The book review:
Wars, Guns and Votes is a political science study of why democracy works—or doesn’t—in the third world. Much of the data is drawn from Africa because African states represent the bottom billion poor people on our planet. Author Paul Collier, who is a professor (and obviously a committed researcher) at Oxford University in the U.K., draws extensively on statistical research he originated or found—he freely credits others who produced useful data—to confirm the obvious—the realization of democracy in Africa has encountered enormous challenges.

Although not Kenya-specific, Collier does frequently refer to Kenya’s 2007 electoral debacle in the book to underscore points about election strategies, such as bribery, intimidation, manipulation of results or tribalism. Regarding the latter, he notes that Raila Odinga obtained 98 percent of the Luo vote. This leads to a discussion of how such blatant, ethnic politics engenders more rather than less political violence and how such violence operates to the detriment of the achievement of democracy wherein folks do not vote according to economic or social issues, but rather by tribal identity. With ample (statistical) justification, Collier believes that Africa’s inability to get beyond identity voting has retarded and warped the realization of democracy on the continent.

Obviously there are other constraints to democracy in Africa. Lack of a rule of law, including respect for constitutions and electoral regulations, poses real problems as does the availability of weapons, the outbreak of civil war or the recourse to military coups d’etat. Africa has had 336 attempts according to Collier of which 82 were successful. As an economist, Collier was interested in finding out whether or not coups or civil war were good or bad for a nation’s ultimate development. Not surprisingly, the data revealed that civil war is definitely bad. Economically, war sets society back a generation if not more, but coups too are bad; even if new leaders oust autocrats such as Amin, Bokassa, Doe or Mobutu. Sadly, Mugabe has not yet been ousted, so there is no data on whether that would have been successful.

To his credit, Collier (whose rather large ego jumps off the pages) puts forward a three-pronged solution to Africa’s woes. He suggests that, in exchange for real democratic elections, Western nations guarantee to reverse any coup or halt any civil war that might ensue. Secondly, that the international community enforce probity in public spending, mostly by strict controls on how aid funds are spent with special attention to halting leakage into national military spending. (Collier’s data shows that forty percent of international aid flows are diverted into military spending). Finally, he insists that, since the small size of African nations generally precludes regional security stability, regional multinational arrangements, even including western partners, be devised to mitigate tensions. This might even reduce or eliminate the need for standing national armies.

Collier marshals lots of studies and data to support his observations. Agree or not, he makes compelling arguments that require readers to think and re-think the hot-button issues that Africa faces today and how, whether or if outsiders might or ought to be involved.

(Note to readers: I have three good Kenya books on tap for coming months: Wildflower – a biography of Joan Root; Her Excellency – a delightful novel by Sam Okello that skewers contemporary Kenyan politics; and It’s Our Turn to Eat, Michela Wrong’s account of Kenya’s 2007/2008 election crisis. Buy copies and let’s compare notes. Bob.)