Real Democracy for Iraq

by Carl S. Milsted, Jr. PhD

OK, so we conquered Iraq. Maybe it was the right thing to do, maybe it wasn’t. War is not nice, but neither is Saddam Hussein. The important issue is how to make our victory worthwhile, both for ourselves, by reducing terrorism, and for the Iraqis, by bringing them freedom and prosperity. According to the public statements by the Bush administration, these goals are one and the same – a noble sentiment, especially coming from an administration that treats liberty with callous disregard at home.
Alas, the prospects for imposing liberal democracy seem rather bleak. When the Europeans pulled out of Africa they left behind democratic governments that quickly degenerated into tyrannical dictatorships. And among the nominally democratic countries in the developing world, elections are punctuated with violence, corruption is commonplace, and military takeover is a ready option.
Many hardcore freedom lovers are thus isolationists, arguing that the increase in government at home needed to impose democracy abroad far outweighs any benefits we can confer. The argument frequently goes that such countries are “not ready” for democracy and the rule of law, that they have to go through unpleasant historical stages on their own before they are ready to join the free world. They also hide behind such noble-sound phrases as “sovereignty” and “self-determination,” as if governments – even brutal governments – had the same natural rights as individuals.
I find such arguments unsatisfying at best, especially when genocide is taking place. Self-determination is impossible when a nation is under the thumb of a ruthless dictator. In unfree societies the government outguns the people by a large margin. Self-determination requires outside help. Come to think of it, the United States needed outside help to gain its freedom. Thanks, France.
Instead of mystically invoking “stages of history” and writing off nations as being “unready” for freedom, we should ask why democracy has taken root in some places and not others when imposed from without. Iraq has been civilized for longer than any other spot on the planet; surely by now they have gone through enough stages of history!
As a good place to start, let us look at two of the biggest success stories of imposing democracy through conquest: Germany and Japan. OK, looking at Germany may be cheating, since Germany has democratic traditions going to Roman times at least. On the other hand, Japan has no record of democracy whatsoever. Yet we managed to leave behind a parliamentary democracy there that has thrived.
What Germany and Japan have in common is that they are relatively homogeneous societies. This is especially true for Japan. It is also true for South Korea, which has progressively evolved towards a democratic system. In a similar vein, Scandinavia has been successful at being democratic, despite levels of government that would cause most countries to become corrupt police states.
When a country is ethnically and religiously uniform, the issues that come up for a vote are how much government to have and how to operate it for the benefit of the entire country. When a country is divided along tribal or ethnic lines, votes center on who gets to loot whom. When a country is deeply divided on religious lines, it is extremely hard to come up with a compromise on which moral laws to impose.
Thus, many “Third World” countries have political parties based not on political philosophy, but upon tribal or religious affiliation. When one such faction gets control over the government, the others can get oppressed to the point of taking arms. Often in such situations a return to military dictatorship is greeted by the oppressed minority with a sign of relief.
According to the CIA’s web site, Iraq has the following religious breakdown:

Shiite Muslim	60-65%
Sunni Muslim	32-37%
Christian and other	3%

We have enough Shiites to turn Iraq into an Islamic republic similar to that in Iran. If you are part of the Christian minority, you might find a wily Stalinist dictator to be preferable to democracy.
Iraq is also divided ethnically. Once again, according to the CIA web site:

Arab	75-80%
Kurdish	15-20%
Turkoman, Assyrian and other	5%

If you are not an Arab, democracy might be an unpleasant thing. Imagine having public schools that teach your children in a foreign language – and you are not an immigrant to a foreign land, but in your ancestral homeland.
There are a couple of ways around this problem. The most proven solution is to divide up the country into semi-autonomous regions. Switzerland is a prime example of this approach. Swiss government is primarily in the hands of the cantons. With such localized control, the Swiss have sustained a liberal democratic society despite having three official languages – of peoples who have been at war with each other during the past century. This was also the original model for the United States; originally “the government” was the state government. For the average person the federal government was unimportant.
The other approach would be to have a limited government constitutional republic, such as the United States once was. If freedom of religion was part of the constitution, then the religious differences would not such a problem. If the government were to issue school vouchers instead of having government-run schools, then the language differences would not be such a problem.
Alas, these approaches have limitations. For federalism, we still have to draw the boundaries between the semi-autonomous states. This can be a very contentious process, which can lead to civil war. As for a constitutional republic, constitutional limitations on government are only as strong as the belief in those limitations by those running the country. For example, during the twentieth century these beliefs declined in the United States, and the federal government has grown far beyond its legal bounds. Most U. S. federal spending is unconstitutional. A piece of paper cannot stop the will of those in power.
Things may be better in Iraq than the demographic tables above indicate. Just because the Shiites have a majority doesn’t mean that a majority wants Iranian-style government. Extremists of any form could be a minority. Alas, with standard plurality-take-all democracy, an extremist minority can legally win an election. Hitler’s National Socialists did just that.
Let us take an imaginary political breakdown to illustrate how this can happen. Suppose Iraq had the following political parties with these levels of support:

Shiite Fundamentalist (a la Iran)	27%
Pan Arab Extremist	21%
Kurdish Separatist	20%
Liberal Democrat	19%
Socialist	13%

In a plurality-take-all system, the Shiite Fundamentalists win! This makes 73% of the population unhappy. A military coup may well be greeted with cheers if the democratically elected government goes too far.
Either the Shiite Fundamentalist party or a Pan Arab Extremist party would be unlikely to honor a federal system. Obviously the Kurdish Separatist party would, but such a party could not win an outright victory in a national election. So the likelihood of maintaining a peaceful federal system looks bleak.
But let us look farther that this table, which just shows first preferences. If you are a Kurdish Separatist, who would you consider to be the lesser evil among the others? The Kurds are mostly Sunnis, and are not nearly as strict as the Iranians in their clothing taboos, so it is safe to say they would not like the Shiite Fundamentalist party to win. Similarly, the Kurds are not Arabs, so Pan Arab Extremist is out. So that leaves Liberal Democrat and Socialist as options. If the Kurds were to get together with the Liberal Democrats or Socialists, a secular federal state might be possible. But which voting system would get Iraq there?
Suppose we modify plurality-take-all, to requiring a run-off election if no one gets a majority. If we just take the top two contenders, we end up with the choice of Shiite Fundamentalist or Pan-Arab taking over the country. A coalition of Kurds, Liberal Democrats and Socialists is not possible, even though it would be a majority. To prevent such a minority situation, we could require that each run-off round represent a majority of the votes in the previous round. Under such a rule, the second round of an election would have the top three parties.
Alas, while, the Kurdish Separatists may like the Liberal Democrats and/or Socialists, but the reverse may not be true. Some in those parties might opt for Pan-Arab or even Shiite Fundamentalist in order to hold the country together.
Run-offs are an improvement over plurality-take-all, but they fail to represent the will of the people when top factions hate each other. Under such a situation, moderate parties would be the second favorite of many, but the top favorite of a few.
Suppose we were to look at some head-to-head contests between pairs of parties. For example: let us take Shiite Fundamentalist vs. Liberal Democrat. In such a race we could expect most Kurdish Separatists and Socialists to vote Liberal Democrat. Pan-Arab Extremists could go either way, so their votes would likely split somewhat. In such a race the Liberal Democrat wins handily. If we were to continue these pairwise contests, the Liberal Democrat party would likely win against everyone except possibly the Socialist party. And the same would be the case for the Socialist. In other words, the bottom vote getters in a simple election would be the top vote getters in any two-way race!
But if we were to rig the system to get any particular two-way race, the extremist faction left out would rightly cry foul. The answer is to run all the possible two-way contests. This is an idea proposed by the French Enlightenment Philosopher, the Marquis de Condorcet. Instead of having a ballot in which you select just your favorite party/candidate, you get to rank the parties/candidates. For example, our Iraqi ballot might look like:

Party\Rank	1	2	3	4	5
Shiite Fundamentalist				x
Pan Arab Extremist					x
Kurdish Separatist	x
Liberal Democrat		x
Socialist			x

(I have filled in the ballot in the way a typical Kurdish voter might vote.)
The results of a vote would be expressed as a grid, with each head to head contest taking up a cell. In the ballot above, the Liberal Democrat would receive a vote against the Shiite Fundamentalist, but not against the Kurdish Extremist.
In the Condorcet system, there is no “lesser of two evil” dilemma. People are able to vote for their true favorite candidate/party while still voting most strongly against their least favorite. A strongly hated faction cannot rise to power because its opposition is fragmented. The winner in a Condorcet vote may not have the most enthusiastic supporters, but it will be the least hated. On such a basis civil war can be averted and democracy has a chance to survive.
If we are going to impose democracy in other countries, we ought to do it right. Come to think of it, perhaps we should get it right in our own country while we are at it. (If we had used the Condorcet system in our own country, all those Nader voters could have voted Gore and/or Browne as their second choice…) If we set a good example, many countries will imitate us, saving us (and them!) the bother of bombing away the ruthless dictators that arise when plurality rule democracy breaks down.