“Democracy” in Afghanistan - the Afghanistan Research and ...

AREU Synthesis Paper Series
5. Democracy, Security and Stability: A Problematic
Relationship
Democracy is widely considered to be an inherently
peaceful political system. This contention is often
supported by the claim (widely made by the Clinton
Administration in the early 1990s) that democracies
do not go to war with one another, and thus, by
extension, the more democracies there are, the
more peaceful and productive the international
world order will become. 65
Many respondents from the first phase of this
research—in which data was collected in relatively
“secure” provinces—shared the main thrust of
this viewpoint. They highlighted that Afghanistan
could not be a democracy because democracies in
other countries were peaceful and secure, as one
community leader from urban Kabul explained:
In the developed world democracy is
implemented by the people and the
governments. There are rights for the people,
they can vote freely and independently. But
in Afghanistan this is not the case. Here there
is force and guns...The warlords forced the
people to vote for them. If they don’t vote for
a particular warlord their life is in danger. This
is what we see in Afghanistan in the name of
democracy, this is a shame for democracy. 66
For respondents who viewed democracy as a
positive but unattained or unachievable goal
in Afghanistan (largely those in the first phase
provinces and Nimroz), the “democracy” of
developed countries was thus idealised as an
“implementable,” conflict-free end-state.
Evidently, there are varying degrees of conflict
and, relatively speaking, the difference in levels of
security and freedom to vote without intimidation
or violence between Afghanistan and a Western
democracy is considerable. That said, so-called
65 Anthony Lake “Dialogue: The Reach of Democracy; Tying Power
to Diplomacy,” New York Times, 23 September 1994. http://www.
nytimes.com/1994/09/23/opinion/dialogue-the-reach-of-democracytying-power-to-diplomacy.html
(accessed 21 April 2011).
66 Cited in Larson, “Toward an Afghan Democracy,” 13.
established democracies are very much still in
the process of developing their systems, changing
voting procedures, and arguing over the rights and
duties associated with citizenship; the relationship
between citizen and state is far from fixed or static
in these countries.
Views of democracy as a peaceful political system
do not always take into account the messiness and
violence that can often accompany democratic
transitions or democratisation. Post-election
violence in Cote-D’Ivoire in 2010-11, alongside the
violent suppression of peaceful civilian protests
pushing for democracy in Egypt, Bahrain, Syria
and Yemen in 2011, provide recent examples of
this. In fact, certain scholars have questioned
the assumption that promoting democracy would
bring about peace for some time. They argue that
while democratic nations may not fight each other
as frequently as non-democratic ones, there is
still no guarantee that they will not experience
internal conflict. 67 One study in particular found
that existing ethnic divides in young democracies
can be emphasised to varying degrees by
democratic institutions and apparatuses, such as
political parties and particular electoral systems. 68
Furthermore, it stressed that if economic trends
follow ethnic fault lines, conflict between opposing
groups can be emphasised in spite of (and even
as a result of) the existence of these democratic
institutions. 69
Data collected in the second phase of this study—
especially (as might be expected) in more insecure
67 Frances Stewart and Megan O’Sullivan, “Democracy, Conflict
and Development—Three Cases” (Oxford: Queen Elizabeth House,
1998), http://www3.qeh.ox.ac.uk/RePEc/qeh/qehwps/qehwps15.pdf
(accessed 14 August 2008).
68 Stewart and O’Sullivan, “Democracy, Conflict and Development,”
comparing the cases of Uganda, Kenya and Sri Lanka.
69 For more on the relationship between ethnicity and conflict, see P.
Collier, “The Political Economy of Ethnicity,” prepared for the annual
World Bank Conference on Development Economics, 20-21 April 1998,
http://www.worldbank.org/html/rad/abcde/collier.pdf (accessed 27
August 2008).
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