Democracy in Divided Societies

As I have noted many times on this blog, the United States is heavily engaged in trying to catalyze democracy in some of the world’s most divided countries, such as Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Iraq. Thanksgiving, the United States’ most unique holiday, is a good time to consider the difficulty of building democracy in divided societies. The reason is not because of the fine example of democracy the US provides, but because of the warning.

The United States emerged from the Revolutionary War as a deeply divided society.  Tyranny of the majority, specifically southerners’ fear that the larger population of the north and its general hostility to slavery threatened their interests, was one of the main cleavages. Like the US advocates in many divided societies today, the US Constitution created a variation of power sharing to ally these fears, most prominently decentralization (federalism) and over-representation of states with small populations in the legislature (the Senate).

Power sharing did not alleviate southerners’ concerns. Subsequent compromises, such as the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850, also ultimately failed. In the event, the country descended into civil war, the south was economically and militarily decimated, and the north militarily occupied the south after the war, imposing a new set of institutions, such as voting rights for African-Americans, that most white southerners resisted. Reconstruction also led to the rise of terrorist groups seeking to drive out northern troops and intimidate blacks from exercising their rights.

The cost and difficulties of reconstruction caused the north to lose interest in it and the military occupation ended in 1877.  Following the withdrawal, African-Americans lost almost all the rights granted to them during reconstruction. Thus, while the war eliminated slavery and the threat of succession, reconstruction failed to bring anything close to democracy and equality to African-Americans.

It seems to me that US history can provide three lessons for considering whether the US can help facilitate democracy in divided societies today:

1. No matter how clever the institutional design, power sharing is fragile if a minority fears domination.
2. Imposing new institutions is an expensive, long-term, and painful process.
3. Political support in the US to impose these new institutions must be very strong.