The Dictator's Handbook (13 page)

Even in modern times the principle of choosing close advisers who cannot rise to the top spot remains good advice. It is surely no coincidence that Saddam Hussein as president of Islamic Iraq had a Christian, Tariq Aziz, as his number two.

What we can begin to appreciate is that no matter how well a tyrant builds his coalitions, it is important to keep the coalition itself off-balance. Familiarity breeds contempt. As noted, the best way to stay in power is to keep the coalition small and, crucially, to make sure that everyone in it knows that there are plenty of replacements for them. This is why you will often read about regular elections in tyrannical states. Everyone knows that these elections don't count, and yet people go along with them. Rigged elections are not about picking leaders. They are not about gaining legitimacy. How can an election be legitimate when its outcome is known before the vote even occurs? Rigged elections are a warning to powerful politicians that they are expendable if they deviate from the leader's desired path.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was the first to really exploit the idea of substitute coalition members. In a one-party state, he nonetheless perfected a rigged election, universal adult suffrage system. Any action he took—say, sending so-and-so to Siberia—was the will of the people, and any of the people in the replacement pool had a chance, albeit a slight one, of being called up to serve as an
influential
or maybe even an
essential
somewhere down the line. Everybody in the Soviet selectorate could, with a very small probability, grow up to be general secretary of the Communist Party, just like the petty criminal Joseph Stalin and the uneducated Nikita Khrushchev. Those already in the inner circle knew they had to stay in line to keep their day jobs. Bravo, Lenin.

Although Lenin perfected the system and probably came up with it on his own, the always fascinating country of Liberia experimented earlier on with the same phenomenon. Prior to Samuel Doe's takeover, Liberia had been ruled by the True Whig Party. The country originated when a number of American liberal organizations, appalled by the evils of slavery, paid to repatriate former slaves to West Africa. Despite the nation's philanthropic origins, the most important lesson the former slaves took from their experiences appears to be that slavery and forced labor worked much better for the masters than the slaves. These former slaves instituted universal adult suffrage in 1904, but
with a property qualification that effectively excluded indigenous Africans from becoming insiders, making the selectorate large but the influential group relatively small. Thus, they established a system run for a small group of insiders despite the appearance of a universal franchise. This structure provided for strong loyalty to the incumbent that ensured the opportunity to suppress any opposition that might arise to their forced labor policies, a system whose policies differed from Soviet ones but whose security in office was the same.
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Virtually every publicly traded company in the world has adopted the Leninist rigged-election system and for much the same reasons. It, along with a packed board, is one of the major factors ensuring that poorly performing CEOs hardly ever get fired. Carly Fiorina had the misfortune of heading a company that might have
looked
like a rigged election autocracy but up close and personal remained more akin to a monarchy. Although there were millions of shareholders who in theory could shape HP policy, so many shares were concentrated in a few hands that HP had more of the characteristics of a small coalition drawn from a small group of influentials within a mostly small, concentrated group of interchangeables; that is, members of the Hewlett and Packard families.

The essence of keeping coalition members off-balance is to make sure that their loyalty is paid for and that they know they will be ousted if their reliability is in doubt. The USSR's Mikhail Gorbachev, thought to be a good guy in western political circles, certainly understood the necessity of rewarding loyalty and shucking off all those whose faithfulness was questionable. He replaced much of the politburo within his first two years in office, picking and choosing from the Communist Party (the real selectorate) those most loyal to him. It turns out, though, that Gorbachev was much less ruthless than contemporaries of the autocratic class. He forced adversaries, like Boris Yeltsin, out of the politburo to be sure. But, as Yeltsin surely realized, he would have been killed under Stalin. Equally, he and many others must have known that it was much better to cross swords with Gorbachev, an intellectual reformer, than with such contemporaries as Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire or even Deng Xiaoping of China. Deng, after all, used ruthless force to end the prodemocracy uprising at Tiananmen Square in 1989. Gorbachev, as we will see, did not hesitate
to use force outside of Russia, but he also did not go around killing his political rivals. His reward was a short time in power first because he left himself vulnerable to a coup by hard-line communists and then because he allowed Yeltsin to resurrect himself politically, defeat the coup, and make himself into Gorbachev's replacement.

The execution of opponents is a longstanding practice among most autocrats. We should not fail to appreciate the moral significance of Gorbachev's restraint. Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, Samuel Doe, and so many others showed no such restraint. They had their erstwhile backers murdered once they worked out who was most likely to be loyal and who was not. We see a nicer version of such behavior as a routine part of corporate changes when there's a new CEO. Although the CEO is supposed to answer to the board, it is commonplace for boards to be reconstituted after a new CEO comes to power; the tail apparently wags the dog.

Being purged from the initial coalition is often fatal. Hitler became chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. During his rise to power he relied heavily on the Sturmabteilung, a paramilitary force also known by the abbreviation, SA, or by a description of their uniforms, the Brownshirts. Hitler perceived the SA's leader, Ernst Rohm, as a threat. He built up an alternative paramilitary, the Schutzstaffel, or SS, and then, on what became known as the night of the long knives, he ordered the assassination of at least eighty-five and possibly many hundreds of people between June 30 and July 2, 1934. Thousands more were imprisoned. Despite Rohm's long term and essential backing (Rohm had been with Hitler during his failed 1923 Munich Beer Hall Putsch), Hitler showed no sentimentality. He replaced him with men like SS leader Heinrich Himmler, whom he deemed more loyal.

Robert Mugabe is likewise a master at keeping his coalition off-balance. He was elected president of Zimbabwe in 1980 following a negotiated settlement to a long civil war. The struggle against the white-only rule of the previous Rhodesian regime was led by two factions that crystallized into political parties behind their respective leaders: Robert Mugabe's ZANU (Zimbabwe African National Union) and Joshua Nkomo's ZAPU (Zimbabwe African People's Union). Initially, Mugabe preached reconciliation:

A naïve observer might have thought that Mugabe planned to bring ZAPU elites into his winning coalition. That might have made sense at the outset, but once ZANU's power was consolidated there would be no reason to keep ZAPU loyalists around. And once Mugabe's power was consolidated, he'd have no need to keep some of his old friends from ZANU around either.

Mugabe also reached out to many in the white community, and particularly former leaders and administrators, to help him run the country. Many whites who had feared the transition, began to refer to him as “Good Old Bob.” Mugabe needed their support. He could not run the country without them and he needed to know where the money was. In this he was greatly assisted by the international community. They pledged $900 million during his first year. However, once he was ensconced in power, Mugabe's attitude changed.

In 1981 he called for a one party state and began arresting whites, saying “we will kill those snakes among us, we will smash them completely.” Mugabe was even harsher towards his former comrades in arms. He forced Nkomo out of the cabinet and sent a North Korean trained paramilitary group, the Fifth Brigade, to terrorize Matabeleland, Nkomo's regional stronghold. As one ZANU minister put it, “Nkomo and his guerillas are germs in the country's wounds and they will have to be cleaned up with iodine. The patient will scream a bit.” The operation was called Gukurahundi—a Shona word that
means, Wind that blows away the chaff before the spring rains. Many veterans from the fight against white rule resisted. In retaliation Matabeleland was effectively sealed off and 400,000 people faced starvation. As one of Mugabe's henchmen, a brigade officer, stated, “First you will eat your chickens, then your goats, then your cattle, then your donkeys. Then you will eat your children and finally you will eat the dissidents.”
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Mugabe needed the assistance of ZAPU fighters to defeat white only rule. He needed the assistance of white farmers and administrators and the international community to find the money to solidify his control over the state. Only when he was entrenched in power did “Good Old Bob” show his true colors.

As we all know, the victor writes history. Leaders should therefore never refrain from cheating if they can get away with it. Democrats may have to put up with real and meaningful elections in order to stay in power, but it shouldn't be shocking to see that whenever they can, they'll happily take a page out of Lenin's book. There's no election better than a rigged one, so long as you're the one rigging it.

The list of tried and trusted means of cheating is long. Just as quickly as electoral rules are created to outlaw corrupt practices, politicians find other means. For instance, leaders can restrict who is eligible and registered to vote and who is not. In Malaysia, under a system known as Operation IC, immigration is controlled so as to create demographics favorable to the incumbent party. New York City's infamous Democratic Party machine, Tammany Hall, acquired its Irish flavor by meeting and recruiting immigrants as they left the boat, promising citizenship and jobs for their vote.

When leaders can't restrict who is eligible to vote or else are unable to buy enough votes, they can use intimidation and violence to restrict access to polling places. North Indian states, such as Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, experience “booth capture,” where party supporters capture the polling place and cast every eligible voter's vote for their party.

Cheating does not stop once ballots are cast, of course. Leaders never hesitate to miscount or destroy ballots. Coming to office and staying in office are the most important things in politics. And candidates who aren't willing to cheat are typically beaten by those who are. Since democracies typically work out myriad ways to make cheating difficult, politicians in power in democracies have innovated any number of perfectly legal means to ensure their electoral victories and their continued rule.

One counterintuitive strategy is for leaders to encourage additional competitors. This is why some states have so many political parties, even though only one really wins. The conventional wisdom about America's two-party system tells us that fringe parties allow for a more vibrant and responsive government. But even in multiparty states, there are always leading parties—you have to ask yourself whether the leading parties would allow the fringe parties to exist if they weren't somehow serving their interests.

Tanzania's parliament and presidency are perennially controlled by the Chama Cha Mapinduzi party (CCM), even though as many as seventeen parties routinely compete in Tanzania's free and fair elections. The CCM government actually provided campaign financing, as we would expect, in an opaque way, to small parties until quite recently, thereby encouraging them to compete and divide the opposition vote. This makes it easier for the relatively centrist CCM to win. Although the CCM wins a large percentage of the vote, all it
needs
to win is one more vote than the second largest party in half the parliamentary constituencies. That turns out to mean the CCM
needs
much less than 10 percent in most districts. The number of supporters a party needs affects the kinds of policies it pursues. In those constituencies in Tanzania where an opposition party generates lots of votes, the CCM needs to appeal to many voters and therefore generally provides better health care, education, and services. In constituencies where the CCM needs fewer votes, cash transfers, such as vouchers for subsidized fertilizer, are more common.
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Multiparty democracy provides a similar means for one or two parties to dominate governments in democracies from Botswana to Japan and Israel. There is more to representing the people than just allowing them to vote, even when the vote is done honestly.

Designated seats for underrepresented minorities is another means by which leaders reduce the number of people upon whom they are dependent. Such policies are advertised as empowering minorities, whether they are women, or members of a particular caste or religion. In reality they empower leaders. That a candidate is elected by a small subset of the population reduces the number of essentials required to retain power. At a very basic level, electoral victory in a two-party parliamentary system requires the support of half the people in half the districts; that is, in principle, 25 percent of the voters. Suppose 10 percent of the seats were reserved for election by one specific group that happens to be geographically concentrated (such as gay voters in the Castro in our earlier account of Harvey Milk's election in San Francisco). To retain half the seats in parliament, the incumbent party need only retain 40 percent of the regular single member district seats, which is readily done with just over 22 percent of the vote. So by focusing on districts in which the privileged minority is prevalent, a party can reduce the number of votes it requires by 12 percent.