The choice of ballots or bullets is the most difficult one that faces any nascent democracy seeking to replace the arbitrary rule of tyrants with the constitutional rule of legitimate authorities who have received a mandate from voting or balloting.  Cultures with a long history of despotic rule have a difficult time accepting the changes of power that result from a constitutional practice, and so those with a lust for power often are unable to give up their power even in the sake of legitimate elections and seek to hold on to power by whatever dishonest means are available.  It takes a noble character lacking in many countries and cultures to accept the mandate of the electorate and to relinquish power peacefully without seeking to destabilize or overthrow the new regime of one’s opponents.

The civil war that erupted last November in the Ivory Coast after an election resulted in a change of power between incumbent Laurent Gbagbo and internationally recognized president-elect Alassane Ouattara appears nearing a completion as the fighting has entered the area around the Presidential Palace in Abijan.  Why did an election result lead to civil warfare in the Ivory Coast, leading to the death of more than a thousand people just this weekend as the fighting appears to be headed to a decisive result in favor of the new president’s forces and his somewhat fractious allies [1].

Why did the Ivory Coast resort to bullets over ballot, and what can we learn from their failure?  For one, let us note that the chief determinant of whether a political conflict can be resolved on the level of balloting and other means of legitimate government by “consensus” or proceeds to the level of conflict between hostile camps depends primarily on the nobility of character of the defeated party in stepping down peacefully and in accepting the legitimate results of elections rather than seeking to illegitimately hold on to power after their legitimacy to power has been rejected.  Whether one is the corrupt former leadership of a church refusing to accept defeat and embittered and lustful for power to the extent that one mobilizes a corrupt effort to attack the legitimacy of the new leadership, a corrupt slaveowning elite that refuses to accept the mandate of the people to commit to the end of the expansion of plantation slavery, or one is a two-bit tinpot African dictator unable to accept the loss of the presidency in the face of a majority vote for the opposition, the lust for power that leads people to reject legitimate elections and the transfer of power to one’s opponents is a common and lamentable problem.

The second element that creates a decisive conflict over power is the strength of the demands of the winners of an election to hold the spoils of power for themselves that they won fairly and squarely through the political process.  So long as two sides desire power and authority and the loser is unwilling to surrender the power to those who fairly obtained it, a conflict on some level is inevitable.  Bullets replace ballots when the losers are unwilling to accept that no political defeat is final, but are foolish enough to neglect to notice that resistance to a sensible and consensual political process may ensure that the victorious party will be committed to eradicating the sore losers from power permanently.

The forces of the former president of the Ivory Coast should have learned some lessons from history that would have preserved their country’s fragile democracy and avoided a lamentable and bloody civil war.  The nation of Somaliland is not yet recognized by the international community, but so far it has been able to conduct three peaceful transfers of power between political parties, a rate of stability that makes it one of the most stable republics in the entire continent of Africa.  In 2000, shortly after I visited the nation of Ghana, the people of Ghana rejected the candidacy of their former dictator, one Flight Lt. Jerry Rawlings in an election.  To his credit, he stepped down from the power he had gotten through a coup and accepted the vote of the people, allowing Ghana to develop a fragile but functioning democratic order that has since resulted in further peaceful transfers of power.

The peaceful transfer of power from one political party to another is the admission that both sides, whether Democrat or Republican, Labor or Conservative or Liberal Democrat, PAN or PRI, or whatever other parties may exist, obey the political covenant that binds all citizens together to accept the verdict of the election and to serve as loyal opposition committed to the endurance of the political order even with deep political disagreements and disputes between the various camps.  It is the commitment by all political actors to the process of voting that allows the ballot to replace the bullet as the means of determining political power.  As all political parties, whether one is in a church or a nation (or even a company of nations) depend on winning power through coalitions, no defeat or victory is permanent as coalitions may change as different issues take precedence and coalitions shift through demography or generation shifts.

It is the resistance by a party to relinquish the offices of leadership that may lead to the most permanent shifts of political power.  For example, the refusal of the Southerners to relinquish their ill-gotten hold of political power after the victory of Abraham Lincoln in the election of 1860 led to a civil war that lasted for four years and ended in the deaths of more than 600,000 Americans.  It also permanently destroyed the South as the leading area of the United States, led to the end of slavery, and to permanent cultural changes in the political and economic system of the United States.  These changes may have been averted or at least made less decisive had the result of the South been less provocative.  The need to defend the results of the election of 1860 by the North and to defend the legitimacy of their new authority within the United States led to revolutionary changes because of the intransigence of the losing side.  When the North consolidated power with bullets that they had won originally by ballots, a more fundamental shift in power happened than would have happened had the democratic order been able to peacefully muddle its way through.

The losing supporters of Laurent Gbagbo ought to learn a lesson from the American Civil War and seek as peaceful an end as possible to preserve their own future chances for power and influence in the Ivory Coast as a whole.  The bitterness engendered by months of conflict may make it impossible for the losing side to gain respect and honor and support from their opponents.  The rigidness of conflict between legitimate winners and sore losers may make the winners determined to strip the losers of political power and the spoils of office for years to come.  An election that may have led to the establishment and consolidation of a democratic order in the Ivory Coast appears instead to lead to bitterness and hostility for years, maybe even generations, due to the outbreak of bloody civil war.  May others learn and profit from the example as well, knowing that a peaceful transfer of power allows a momentarily defeated party the opportunity for future victory by virtue of their commitment to the democratic process.  We could all stand to learn that lesson a little better.

[1] http://www.csmonitor.com/World/terrorism-security/2011/0403/Heavy-fighting-in-Ivory-Coast-as-forces-clash-around-presidential-palace