Dictators

 In a recent thread over at Crooked Timber, John Quiggin averred that with fall of Qaddafi, the world is running out of dictators. I sharply disagreed. I’d like to distill the ensuing discussion into a post, because it led to an interesting question: who are the world’s remaining dictators?

Let’s start by defining our terms. I define a dictator as (1) a solitary leader, who (2) wields tremendous personal power, and (3) rules in a generally illiberal manner, and (4) will not leave office or surrender power unless compelled by force majeure, and (5) is not a traditional monarch.

(1) “solitary leader” eliminates juntas and oligarchies. There are several borderline cases where a country is ruled by a group, but one member of the group is clearly primus inter pares. It also eliminates regimes that are repressive, but run by a party or oligarchy rather than one guy.

(2) “tremendous personal power” is obviously pretty slippery. But as the judge said, we know it when we see it. A dictator may have to deal with other power centers, and may face various and sharp constraints on his rule. But if the leader can do pretty much as he pleases, provided that he wants something badly enough, he qualifies. (Note that this one disqualifies rulers who are “merely” authoritarian.)

(3) “illiberal”: a leader who can and does ignore human rights, freedom of the press, inconvenient constitutional provisions, and so forth. Note that this does not disallow elections, as long as the dictator always wins them. A free-ish press is also possible, as long as it can be curbed or suppressed if it presents a serious problem.

(4) “will not leave”: this is close to the heart of the definition. A dictator is a guy you can’t get rid of, ever. Dictators may  — very rarely  — step down voluntarily, but they don’t lose elections and they can’t easily be compelled to leave otherwise. If you’re going to rule indefinitely absent a coup, revolution, civil war, or at least massive and sustained protests accompanied by major social and economic disruption, good chance you’re dictator.

(5) “not a traditional monarch”: this one is more for convenience than anything else. There are several traditional monarchs, all in the Arab world, who are very much like dictators. For now, I’m choosing to view them as their own category.

Obviously this is a fairly ad hoc definition that is going to scoop up a wide range of characters. The resulting group is likely to be, as the biologists say, paraphyletic. And it’s going to be a bit blurry around the edges, too. Nonetheless I think it’s an interesting exercise: if we apply these standards, who do we end up with? Well, I get the following list:

Angola: Dos Santos has been the President nonstop since 1979.  There are significant limits on his power, but IMO he qualifies.

Azerbaijan

Belarus

Cambodia: Hun Sen, a bland and retiring little man, has ruled unchallenged since the middle 1980s.

Cameroon: Paul Biya since 1982. The country has kept the trappings of a democratic republic, including opposition parties, but Biya is in charge and he’s not going anywhere.

Chad

Congo (Republic)

Congo (Democratic Republic):  President Kabila, son of the late President Kabila, is likely to stay in power for the foreseeable future. He’s in a tie with Aliyev of Azerbaijan for youngest dictator -- they’re both just 40.

Cuba: Raúl, not Fidel. (It’s surprising how many people think it’s still Fidel.)

Djibouti

Equatorial Guinea: this is a nasty one. Doesn’t get much attention, of course.

Eritrea: Afewerki is another nasty one. A shame, since his rule started with really high hopes.

Ethiopia

Kazakhstan

North Korea

Rwanda

South Sudan: I’m jumping the gun here, because the country of South Sudan is just a few months old. But President Mayardit has already made it pretty clear that he’s not going anywhere.

Sudan

Syria: At least for the nonce. (I think Assad has a decent chance of sticking around.)

Tajikistan

Turkmenistan

Uganda: to nobody’s surprise, President Museveni won a fourth term a few months ago.

Uzbekistan

Zimbabwe: Robert Mugabe, still hanging in there at age 87, has been the world’s oldest dictator for a while now.

There are some borderline cases:

Algeria: I’d put Algeria right on the border. M. Bouteflika is president for life, has built an immense personal and family fortune, is the subject of a personality cult, and rules illiberally. On the other hand, his power is relatively limited; in particular, he must deal with rival power centers, most notably the military and the security services.

Burma: Burma was run by a military junta until the middle 2000s. Then Than Shwe drove his last serious rival out of power. He then ruled — but from behind the scenes; he was a dour, withdrawn character who mostly shunned the limelight. Then Than Shwe stepped down last year, appointing a hand-picked successor. It’s a bit soon to say whether the new guy qualifies.

The Central African Republic: Francois Bozize took power in a coup a while back, but I’m not sure he qualifies; he came close to losing the last election, and might have accepted defeat if he had.

Fiji: the current leader came to power in a military coup and shows no sign of stepping down. However, to me he looks “authoritarian” rather than “dictator” — Fiji still has a somewhat-functioning constitutional framework that seems to place some real limits on his power.

Gabon: the current President Bongo is the son of the late President Bongo. Bongo pere was the real deal  — he ruled without serious opposition for decades. It’s not clear to me whether Bongo fils is in the same league.

Togo: It looks like Gnassingbe fils, after a tricky couple of years, is on track to fill his father’s shoes. Not sure if he’s there yet, though.

And some that don’t come close:

Afghanistan: even putting aside the fact that half the country is at war with him, Karzai just doesn’t seem to have that much power.

Iran: theocracy, very authoritarian, but also weirdly constitutional — the powers of both the President and the Supreme Leader are vast but constrained. Iran is sui generis, its own strange thing.

Nicaragua: Ortega has certainly played around the edges of standard democratic practice, but if he lost an election, then he would lose power.

Russia: Actually, I don’t think Russia is very close to the border at all. Authoritarian, yes, but not any kind of dictatorship. I’m only including it here because people are going to ask.

Venezuela: Oh, come on. Obnoxious narcissist with authoritarian tendencies, not a dictator. As with Russia, included only because someone’s going to bring it up.

That makes 24, plus six borderline cases.

So: is this list meaningful? useful or interesting in any way? or is this just a parlor game?

There are some patterns. There’s not a single dictatorship left in the New World other than Cuba. The complete disappearance of the classic Latin American strongman is an interesting historical development that my co-blogger is annoyed to learn doesn’t seem to have attracted much attention in the rest of the world. 14 of the 24 are in Africa, and six more (the four ‘Stans, Azerbaijan and Belarus) are from the former Soviet Union. In fact, if we include Cambodia, Cuba, and North Korea, then every single dictatorship except for Syria is either African or a relic of Communism.

I’ve excluded the Arab absolute monarchies. But if we included them, then you could argue with a straight face that every remaining dictatorship falls into one of just three groups: African, Arab, or Communist/ex-Communist.

Is there any meaning in that pattern?

Comments

[John Quiggin]

"Is there any meaning in that pattern"

I'd say, it supports the claims in the original post, even if I was a bit sloppy in counting. Even within the two remaining categories, the trend is clearly down. One-party government, usually with an individual strongman, was (by definition) universal in Communist countries, and close to universal in Africa.

And, contrary to a bunch of commentary suggesting that this form of government is in some sense resurgent, the list suggests the opposite - these are countries that are at the back of the international pack in just about every respect you could name.

[Doug M.]

"The trend is clearly down"

-- not seeing it. The number of sub-Saharan African dictatorships has stayed pretty stable over the last decade. Communist / ex Communist, even more so -- that number hasn't changed at all in the last 15 years.

The trend /was/ clearly down from the mid-20th century until... oh, some point around 2000 or a little before. Since then, the number of dictatorships has been roughly stable. The Arab Spring has caused a sudden downturn -- but it's not that big a decline (from ~27 to ~24), nor is it likely to be sustained. A one-off is not a trend.

"contrary to a bunch of commentary suggesting that this form of government is in some sense resurgent"

-- Not my argument. I'm claiming it now appears to be in a state of rough equilibrium. Dictatorships will disappear, but new ones will come into existence at very roughly the same rate.

Looking at the list above, I see one brand new dictatorship (South Sudan) plus three or four countries that have drifted from authoritarian rule to full-blown dictatorship over the last decade or so (Djibouti, Tajikistan, Uganda, arguably the Rep. Congo). So, new dictatorships are still coming into existence. This doesn't mean dictatorship is undergoing a resurgence -- it isn't -- but it's entirely consistent with the equilibrium hypothesis: they come, they go, the total number remains around the same.

"These are countries that are at the back of the international pack"

-- Actually, several of them (Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan) are middle-income. Kazakhstan is well above the current cutoff for EU membership.

But let that bide. Yes, most are pretty low-income. What exactly is your point? The charitable interpretation is that you're subscribing to some vaguely Whiggish notion that there's some sort of arrow of development which points toward greater liberty. The less charitable one is that you think countries at the back of the pack don't matter somehow.

Doug M.

[John Quiggin]

"What exactly is your point? The charitable interpretation is that you're subscribing to some vaguely Whiggish notion that there's some sort of arrow of development which points toward greater liberty. The less charitable one is that you think countries at the back of the pack don't matter somehow."

My point is not the Whiggish one, in the sense of presupposing a given, or even a positive, direction of development. It's merely saying that there are directions that can be discerned and an institution that only survives in the least developed countries is unlikely to endure.

I imagine you could say the same thing about the extended family (I haven't checked the data). That is, if the extended family survives as an important form of social organisation only in some very poor countries, it is unlikely to survive for long.

[John Quiggin]

You've omitted Yemen, by the way.

[John Quiggin]

Countries that were dictatorships in 2000 and aren't now include (as well as Egypt, Tunisia and Libya), Kyrgztan (sp?), Iraq, Liberia, Pakistan. I lack your encyclopedic knowledge on this, so I suspect there are more, but in any case this group is larger in number, and even more in population than the additions (South Sudan didn't add anyone, of course).

[Noel Maurer]

Yemen is excluded for two reasons. The proximate one is that it's in a civil war, which by definition means it's not a stable dictatorship. The real one is that even before the balloon went up, Saleh's authority was highly circumscribed, against the tribes, against the Shia, and against other political factions. He wasn't a democrat, but he also wasn't much of a tyrant; no comparison with Mubarak or Assad.

[Doug M.]

"this group is larger in number,"

Er, no it's not. Kyrgyzstan, Iraq, Liberia and Pakistan: that's four. (At most four, because Pakistan's pretty dubious. If we're excluding current-day Algeria, Burma, and Fiji, it's hard to see how we can bring in Musharraf.) I listed five new dictatorships over that same time period.

Include the Arab Spring and it becomes 7-5. Go freedom... but it's not exactly an overwhelming preponderance, is it. And even then, you're looking at 10+ years of stability or a small increase, followed by a one-time drop that seems unlikely to be repeated.

The number of dictators in 2010 was almost exactly the same number as in the late 1990s. That's not a "clearly downward" trend by any reasonable standard.

"I suspect there are more"

Bhutan! But that was a royal dictatorship, and we've excluded them.

"I lack your encyclopedic knowledge on this,"

Ugh. John, I haven't written anything that's not easily findable with a few moments of easy online research. There's been nothing in this discussion that's particularly obscure or arcane; I haven't even alluded to the academic literature.

Claiming ignorance, even relative ignorance, is just... unseemly. This isn't that hard. I'm sure you can keep up.

Doug M.

[John Quiggin]

OK then, Yemen should be counted as a transition out of dictatorship since 2000. I agree Saleh was no Assad, but he still met your criteria until the Spring.

But the real question is whether 2000 represented a structural break in the downward trend clearly evident before that.

To maintain this view (let alone the "authoritarianism resurgent" line that was popular until recently), you need your claim that the Arab Spring will not be sustained, by which I assume you mean that some or all of Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen will return to dictatorship. I agree that, if this happened, it would be good support for your view. Conversely, if it doesn't, it's support for mine

[Doug M.]

Dude. Noel just spelled out why Saleh probably never qualified. You're now saying "okay, so he qualified." The hey?

It's fine if you disagree with Noel. But then explain why. Don't blithely ignore him; that's just bad manners.

"by which I assume you mean that some or all of Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen will return to dictatorship"

I have no idea why you would assume that. It isn't remotely supported by anything I've said.

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, assume you're not trying to construct a very silly straw man, and spell out my position using short, clear words. I think Libya, Egypt and Tunisia probably will /not/ return to dictatorship. On the other hand, I don't think the Arab Spring will spread to topple more dictators.

That was what our bet was about. Remember our bet? I said Assad would probably still be in power six months from now. You said you wanted a year, since these things take time. I said okay, fine, a year -- he'll still be in power on August 31, 2012. You never responded. Do we have a bet on that, or not?

As for "authoritarianism resurgent", that's a separate and much more fraught question. Just because classic dictatorships aren't coming back doesn't mean that liberal democracy is conquering all. But that's a question for another post.

Doug M.

[John Quiggin]

I thought your acceptance sealed the bet, since I had stated the terms I wanted.

Since we are both getting bad-tempered about this, I'll leave it at that and get back to you in August 2012 (or earlier if Assad falls in time for me to win).

[Noel Maurer]

Doug and I have a bet about the longevity of the eurozone. Loser either flies out to the land of the winner (or, if schedules don't permit, pays the winner to fly out to them) and then buys them a lot of steak, cigars, and good well-aged port.

I would be delighted to make such a bet about Assad! You on, sir? Admittedly, you've probably been to Boston, whereas I've never been to Australia, so the upside is larger for me.

[Doug M.]

I actually like this one better, because I'll be happy if I win.

Assad going down will have all sorts of complicated and unpredictable effects, but it's likely to be a net positive in the long run. One interesting knock-on: it would deprive Iran of its best and most reliable ally. (Iran is, of course, giving Assad all reasonable support. They just replaced their ambassador to Damascus with a hard-line Revolutionary Guard type.)

That said, I think Assad's chances look pretty good right now. He hasn't been able to suppress the protests, but neither have the protesters been able to make much progress against the regime.

Doug M.

[JohnQuiggin]

"I actually like this one better, because I'll be happy if I win. "

I hope that's a typo for "lose"! Also, I think Oscar is a spambot

Noel, I'm happy to take the same side bet as with Doug ($50 to charity of choice). I'm in DC at present but will be back in Brisbane before the bet expires, and it's a long way to Boston from there.

[Peter]

Actually, several of them (Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan) are middle-income. Kazakhstan is well above the current cutoff for EU membership.

All of these three get most of their (relative) wealth from oil or gas production. They don't really have well-rounded modern economies, except maybe Kazakhstan to some extent.

[Doug M.]

Happy if I /lose/, yes. My bad.

Doug M.