Demoracy Isn't Built on One Election Alone ... And Certainly Not in Iraq

Samuel Issacharoff, in the Wash Post (1-23-05):

By itself, the election is a milestone. But it is not the key to their country's democratic legitimacy. The lasting success of democracies lies not in seeing that the will of the majority is expressed through the ballot box, but by two more long-standing factors: first, a commitment by a nation's elites that a victorious electoral coalition will not use its hold on power to exact revenge on the losers; and second, proof that the people can vote their leaders out as well as vote them in.

The history of the 20th century is littered with the remains of elections that augured neither democracy nor the rule of law. The entire Soviet empire was enamored of show elections in which every citizen was given the privilege of voting for the winner -- and only the winner. Fascist and corporatist regimes would routinely invoke the plebiscite to crown the claimed rule of the people, a tool used by Hitler to consolidate power in the 1930s. Post-colonial regimes in countries such as the Central African Republic or more recently Zimbabwe would hold elections only to see the victors proclaim themselves rulers for life -- what the British ex-colonialists would sneeringly call "one man, one vote, one time." What's more, all these oppressive regimes would hold their elections pursuant to constitutions that stood as paeans to human dignity.

For most Iraqis, the act of voting alone is understandably a major event, as their country has not had a meaningful election since 1953. Assuming that the elections are held across most of the country, that they are not fraudulent and that the majority prevails, most would conclude that democracy, at least in some rudimentary fashion, has been established. While elections may be necessary to a democracy, though, they are by no means sufficient.

The dirty secret about democratic processes is that they come into being in a decidedly undemocratic fashion. Before any election can be held, there must be ground rules that determine what the elections are for, and formal institutional structures that will be filled by the elections.