“Bread and circus” is a derisive term often used for actions designed to distract a discontented populace from focusing on the policies or situations created by their leaders. In some places, however, bread and circus could actually be a welcome improvement. Failed states, dysfunctional ‘democracies’, and imploding autocracies — Somalia, Haiti, and Zimbabwe are prime examples– are failing to provide the bread, and the politics have become the circus. Far from creating a distraction, it is wreaking unfathomable damage on the people and their country and calling attention to the leaders’ incompetence or malfeasance.
So much so, that in Haiti there’s even rising nostalgia for the Duvaliers (see NYT article). The Duvalier dictatorship, handed from father Papa Doc to son Baby Doc, was brutal. Political dissent literally had the life crushed from it, elections were spectacularly fraudulent, and the favored elite amassed vast riches thanks to pervasive corruption, while Haiti’s life expectancy, infant survival rate, literacy rate, employment, and income plummeted to the lowest in the region. Voodoo and violence were wielded forcefully from the very top levels of power to manipulate a stressed populace isolated from the rest of the world. Years later, from exile in France, Jean-Claude Duvalier (Baby Doc) would muse, “Perhaps I was too tolerant.”
With a revolving door of leaders and a population born mostly since 1986, now Haitians are subject to revisionist history. The memory of violence and terror have abated while the hunger, filth, and fear of kidnapping are all too real today; Haitians are beginning to recall the Duvalier era as one of “peace”.
“I know that the higher level of insecurity has made people nostalgic for the strong hand,” said Mr. Elie, the commission’s leader [in a review of whether to revive the Haitian army]. “They think the army is going to bring back what they call ‘the good old days.’ We don’t want people to fall for that nostalgic trap.”
Those old days, Mr. Elie said, were a time in which Haiti’s elite lived lives on the backs of the suffering masses. Creating a more equitable society, he said, is a long-term struggle that inevitably makes many uncomfortable.
“It’s time to show people that democracy is not just about voting but changing their real lives,” said Prime Minister Jacques-Édouard Alexis.
Indeed! Past time, I’d say. Stop this circus and get back to some basic bread and butter issues. Though the Haitian example may seem extreme, it is a stark reminder that elections are ‘necessary but insufficient’ for creating democracy. True democracy is judged by the character of the daily interactions people have with their government and by their ability to change policy as well as leadership in order to create a system that delivers the security, stability, safety, services, and opportunity for them to thrive. This is why we find Democracy That Delivers one of the most important concepts for improving people’s “real” lives — politically and economically.
Published Date: March 26, 2008