After President Jacob Zuma’s sacking of his
Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan, political tension in South Africa is once
again on the rise. With Standard & Poor’s downgrading South Africa’s credit
rating, it seems that their country is in uprising. Yet President Zuma seems
impregnable – with the ANC confirming that none of their MP’s would vote to
remove him from office.
How can this be explained? Well, it
involves exploring the murky depths of political theory. In this instance, the
rules that bind leaders and allow them to lead. For a more detailed explanation
of the theory that I’m about to present, please consult a copy of “The
Dictator’s Handbook: Why Bad Behaviour Is Almost Always Good Politics” by Bruce
Bueno de Mesquita and Alistair Smith.
To put it simply: No one rules alone. No
one person has absolute authority. The power that a leader has is not to act,
but to get others to act on his or her behalf, using whatever he has in the
treasury to get them to do so. After all, a leader does not build roads alone,
doesn’t enforce the laws alone, and certainly can’t defend the nation alone. He
or she needs an army, with a general in charge. He or she needs a treasury, and
someone to fill it. He or she needs laws, and someone to enforce it… And so the
list goes on.
Every leader has these ‘pillars’ that
uphold his or her power. Without them, a leader can do nothing. This concept
remains true whether it’s for a dictatorship or a democracy, a corporation or
an NGO. The only difference is the number of pillars a leader needs to support
his/her power. Still, no matter the number of pillars, the rules for getting
and maintaining power remains the same.
First, get the key pillars on your side.
They give you the power to act. Second, control the treasury. This ensures you
can get compensated for your hard work, and, of course, enable you to pay those
key pillars for their loyalty and ensure your leadership. This is actually a
leader’s true job – to optimize the amount of resources acquired, and
distribute them in the best way so as to ensure his/her continued leadership.
Thirdly, minimize your key pillars. After all, if a pillar is not required, any
resources allocated that way could be better spent securing the loyalty of
another pillar. After all, not all pillars required to gain power are required
to maintain it.
Now, you might be thinking to yourself,
“Well, I can see how that’s true for a dictatorship, but democracies don’t work
like that!” Let me remind you then, that no one rules alone. Every president
and prime minister has to negotiate with their parliaments and house of
representatives. They have their own key pillars. “But surely”, you say, “those
key pillars are so fractured amongst so many people! It would be impossible to
follow these rules and buy their loyalty!”
Is it, though? Democracies usually have way
more complicated laws and tax codes than the simple extractive, strong-hand
laws of dictatorships. This is not by accident – this is how the loyalty of key
pillars are assured! All those voting citizens can be divided into blocs – the
elderly, homeowners, farmers, the poor etc. Farming subsidies, for example, are
not about farming at all – it depends on whether the farmer voting bloc is a key
pillar. When the farming vote doesn’t swing an election in a country, there are
no farming subsidies.
And even the third rule applies in a
democracy. While it might not be feasible to eliminate those who don’t support
a leader, it is possible to make it easier for key blocs to vote than other
groups. Party rules can have pre-elections with complicated rules to ensure
those in power stay in power. And even in a democracy there are influential
individuals that can be rewarded by special loopholes, passing laws that favour
them…
Given all this, why then do we as citizens
prefer democracies to dictatorships? Because of rule two – the treasury.
Leaders always want to increase the size of the treasury. In dictatorships,
there is no tax code – wealth is taken directly. But in a democracy, there is a
tax, but it is comparatively lower than that of dictatorships. Why would that
be, if these rules apply? Firstly, cutting taxes buys votes! Unable to raise
taxes, but wanting to increase their treasury, leaders in democracies need
citizens to be more productive to bring in more taxes. Hence why some of the
treasury is diverted towards increasing education, health, infrastructure – all
in order to increase the tax they generate.
This is why people’s revolts only succeed
in those countries between the two extremes of government. In a powerful
dictatorship, there was not need to develop the citizenry or infrastructure,
and no one makes a worse revolutionary than a starving illiterate citizen. In a
democracy, however, a revolt would be near impossible to organize, because a
revolt would also destroy the source of the wealth of the treasury – the
productivity of the citizens. In a democracy, a revolt only truly becomes
possible if the wealth of the treasury is no longer dependent on the citizens.
When we thus look at South Africa through
this lens, much becomes clear. President Zuma had lost control of the treasury,
and was acting to regain control of it, and thus secure his power. Those who
wrested power from him more than a year ago had failed to secure any of the
other key pillars of his power, and thus could not unseat him. The declaration
of the ANC that they would not vote to remove him confirms his position is once
again secure.
As it turns out, shifts in power and the
reasons for them become much clearer once you become aware of these rules. They
apply from the highest level, for presidents, their cabinet and parliaments, to
corporation, with CEO’s and their boards to the smallest, like church councils
and homeowners associations. To you. Because you cannot ignore the zeroth rule:
Without power, you cannot affect anything.
