In my book The Bottom Billion (2007), I argued that a number of traps had caught 1bn people in some 60 countries in extreme poverty. One trap was violent conflict, especially civil wars. Another was poor governance: in many of these countries, government was not performing the essential functions of the state. But both are about political power.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, many of these 60 countries have adopted democracy. Autocratic leaders such as Zambia’s President Kaunda and, later, Daniel arap Moi in Kenya and Robert Mugabe in Zimbawe, were forced to introduce competitive elections, a move expected to defuse conflicts and so make societies more peaceful. Elections were also meant to discipline governments: accountability to voters would force them to promote economic and social wellbeing. But the results have been disappointing.
Peace, in particular, has proved elusive. In researching my book, I examined whether the coming of democracy changes the incidence of political violence. The results were surprising and disturbing. Below a threshold of around $2,700 per capita, democracies are significantly more prone to political violence than autocracies. All the bottom billion countries were far below this, so while democracy might be desirable for other reasons, it was not, for them, the royal road to peace.
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