How to expose the "free election" scam

A country that holds free elections is a democracy, or close to it.  Right? 

It's easy to jump to that conclusion, and many of us (including government officials) do.  But that thought process skips three important questions that must all be answered "yes" before one can conclude that a so-called free election is actually free—as opposed to a skillfully-controlled scam. 

Given what's happening in Cuba these days (and China, and Russia, to name a few others), I thought it would be a good idea to re-listen to an expert on the subject of how politicians achieve and sustain political power.  I was right, it was a very good idea.  Here's the podcast titled "Democracies and Dictatorships," Russ Roberts's interview of NYU's expert, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita.  It's a one-hour fast track to understanding what really motivates politicians, and sustains them in (or removes them from) power.

By the way, here are the three questions.  If any one of them can be answered "no" then the election in question wasn't "free"—it was rigged. 

1. Was the press free to report to the public whatever they wanted?
2. Was the public free to assemble, to protest or support whatever they wanted?
3. Were the ballots counted by a truly independent, disinterested group?

Freedom of the press and freedom of assembly are essential; in their absence, elections are scams.  Food for thought as we think about what should happen in Cuba next. 

Don't miss the podcast.  It's a quick way to add a good BS-detector to one's cognitive tools. 

Comments

[anon.]

If you include within "freedom to assemble" the freedom to pool resources in order to amplify one's voice, then America's elections aren't particularly free. Our Byzantine system of campaign-finance regulations disqualifies us.

[Fuzz]

Given those criteria, it could be argued that the US elections of 2004 could be considered a "scam".

[Ken]

I thought of shooting our system down on the basis of "truly independent, disinterested group" doing the ballot counting.

[Jose]

Steve,

The questions you identified are good questions, but I think they dance around the heart of what I would consider to be a fully-functioning democracy. I would argue that a fully functioning democracy requires two theoretical components:

1. Regular elections where the population can choose representatives that can affect all policies of the nation, and;

2. The Rule of Law.

It seems to me that the three questions that you cited above are really just operationalized variables of the "Rule of Law" component above:

"1. Was the press free to report to the public whatever they wanted?
2. Was the public free to assemble, to protest or support whatever they wanted?
3. Were the ballots counted by a truly independent, disinterested group?"

In other words, the three questions above are simply real-world indicators to determine whether the Rule of Law actually existed for an election.

I think this is an important distinction, as we can envision an election which could satisfy all three of the questions proposed above, but still not be considered "fair and free" elections.

Let's consider the first prong of my proposed formulation:

"1. Regular elections where the population can choose representatives that can affect all policies of the nation..."

In Iran, for example, they can elect a President. However, the real power in Iran is the "Ruling Council," who installed themselves with Khomeini. These Ruling Council positions are unelected, and the decisions that they make on economic, domestic, foreign, and national security matters are unreviewable/unchangeable by any elected representatives. So even if Iran had elections for President that satisfied the three questions you proposed, I would argue that Iran would still not be a democracy b/c the elected representatives can't actually affect or change large portions of national policy.

Let's consider the second prong of my formulation:

"2. The Rule of Law"

Let's say that a country has elections where the voting booths are supposed to be open from 8 am to 6 pm. The ruling party then gets all their voters in between 8 am and 11 am, while the opposition expects their voters to come in b/w 3 and 6 pm, and have coordinated for voting drives during that time. Let's say that the ruling party then decides to close the voting polls unilaterally at noon. I would not consider this to be a fair and free democratic election, but it could satisfy the three questions that you posed - the free press was allowed to see this ocurring, and the ruling party did not place any restrictions on freedom of assembly.

In the end, I believe that three questions you proposed are three INDICATORS (operationalized variables) of whether the election was free and fair - ie, whether it satisfies the Rule of Law. That's because at core, the Rule of Law envisions that all sides will be treated equally, with the "rules of the game" agreed to in advance.

Thoughts?

Jose

[Chris B]

I think our focus on free elections comes from the fact that it is something we can help with. If Congo wants to hold an election,and they ask for our help, well we can monitor it, we can count the ballots etc. It is the one tangible piece of being a democracy that we can do SOMETHING measurable and concrete to aid in.

As Jose points out, and Steve makes evident in his post, the rule of law is far more important in actually being a democracy. Unfortunately, we (in the west) have eevr had any real success teaching the rule of law. It jst seems to be one of those things that a country has to develop on its own. So instead we help with elections and declare a country a democracy.

[Aaron]

I love the whole econtalk podcast series, and I'm listening to the one by the author of the Bottom Billion who points out that elections are easy to run, people like them (a way to gain power, even if just to loot the treasury) but a free election by itself is not really a useful thing. The institutional checks and balances are much harder and much more useful.