In the previous chapter we highlighted some trends that reinforce the central role of political leaders: the centralisation of executive power; the decline of mass parties and electoral dealignment; the expansion of the mass media and the accompanied revolution in political communication; and the globalisation-driven complexity of political decisions, increasing risk, and the high profile of ‘world leaders’. Together, we have argued, they result in a shift in contemporary democracies towards leader-centred, trust-based and highly mediated politics. It is time now to look more closely at the theoretical model of ‘leader democracy’ and compare it with its main rivals/competitors: the aggregative-pluralist and the deliberative-participatory models. This comparison is undertaken not so much to question the ideological attractiveness of these rival models as to assess their descriptive accuracy, consistency and adequacy in accounting for actual political developments. Moreover, we also highlight the normative underpinnings of ‘leader democracy’ – mainly in response to those critics who see the model as ‘insufficiently democratic’.

It is worth stressing again that this is more a juxtaposition than a comparison because the rival models of democracy we overview below are only partly commensurate. The model of ‘leader democracy’ is predominantly descriptive-explanatory, while the compared models are predominantly normative. The deliberative-participatory model, in particular, aims primarily at setting up criteria for the normative justification of democracy, and it addresses – above all – the question of desirability of democracy.

Introduction

Since the early 1990s the international community has been increasingly adopting liberal state-building as part of a wider liberal peacebuilding strategy for addressing the plethora of problems facing post-conflict societies (Chandler 2006; Chesterman 2005; Kostić 2007; MacGinty 2006; Paris 2004). In that sense, liberal state-building is viewed as a peacebuilding measure with the aim to construct or reconstruct the institutions of governance capable of providing citizens with physical and economic security (cf. Paris 2004; Richmond 2006). One of the guiding assumptions has been that the presence of strong state institutions would facilitate macro-economic growth and provide economic and societal security of its citizens (Paris 2004). Such measures, in combinations with strong state institutions and functioning infrastructure, are supposed to bring economic well-being that would in return strengthen the legitimacy of the state among its citizens by means of democratic elections, thus bringing about political moderation and societal integration in previously fragmented societies (Paris 2004).

However, while it has been shown that this type of liberal state- and nation-building fails short of bringing societal integration in multiethnic societies (Kostić 2007, 2008), it does not include in its framework of analysis the environmental problems of post-conflict societies. Economic development projects such as large hydro projects or opencast mining for lignite – as an element of a broader state-building exercise – lead to environmental stress for the communities, and can further exacerbate inter-communal incompatibilities (Swain and Krampe 2011).

“La tragedia de los comunes” empieza con esta salva de dos científicos nucleares que habían pensado largo y profundamente sobre la carrera armamentista entre las superpotencias: “De acuerdo con nuestro ponderado juicio profesional, este dilema no tiene solución técnica” (cursivas en el original). Garrett Hardin amplía dicha sentencia y se da cuenta de que hay toda una clase de problemas que no tienen solución técnica. La pregunta que surge es: ¿pertenecen a esa clase de problemas las fluctuaciones climáticas?

Uno no tiene que invocar el espíritu de Hardin para imaginar su respuesta. Una sección de “La tragedia de los comunes” se titula “La contaminación” y Hardin explica que “el asunto no es sacar algo de los recursos comunes, sino de ponerles algo dentro”. Entonces, ¿cuál sería la reacción de Hardin al artículo “Keys to Climate Protection” (Claves para la protección del clima) que abre con “La política tecnológica yace en el centro del desafío del cambio climático?” Algunos sostienen que el autor, Jeffrey D. Sachs, es el economista más ilustre sobre desarrollo y se podría decir que la revista, Scientific American, es la más egregia dentro de la ciencia norteamericana. ¿Cómo hubiera reaccionado Hardin a la lista de Sachs “acerca de las tecnologías más prometedoras? Encabezando la lista está la “Captura y almacenamiento de carbono” (conocida por sus siglas en inglés como CCS), que “depende de la capacidad de capturar el dióxido de carbono en la planta de energía a bajo costo, transportarlo por gasoducto a distancias considerables, y almacenarlo bajo tierra de manera segura, fiable y duradera”.

Introduction

When the government of Indonesia and the Free Aceh Movement (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka, GAM) signed the Helsinki peace agreement in 2005, as many as thirty years had passed since the armed conflict in Aceh started. Likewise in Sri Lanka, the civil war between the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) had been raging for more than two and a half decades when the government declared victory in 2009. The prolonging of these two conflicts is striking, and still they are merely two out of a number of civil wars that have lasted for several decades, causing widespread human suffering with numerous casualties and socio-economic losses.

As many of today's armed conflicts tend to be long lasting, they often have a noteworthy track record of peace attempts. At an international glance, efforts to reach a negotiated settlement to armed conflicts have increased in the last decades and nowadays engage a variety of both state and non-state actors (see Ramsbotham, Woodhouse and Miall 2005; Wallensteen 2007). In Aceh, however, it was not until the beginning of the 2000s – more than two decades after the armed conflict started – that the conflict gained international attention while carrying out peace attempts. Also in Sri Lanka, the peace attempts made in the 2000s reached a new dimension of internationalization (Goodhand and Klem 2005, 88).

At the height of Sydney's summer theatre season in 1921, Frank Hurley was presenting his latest entertainment, the Melanesian travelogue Pearls and Savages, to record houses at the Globe Theatre in George Street. On 10 December he wrote to Sir Douglas Mawson, who in 1911 had taken Hurley as his camera operator on the Australasian Antarctic Expedition. Hurley had a deal to put to him. He had been back from Papua, ‘the land of Headhunters’, for a couple of months now and was bursting with ideas for a new show. ‘Briefly,’ he wrote, ‘my project is this. To produce an Evening's “Antarctic Memories” using Shackleton & your film in conjunction.’ Not given to modesty, Hurley went on, ‘I would lecture with an assistant, & will have the presumption to say that there is no one will make a bigger success of the picture than myself, as I am well in with the Union Theatres & press & public.’

Three months later and still on tour, Hurley was staying at the Oriental Hotel in Melbourne's Collins Street. He had received a positive response from Mawson and replied, ‘I will be back in Sydney in a fortnight & will have an agreement drawn up… The rights I presume will include N[ew] Z[ealand]. About the rest of the world – continental, UK & US… As I expect to be over there in the near future fine business could be done.’

It is not an accident that the concept of ‘leader democracy’ has been gaining currency only since the last decades of the twentieth century. The earlier period, especially the three decades of post–Second World War reconstruction in the industrialised West, could be well characterised as ‘party democracy’ – a period when the central role in political elites was played by entrenched and ideologically organised ‘machines’ and directorates of mass ‘cleavage’ parties (Volksparteien). There were some variations, though. Political power in America, and in other presidential systems, was always more concentrated and leadercentred than in the European parliamentary systems. It was the president who formed and led the ‘core executives’, coordinated the pressures within the power elite and headed election campaigns, even if presidential nomination was in the hands of party heads. The typical European parliamentary democracies, by contrast, had approximated ‘party democracy’ until the final decades of the twentieth century.

This postwar configuration was, no doubt, a reaction to – or strictly speaking a recoiling against – the highly concentrated, personalised, autocratic and nationalistic leadership in fascist and communist regimes that continued to cast a shadow over European politics long after their demise. The results generated a leader-phobia combined with a vigorously collectivistic and pluralistic ethos. The popular leader-phobia helped in imposing collegial constraints on political decisions and prompted the executive ruling minorities to keep a low political profile. For the Western ‘baby boom’ generation and their East European ‘post-Stalinist’ equivalent, strong state and centralised leadership had highly antidemocratic connotations.

Introduction

Since the early 1990s, resource conflict, state failure and criminal violence have dominated the security agenda of many African countries. These emerging threats challenge the traditional notion of security as the protection of territorial integrity, stability and vital interests, mostly through military means. Rather than originating from other states, the above security threats come from within the state. They involve state and non-state (security) actors as main perpetrators of violence, and tend to emerge from adverse socio-economic conditions and national political crises (IPA 2006). The ‘developmental’ underpinnings of emerging security threats are increasingly understood and integrated in multilateral peacekeeping missions and peacebuilding activities that are spearheaded by the United Nations and other western donors. For instance, there has been much attention paid to the role transparent and formalized resource governance can play in preventing conflict and promoting post-conflict recovery, notably through generating official state revenues (EITI 2010; UNEP 2009). Yet there has been relatively little analysis of (1) how resource governance can be improved to enhance security and development for communities at the production level and (2) how post-conflict resource governance, as a development priority, relates to and depends on more conventional security sector governance.

This chapter considers the mutual interaction, or nexus, between security and development through the lens of resource conflict and post-conflict resource governance in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

La discusión sobre el cambio climático y el manejo de las emisiones de CO2 forman parte de un debate mundial en que sus causas y efectos son el objeto de intensos estudios científicos por expertos, quienes, de acuerdo a sus conclusiones, se ven obligados a promulgar una acción inmediata a gran escala. Sin embargo, el discurso se ejemplifica mayoritariamente en lenguaje económico y de desarrollo, tendiendo a dejar de lado la problemática ética del asunto. Hasta ahora las soluciones propuestas han dependido generalmente de la aplicación de instrumentos de mercado relacionados con la escasa capacidad de la atmósfera – que sin duda es un bien público global – para transformar gases invernaderos. Menos discutidas entre los países son las asimetrías en lo que concierne a las emisiones excesivas y sus subyacentes consecuencias, siendo casi inexistente la perspectiva de la política económica.

Dentro de este escenario, se lanza La economía de la Iniciativa Yasuní-ITT, la cual ofrece una visión fresca, holística y justificada, a los dilemas causados por el cambio climático. Consideraciones éticas infunden cada página con un tono desafiante, lo que conduce a cuestionar enérgicamente el discurso oficial, demostrando en última instancia que la termodinámica sí importa. La física explica cómo el sumidero atmosférico ha sido apropiado por el Norte y la economía confirma como el pago que precede a la extracción de petróleo en el Sur, puede conducir tanto a eficiencia como a equidad.

There are two basic assumptions of contemporary liberal and democratic political thinking. First, laws (not men) rule in a liberal or constitutional state. Second, many (not few) rule in a democracy. Both are simplifications that easily confuse hopes with reality. They may be correct in capturing the wishes and intentions of many liberal-democratic reformers. However, they also ignore the requirements of large-scale, complex and organised societies, and turn a blind eye to the actual paths of political modernisation and mass democratisation. Most critically, they neglect the indirect-representative character of modern democratic regimes, the key role of political leaders, and those leaders' charismatic (Weber) and innovative (Schumpeter) potential.

This does not mean that direct, participatory and grassroots democracy is impossible or unrealistic and that rational legalism and public responsibility are illusory. Participatory forms of ruling are applicable to small, simple and homogeneous social settings, and they fail in complex large-scale nationstates. Such nation-states inevitably develop indirect forms of democratic representation; they are highly organised and shaped by parties, professional politicians, elective leaders and elites.

Los seres humanos están cambiando el metabolismo del planeta a un nivel del cual hasta ahora se desconocen sus implicaciones. Fundamentalmente estamos alterando los gases en la atmósfera, las extensiones de agua y la compleja red de especies que conforma la vida en la Tierra. La economía de la Iniciativa Yasuní-ITT aparece justo cuando los peligros a los recursos del mundo se pueden observar a simple vista. Las tasas de extinción son ahora mil veces más altas que aquéllas inferidas del registro fósil. El cambio climático parece estar acelerándose de forma alarmante. Para los seres humanos esto significa un aumento del nivel del mar, inundaciones feroces, sequías prolongadas y condiciones meteorológicas irregulares. En 2010 puede que a nivel mundial lleguen a haber más de 50 millones de refugiados por factores climáticos. El problema es mundial y no hay donde esconderse.

Aproximadamente el 80% de la humanidad vive en países en vías de desarrollo, a menudo rodeados por recursos naturales valiosos. El Ecuador es un microcosmos de ese mundo y su Reserva de Biosfera de la UNESCO – Yasuní – es un ejemplo de la magnificencia de los recursos naturales en su estado original. Por añadidura, Yasuní también se encuentra encima de una reserva inmensa de petróleo. Como es el caso lamentable de muchos países en vías de desarrollo que son ricos en hidrocarburos, aproximadamente la mitad de la población del Ecuador vive en la pobreza.

Introduction

Following a global flurry of ‘new wars’ and ‘new conflicts’ in the post–Cold War era (Kaldor 2007; Keen 2008), a lot of rethinking has been done (and certainly will be done) on the causes of violent conflict in the global system. After a decade dominated by, inter alia, ‘9/11’, the unstable and violent African development context and the relatively sustainable peace (and very successful development) in East Asia, reflections on the relations between development and security (and vice versa) became unavoidable. In policy documents (e.g., UN 2004; OECD 2007; DFID 2005; European Council 2003, 2008; UNDP 2005), as well as in academic circles (Buur, Jensen and Stepputat 2007; Chandler 2007, 2008; Duffield 2001, 2007; Paris and Sisk 2007), the ‘development-security nexus’ was coined as a concept and emerged as a hotly contested topic. Unsurprisingly, the policy world was jumping to ‘new solutions’, with reductionist conclusions, whereas research remained more sceptical. For instance, irrespective of whether we listen to the ‘new’ United States foreign policy articulated by Colin Powell or by General Petraeus, to the secretary-general of the United Nations and to the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty on ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (UN 2009; ICISS 2001), or the European Union's ‘European Security Strategy’ (European Council 2008), the attention is increasingly on how conflicts of various sorts can be prevented through greater focus on ‘development’. The nexus became a commodity over which intellectual ownership was as unclear as important.

Finally, from these five case studies I want to draw some conclusions about exhibitionary entertainments in the early decades of the twentieth century. I will return now to those research questions I asked in the introduction to this book, which have informed my archival research, and attempt to draw out some of the more general concepts and principles that define what I have called colonial modernity.

A central strategy in my re-imagining of the fluid media landscape of the early twentieth century has been to revive Frank Hurley's quaint and now largely forgotten term, ‘synchronized lecture entertainments’. Recovering this term has helped us to see that in the early decades of twentieth century, media such as photography and cinema, which we now tend to think of as distinct, were in fact bound together in the kinds of mixed or multimedia ‘platform’ performances described by Charles Musser and Carol Nelson in their pioneering book, High-Class Moving Pictures (1991): these include lectures, travelogues, magic lantern shows and gramophone concerts. Some of the media used in these synchronized lecture entertainments belonged to the new century, while others had deeper roots in the long nineteenth century and beyond. They include lantern-slide projection, early cinema (now incorrectly called ‘silent’ cinema, as Rick Altman has shown in Silent Film Sound), musical accompaniment and sound effects (both live and pre-recorded), ethnographic displays, photographic exhibition, newspaper and book publication, and – centrally – the presence of the celebrity lecturer and his narrative, anecdotes, stage patter and humbug.