Laurent Gbagbo, who was captured after a long and brutal civil war in Ivory Coast, said a year before he became president in 1999: “What does (former Serbian and Yugoslavian President Slobodan) Milosevic think he can do with the whole world against him? When everyone in the village sees a white loincloth, if you are the only person to see it as black, then you are the one who has a problem.”

What made him another Milosevic? He is simply one of the power-maniacs history has witnessed since its beginning. Anybody can become a power maniac because man is innately attracted to power. Power seekers may become power maniacs when the political, economic and socio-cultural environments are favorable to them.

Such favorable environments exist in most developing countries: They include deficiencies in state-building; poverty; ethnic, religious and regional diversity; and a combination of these. Dictatorship and the political, economic and socio-cultural environments are mutually reinforcing. On the one hand, a power maniac takes advantage of those conditions in his country and seizes power and tries to keep it by all means. On the other hand, the power maniac aggravates the existing conditions because he believes that such conditions are beneficial to his lasting monopoly of power or he is incapable of improving them.

However, it should also be noted that although most developing countries have not yet shed the above adverse conditions, some have maintained political stability while others have gone through chronic political instability or political turmoil. To find what makes a power maniac, we can examine the seven Arab countries going through political turmoil: Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Syria, Morocco, Jordan and Bahrain.

The first four are pseudo-democracies, or autocracies in the guise of democracy. The latter three are absolute monarchies. Economically, Bahrain and Libya belong to the upper class of nations, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, and Syria the middle and Yemen the lower class. Demographically, Egypt is ethnically and religiously almost homogeneous; Libya is ethnically heterogeneous but religiously Sunni Muslim. Elsewhere, Jordan has two major ethnic groups but its people are Sunni Muslim; Bahrain is ethnically homogeneous, but its people are divided into the Shiite majority and the Sunni minority, ruled by a Sunni king.

The Yemeni are predominantly Arab but divided into Sunni and Shiite Muslims; Tunisia is multi-ethnic but Sunni dominant; the Syrians are predominantly Syrian Arab and Sunnis with some Shiites and Christians.

The demographics and political conditions vary, but all seven countries are in political turmoil, and there is one element they all share: autocratic rule. All of them have been ruled by one person for more than 10 consecutive years.

At present there are 60 states in the third world that have been ruled by one person for more than 10 consecutive years. Among them, six countries are absolute monarchies, one a constitutional monarchy, three are communist states and the rest pseudo-democracies. The rulers of the 50 pseudo-democracies have either illegally seized power and maintained it or legally gained power but maintained it through illegitimate means. The leaders of the three communist countries (Laos, Cuba and North Korea) are not democratically elected.

Why do power-maniacs use “democracy” as the source of legitimacy? Why do those who revolt against the autocrats demand democracy instead of any other political systems? Why do some countries fall into a political turmoil while others do not, despite being under the same conditions scholars consider the causes of popular uprisings or revolutions?

Concerning the first question, both the ruler and the ruled recognize democracy as the only source of legitimacy of government, rejecting other sources such as the traditional and charismatic. Is it attributable to the influence of Western civilization, or the instigation or conspiracy of Western powers? Is it because of the people’s innate desire for freedom or popular sovereignty? The radicals will support the first view, and the liberals the second. No matter which view is correct, democracy will remain the main source of political legitimacy for a long time in the future.

As to the second question, I suggest that the time factor is crucial. A country will implore or explode when the above five conditions coalesce into a critical mass, or when one or more conditions intensify and reach a critical degree of intensity.

The role of the individual in any political turmoil is more important than any other factors, as we have seen. All power maniacs have the following common characteristics: Western-educated intellectuals or professional soldiers; megalomaniacs and paranoiacs; propagandists; and hallucination that their states are their personal estates; and insatiable desire for wealth and prestige.

No wonder why Saddam Hussein, the executed dictator of Iraq, said that only his autocracy could maintain the unity and peace and stability of Iraq. We now know why Moammar Gadhafi said that all the people of Libya love and adore him and that Western imperialists were trying to retake African nations. Their remarks remind us of Joseph Stalin’s two theories which he developed to consolidate his autocracy: the enemy of the people and capitalist encirclement. It is not surprising that Kim Jong-il uses the same propaganda tactics. Actually, the enemy of the people is the power maniac himself.

Until democracy becomes second nature to the peoples of the Third World, the zone of chaos will have to go through all kinds of trial and travail.

By Park Sang-seek

Park Sang-seek is a professor at the Graduate Institute of Peace Studies, Kyung Hee University. ― Ed.