The Dictator's Handbook (34 page)

These freedoms also make protest easy. But since people like these freedoms, granting them can also dissipate their desire to bring down the government. Protests are common in democracies but revolts intending to overthrow the institutions of government are not. Democrats provide the policies people want because otherwise the people will protest, and when people can freely assemble there is little a leader can do to stop them except give them what they want. Sometimes, of course, democratic leaders fail to give the people what they want. Then people are likely to take to the streets to indicate their dislike of a particular policy. That's what generally happens when a democracy goes to war, for example. Some people favor the decision and others oppose
it. Those who oppose it frequently make their displeasure known by taking to the streets, and, if there are enough of them and if they protest for a sufficiently sustained time, they can provoke a policy change. Lyndon Johnson, for instance, chose not to seek reelection in the face of deep dissatisfaction with his Vietnam War policies.

In democracy, protest is about alerting leaders to the fact that the people are unhappy, and that, if changes in policy are not made, they'll throw the rascals out. Yet in autocracy, protest has a deeper purpose: to bring down the very institutions of government and change the way the people are governed.

Autocrats dislike freedoms because they make it easy for people to learn of their shared misery and to collaborate with each other to rise up against the government. Given their druthers, autocrats eliminate freedom of assembly, a free press, and free speech whenever they can, thereby insulating themselves from the threat of the people. Unfortunately for autocrats, without the public goods benefits from these freedoms, people can find it hard to work effectively because they cannot easily exchange ideas even about how to improve the workplace. And if the people don't work effectively, then the leader cannot collect tax revenues.

Autocrats must find the right balance. Without enough freedom the people are less productive and do little work, but give them too many freedoms and they pose a threat to the leader. The degree to which autocrats rely on taxation to fund the government limits the extent to which they can oppress the people.

Nations awash with natural resource wealth or lavished with foreign aid rarely democratize. They are the world's most oppressive places. Their leaders have resources to reward their essential supporters without having to empower the people. In such societies, though the people really desire change, they cannot act upon these wants. Without the ability to assemble, coordinating against the government is difficult. What is more, the people know the leader can afford to pay the coalition to oppress them. With little chance of success, the people keep their heads down. Protest is rare and answered with even greater repression.

But what happens if the money dries up?

Take a look back at
Figure 7.1
, where we graphed Egypt's foreign aid receipts through 2010. US aid to Egypt has been dropping as Egypt's peace with Israel has aged and matured. The drop in aid has been substantial and that means Egypt's former president, Hosni Mubarak, found himself in a weaker and weaker position when it came to buying the loyal support of the military. The global economic slowdown had compounded the importance of aid for the Egyptian regime. With money drying up, a chance was created for a rebellion against his government. And, indeed, in early 2011, Mubarak, facing a poor economy and decreased aid receipts, also faced a mass rebellion.

When autocrats lack abundant resources they have a more difficult time managing the people. First and foremost, leaders must pay their essential backers or they will be gone. Leaders without adequate revenues from aid, natural resources, or borrowing must obtain them by encouraging the people to work and by taxing them. Unfortunately for leaders, many of the public goods that increase productivity also improve the people's ability to coordinate and, therefore, protest. Further, because the leader needs the tax revenues the workers provide, such protests are more likely to be met with concessions than in a resource-rich nation or one with huge cash reserves.

The factors that lead to rebellion are relatively uncomplicated. How much a leader does to enhance the welfare of the people by providing public goods determines the desire of the people to rebel. The level of freedom determines the ease with which they can act upon these desires by taking to the streets.

Yet, though high levels of either factor are in evidence in a host of countries around the world, protests remain rare. They require a spark.

Shocks that trigger protest come in many forms. On rare occasions protests happen spontaneously. But more often it requires an event to shake up the system and trigger protest. At the collapse of the Soviet Union and other communist states in Eastern Europe in 1989, contagion played a major role. Once one state fell, the people in the surrounding
states realized that their state was perhaps no longer invulnerable. Free elections in Communist Poland triggered protests in East Germany. When it became clear that security forces would not obey East German leader Erich Honecker's order to break up demonstrations, the protests grew. Successful protest in Germany spawned demonstrations in Czechoslovakia, and so on. As each state fell, it provided a yet stronger signal to the peoples of the remaining communist states. The states fell like dominos. And each was suffering from a poorly performing economy, so that the East European dictators could no longer assure private advantages to their supporters. Quite the contrary, they had been reduced to a state in which many of their henchmen understood it was better to abandon the dictator than go down in a blaze of glory with their failed regimes. Much the same story repeated itself in the Middle East in 2011. As Tunisia fell, the people of Egypt realized that their leader might also be vulnerable. So contagious was the belief that rebellion could succeed that the once rock-steady Middle East quickly became fertile ground for mass movements. People in Bahrain, Jordan, Yemen, Syria, Libya, and elsewhere tried their luck.

A massive natural disaster, an unanticipated succession crisis, or a global economic downturn that drives the autocrat's local economy to the brink or beyond the brink of bankruptcy can also provide a rallying cry for protesters. Other shocks can be “planned”; that is, events or occasions chosen by an autocrat who misjudges the risks involved. One common example is a rigged election.

Dictators seem to like to hold elections. Whether they do so to satisfy international pressure (and gain more foreign aid), to dispel domestic unrest, or to gain a misleading sense of legitimacy, their preference is to rig the vote count. Elections are nice, but winning is nicer. Still, sometimes the people seize the moment of an election to shock the incumbent, voting so overwhelmingly for someone else that it is hard to cover up the true outcome.

Liberia's Sergeant Doe was foolish enough to hold an election. In doing so, he provided the impetus for protest that he was lucky to survive. In 1985, Thomas Quiwonkpa challenged Samuel Doe after it took weeks for Liberia's electoral commission to “count” the votes. Perhaps Quiwonkpa took the commission's dalliance as a sign of popular support
and equally a sign of the commission's lack of support for him. As his insurgency approached the capital, Monrovia, the masses took to the streets against Doe's government. Unfortunately for them, Doe's essential supporters remained loyal. The costs of protest became very real. Doe's soldiers killed hundreds in retribution.

In post-Soviet Eastern Europe, “legitimizing” elections helped to promote citizen uprisings. Rather than sustaining the regimes in power, elections created the opportunity to replace them. In 2004, the incumbent Ukrainian leader, Leonid Kuchma, having served two terms, decided, perhaps to the surprise of his essential backers, to respect the two-term limit and retire. His chosen successor was Viktor Yanukovych. The runup to the election looked like it came straight out of a John Le Carre spy novel, with the leading opposition candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, allegedly poisoned with dioxin, which left him horribly disfigured.

In the first round of the elections in October each of the leading candidates received about 39 percent of the vote. This necessitated a runoff election on November 21, in which the official results differed greatly from exit polls. Even before the second round presidential runoff was complete, Yushchenko called for the people to take to the streets. The electoral commission declared Yanukovych the winner. However, protests mounted and the security forces withdrew. Eventually the Supreme Court ruled that given the high level of fraud, another ballot was needed. Yushchenko then won the election handsomely.

Coalition dynamics play a key role in explaining why the security forces allowed the people to take to the streets. The president was changing. Although the retiring incumbent, Kuchma, backed Yanukovych, he could not ensure core supporters within the security forces that they would be retained after the transition. As we saw with Louis XIV and many others, newly empowered leaders, even when they have been chosen by their predecessor, are wise to shake up their coalition, bring in their own loyalists, and dump many of their predecessor's erstwhile backers. The security forces, being uncertain whether they would keep their long-run privileges, declined to attack the masses, hedging their bets about who would be more likely to reward them. Without force to control the masses on the street, Yanukovych's supporters deserted. The people brought Yushchenko to power, but an essential factor
in their willingness to take to the streets was the apparent lack of support for Yanukovych by the security forces.

Sometimes the shocks that spark revolt come as a total surprise. Natural disasters, while bringing misery to the people, can also empower them. One frequent consequence of earthquakes, hurricanes, and droughts is that vast numbers of people are forced from their homes. If they are permitted to gather in refugee camps, then they have the opportunity to organize against the government. You see, refugee camps have the unintended consequence of facilitating free assembly. Earthquakes, storms, and volcanoes can concentrate large numbers of desperate people with little to lose. They also can substantially weaken the state's capacity to control the people.

On the morning of September 19, 1985, a large 8.1 magnitude earthquake occurred on the Michoacan fault in the Pacific Ocean about 350 kilometers from Mexico City. Mexico City is geologically vulnerable as it was built on the soft foundation of the remains of Lake Texcoco. The clay silts and sands that make up the lake bed plus the soil's high water content led to liquefaction (wherein the ground behaves like a liquid) during the earthquake. The city was also built in the absence of democratic rule, so few building codes had been enforced. As a result, the distant quake caused enormous devastation throughout the city. The death toll is highly disputed, but is thought to be between 10,000 and 30,000 people. An additional 250,000 were made homeless. The government did virtually nothing. Left to rescue themselves, the people formed crews to dig for survivors and organized refugee camps.

Born of necessity, these camps became the foundation for an important political force in Mexico City. Instead of separate individuals unhappy with their government, the earthquake formed a concentrated mass of desperate people. Forced together into crowded camps, they shared their disillusionment with the government. Organizing a protest rally was suddenly relatively easy. Ready and willing participants were on hand and had little to lose. With the government largely absent, these social groups became important political forces that rapidly deployed as large antigovernment demonstrations. Unable to oppose these groups, the government sought to accommodate them. It is widely believed they played a key role in Mexico's democratization.
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The story of Anastasio Somoza's deposition in the Nicaraguan Revolution in 1979 is broadly similar. In 1972, a 6.2 magnitude earthquake struck the capital of Managua, killing around 5,000 people and forcing about 250,000 homeless people into camps. Somoza and his cronies profited from disaster relief but did nothing to resettle the enormous number of homeless people who had gathered in refugee camps in the capital. These camps became organizing grounds for the activists who eventually ended Somoza's reign.

Not all autocrats make the mistake of ignoring disasters or ignoring the creation of refugee camps. Consider the case of Myanmar in 2008. Than Shwe is the military leader of Burma (officially known as Myanmar). Although he has been described as an unremarkable man, he understands the essentials of staying in power.
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On May 2, 2008, a massive cyclone, named Nargis, swept across the Irrawaddy Delta in southern Burma causing havoc. The delta's residents, mainly poor fishermen and farmers, received no warning of the coming storm. The storm destroyed entire towns and villages. The official death toll is 138,000, though other estimates suggest it might be as high as 500,000.

No one can blame Than Shwe for the storm or for the low-lying villages' vulnerability to storm surge. However, Burma's military regime provided no warning and did nothing to help the survivors, and for that they can be blamed. Indeed they did worse than nothing: they actively prevented help from being delivered. Many people in Rangoon, the major city in southern Burma that was itself heavily damaged by the storm, attempted to help those in the delta. They were not allowed. Small businessmen and traders were reduced to smuggling small amounts of food into what remained of towns and villages.

The international community rallied to offer assistance. As tens, or possibly hundreds, of thousands of people died of hunger and thirst in the aftermath of the storm, ships full of disaster relief supplies sat off the coast. The military junta refused to allow relief workers in. Visas were almost impossible to obtain. Information was extremely scarce. The government requested aid, but asked that it be in the form of bilateral government-to-government assistance. Effectively, Than Shwe was saying, “send cash, but you can't come in.”