Human Rights Maps (101): Governance in Africa

The Ibrahim Index provides a comprehensive ranking of African countries according to governance quality. It measures the delivery of public goods and services to citizens by government and non-state actors and uses indicators across four main pillars: safety and rule of law (murder rate, corruption etc.); participation and human rights; sustainable economic opportunity (fiscal policy, free markets and inflation); and human development (education and health care). Together those constitute a proxy for the quality of the processes and outcomes of governance. The following map shows the scores for 2007/2008 (dark blue for low scores to dark red for countries that are better governed):

(there’s an interactive version here and here)

Here’s the ranking for 2010:

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Careful with the data before 2006; there are some methodological problems with those. Also, don’t forget that these are country aggregates and that there may be huge regional differences within countries (a country that scores very badly overall may have regions that do relatively well, and vice versa).

More maps on issues related to governance are here (other posts about governance are here). More maps about human rights in general are here.

Related Articles

• 2010 Ibrahim Index shows a ‘mixed picture’ of African governance (one.org)
• African progress threatened by ‘democratic recession’ (theglobeandmail.com)
• Africa rights advances ‘reversed’ (bbc.co.uk)
• An index of African governance: A rum old mix (economist.com)

Why Do Countries Become/Remain Democracies? Or Don’t? (8): The Resource Curse

I’ve written before on the so-called resource curse: the fact that some countries with lots of natural resources tend to do worse than countries with less resource wealth, worse in two respects: less economic growth and prosperity and less political stability and respect for basic rights.

I’ve also tried to list some of the possible reasons why reliance on natural resources inhibits development, political and institutional stability, anti-corruption efforts and legal protection for human rights.

Now, the important thing to stress here is that reliance on resources can lead to negative consequences, but doesn’t necessarily have to. Not all resource-rich countries are “cursed”. There’s a paper here arguing

that the natural resource curse burdens non-democracies, but countries with better democratic institutions are not corrupted by such endowments. For governments accountable to their citizens, resources can be a blessing.

The figure below, from the same paper, plots a measure of resource dependence against the Political Risk Service’s corruption index (all data for 1990) – corruption being an indicator of the resource curse. The figure does not demonstrate that there’s a linear relationship between higher levels of corruption (lower index value on the y-axis) and natural resources (higher value on the x-axis). The fitted line does have a slight rightward slope, but the dispersion of countries is very wide. Norway and Iraq are more or less on the same level of resources, but on opposite extreme of corruption, and the same is true for many other countries.

So, natural resources do not produce corruption or a resource curse in any mechanical or deterministic way. Some third element is necessary for the curse to take place. The paper cited above argues

that strong democratic institutions help to moderate the effect of natural resources on corruption. In figures [below], we split the sample into democratic and non-democratic countries. These suggest that the negative relationship between natural resources and the corruption index prevails in the sample of non-democratic countries but not in the sample of democratic countries… the relationship between natural resource rent and corruption depends on the quality of the democratic institutions… These findings imply that resource-rich countries have a tendency to be corrupt, because resource windfalls encourage their governments to engage in rent seeking. However, history shows that countries discovering natural resources after they have established well-functioning democratic institutions tend to handle the scourge of corruption much better.

More on the related topic of good governance.

The Causes of Human Rights Violations (14): The Influence of Democracy on Human Rights

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I’ve stated many times before (here and here for example) that I believe human rights and democracy are interdependent and cannot be properly understood if they are separated from one another. A democracy without human rights, without for example the freedom to speak and to organize, is not really a democracy, and the system of human rights is incomplete when political rights – i.e. rights which ground democracy – are left out. Rights and democracy are prerequisites for each other. What use is the right to vote if people don’t have the right to speak, to have an education etc.? And what use is the right to speak if you’re not allowed to vote? (See here). And there’s a dynamic aspect to this: a certain level of protection for human rights will lead to the development of (a stronger) democracy; and, vice versa, a certain level of development of democracy leads to better protection of human rights. It’s the latter point that I want to deal with in the current post.

Why do I assume that more democracy leads to better human rights protection? For several reasons. Democratic rulers know that they can’t get away with repression. They’ll be voted out if they try, or, worse, they’ll suffer the consequences of the rule of law, imposed on them by other branches of power in a system of checks and balances and separation of powers. Democracies also have powerful non-violent mechanisms for dispute settlement. And, finally, democracies need human rights to function adequately, so they have an added incentive to respect them.

However, all this isn’t just my personal assumption. Most of the political science literature supports the statement that democratic political systems decrease rights violations and repression (see here for an overview). What the literature doesn’t agree on is the pattern of the influence of democracy on rights. There are mainly 3 models doing the rounds: a linear one, an inverted u-shape model, and a threshold model.

1. Linear model

This model, which is the most popular one, states that every step towards democracy is a step away from repression and rights violations (perhaps with “diminishing returns” for human rights once democracy has reached a certain – high – level of development, in which case the linear pattern would be slightly bended downwards, as in the image below).

linear influence of democracy on human rights

2. Inverted U-shape model

This model states that well-developed democracies do indeed offer better protection of human rights, but it also states that very authoritarian regimes are also not characterized by high levels of repression since these regimes enjoy such a high level of regime security – perhaps through previous repression – that repression is no longer necessary. This model is also called MMM or “more murder in the middle”. Regimes in the middle are unstable, mixed, and perhaps in a transition to democracy or to strict authoritarianism, and therefore may feel it is necessary to use repression.

inverted u-shape influence of democracy on human rights

3. Threshold model

This model, contrary to the first one, states that not every step in the development of democracy improves the rights situation. Only after democracy has reached a certain level of maturity (a “tipping point”) will repression diminish.

threshold influence of democracy on human rights

Examples

Examples of model 1 are here and here. Other examples are cited here. Examples of model 2 are here and here. An example of model 3 is here.

Bottom-line?

So, which one is closest to reality? Difficult to say. Much depends on the data used, but still more on the definitions. All 3 models have some intuitive appeal, but only if use different definitions. Model 2 for example is convincing, but only if we limit “repression” and “rights violations” to attacks on physical integrity rights. A well-established and very authoritarian regime will probably not need to go to such extremes. On the other hand, a weak authoritarian regime, threatened by a strong internal (democratic) opposition will be more likely to use force and violence. But all other human rights, apart from the physical integrity rights, are still heavily violated in a “safe” authoritarian regime. So it’s a bit dubious to say that such regimes are not “repressive”.

Why Do Countries Become/Remain Democracies? Or Don’t? (5): The Aid Curse, or the Negative Effect of International Development Aid on Democracy

(source, INDONESIA Meulaboh, Aceh, Northern Sumatra: Indonesian army (TNI) soldiers unload aid from an American helicopter following the tsunami which struck South Asia in 2004, Photographer © Patrick Brown/Panos Pictures)

Via Bill Easterly’s blog, I discovered this paper on the so-called “aid curse“: just as dependence on natural resources has a negative effect on the quality of a country’s governance and democracy (a phenomenon called the resource curse), so has international development aid (or official development aid, ODA), especially in countries which depend heavily on aid (and in which aid represents a large percentage of GDP).

This is surprising, because one of the aims of international development aid is to bolster the quality of governance, directly through aid targeted at this objective, or indirectly on the assumption that better education, health care etc. will ultimately lead to better governance.

It seems now that there is a correlation (and perhaps even a causal link) between high levels of aid and low levels of democracy. The explanation is that foreign aid , like the revenue of natural resources, provides an opportunity for governments and leaders to appropriate funds illegitimately. And, because they benefit from aid, they will try to exclude other groups from power. This obviously destroys democratic institutions or makes it more difficult to establish them.

Foreign aid also reduces the need for a system of taxation. And without such a system, it’s a lot more difficult to construct a well-functioning government, and it’s less likely that forces for representation take root (historically, the principle of “no taxation without representation” has promoted democracy). When a government doesn’t depend on taxes for its revenues, then it will have less incentives to seek accountability.

These graphs from the paper show how the levels of democracy in countries decrease while the levels of aid (as official development aid – ODA - over GDP) increase:

None of this proves that we should give less aid to developing countries. Probably the opposite is true. What it proves is that aid is more than just sending money. Donors should check what happens to their money, should target the money, and should bypass the “sticky fingers” in government as much as possible. To some extent, donors should also make aid conditional on democratic reform because this reform is the way to avoid aid inefficiency. However, when doing so, they should be careful not to put the cart before the horse: one of the goals of aid is precisely democratization.

Human Rights Maps (28): Debt Relief and the HIPC Initiative

The Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative (HIPC), set up in 1996, aims to reduce the debt of the poorest countries in the world. Poor countries are eligible if they face unsustainable debt and if they agree to follow certain policies of good governance as defined by the World Bank and the IMF.

More on the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative.

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The Causes of Human Rights Violations (11): Failed States

Arkan, warlord in ex-Yugoslavia, gunned down in 2000

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A state that is too powerful will violate human rights. But in many cases it is the absence of state power that leads to rights violations. A failed state, a state whose government is extremely weak or non-existent and has no control over what is happening in its territory, doesn’t actively violate rights, but neither is it able to play its constitutional role as a safeguard and protector of rights. The courts aren’t able to punish rights violations, the police don’t enforce the law and the judicial verdicts, the government administration isn’t able to provide education and health care etc. (There’s a post here on the importance of both state forbearance and active engagement in the protection of human rights).

Rights violations are horizontal as well as vertical; they take place between citizens and not only between citizens and the state. Hobbes has famously warned against state failure and the resulting “state of nature” in which man is like a beast to his fellow-man. The state is a necessary institution,

• both as a “zoo-keeper” holding an effective monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force within its borders, a monopoly not undermined by the presence of warlords, paramilitary groups or an insurgency,
• and as a provider of services such as education, health, poverty reduction etc.

Both types of active engagement are required for the realization of human rights. Even Ronald Reagan – who famously said that government is not the solution to our problems but rather the problem itself - admitted that government is the safeguard of human rights (although he probably had a somewhat simplistic and restrictive interpretation of human rights).

Libertarians and anarchists haven’t come up with any serious arguments against state actions in the field of human rights (all they managed to do was to restrict the notion of human rights). The arguments that

• it is the state that makes bad people
• man is a “noble savage” corrupted by society and the state (Rousseau)

have been thoroughly contradicted by the events in some of the world’s failed states. This is the failed states top 10 in 2007 according to Foreign Policy:

1. Sudan
2. Iraq
3. Somalia
4. Zimbabwe
5. Chad
6. Ivory Coast
7. D.R. Congo
8. Afghanistan
9. Guinea
10. Central African Republic

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The complete list of states is here. Each nation is given an overall score based on 12 criteria:

• mounting demographic pressures
• massive movement of refugees and internally displaced peoples
• legacy of vengeance-seeking group grievance
• chronic and sustained human flight (“brain drain”)
• uneven economic development along group lines
• sharp and/or severe economic decline (e.g. failure to pay salaries of government employees and armed forces)
• criminalization and delegitimization of the state
• progressive deterioration of public services
• widespread violation of human rights
• security apparatus as “state within a state”
• rise of factionalized elites
• intervention of other states or external actors

Brookings has a comparable index of state weakness.

The absence of an effective monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force, proven by the activity of warlords, paramilitary groups, an insurgency or a civil war, is not the only criterion to assess the failure of a state. Extremely high crime rates, extreme political corruption, judicial ineffectiveness, and military interference in politics can also indicate state failure or state collapse.

Noam Chomsky

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Noam Chomsky suggests that state failure is a deliberate U.S. foreign policy objective, notwithstanding the publicly asserted policy of democracy promotion. He even claims that the biggest failed state is the U.S. itself, as it is apparently not able to provide good health care and education, but does routinely torture and flout international law.

Here’s a link to the related topic of good governance.

The Causes of Human Rights Violations (8): Lack of Good Governance

Bad governance is a cause of underdevelopment, poverty, war and human rights violations. Major donors and international financial institutions are increasingly basing their aid and loans on the condition that the recipient countries reform their systems so that these conform to the requirements of good governance.

Good governance means a good way to take and implement government decisions (corporate governance is the way to take and implement decisions in a company, but that’s another topic). When judging whether governance is good or bad one has to look at:

• the way decisions are taken and implemented
• the structures and rules that govern the decision making and implementing process
• the people involved
• the decisions themselves
• the outcome and consequences of the decisions.

The focus is both on what is done and on the way it is done.

Criteria for judging governance

The criteria used to judge governance are the following (some are partially overlapping):

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1. Is the government accountable or is there no way to criticize it, to replace it or to correct it?
2. Is the process of decision-making and implementation transparent or is it hidden from public criticism? Is information freely and directly accessible to those who will be affected by decisions?
3. Is the process of decision-making and implementation responsive to the needs of the citizens or does it follow other needs (such as business needs, international requirements, selfish needs…) and ignores or misrepresents the needs of the people?
4. Is the process of decision-making and implementation inclusive, just and fair? Are the needs of the most vulnerable taken into account? Do all the members of society feel that they have an equal stake in it, or do some feel excluded, left out, treated unfairly or discriminated?
5. Is the process of decision-making and implementation effective and efficient? Does it produce the results that meet the needs of society or results that are demanded by an elite? Does it deliver rapid service or are the procedures slow and cumbersome? Does it make the best use of resources or is it wasteful and time consuming? Does it make use of natural resources in a sustainable way and a way that protects the environment?
6. Does the process of decision-making and implementation follow the rule of law or is it arbitrary? Are decisions based on enforceable rules that apply equally to all? Are these rules enforced by an independent judiciary and an impartial and incorruptible police force?
7. Is the process of decision-making and implementation participatory or is it exclusive? Does it respect equality and non-discrimination? Is the participation ad hoc or organized and structured?
8. Is the process of decision-making and implementation oriented towards consensus, towards mediation of and compromise between different interests, or is it divisive?

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The concept of good governance is therefore not limited to the government, but to the whole of society, including the effects of government on society and the input of society in government.

The criteria to judge governance are universal, but it is important to take into account local circumstances, historical “baggage” (like previous regimes, colonialism etc.), a country’s position in the international system etc.

Good governance, human rights, and democracy

Many of these criteria can be expressed in the language of human rights and democracy. I’ve tried to put this in the following table (click on the image to enlarge):

Indicators of bad governance

• Corruption
• Human rights violations
• Lack of democracy
• Inefficient government bodies, long delays in judicial verdicts or other government decisions, waste of resources, large budgets, overstaffing…
• Environmental degradation
• Resource curse
• Poverty
• Civil war or war
• Discrimination or inequality
• Underdeveloped legal institutions
• etc.

More information and country reports are here.

Human Rights Facts (7): Human Development Index

I’ve written about the Human Development Index before on this blog, but only casually. This post is meant to give a more in-depth explanation of the concept.

The word “development” as it is used in terms such as “the developed and developing (or underdeveloped) world”, “international development aid” etc. refers to an evolution or process towards greater quality of life for humans, both physically and spiritually. It encompasses economic growth, health care, education, equality, disaster preparedness, infrastructure, human rights, governance, environment etc.

The process is usually understood as an international one, whereby countries and communities are assisted by others and by the international community as represented in international institutions such as the UN, the World Bank, the IMF etc. Non-governmental organizations (NGO’s) also play an important role.

In 2000, the United Nations declared eight “Millennium Development Goals” (MDG) to be achieved by 2015 or 2020 according to measurable targets and defined indicators:

The measurement of development and of the progress of development is a difficult and complex problem, given the many aspects of development as cited above. Some aspects of the measurement include:

• National GDP
• Literacy rates
• Life expectancy
• Infant mortality rates
• Gini coefficient
• HIV infection rates
• Number of doctors per capita
• Freedom scores
• Governance scores
• Number of PhD’s
• Number of newspapers or other publications
• etc.

While each component of development is relatively easy to measure (given adequate national statistics), their aggregation and relative weighting is complex and controversial. Hence it is difficult to measure a country’s overall development rate. A simplified and widely accepted overall measurement is the “Human Development Index” (HDI). The HDI combines measures of life expectancy, literacy, educational attainment, and GDP per capita for countries, so only 4 of several possible development measures, which is why some have called the HDI a “crude” measurement. The index was developed in 1990 by Mahbub ul Haq, Sir Richard Jolly, Gustav Ranis and Lord Meghnad Desai.

The following 2 graphs show the HDI in 2002 and 2007:

This graph shows the different levels of progress by continent:

Human Rights Facts (4): Conditional Development Aid

In the previous post, I cited some numbers on development aid. Many donors have started to attach conditions to the aid they give (much like the conditions that are often attached to loans, see this post on foreign debt). Some of these conditions are respect for human rights, democratic government and good governance.

Indeed, development is not a goal in itself. Life is more than economic wellbeing. Economic wellbeing is an important step on the way to a life that is more than just decent survival, a more profound way of life, a cultural life and public life, for example, which are only possible if the economics are right.

Economic development must also make it possible to enjoy human rights and democracy that in turn, just like development but often only after development, can help us to have a more meaningful life. Underdevelopment is traditionally and correctly identified as one of the major causes of rights violations and authoritarianism. Development aid must promote economic development, which in turn allows us to have a better life and to eliminate some of the causes of the violations of those rights that we also need for a better and more profound way of life.

Given this process – development aid promotes development, which is an intermediary step towards democracy, human rights and a more profound way of life that is more than survival – it is natural to use development aid as an instrument for the promotion of human rights and democracy.

If development aid is an instrument for the promotion of human rights, then it would be self-contradictory to give development aid without requiring human rights reforms. Since development is a step on the way to democracy and human rights, it is useless to give development aid if this aid will never benefit democracy and rights. Or, even worse, if it helps dictators cling to power. Efforts to protect human rights and the principles of democracy should come first before being allowed to receive development aid, preferential treatment on the level of trade tariffs, debt rescheduling, military assistance or other kinds of aid. See for example art. 130u (2) of the Maastricht Treaty, that requires European Union policy in the field of development to “contribute to the general objective of developing and consolidating democracy and the rule of law, and to that of respecting human rights and fundamental freedoms”.

However, one should not exaggerate with conditionality. In some cases, people will die if we wait with development aid until their governments have protected human rights and democracy. But it should be made clear to these governments that the West doesn’t sign blank checks. Without democracy and human rights, it is likely that these countries will remain in economic limbo. So conditional development aid will render itself superfluous in the long term.

Conditional aid implies the requirement to produce efforts to protect human rights and to install democracy. It does not require immediate results. Human rights and democracy need decades to be built successfully. Aid should then be given when substantial progress has been achieved, and withheld when no progress has been achieved. The conditions must be clear, progress indicators must be measurable and must be measured.

The Causes of Poverty (6): Foreign Debt

Together with aid, fair and free trade and good governance (including democratic government, respect for human rights, curbing corruption etc.), debt relief is the answer to the development problems of third world countries, especially in Africa.

Much of the foreign or external debt of these countries is unpayable, and exacts a heavy toll. Cancellation of debt can free resources because poor countries have to pay a lot servicing their debt (not so much repaying their debt but paying interest rates on the money they owe). If they don’t have to pay this servicing anymore, the same money can then be used to expand health and education services, improve infrastructure etc.

“Can”, because there is no guarantee that the often corrupt governments of these countries will do so. They can use the money available because of debt write-offs for other purposes. That is why debt cancellation is often conditional. The main lenders of money, the international institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF (“multilateral creditors” which lend money at relatively low commercial rates), and the Paris Club, an informal group of rich lender nations (“bilateral creditors”), impose conditions such as good governance before agreeing to cancellation. They argue that only countries which have met these conditions can guarantee that the money will be spent on development. They also worry that debt relief might be seen as a perverse reward for countries that lack financial discipline.

Others charge that conditionality violates the sovereignty of borrower countries and imposes programmes that may create problems for the local economies and for the legitimacy of the governments. They also claim that countries can only establish good governance and fight corruption when they have the money to do so. Any relief must therefore be unconditional. The truth is probably in the middle somewhere, which means that some conditions should be imposed but not too strictly.

The Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative was launched in 1996 by the World Bank and IMF to provide relief to poor countries from excessive debt burdens. HIPC identified about 40 countries, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa, as potentially eligible to receive debt relief. Countries deemed eligible have to meet HIPC targets for good governance, curb corruption and fraud, open up their economies and liberalize their international trade. Although it has proveded debt relief which is worth billions of $ to many countries, it has still not produced a lasting solution to the debt crisis. Even HIPC countries are still spending more on debt than healthcare, for example.

Although today all parties agree on the necessity of debt cancellation (but not on the method of cancellation), it’s not useless to recall the origins of much of this debt. Poor countries suffer from so-called “odious debt”, the consequence of past or current regimes borrowing money not for the development of their country but for the conduct of wars for example.

In international law, odious debt is a legal theory which holds that debt incurred by a regime for purposes that do not serve the interest of the nation should not be enforceable. Such debts are thus considered by this doctrine to be personal debts of the regime that incurred them and not debts of the state. (Wikipedia)

And even the debt that was initially incurred for beneficial purposes was often diverted by corrupt and undemocratic regimes, institutions and individuals. So, these two facts put together makes it very difficult to maintain that this debt should be serviced.

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