Western Democracy Has Failed in South Sudan – Time to Consider Alternatives!

By John Young, PhD.

Introduction

If South Sudan’s independence was the result of a Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) military victory over the Sudanese army then the SPLA or ideally the people could have determined the form of government and the constitution that would best meet the needs of the country.  But South Sudan’s independence was the result of a US brokered peace process conducted by the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the form of government was prescribed by the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) and that embodied Western notions of democracy and governance.  That these alien notions have not found a good fit in South Sudan is not a surprise because US attempts to promote democracy in Afghanistan, Iraq, and a host of other countries have also failed.  

The difference between South Sudan and Afghanistan and Iraq is that unlike the latter countries the South Sudanese were favourably disposed to the Americans, their values, and their forms of governance, and they hoped that their country would benefit by following US experience.  But it has been glaringly evident for some years now that the experiment with an imported version of democracy has not worked.  Trying to transplant systems of governance developed over hundreds of years in the West to South Sudan which does not have a supporting environment has fostered chronic instability and proved to be a disaster.  If South Sudan is to have a system of governance that works for the people and has the support of the people, then it will have to look to its own resources and history and not depend on foreign imports.

What is Western Democracy?

People use the word ‘democracy’ all the time, but with few exceptions they have little understanding of what that word means in practice in the West.  For most people democracy means free and fair elections, civilian rule (the current demand of protestors in Sudan), political equality, governments that represent the will of the people, rule of law, and human rights.  Maybe they learned as I did in grade school the famous words of President Abraham Lincoln that democracy is rule of the people, by the people, and for the people.  Beautiful sentiments, but this is not how the Western theorists of democracy understand how it operates as a system of governance.

The current Western understanding of democracy has its theoretical origins in the elite model of democracy put forward by Joseph Schumpeter in his 1942 Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy.  Schumpeter held that democracy does not involve popular sovereignty and social justice but is simply an institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions, and thus it places form or mechanism above the actual content of democracy.  Samuel Huntington is probably the foremost American political scientist of his generation and his views about democracy closely followed Schumpeter.  

In his 1991 study, The Third Wave:  Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century Huntington held that free and fair elections are the essence of democracy and dismissed ‘fuzzy norms such as honesty, equal participation and power, and openness as being key to democracy’.  Not concerned with popular empowerment, elections were foremost a means to ensure the peaceful and orderly circulation of elites and whether those elites betrayed the trust of their constituents, refused to share power, or operated secretly was not of interest and did not challenge his definition of democracy.  Huntington also thought that democracy could be imposed from above even if the people did not want it, and that democracy should broadly conform to US practices.  He was a strong supporter of President Bush’s invasion of Iraq and the objective of bringing democracy to the Middle East.  We all know how that project turned out.

American governments do not recognize the illogical of imposing their democracy on others or the legitimacy of those who resist it.  Nor do American governments accept that their version of democracy is problematic when imposed on countries of different social and historical backgrounds like South Sudan, however ethnocentric that is.  There is little reason to think that the US will learn anything from its failures in Afghanistan, Iraq, and South Sudan because in the 1960s and 1970s it learned nothing from its disastrous and ultimately unsuccessful war to deny Vietnamese the right to national self-determination.  The response of American elites was to blame the US defeat on anti-war activism instead of recognizing that the active engagement of citizens protesting helped end a national tragedy.  Indeed, in a highly influential report by the Trilateral Commission, Huntington concluded that the central problem facing US democracy stemmed from ‘an excess of democracy’ and called for the restoration of ‘the prestige and authority of central government institutions’ (Trilateral Commission, 1975, p. 113).  In other words, democracy had to be saved from itself by a reassertion of elite authority and that is indeed what happened and public activism declined.

Elections as a Critical Component of Western Democracy:  the US and Sudan

Based on the understanding of democratic elections as developed by Schumpeter and Huntington it is insightful to consider the recent US presidential elections and the 2010 Sudan national election.  In 2016 the Republican candidate, Donald Trump, won the election, but the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, refused to accept the result and claimed that Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin rigged the election in favour of Trump.  Clinton, the Democratic Party, the big technology companies, and much of the US media continue to make that claim, but five years later there have been no arrests, much less convictions for this heinous crime, and a three-year US Senate Commission investigation headed by Robert Mueller concluded there had been no Russian collusion with the Trump campaign in the election.  

In November 2020 Donald Trump faced off with Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, and after Biden was declared victor, Trump and most Republicans have continued to claim that the election was rigged, and they were cheated.  And in the land of free speech, You Tube banned anyone from claiming that Biden’s election was fraudulent, something it did not do when Democrats claimed that Trump’s presidential victory was fraudulent.  The US holds up its democracy as a model for the world, but the last two elections did not meet the minimal requirements as specified by Schumpeter and Huntington of a peaceful circulation of elites.   

Elections in the West are a public spectacle that are carefully coordinated by party machines, funded by the rich, and party messages are carried to the public by powerful media companies.  There has also been a growing link between the dominant parties, Democrats and Republicans, media and technology companies, and the intelligence agencies.  Such cooperation ensures that political debate is restricted to a narrow range of subjects which are shaped by these bodies.  Alternative perspectives are rarely heard, and while much is made of differences between the major US parties, in fact there is a bipartisan consensus on most issues, particularly those related to national security and foreign policy.  Elections have the effect, if not the intent, of creating the illusion of popular control of government, but they fail to genuinely express the general will of the public.

The last national election that South Sudanese participated in was the 2010 Sudan election.  The election was pressed on the National Congress Party (NCP) and the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement (SPLM) by the Troika of the US, UK, and Norway during the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD).  IGAD is ostensibly a regional organization and thus designed to provide ‘African solutions to African problems’, but it was conceived, funded, and is largely directed by the West.  As noted, the West gives a central place to elections in its understanding of democracy and elections were also held to be necessary to ensure the legitimacy of the peace process.  The elections went ahead despite interference of the media by both the NCP and SPLM, limited freedom of association, repression of non-government parties and civil society, the involvement of the security services, and the use of state bodies by both the NCP and SPLM to advance their campaign.   

As the political advisor to The Carter Center which was an official observer of the 2010 elections, the 2011 elections in Southern Kordofan, and the 2011 referendum on secession I quickly learned that acceptance of the election did not involve people empowerment or determining the will of the people, and instead it focused almost entirely on the form and not the content or outcome of the exercise.  This approach mirrors the Western understanding of democracy which also assumes a technical focus.  The key to gaining the approval of the observer missions is by heeding the technical rules and only cheating when you are unlikely to get caught.  

In that respect the NCP was far more effective at cheating than the SPLM.  The best cheating is carried out during the voter registration because election observation missions do not have the resources to follow this exercise, particularly in a large country with limited transport and communications like Sudan.  The NCP concentrated on fixing the voter registration and for the most part got away with it.  However, one of the Carter Center observers managed to get hold of a video of about six or seven cute little girls aged about five or six happily waving their voter registration cards provided by the NCP.  Meanwhile, the SPLM and its security services were reduced to stuffing and stealing ballot boxes.  For example, during the hard-fought campaign between Angelina Teny and Taban Deng for the governorship of Unity State, four citizens of the state arrived at my hotel with large bags of election ballots for Angelina that had been thrown out the window.  

But rigging was not the only problem of the 2010 elections.  Salva Kiir as leader of the SPLM was expected to run against al-Bashir for the presidency of Sudan.  But if he lost against al-Bashir he would be out in the cold and another SPLM official would lead the southern Sudan government, and if he was elected president of Sudan, it would be difficult to then campaign for the secession of southern Sudan which he clearly supported.  While the SPLM membership almost certainly favoured unity because by 2010 most party members were from the north, after Dr. John Garang died in a still unexplained helicopter crash in 2005 southern leaders of the party were almost all in favour of secession, and it was their view that carried.  Salva therefore did not run against al-Bashir for the presidency and instead an SPLM loyalist from the north, Yasir Arman, served as the party’s candidate.  

But Yasir’s assignment was also problematic because he unexpectedly performed well in the campaign and might have defeated al-Bashir on a second ballot, and again that would have been difficult for the SPLM to then argue the necessity of southern Sudan seceding.  As a result, Yasir as a loyal member of the SPLM dutifully withdrew from the campaign.  The SPLM leadership needed an al-Bashir victory which it got, and this set the stage for the 2011 referendum and its massive vote for the secession of southern Sudan.  The duplicity was striking.  While both the NCP and the SPLM officially favoured unity, the NCP was happy to see the last of southern Sudanese who threatened their Islamist agenda, while the southern Sudan SPLM leadership had turned its back on their long-time leader, Garang, and his vision of a united New Sudan.  Indeed, the SPLM had spent its almost entire existence devoted to winning the support of Sudanese in both the southern and northern parts of the country so it could introduce its program of radical reform and when that objective was within reach, it opted for independence.

But the duplicity was not restricted to the NCP and SPLM because the conduct of the elections placed the international observers in a quandary – if they ruled that the election was unfair, and there was considerable evidence to indicate that was the case, the peace agreement might collapse, and the parties return to war.  But if the monitors endorsed the election the international community would be making clear that its concern with security and keeping the peace process on track trumped its commitment to democracy.  While the internationals forced the unwilling NCP and SPLM to hold an election, the parties turned the tables and left the internationals with seemingly little option but to endorse what was clearly a flawed process. 

The ultimate result of the elections was two-fold.  First, it left the NCP in almost complete control of the north and the SPLM in almost complete control of the south and hence the country was effectively divided into separate entities even before the referendum on secession.  Second, by sanctifying the elections IGAD and the international observers gave legitimacy to Presidents al-Bashir and Salva and the authoritarian regimes they led.  Contrary to the expectations of Western theorists, democracy was not realized as a result of the 2010 elections; instead the elections made clear the collusion of elites in the north and south of Sudan to undermine the popular will.  Elections which were supposed to epitomize democracy failed South Sudan, and Salva, elected president of the autonomous region of southern Sudan, went on without challenge to become the president of the independent state of South Sudan.

If elections are the key element in democracy that was not evident in the 2010 election and independent South Sudan has not had another election.  The 2010 election did not usher in a democratic transformation in South Sudan.  The executive had a stranglehold over state power and despite many political parties, Salva was correct in considering most of them ‘brief case parties’ with limited constituencies whose leaders are largely devoted to self-enrichment.  The fundamental task of the National Assembly is to make the executive accountable, but because there have not been any elections since 2010 and they were held in a united Sudan, the Assembly is an appointed body.  Moreover, the Assembly lost much of its credibility when it ignored citizens being slaughtered almost within sight of its hearings during the Juba massacre of mid-December 2013 which ignited South Sudan’s civil war.

Democracy Versus National Self-Determination

Most of the popular political and armed struggles in the Horn of Africa have been over national self-determination in opposition to ethnocratic governments.  Thus, the armed struggles of Eritreans which led to independence in 1993, the struggles of various nations under the banner of the Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) to overthrow of the Derg, the struggles of the people of Somaliland, the revolt of Anyana during Sudan’s first civil war, the later SPLM led struggle against successive governments in Sudan, and the armed struggles of the peoples of the Nuba Mountains and Southern Blue Nile were all in support of national self-determination.  Moreover, the millions of participants in these struggles understood them to be democratic struggles.  

But the Western approach to national self-determination has been at best ambiguous and at worst it does not recognize that struggles for national self-determination are democratic struggles.  The first major Western leader to call for national self-determination was US President Woodrow Wilson, and he took his appeal to the post-World War I Versailles conference in 1919.  However, when the future president of Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh, an ardent admirer of the US, tried to meet with Wilson in Versailles to plead the case for Vietnam’s right to self-determination, he learned that for the US president, national self-determination only applied to the civilized people of Europe.  Indeed, Japan sent the only non-white delegation to Versailles, but left before it was completed after attempts to overcome the conference’s racist measures were defeated, while the American civil rights campaigner, W. E. B. Dubois, was the only black person to attend.

It was not the so-called democratic West, but the fledgling Soviet Union that granted national entities subjugated by the former Tsarist Empire the right to self-determination and encouraged the peoples of the Western colonies to struggle for their independence.  While the Versailles conference explicitly rejected the right of colonized people to self-determination, the largely ignored Baku Congress of 1920 organized by the Communist International and attended by more than 2000 delegates, 90% of whom were racialized, affirmed the right of all people to national self-determination and called for the end of empires (John Riddell, 2020).

National self-determination again came to the fore in the wake of World War II when the European powers were forced to accept de-colonization.  But not because of any democratic enlightenment.  Instead, after being devastated by the war the Europeans were too weak to oppose demands for self-determination and if they tried liberation movements would develop and likely be supported by the socialist bloc, further increasing the cost.  Added to this was the US interest in gaining unhindered economic access to the colonies, ensuring they sided with the West in the Cold War, and that the transition to independent statehood went smoothly.  This approach generally proved effective except in a minority of cases such as Algeria, Mozambique, and Angola where declining European colonial states refused to relinquish their powers, and indeed the socialist block came to their assistance.  

Vietnam served as the biggest Western assault on the right of national self-determination and not only were France and the US defeated while the Viet Minh under Ho Chi Minh came to power, but the war served to mobilize people globally against US imperialism, including a generation of activists in Sudan and Ethiopia.  Further undermining Western prestige, Ronald Reagan and Margret Thatcher supported the South African apartheid regime, thus denying the black majority the right to self-determination on the pretext that their opposition was part of the global struggle against Communism.  And for more than fifty years the US has been the principal backer of Israel, a settler state which denies self-determination to Palestinians.    

Decolonization signified both the end of formal European empires and the emergence of the US as the dominant world power but according to Kwane Nkrumah it was largely an illusion because colonial rule was replaced with neocolonialism which involved states having the outward trappings of international sovereignty, while their economic system and political policies continued to be directed from the metropoles.  Frantz Fanon went further and concluded that the rulers of neocolonial states did not derive their authority from the will of the people, but from the support of their former colonial masters and the international community.  The second-tier status of the former colonies in an international hierarchy of states was further reinforced by their marginal role in the global economy in which they provided raw materials for the industrial West.  

The Decline of Western Democracy

The 1776 American Revolution is correctly hailed as a major democratic achievement, but the leaders of the revolution were all wealthy white men, some of them slave owners, and they were opposed to granting the vote to white working-class men, Afro-Americans, and women.  Indeed, it is estimated that George Washington won the first US presidential vote when only 6% of the population were eligible to vote (Northern California Citizenship Project, 2004).  It was not until 1870 that Afro-American males were formally permitted to vote and not until 1919 that women grained the right to vote.  The civil rights movement of the 1960s was in large part in opposition to barriers still placed on Afro-Americans to voting, and Republican led states are still accused of instituting barriers to poor people voting.

But by the 1970s when it could be said that the vast majority of Americans could vote, the power of the vote had markedly declined.  Led by the US the West adopted neo-liberalism which involved the transfer of the authority and centrality of the state to the market, and this served to empower the classes and corporations that controlled the market and reduce the ability of citizens to influence government.  During the Cold War there were competing visions of democracy.  The socialist bloc emphasized economic democracy, which included economic equality, guaranteed jobs, good working conditions, overcoming regional economic disparities and the like, while the West emphasized elections, human rights, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press etc., all rights within the political sphere.  But even before the end of the Cold War, the West wanted to put to rest any notions of economic democracy which it associated with socialism and authoritarianism. 

The ascendency of the market and with it the emergence of a class of global billionaires, together with the waning role of the state has led to a decline in the percentage of people voting in elections in the West, particularly the lower classes and that leaves the state under the even greater influence of the wealthy.  The growing social dislocation and inequalities within and between states that neo-liberal policies produce is considered a necessary product of development and can be safely ignored.  

Neo-liberalism held that peripheral states must place the interests of the dominant global financial bodies above those of their welfare seeking people, a formula that was hard to reconcile with democratic accountability as it is popularly understood.  The various measures, international agreements, and institutions that came together to cement neo-liberalism were held to constitute a consensus – the Washington Consensus – except there was no consensus.  Indeed, as former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere, famously asked, ‘Who elected the IMF to be the ministry of finance for every country in the world?’ (Godfrey Mwakikagile, 2006, p. 27)  

Although South Sudan had enormous economic and regional disparities, the CPA committed to a regime which – befitting the dominance of neo-liberalism – did not include any attention to poverty alleviation, economic justice, or overcoming the inequalities that abounded in the country. It was assumed that to the extent these were matters of political concern that they would be resolved by the market. But apart from a small urban population and a handful of farmers in Equatoria that produced for the market, most South Sudanese are self-sufficient peasants, herders whose animals were raised to meet traditional needs, or were supported by the international aid agencies or their relatives in the West.  The country’s enormous wealth in oil and other resources has filled the foreign bank accounts of the elite but has done little to raise living standards.  

Conclusion and Recommendations

The development of an independent South Sudan was never going to be easy, but it was made irrevocably more difficult by adopting a foreign and largely US formulated notion of democracy instead of finding models within the diverse and rich cultures of the country.  Not only has the pursuit of the Western model of democracy in South Sudan proved to be a dead-end, but this version of democracy is now in crisis in the US.   For most of us who have grown up thinking of the US as a bastion of stability in a sea of unpredictability, it may be hard to accept that is no longer the case and even the mainstream media regularly publishes articles on the crisis of American democracy, the possibility of coups, insurgencies, of the US becoming a fascist state, and domestic terrorism.  The internal disarray has also reflected negatively on the US internationally as confirmed by a November 2021 Pew Research poll of seventeen advanced countries which found that only 17% of respondents considered the US democracy a good example for others to follow (Pew Research Center, 1 November 2021). 

Reforming governance in South Sudan must begin with giving citizens, and not just elites, a voice.  The primary focus of the peace process was on gaining the approval of internationally selected elites to various forms of power-sharing. This approach assumed that the problems of South Sudan could be equated with the concerns of these elites who could then build a peaceful state that realized popular demands for national self-determination and development.  But the South Sudanese elites failed the people and means must be found to engage the people in nation-building directly, in keeping with their own traditions.  While elections of some type may be employed, we have seen how elites in both the US and South Sudan have undermined the will of the people.  

In a country with the national, cultural, political, and economic diversity of South Sudan, the devolution of central state powers to subsidiary units is essential to meeting indigenous needs, ensuring a modicum of stability, and taking government to the people.  Or taking the city to the countryside as Garang put it.  Federalism is embedded in the 2018 peace agreement, so the issue is not whether to have a federal system, but rather the form it should take and how to get there and that is where the problems begin.  Foremost, the present South Sudanese state is dominated by the security services and its officials have an inside track on acquiring oil resource revenues, which constitute almost the entire economic basis of the country.  The security services also have a vested interested in blocking or undermining democratic initiatives.  

A devolution of state powers or even a system of confederalism is necessary to express the diversity of South Sudan, ensure stability, overcome systemic unequal development, and provide the basis for democratic governance.  But the devolved units must have genuine power and that means adequate budgets to provide the needed services, not simply employ staff which is presently the case.  And realistic budgets are dependent upon a major reduction in the security sector budget and a thorough-going Security Sector Reform which is a major challenge.  Devolving state powers needs careful consideration because without assessing the implications there is a danger they could aggravate the problem.  Like aid agencies, proposals for governance reform should proceed from the injunction of ‘do not harm’.

A crucial mechanism to disperse powers in society, undermine the grip of centralized states, and economically advance some of the weakest elements in society is the development and strengthening of lower class-based organizations.  This would involve legislative and political means to expand trade unions and associations of farmers, petty traders, especially women, boda-boda drivers, herders, and others. Such an approach not only fosters economic democracy but can counteract the many divisive tendencies within South Sudanese society and encourage unity.

Contrary to Western conceptions, for democracy to be meaningful it cannot be restricted to the political sphere.  Economic rights must be considered democratic rights and poverty alleviation and overcoming the gap between a poverty-stricken majority and a wealthy state linked elite must be the priority of governments in South Sudan.

Although marginalized by the SPLM the traditional authorities retain considerable legitimacy and given the poor performance of politicians at all levels of government in South Sudan their attributes should be recognized and means found to give them an expanded role in government.  Traditional leaders and elders have the best understanding of South Sudanese cultures, and it is through a dialogue with them, the general public, and the urban centred politicians that effective systems of governance based on South Sudanese experience and practices can be considered and developed

The education and experience of most South Sudanese is based on Western philosophies, practices, analyses, and models of government and the economy.  But their failures in South Sudan, throughout the non-Western world, and increasingly within the West itself, can no longer be ignored.  Corresponding to this we are witnessing a global change of power relations as the uni-polar post-World War II dominance of the US is ending and a multi-polar world is emerging.  These developments have enormous implications for South Sudan and emphasize the need for a re-thinking of how government and the economy should be organized.  

About the Author

John Young is a Canadian with a PhD in political science who has worked in the Horn of Africa since 1986 as a teacher, journalist, peace monitor, consultant, and academic. He has published two books, Peasant Revolution in Ethiopia: Tigray People’s Liberation Front 1975 to 1991 (Cambridge University Press, 1997) and The Fate of Sudan: Origins and Consequences of a Flawed Peace Process (Zed Books, 2012), as well as numerous articles on regional conflicts, peace processes, and governance.