Zimbabwe is a good example, because the original problem was a wealth imbalance which had race thrown in to the mix. Rhodesia was a democracy, but one that had elements of Mqs ideas: It had something amounting to a poll tax. You had to have a certain educational/financial standing to be eligible to vote. This effectively is how the whites controlled the country, with only 5% of the population, even though in theory, any black could attain voting rights.
Not surprisingly, this resulted in non-democratic means of correcting the problem. But when those means prevailed, Mugabe then concentrated the wealth much further, taking from the 5% mostly to himself (he's considered a multi-billionaire), his family, and the other upper henchmen in his party.
Its true that he gave land taken from the 5% to a wider base, but land "wealth" depends on whether its worth living in the country, and Mugabe's other main accomplishment has been to destroy what wealth he didn't steal. So the net effect is that today the 95% is way worse off than they were when the 5% were still around.
Your question was interesting, because there is an argument that democracy should be self-correcting against some types of imbalances. Why is it sometimes not? |
