Punishing developing countries!
The hypocrisy of Western Democracies,

By: Tseggai Mebrahtu

If there were constitutional rule of law and democracy in developing countries, then there would not be either economic or political refugees. The big problem of the peoples of developing countries is that they are ruled by extremely incompetent and corrupted dictators supported financially, diplomatically and militarily by the very West which pretends to be working for the global respect of democracy and human rights. Unlike the peoples of Western Europe who have the right to vote out of office incompetent leaders, the peoples of developing countries don’t have such a right. Instead they must put up with political servitude and economic oppression by corrupted and incompetent leaders. They are condemned to pay the price for the economic failure of corrupted and incompetent rulers. Contrary to the never-ending official discourse of economic development, dictatorial rulers of developing countries aren’t at all interested in the economic development of their peoples. 

Economic development means above all human development; human development presupposes constitutional rule of law and accountable governance which dictatorial rulers are not ready to hear of. As a result, they resort to various ways with view to submitting the people to their diktats. The most effective way to do this is to prevent by all means political and economic modernisation. Concretely this means keeping the people under an abject poverty and ignorance in such a way that they would adopt a fatalistic conception of their horrible way of living. This does not mean that education does not exist. The patrimonial (the term patrimonialism is an idea type developed by the great German sociologist Max Weber to describe a traditional political systems. It refers to the idea of private property. A patrimonialist state is therefore a traditional state in which state power is considered by the ruler as if it was his private property. The patrimonial ruler administers the state in the manner of his household property. He considers members of the civil and military bureaucracy as his private servants and not as public servants who have right opposable to him) leader needs educated men and women in order to run the civil and military bureaucracy established with the aim of enabling him to exercise strict control on the people and on the country. In a modern state, the existence of a public administration guided by principles of rational management, neutrality and respect of legality is a prerequisite for economic development. Under such a system the bureaucratic apparatus, far from being assimilated with red tape and inefficiency, is considered indispensable for satisfying public demands by improving and developing the public service in the field of day to day administration, health, education, justice, et cetera. Members of the civil and military bureaucracy are chosen on the basis of their personal talent and merit. Patrimonialism and its different manifestations such as nepotism, cronyism, provincialism, tribalism, misappropriation of public money et cetera are exceptions in countries which have a modern state. When such patrimonialist mal practices are committed, justice is set in motion. Any violation of the law by any body entails criminal and civil responsibility. However, under a patrimonialist state, it is the capricious decisions of the dictator which must be obeyed. Law is not considered as a limit on the power of the patrimonial ruler. For him, law is made to serve him against his adversaries but not against him. The traditional patrimonial ruler’s power was limited by tradition, by religious interdictions and by fear of God. 
The ‘modern’ patrimonial ruler does not know of such a limitation. The patrimonial ruler thinks mal fide or bona fide that what he thinks and does is good for the people and the country. His autocracy leads him often to believe that he is omnicompetent and omniscient. It is he who decides the economic, educational, social and cultural policies. He does not accept the advice of experts. He has a tendency to teach them on a matter of which they are specialists. The patrimonial ruler does not know of modesty. He prefers to go ahead with his policies even if they have devastating consequences for the people and the country. Those who oppose him or who do not endorse his policies are often considered as making an attack on his person. The patrimonial ruler hates very much patriotic and independent minded intellectuals because they adopt a critical approach on his policies. The only way for the patrimonial ruler to silence such critically thinking individuals or journalists is to deprive them of academic freedom and freedom of expression. As it is in the nature of the patriotic intellectual to use his knowledge to the service of his country and his people in particular and man kind in general, he has a problem with a patrimonial rule. 
As a result, he is obliged to take the road to exile. The devastating consequences of this is brain drain. The country is deprived of its brainy sons who, if treated properly, could have made the difference in bailing the country out of pauperisation and abject poverty. The patrimonial ruler does not care about the brain drain. Rather he encourages the brain drain by prolonging his patrimonial rule. When all the brainy and patriotic intellectuals leave the country, what remains is yes-man intellectuals and very few real intellectuals who are determined to pay the necessary sacrifice by remaining in the country. But, the latter play often a very marginalized role in the civil service and in higher educational institutions. Because the most important posts are given to loyal servants of the patrimonial ruler with the result that the patrimonial ruler cannot bring about any economic development for patrimonialism is the antidote of economic development, democracy and constitutional rule of law. The consequence of this is sharp antagonism between the patrimonial dictator and the toiling masses.

The determination to stay in power leads dictators to bank on patrimonial relationship in the national and international level. On the national level, the patrimonial ruler sets up a civil and military bureaucracy devoted to protect his power from political and economical challenge. To do so, the patrimonial ruler appoints men and women very loyal to him. Although, the patrimonial ruler chooses his loyal servants from circle of his close relatives and friends who are mostly from his native village, it is not unusual that he recruits also political clients from neighbouring villages, districts, provinces or from other ethnic groups. But the latter enjoy less importance by the patrimonial ruler in comparison to the loyal clients from his village.

The relationship between the patrimonial ruler and his patrimonial clients is based on rendering a mutual service. The patrimonial ruler distributes wealth and power to his patrimonial servants who in exchange are expected to defend him ideologically, administratively and militarily. The ruler does not have any social legitimacy. He is an illegitimate ruler in the eyes of the people. Therefore his stay on power is dependent on his ability to distribute money and power to his political clients in the civil and military bureaucracy. Political clients of the patrimonial ruler can misappropriate public money with impunity thanks to the protection by their patron ruler. In fact under such a system, the idea of public money is meaningless because the patrimonial ruler considers the treasury of the country as his private pocket. Patrimonial clients both in the civil and military bureaucracy are protected by their patron ruler provided that they continue to demonstrate unquestionable loyalty and respect for their patrimonial ruler. Patrimonial bureaucrats and the patrimonial ruler have a common interest to help each other and oppress the people so that they can continue to enrich themselves at the expense of the people. They know that they badly need each other. The patrimonial ruler cannot stay in power if the military, the police and the country’s security service don’t serve him loyally and blindly. On other hand, the latter cannot continue to lead a comfortable life unless their patron ruler is there to protect them and to distribute them power and money. But, the symbiotic relationship between the patrimonial ruler and his civil and military protégés can be dependable and lasting if, beyond their patrimonial relationship, they are tied to each other by kinship, political marriage, and a sentiment of village belongingness.

The devastating consequence of patrimonial rule is extreme impoverishment of the people, the generalisation of corruption and impunity, and famine. As result the country under a patrimonial ruler becomes very vulnerable to man made and natural calamities. The absence or the insufficiency of rainfall in one season means the spectre of famine and death. This means also the patrimonial ruler cannot expect to collect as much taxes as he would have liked in order to continue to distribute wealth to his clients in the military and civil bureaucracy. The insufficiency of taxes collected from the poor means less income for the leading members of the bureaucracy. The patrimonial ruler knows well that he cannot stay long in power as long as he is not in a position to continue to distribute wealth to his political clients in the military and civil bureaucracy. This obliges him to look for financial support from abroad in a bid to continue to lord it over the people. To this end, he looks for a patron state which ensures his protection in exchange for acceding to its demands. The usual candidates for a patron state are countries with imperialistic ambitions interested in having client or satellite states for geo-strategic reasons which can be military, cultural, diplomatic or economical

The service that the dictator of a developing country is expected to render to an imperialist state could vary from diplomatic support in various international forums to allowing the establishment of military bases in his territory or making his territory at the disposal of the patron state so that the latter can use the territory of the client state as launching pad to attack other states or to spy on them. In some cases, the client (satellite) state may also allow companies of the patron state to damp their industrial and nuclear garbage in its territory. The dictator of the client state can be expected to wage a proxy war in the name of his patron state. In other cases, the client dictator can also be expected to make financial contributions to finance the election campaign of the politicians of the patron state. The patron-client relationship that characterises the relationship between a dictator of a developing country and some or almost all the elites of the developed world is based on a such a reciprocity that some western states have a vested interest that the peoples of developing countries remain poor forever, that they continue to suffer from autocracy. The West’s imperialistic ambitions is at variance with peoples of developing countries for economic and political sovereignty. By supporting dictatorial regimes financially, militarily and diplomatically, Western democracies’ imperialistic geo-strategic ambitions has always been the greatest obstacle of peoples of developing countries in their fight for political and economic democracy.

The patron-client relationship between dictators of developing countries and Western democracies makes that dictatorial rulers of developing countries are directly accountable to Washington, Paris, Berlin, London and not to their own people which they consider as their servants. Dictators know that with the help of imperialism, they can lord it over the people for a long time. They can kill innocent civilians, imprison members of opposition parties, they can keep their people under abject poverty with the help of imperialism; the latter says nothing or pays a lip service to democracy and human rights by denouncing their violation but it will never go as far as taking meaningful measures because by doing so it will weaken the ruler of its satellite state. Instead, the patron state tries to protect its client dictator under the pretext of fighting Islamic fundamentalism or terrorism. The patron state arrogates the right to define terrorism in a manner which suits its geo-strategic ambitions. In the eyes of the peoples of developing countries the greatest terrorists are their patrimonial rulers. But this definition of terrorism is at variance with geo-strategic and imperialistic ambitions of the patron state. A patrimonial ruler who ingratiates himself towards the West is assured of the support of the latter no matter the amount of crime he commits against his people provided that the country which he rulers is geo-strategically important for the West. The West prefers the patrimonial ruler than the political empowerment of the people of a developing country.

The advent of real popular sovereignty in developing countries is at variance with imperialistic ambitions of patron states of the North. Because where there is a real sovereignty, imperialism will lose its domination over its satellite states. Imperialism does everything it can to keep the developing world under its domination by using such financial organisations as the world Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Contrary to the conventional explanation these two organisations don’t have the mission of ensuring global economic prosperity or helping developing countries out of poverty. By imposing draconian conditions in the name of structural adjustment programmes, these organisations participate in the global imperialistic strategy of domination and in the worsening of the already horrible living conditions of the peoples of developing countries. The so-called structural programmes aim at privatisation and deregulation of the economy. This means the disengagement of the state from the social domain such as health, education, culture et cetera. The idea behind the structural programmes is that the workings of the economy must be left to market forces, that the intervention of the state perturbs the good functioning of the market according to the natural law of supply and demand. All these are neither theoretically nor historically well founded. The role of a state with institutionalised rule of law in economic development is very decisive as the case of the developed world or that of present day South east Asia amply demonstrates. However, under the pretext of adjusting the economies of developing countries to the global market, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are in reality interested in enabling developing countries to pay their external debt by obliging them to cut their expenditure on health and education. 
This is the main logic of structural adjustment programmes. Cutting the state expenditure on health and education means more misery and poverty to the toiling masses of developing countries. The populations of developing countries may express their dissatisfaction with the incompetent rulers but the answer of the latter is shooting at innocent and unarmed civilians for he simple reason that they dare challenge the power of the dictatorial ruler. This obliges ‘citizens’ of developing countries to emigrate in search of a better life without knowing what awaits them. From this, one can see that the developed world is not without responsibility in the economic misery and political dictatorship of which peoples of developing countries are victims.

Structural adjustment programmes have also other objectives in that by opening the profitable public sector of developing countries to international competition and private investment, they enable multinationals from the North to get huge profit. By doing so they prevent the birth and the development of a national class of bourgeoisie. The privatisation and deregulation which the World Bank and the IMF are apostles aim to prevent developing countries from subsidizing their farmers whereas countries considered often as a choice of new liberalism are known by their protectionist policies. The result is that by subsidizing their farmers, Western states render the economies of developing countries utterly out of competition. The aim of the North is always to make developing countries providers of raw materials whose price is dependent on the free will of the former. Now that the new international economic order and the right to development which had widespread recognition in the 1970s have now been buried and replaced by economic globalisation in which the weak and the strong are supposed to compete under the control of the World Trade Organisation, the peoples developing countries don’t seem to have any future. They have lost even the nominal sovereignty they have had thanks to treasonous patrimonial rulers.

The contradictions and the hypocrisy of the West is that while it preaches for economic globalisation and obliges developing countries to open their market to savage and unequal international competition, it refuses the global movement of people and the respect of their right globally. The West should be told that the economic suffering of the peoples of developing countries is the direct result of its immoral policy to support dictators of developing countries who have no legitimacy in the eyes of the people. Dictators of developing countries are no more different from former colonialists if not worse. As long as the West does not abandon its imperialistic ambitions and it starts to work for a real democratisation of developing countries, its effort to create an economic fortress is a futile attempt. The West cannot continue supporting dictatorial rulers and at the same time complain of illegal immigration. The solution does not consist either, as the West says, in granting economic assistance to developing countries with view to stopping immigration. Peoples of developing countries know that the economic aid that the West grants has never benefited them nor has it made any fundamental change in their lives. On the contrary by granting loans to developing countries, the West makes developing countries at its mercy. The peoples of developing countries are victims of the loan and economic aid of the West. That loan and aid could be beneficial if there were rule of law and accountable governance. In the absence of these two , the greatest beneficiary of Western loan grant and economic aid is the patrimonial ruler who uses it to recruit new clients in the military and civil bureaucracy or to feed those already at his service.

The only real solution for the peoples of developing countries is that the West refrain from supporting dictators and oblige them to respect religiously democracy and human rights. The West has more to gain from the prevalence of democracy and human rights in developing countries than from its patronizing and imperialistic international relations which have rendered intolerable the lives of the peoples of developing countries. However, given the history of the West and given its determination to make developing countries providers of raw materials by supporting patrimonial rulers, the economic punishment that the European Union is threatening to inflict on uncooperative developing countries should not be taken seriously. It is intended for the consumption of the public opinion of the North in a bid to weaken anti immigration, populist and xenophobic political parties.

We know that if the West were to go ahead with the punishment, it would not be the people of developing countries who suffer from it. It is the clients of the North, i.e, the dictators of developing countries and their military and civil bureaucracy who suffer to the extent of losing their power. The Hailesellassie and the Mengistu Hailemariam of Ethiopia is a good example of this in that when the two dictators were abandoned by their respective American and Soviet patrons, they became very vulnerable to the extent of losing their power in a very humiliating fashion for them and their families individually but also with untold misery for the Ethiopian people. If Haileselassie and Mengistu had been wise enough to rely more on their people than on giving Ethiopia as a neo-colonial gift to imperialism, the Ethiopian people could have had by now a developed and modern country . We would not have been under permanent pauperisation . The two leaders could have taken an honourable retirement from politics not to mention that they could have been remembered in the annals of Ethiopian history as national heroes. However their boundless greed for power led them to work against the Ethiopian people by seeking support for their anti Ethiopia policy at home and abroad. That enabled them to stay in power as long as they could render a service to their domestic clients in the civil and military bureaucracy and their foreign imperialist patrons. When they were not in a position to render service to either of them, they were abandoned by every body and there was no reason why the people should come to their help for their had betrayed them by banking on imperialism and on internal repressive machinery.

That said, it would be naïve to expect that the solution for developing countries can come from outside. It is also naive to expect that imperialism can abandon its hegemonic ambitions and work for the economic development and democratisation of the peoples of developing countries. The marriage of convenience between America, the land of democracy and some Gulf states with the most primitive political system and inhuman ‘criminal justice’ militates against envisaging such eventuality. The solution for the peoples of developing countries is to wage a war of liberation against first patrimonial rulers and then against their imperialist protectors. The peoples of developing countries should fight resolutely in order to be masters of their destiny as a free people. To be maters of their destiny and to win over the coalition between imperialism and dictatorial rulers, the peoples of developing countries are best advised to be united as one man and to fight divisive politics such as tribalism, provincialism and its corollary belly politics. There is no doubt that in their fight for economic development and constitutional democracy, developing countries can rely on the moral support of the members of the civil society in the Western democracies who have nothing to gain from vassalisation of developing countries by imperialism.

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