h2>
<p>There are a number of possible steps forward for South Africa. But none will be easy.</p>
<p>The current economic blueprint, the <a href="http://www.poa.gov.za/news/Documents/NPC%20National%20Development%20Plan%20Vision%202030%20-lo-res.pdf">National Development Plan</a>, is a coherent enough framework within which to build a more inclusive economy. </p>
<p>The challenge is translating the plan and policies stemming from it into vision and action. </p>
<p>The plan strikes a sensible balance between how the country can grow its economy while meeting development outcomes. A pre-requisite to implementing its proposals would be securing agreement between the main players on concrete next steps.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82925/original/image-20150526-24766-h0i2r7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82925/original/image-20150526-24766-h0i2r7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82925/original/image-20150526-24766-h0i2r7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82925/original/image-20150526-24766-h0i2r7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82925/original/image-20150526-24766-h0i2r7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82925/original/image-20150526-24766-h0i2r7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82925/original/image-20150526-24766-h0i2r7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Provision of basic infrastructure to low-income settlements can make a big difference to the poor.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">REUTERS/Mike Hutchings</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A social compact would most almost certainly deliver this outcome. But we doubt that a social compact is possible in the near future given the fractious relationship between key players in the country. Government and the ruling African National Congress are neither tightly organised nor decisively led. The business community is fragmented, and the trade union movement drifts from one crisis to another.</p>
<p>It will be some time before we are ready to think seriously about a broad <a href="http://www.gsbbusinessreview.gsb.uct.ac.za/towards-a-social-compact-for-south-africa/">social compact</a> as the basis for sustained growth and development.</p>
<h2>Inspired coalition building</h2>
<p>What is clear is that the successful implementation of the NDP as well as achieving <a href="http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTDEBTDEPT/Resources/468980-1218567884549/WhatIsInclusiveGrowth20081230.pdf">inclusive economic growth</a> and sustaining democratic institutions should not be left in the hands of the political elite alone. </p>
<p>But there may be another way. Lessons can be drawn from a number of successes achieved by various levels of the state, often in partnership with civil society and the private sector.</p>
<p>These include:</p>
<ul>
<li>improvements in high-school performance in Free State province;<br></li>
<li>new investment commitments of upwards of 3,500 MW of new capacity in
<a href="http://www.ipprenewables.co.za/">renewable</a> electricity generation; </li>
<li>public-private-community partnerships in forestry development in the Eastern Cape province; </li>
<li>quite successful scaling up of training in some (but certainly not all) of the <a href="http://www.labour.gov.za/DOL/legislation/acts/basic-guides/basic-guide-to-sector-education-and-training-authorities-setas">Sectoral Training Authorities</a>; </li>
<li>successful roll out in many provinces, even in difficult settings such as Limpopo, of labour-intensive <a href="http://www.epwp.gov.za/">public works programs </a>which both provide employment and support the provision of local infrastructure and services;<br></li>
<li>pro-active local development strategies in the Western Cape province; and<br></li>
<li>provision of basic infrastructure to low-income settlements in <a href="http://www.upgradingsupport.org/news/entry/ethekwini-responds-to-basic-needs-of-informal-settlement-dwellers">Ethekweni</a>, a large metropole on the east coast of the country.</li>
</ul>
<p>The key is to direct attention to islands of effectiveness. Progress can be achieved through collective action by government, private sector and civil society even where the broader governance environment is difficult. </p>
<p>These localised successes, while still small, have the potential to inspire coalition building and experimentation to build momentum for inclusive growth. This could help build virtuous circles of hope and possibility.</p>
<p><strong>_This article is based on the <a href="http://www.opensaldru.uct.ac.za/bitstream/handle/11090/770/2014_138_Saldruwp.pdf?sequence=1">working paper</a> by the authors and Ingrid Woolard. The paper was funded by DFID as part of the Effective States and Inclusive Development (ESID) research program which is led by the University of Manchester.</strong>_</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/42020/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>South Africa’s inequality levels are stark. The rich are super rich, the poor very poor. There’s a gaping hole in the middle and this is the greatest threat to stability.Alan Hirsch, Professor and Director of the Graduate School of Development Policy, University of Cape TownBrian Levy, Academic Director in the Graduate School of Development Policy and Practice, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.