As I suspected months ago, Mugabe did not go gentle into that dark night. After placing second in the initial run off election, he has been accused of doing everything within his power to ensure victory in the main election, which he has won with nearly 85% of the popular vote. Rightly, most of the western world has rightfully identified this election as being pretty much a sham. The question is why.
It takes a case as extreme as the Zimbabwe election to highlight the difference between democracy as an end and democracy as a means. Properly viewed, democracy is a means. It is a device that countries can use to generate policy outcomes. Generally speaking it is a fairly good means; when elections are fair and transparent, the resultant policies have a strong tendency to be better than those chosen by other means, such as dictatorship or theocracy. This is not to say that democracies cannot generate bad results, or that other means cannot produce good results, but rather that democracy tends to be far more robust. The problem with the Zimbabwe election, then, is that means by which Mugabe was re-elected are not those means that are likely to generate good outcomes, or ends, which are the things that we as individuals or society actually want.
Of course this all seems rather obvious. But I think one of the major flaws in modern civil society is that, in cases not nearly as extreme as the Zimbabwe election, democracy is viewed as the end itself. Most people seem to have the general notion in the back of their minds that there is some inherent justice in outcomes produced by the democratic process. That is, because democratic processes generally lead to good policies, any policy chosen is inherently good. And if a policy is obviously bad (i.e. the Mugabe re-election), that policy must necessarily be the result of something other than democracy. There are obviously logical fallacies here (the appeal to probability and no true Scotsman fallacies are the ones that spring immediately to mind), but the result is that democracy becomes the end. Society could use a little more Churchill, who famously said that "democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." Just because it is better than everything else doesn't make it perfect.
It takes a case as extreme as the Zimbabwe election to highlight the difference between democracy as an end and democracy as a means. Properly viewed, democracy is a means. It is a device that countries can use to generate policy outcomes. Generally speaking it is a fairly good means; when elections are fair and transparent, the resultant policies have a strong tendency to be better than those chosen by other means, such as dictatorship or theocracy. This is not to say that democracies cannot generate bad results, or that other means cannot produce good results, but rather that democracy tends to be far more robust. The problem with the Zimbabwe election, then, is that means by which Mugabe was re-elected are not those means that are likely to generate good outcomes, or ends, which are the things that we as individuals or society actually want.
Of course this all seems rather obvious. But I think one of the major flaws in modern civil society is that, in cases not nearly as extreme as the Zimbabwe election, democracy is viewed as the end itself. Most people seem to have the general notion in the back of their minds that there is some inherent justice in outcomes produced by the democratic process. That is, because democratic processes generally lead to good policies, any policy chosen is inherently good. And if a policy is obviously bad (i.e. the Mugabe re-election), that policy must necessarily be the result of something other than democracy. There are obviously logical fallacies here (the appeal to probability and no true Scotsman fallacies are the ones that spring immediately to mind), but the result is that democracy becomes the end. Society could use a little more Churchill, who famously said that "democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." Just because it is better than everything else doesn't make it perfect.
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