Defeating Dictators

September 5, 2011
“The only good dictator is a dead one,” argues this hard-nosed, outspoken pro-democracy manifesto and how-to manual. Economist Ayittey (Africa Unchained) surveys current and former dictatorships, aka “vampire states,” from his native Ghana, where he helped lead a successful movement against the despot Jerry Rawlings, to Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, Alexander Lukashenko’s Belarus, and the tottering tyrannies of the Arab world. Ayittey mixes right-leaning socioeconomics—he champions capitalism against socialist development schemes—with a bullet-pointed primer for activists, one that’s full of practical insights on the need for unity among opposition groups, the centrality of independent radio stations and other “free media,” the potency of civil service strikes against military rulers, and the usefulness of motor oil for toppling antidemocracy thugs from their scooters. Ayittey’s unorthodox political theories—he favors traditional modes of “consensus” decision making over Western-style multiparty majority votes, and insists that political reform must precede economic liberalization—will be as controversial as his one-size-fits-all conception of dictatorship, lumping together countries as dissimilar as China and Ethiopia, which can seem simplistic. Still, his forthright language, lucid analyses, and pragmatic attitude make this a compelling and timely challenge to the despotism-as-usual status quo.