Stretching semantics for mischievous ends

A fraught political entity, inherently predisposed by the bankruptcy of its primordial birth, always stretches the semantic range of theories, concepts, and words, creating a new condition where same arguments end up undermining the very foundation that coined them, while supporting the cause against which they were instituted and fronted. I am talking about Meles Zenawi and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).

We have always known varnishing old or existing knowledge spheres, ideologies, and systems with fresh colours and marketing them as significant departures from dominant thinking regimes of any given time is the unmistakable attribute of novice intellectuals. We now know it is also the exclusive franchise of learned dictators who seek theoretical disguise to entrench dictatorship. These dictators hence fill hollow ideological jars with rebranded secondhand paradigms, made more alluring and malleable through bastardized and selective political and economic narratives that borrow from any and every tradition to justify profane ambitions of absolute and unending political power.

‘Paradigm shift’, ‘Thinking outside the box’, and ‘the third way’ are the much-maligned aromatic terminologies which are now at a risk of joining the growing list of overused clichés. There are genuine paradigm shifts. There is unpretentious thinking outside the box. There are always alternative ways, the middle ground. But these genuine breaks from orthodoxy are conspicuous in their ingenuity. They are not the ‘supplements’ that Jacques Derida derided as an ‘indication of a certain lack of originality’ (Of grammatology, 1976).  They are not what adolescent Addis Ababa vagrants call ‘the same boqolo (maize)-different Joniya (Sack)’, with awesome insolence in heavily-accented Amenglish (Amharic-English).

Meles’s Green Book and the Developmentalist(1) State

Perhaps it is fair to describe Meles’s incomplete monograph that first came to the eyes of political economists in 2006 as his Green Book. The Monograph is titled ‘African Development: Dead Ends and New Beginnings’. I was exposed to the thinking reflected in this monograph before it came out in English. I have read a trilogy of Amharic books by Meles Zenawi, one of them ‘Ye Abiyotawi Dimokrasi ye limat Masmaroch ina Aqtachawoch’ (the developmental paths and directions of revolutionary democracy) when I was working in Ethiopia. Meles’s name did not appear on these Amharic versions, but it was open secret that these were the Prime Minister’s writings. I analyze Meles’s political thinking based on his arguments in these essays and in the political practices of his two decades of governance. In “African Development: Dead Ends and New Beginnings”, Meles emphatically declares the neo-liberal development paradigm dead and argues that African renaissance can only be achieved through the paradigm of ‘Developmental State’. This, perhaps, is meant to be the antithesis of Fukuyama’s triumphalist punch-line “the End of History”, proclaiming the unassailability of the neo-liberal paradigm after the demise of Socialism.

The Prime Minister called the developmentalist proposal a fundamental shift in paradigm. In reality, the arguments presented in the monograph as interesting as they are, are a mere overhaul of the ‘State and Market” dialogue of the 1970s. As Minga Negash argued in his critique of Meles’s monograph, the debate about the role of government in capitalist economies is as old as the history of the dismal science we call economics. The genesis of developmentalist State paradigm can be traced back to Durkheim’s ‘Solidarism’, Alfredo Rocco’s ‘Corporatist State’ in Fascist Italy, John Stuart Mills ‘liberal corporatism’, and the 20th century corporatism in Latin America. Like any theory, it gets newer definition with time and there are classical and contemporary definitions of it too.

A Developmental State is an activist and interventionist state whose confines of managing the economy goes beyond the neo-liberal stipulations of protecting property rights and enforcing contracts. Chalmers Johnson, who first conceptualized the ‘Developemtalist State’ in his book “MITI and the Japanese Miracle", identifies two orientations of governments in the context of market economy: the regulatory orientation (which predominates in the USA) and the developmental orientation (which predominates in Japan). This shows that the hand of the government is never absent in any capitalist economy. It follows that a puritan version of the neo-classical market economy where governments have an inconsequential role in the economy has never been implemented in any capitalist country in recent history. And therefore the discussion on the role of government in the economy, whether in neo-liberal or developmentalist state, is about the degree of control and/or regulation. To its critics, a developmental state is a corporatist state, what Ron Paul describes as “a system where businesses are nominally in private hands, but are in fact controlled by the government.”

Ambushing healthy postulates

Let us see what Omano Edigheji, a proponent scholar of the democratic developmentalist state, thinks about the defining principles of the liberal democracy that Meles is saying is a dead end. Liberal democracy offers citizen participation (meaning choosing their leaders), equality, political tolerance, accountability, transparency, regular free and fair elections, economic freedom, control of the abuse of power, a bill of rights, the separation of the powers of the executive, the legislature and the judiciary, accepting the result of elections, human rights, a multiparty system, and the rule of law. These are not principles one associates with the regime of Meles Zenawi.  

Knowing that these principles are impervious to the TPLF’s soul, Zenawi seized on the limitations of neo-liberal economic paradigm – market failure, rent-seeking and the absence of equity to perfume dictatorship; challenges recognized by mainstream economists all along, and whose solution does not lie in a fit-all prescription or on jumping onto state-led economy which itself is not immune to rent-seeking and market distortions. Serious economists have looked at all sides of the argument and arrived at the conclusion that the net gain of market liberalization has been positive. Some scholars even ascribe the success of Asian economies largely to these countries’ embracing of free-market ideals and not to the economic activism of their governments.

With impish abandon, Meles disregards the nuance that ‘the specificity of certain political and economic conditions must be taken into account’ when prescribing a developmentist State. Meles invokes Korea, Scandinavia, Japan, Botswana and sundry to explicate the point that a dominant political party that rules for a century or half-century can only establish developmentalist state in Africa. The analogy is false and dishonest. The Social Democrats in Scandinavian countries ruled for many years by appealing to voters, not by intimidating the electorate. They did not steal elections; beat political opponents, closed political space for rival ideas. The Japanese transformation was led by the Liberal Democratic Party, espousing various economic growth and development models at any given time, but with leadership that was coming to power through democratic elections. They wore the cloak of the dominant party by charm, not by coercion and pilfering ballot-boxes.

Edigheji warns against the type of dominant party that Meles is imposing on Ethiopia under the subterfuge of democratic developmental state, when he says that a “democratic developmental state requires a political system that is able to accommodate diverse political interests and not one that prescribes one party”. Ever selective, Meles travels to Italy to escape such reprimand. The differing social values and capital in North and South of Italy is raised to defer democracy. The reasoning is that the prevailing social organization in Ethiopia is similar to that of South Italy and therefore time is needed before opening up the political space for contending ideas.

Indeed, all parties in Ethiopia, and idiosyncratically the TPLF, has every features of the Social organization in Southern Italy - the "amoral familialism", which is the ‘vertical linkage variety’ based on primordial/ancestral connections. The horizontal programmatic coalitions (based on common programmes and orientations, not on ethnicity) that is the defining institutional attribute of a developemental state is awfully lacking in the TPLF as a party and in the government it leads. The democratic developemntalist state paradigm emphasizes that an electoral system that promotes accountability is more important than the number of political parties involved in the election process; not that electoral democracy should be forfeited or deferred to ensure unelected dominant party stays in power until its ‘development’ goals are achieved. Register this willful misunderstanding by Meles!

The deadly mix of hybrid paradigms

Incompatible to either neo-liberal or developmentalist thinking, Meles’s hybrid proposal is one that doesn’t entertain the idea of electoral democracy, accountability, mulit-party system, human rights and the rule of law. Instead, its political regime promotes one-party dictatorship, violation of individual rights, ethnic divisions, and the rule of the jungle. On the economic front, hiding behind the slogan of an activist State, Meles and the TPLF have turned state-owned parastatals into conglomerates owned by what is misleadingly named ‘foundations’.

These so-called foundations are a group of Meles’s Tigrayan cronies and war veterans who enjoy patronage, the very evil the developemental state was meant to safeguard against, theoretically. The Endowment Fund for Rehabilitation of Tigray (EFFORT) is a case in point. In the name of interventionist state, the TPLF controls the economy, the media, professional associations, and even churches and mosques. There is no facet of the Ethiopian life that the TPLF does not control. What Meles seeks is therefore not an activist state; it is a state in full control of the political, economic and social surface of Ethiopia. No wonder Lencho Letta (former OLF leader) retorted “why ask for what you already have” upon reading Meles’s monograph calling for a shift to ‘Developemental State’.

Leviathan in 21st century

I will halt the discussion on the tedious and pervasive debates on development paradigms. There is a lot of literature put forth for and against big governments in Capitalist economies, which interested readers can pursue. But it is instructive to note that, like all theories, the developmentalist paradigm is not monolithic and is afflicted with variants, extensions and interpretations. Meles’s version of the dominant Party and ‘hard’ State theme, which is central to the democratic developemntalist thinking, is patently different to what other pro-developemntalist State scholars like Edigheji espouse. I hope I shed light on the real nature and direction of the ‘made-by-Meles’ developmentalist State construct. I think the TPLF and the government it leads in Ethiopia do not have the institutional attributes of a developmentalist State. The pith that holds together the attributes of a developmentalist State is the notion of ‘embedded autonomy’, which presupposes that the dominant party and the big bureaucracy it runs in such State will be autonomous entities, in the sense that they will not have individual or organized business interests other than delivering the common good of socio-economic development. This does not apply to TPLF and the Meles regime. Rent-seeking is practiced by party officials and the huge network of regime sympathizers at federal and regional levels, who are critical to the survival of the regime. Accountability is non-existent. A regime that can’t rely on the votes of voters for survival must reward the parasitic support base. This support base is mainly composed of the ethnic groups that make up the leadership of the government, political cadres, the military and security apparatus, and urban middle class with connections to party and government bigwigs.

Today, the state in Ethiopia is anything but a developmentalist state. That doesn’t mean it is not engaged in development. Benevolent dictators in the Gulf develop their countries. Malevolent dictators like Saddam, Gaddafi and Ben Ali have all left behind some refulgent statistics on key development indicators. Dictators engage in self-serving development programmes whose main thrust is providing basic necessities to oppressed citizenry to remain in power. The problem is these dictators do not realize bread and butter issues are not the only needs of the populations they rule. People need freedom. People need to have voice. When dictators refuse to listen and get delusional about their indispensability, the masses rise up against them; banish some, impeach some and lynch others.

What Meles is seeking through a diversionary development talk is an unadulterated Leviathan, Hobbes’s scary beast. He has got it; hence I share Lencho’s bemusement. Embracing the old corporatist thinking in a new bottle is an attempt to find sanitizing theoretical cover for eternal dictatorship. Unable to openly promote tyrannical communism, Meles has subtly found unshackling terminologies that allow him to practice Marixim-Leninism without suffering the reflexive charge of ‘a communist in the 21st century’ from overbearing global capitalism. He was a communist at young age; he is a closet communist now. In today’s Ethiopia, Meles is a dwarf God, answerable to none. He has arrogated to himself the twelve principal rights of the Hobbesian ‘sovereign’ which include ‘prescribing the rules of civil law and property’ and ‘to be judge in all cases’.

As the judge of all cases, Meles heard the cases of all sides and passed a verdict: That he is the only person who can lead Ethiopia to development. The indispensability syndrome of archetypal despots cannot be missed in this verdict. The direction to which Ethiopian politics is heading cannot be obscure. A party that does not want to leave power through elections cannot bring about sustainable development, even if it achieves some measure of development under repressive political system. Illegitimate domination attained through military might and crackdown on dissent invites rebellion and armed struggle. This is not a prospect in Ethiopia; it is a reality we are witnessing today.

Conclusion

Meles is exhibiting the delusional trait of dictators. He believes that the TPLF/EPRDF is a democratic party and that today’s Ethiopia is a democratic State. Gaddafi too did not understand why Libyans were demanding his exit, comically claiming that he could not resign because he was neither a president nor a king. He was merely ‘a brother leader’. With deceptive developmentalist State philosophy and delusional democracy, Meles is prepared to rule Ethiopia by force for the foreseeable future. The discussion above shows that the opposition in Ethiopia can forget about winning elections through the ballot box. Meles doesn’t fear the national opposition parties as they are weak and divided. Liberal Imperialism, which is getting more bullish under the ill-defined ‘humanitarian intervention’ principle, is what Meles fears. For now, even that doesn’t threaten his regime, thanks to the war on terror and the absence of oil in Ethiopia, which is often the enticing magnet for such interventions. Meles has put contingencies in place in case Western aid, which is key to the survival of his regime, is cut because of his rejection of genuine electoral democracy and respect for human rights.  The ‘look-East’ policy is cooking; it is why his key man Siyoum Mesfin is in China.

Finally, I do not wish to commit the folly Publius Cornelius Tacitus, the Roman senator and historian, warned against when analyzing tyranny; the folly of mistaking vilification for objectivity and adulation for flattery. Tacitus wrote that the temptation is to either go for adulation for the tyrant's achievements or blanket vilification of his crimes, when analyzing tyrants. Rarely does either of these extremes reflect the actual reality. Let me therefore confess that I agree with some of Meles’s political philosophies, but distrust his motives. I like Meles’s anti-western interventionist stance even though I understand it emanates from a deep desire of perpetuating tyranny at home, without the bother of a foreign censure. I share the despair miasmic electoral democracy controlled by predatory elites can inflict on poor masses. For example, Somaliland’s relentless elections and the periodic elections in Kenya and Nigeria are wasteful and only serve the purpose of fattening some elites in shifts. There is no genuine mass participation. Meles highlights such failures of electoral democracy to rationalize its absence in Ethiopia and for the sole purpose of clinging to power.

Yet, we need to delink sinister motives from correct principles. The quest for more sovereign decision-making for Africa and other weak states in the world cannot be wrong because a dictator hugged it. It is a principle that should be supported and not abandoned regardless of who embraced it or who rejected it. Improvement in electoral democracies so that masses can take part in a meaningful way is critical. The solution for this cannot be reverting to autocracy and endorsing precedents where dictators impose themselves as rectifying agents of democracy’s ills without any popular mandate. What should be done is to promote good political philosophies and sound economic policies, such as those embedded in the developmentalist state theory, while concurrently exposing the real motives and practices of tyrants who try to hide their oppression under attractive paradigms and simulated democracies.

Muktar M. Omer
E-Mail: muktaromer@ymail.com

(1) There is a difference between Developmentalist State and Democratic Developmentalist State. However, for the purposes of this paper, the two terms are used interchangeably.

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