There is no such concept as “full dictatorship” in scholarly literature

Feb 19, 2011 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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I doubt very much that the person who wrote last Sunday’s editorial is neatly acquainted with the complete terrain of political theory. This does not mean editors and commentators should not engage in political polemics.
And it is the right of an editor to use terms which he/she feels has acceptability in journalism. Political theory is another matter. The Sunday Stabroek opined that Guyana “never had a full dictatorship in the true sense of that term.” What is the true sense of the term, dictatorship? I hope that editor knows what it is.
The Stabroek News went on to explain that some letter-writers from the diaspora have been careless in applying the term dictatorship to the Jagdeo Government.
Two of those writers are very learned men – professors Nigel Westmaas (who as recent as December last year assigned the concept to his country’s government) and David Hinds. Obviously, the Stabroek News writer has no use for the scholar who popularised the theory of elected dictatorship, Fareed Zakaria
It was Ravi Dev in his subtle support for the PPP Government that set the trap for anti-government critics who labeled the Jagdeo presidency a dictatorship. First, he outlined what is dictatorship and he borrowed wholesale from textbooks in the fifties that drew their research from pre-war fascist Europe.
The features of dictatorship have undergone considerable mutation from when Hitler, Stalin, Franco and Mussolini ruled Western Europe. In other words, scholarship in the late 20th century had left Dev far behind. Dev knew this but he was trying to be smart. Secondly, Dev argued that dictatorship cannot spring from a government that was freely elected. Dev obviously ignored the seminal work of Zakaria.
Dev’s second point was weak because it has no basis in human nature. There is nothing in behavioural science that denies self-destruction. A government can come into power, become ruthless, violent and install a dictatorship.
Its chief architects can believe that they can still win an election. In ethnically driven countries it can happen. It did in the Balkans and a few former USSR Republics. It has happened in Guyana and Russia. It is outside the scope of this short viewpoint to adumbrate the outlines of Zakaria’s work.
Basically what Zakaria advises us to do is not to treat democracy as a complete process. Zakaria posits two processes at work for a government to achieve the description of being a free country – democracy and constitutional liberalism. The former is about how a government comes to power. The latter is about the mechanism the government uses to exercise power. The two are not integrated.
A freely elected administration can decapitate constitutional liberalism. I would like to think that the two founders of the Stabroek News – David De Caires and Miles Fitzpatrick – did acquaint themselves with an understanding of constitutional liberalism.
Let us quote Zakaria and there is no doubt in my mind that what is being reproduced here, De Caires and Fitzpatrick would have accepted in their early writings.
Here is Zakaria; “It (constitutional liberalism) refers to the tradition, deep in Western history that seeks to protect an individual’s autonomy and dignity against coercion…the term marries two closely connected ideas…it is liberal because it draws on the philosophical strain, beginning with the Greeks, that emphasizes individual liberty …it is constitutional because it rests on the tradition, beginning with the Romans, of the rule of law.”
See, Fareed Zakaria, “The Rise of Illiberal Democracy,” Foreign Affairs, Nov-Dec 1977 or his book on the same subject. No two countries are alike so dictatorship is a culture-based concept. Depending on the history of the territory, dictatorship can be accompanied by minimalist violence or in worse case scenarios, extreme cruelty.
The Nazis did allow the Red Cross to visit the Greek village of Distomo that they had massacred after some partisan attacks on their troops in June 10, 1944. So, were the Nazis all that bad? After all they did allow the Red Cross to do their investigation. One is going to end up in theoretical confusion if one selectively picks out what is bad from what is worse in authoritarian regimes and on that basis concludes that you have full dictatorship, half dictatorship.
It is best to describe the different kinds of dictatorship you have in the world. The Middle East have dictatorships some of which have features you don’t find in Guyana. On the other hand, Guyana has features of dictatorship that Arab rulers would not tolerate such as state involvement with deadly drug barons and sexual misconduct.

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