Reprinted from The Mandarin with permission.
Strengthening democracy and curbing corruption in developing countries needs a multi-faceted approach, a new peer-reviewed paper from the US National Bureau of Economic Research shows. And, as it turns out, undermining democracy needs a similar approach — in developed countries as well.
The paper, Malfunctioning Democracies: Understanding Accountability Failures in Developing Countries by economists Claudio Ferraz of the University of British Columbia and Frederico Finan of Berkeley, argues that persistent corruption, clientelism and capture by wealthy elites persists even in democratic developing countries because “vertical accountability” — electoral processes — are not given the necessary support by “horizontal accountability” mechanisms like courts and independent regulatory agencies and “diagonal accountability” mechanisms like an independent media and civil society. Traditional research, Ferraz and Finan argue, tends to examine each of these in siloes rather than understanding how they work together systemically.
Unstated by the authors, possibly because Finan might have to flee the United States like Rutgers historian Mark Bray was forced to if they did, is that their analysis is directly relevant — almost uncannily so — to the United States’ slide into autocracy under Trump. Americans studying developing countries, like so many beakers in a science experiment, might reflect that they’re on the Bunsen burner as well.
Politicians in developing countries often undermine elections through various nefarious strategies, including voter manipulation, clientelism, and the erosion of electoral fairness. Consequently, the existence of independent institutions that foster horizontal and diagonal accountability, such as an independent judiciary, a free media, and an active and organised civil society, is also crucial in preventing the abuse of power … Despite notable advances in horizontal accountability in many developing countries, such as the professionalisation of courts and the establishment of auditing and control agencies, significant capture and subversion of these institutions by politicians are still widespread … However, politicians and local elites have also found ways to capture the media and manipulate institutions of direct democracy, undermining their effectiveness.
The study identifies political capture of the judiciary, capture of audit agencies, media capture, use of social media for disinformation and censorship and elite capture of local democratic machinery as crucial examples of the way horizontal and diagonal accountability mechanisms can be suborned in developing countries, in a way that uncannily maps events in the United States: the stacking of the Supreme Court by the Republicans, the sacking of the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics for producing jobs data unfavourable to the Trump administration and the attempts to take control of the US Federal Reserve, the transformation of Twitter under Elon Musk into a platform for right-wing abuse, the exploitation of the murder of Charlie Kirk to target progressive groups, the often successful attempts by Trump and his coterie to bully, sue and intimidate US media outlets and attempts to dictate political coverage via access restrictions.
But Ferraz and Finan go further and examine widespread views of democracy in developing countries – and how fragile they can be, noting “in many developing countries, voters are growing increasingly frustrated with the failure of democracy to improve their lives. Recent micro-level evidence shows that citizens exposed to longer successful democratic spells express greater support for democracy, while economic mismanagement and corruption scandals undercut it.”
Citizens in developing countries, therefore, aren’t a whole lot different to those of countries like the US that are plagued by right-wing populism: perceptions that economies have been managed in the interests of elite interests rather than ordinary people has been a key driver of the embrace of autocratic populists offering the illusion of taking back control and restoring ordinary people to the centre of policymaking at the expense of “liberal elites”. As a classical populist, Trump promises to govern for ordinary Americans against vested interests (while, of course, lining his own pockets and those of his supporters), portraying constraints on his power, such as the constitution or elections, as impediments to be removed — “terminated”, in the case of the US constitution, overthrown by insurrection, in the case of the 2020 elections.
The researchers go on to make a statement of the bleeding obvious, that “the rapid rise of the Internet and social media has been a double-edged sword for accountability in developing countries. While new technologies can enhance transparency and civic coordination, they also facilitate disinformation, targeted censorship, and polarisation. Less educated voters are particularly vulnerable to misinformation and tribalism, which can weaken political accountability.” That accords with the US experience, where higher levels of education are consistently and strongly correlated with support for Democratic candidates.
But in findings that again confirm little difference between voters in developing countries and those in the US, they also find that “this growing discontent with democracy has been accompanied by increasing polarisation in many countries. When polarisation is high, voters have a strong preference for their favourite candidate, which makes it costly for them to punish an incumbent by voting for a challenger. Incumbents exploit this lack of credible punishment by manipulating the democratic process in their favour and dismantling checks and balances. Many citizens prefer to tolerate violations of democratic rules by co-partisans as long as cherished policies are delivered.”
The only caveat in applying this to the US is that toleration for violations of democratic rules is predicated as much on the expectation that designated enemies are being vilified and attacked, either rhetorically or via a corrupted criminal justice system (“lock her up”), as on the expectation that “cherished policies” that might offer benefits for particular classes of voters are delivered.
Seen from the Trump perspective, the study suggests he’s going about the dismantling of US democracy the right way. For decades, Republicans have sought to undermine US democracy via voter suppression, with varying levels of success. But merely focusing on the vertical accountability mechanism is problematic, as the experience of developing countries shows: to properly suppress democracy, the judicial system and independent government institutions must be brought to heel, and the media and civil society must be at least cowed and ideally turned into supporters.
As the paper also suggests, democracy is a habit. In countries that get out of the habit, citizens’ enthusiasm for it lessens and weakens. Once lost, it might be a long time before it is regained, especially if those institutions of horizontal and diagonal accountability aren’t restored first.
About the author
Bernard Keane is Crikey’s politics editor. Before that he was Crikey’s Canberra press gallery correspondent, covering politics, national security and economics. Got a tip? Contact him securely on Signal at @Bernard_Keane.66.
