The Good in Mediocre Governance
“In international strategizing, as in life, we tend to have a better sense of ideal outcomes than we do of possible, if second-rate, ones. Just as little girls dream of being prima ballerina at the Bolshoi and not members of the corps de ballet at the Kentucky Ballet Theatre, policy-makers tend to hold up the bright lights of Sweden and Denmark when articulating the hopes for crippled states like Zimbabwe and Cote D’Ivoire. With a nudge here and a nudge there, goes the common parlance, Mali can take a cue from prosperous Netherlands and Iraq can democratize in the image of Canada. This is our Bolshoi fixation.
The reason to call on the middle countries when imagining the futures of the most broken ones is that the questions most relevant to the 20 or 30 weakest countries can’t be answered through the examples of the 20 or 30 strongest. How can peace be maintained in the wake of a rigged election by a megalomaniacal leader? How can economic prosperity improve despite the presence of outrageous levels of corruption? How much violence is enough violence to declare a power-sharing arrangement dead?
These answers can only come, in practical terms, from places that have confronted civil war, authoritarian leadership, a breakdown of law and order but have still, through various strategies, improved their lot. An understanding of these strategies is an invaluable asset.
So while it is tempting to view the state-building project through an ideological lens (a state after all is an idea, as are its virtues: liberty, equality, etc.), more immediate benefit will come from utilizing a pragmatic one. This is not to advocate for subpar governance. But where a liberal, democratic, prosperous, and stable state might be the ideal goal in every case, it can’t be the proximate one for Sudan, Haiti, or Liberia. Ballerinas, after all, clock thousands of hours in front of audiences before even auditioning for the Bolshoi.” —Mary Albino
