Wars, Guns and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places. Best book I've heard about in months!

Wash Post reviewed the new book by Paul Collier, Wars, Guns and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places. The Guardian did too.

It sounds amazing and I cannot wait to read it when I am done with Tom Ricks' new book The Gamble about the surge, which so far (on page 150) has given an extremely thorough analysis of how the surge was decided upon. Thrilling.

Collier is a World Bank economist, and apparently one of the best. He lately has used his economic background for the good of political field - using empirical evidence, data and stats, to prove his theses about WHY people are violent, why individuals are radical. He debunks that it is because of religious or ethnic reasons and argues it really has to do with economics, among other more practical reasons - politics. This is why I dig him.

There are so many interesting angles this book covers....

Basic point is when you half ass democracy building (just have elections) in countries that have NO other democratic/ civil society institutions it creates more violence, therefore giving democracy a bad name. (This is exactly what has happened Iraq and has happened in other countries in the region.)

Also voter turnout is the equivalent of 'wearing football scarf' (great line) and doesn't mean much when all civilians are doing is casting a ballot and are not to the slightest extent engaged in their societies. (They don't know the candidates platform (also, the candidates don't have one) and vote based on ethnic or religious group or tribal and family connections.)

Civil society makes democracy real: rule of law, free press, free speech, freedom of assembly, transparent ballot counting, political parties based on ideas and ideology not ethnicity or religious orientation, security.

Elections without rules, checks and balances, traditions become just like warfare – war to see who wins. As warring parties are forced to transfer/ funnel their violence into elections, the election is rife with fraud, violence, threats, assassinations, bribes.

Elections are also a horrible idea during sectarian bouts and times of ethnic tension because they simply cement these identities instead of working to erode them and create a national identity. This is so exactly what happened in Iraq. Sectarian, Sunni Shii identities created after the invasion because of the security vacuum were artificial and could have been done away with, but instead we called for elections right in the middle of the height of their rise - and what do you get? Sunni boycott of the elections, Shii win power and Shii militias start to cleanse neighborhoods of Sunnis, further entrenching sectarianism.

More later.