Watching the empire stumble

Africans have watched with disconcerted fascination as the American democratic process chugs towards a problematic election at the start of November.

For many African countries, America’s democracy was the gold standard, particularly for those returning to political pluralism after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Indeed many constitutions across the continent resemble America’s in design, and US agencies are important actors in advising governments across the continent in the management of elections.

The US has also used a range of anti-corruption instruments — such as the Magnitsky Act, and the state department’s increasingly infrequent opinions, cautions and threats to regimes and administrations around the world — to push countries to adhere to standards of human rights, good governance, transparency and accountability modelled on American standards.

For many corrupt authoritarian regimes, realising they are on the radar of the prosecutors for the Southern District of New York has traditionally been a powerful threat.

Times have changed. The Trump administration has removed key oversight mechanisms such as inspectors general in assorted US government departments, and, as elections loom, disgruntled civil servants increasingly publicly express discontent with corruption in the administration.

The corruption and conflict of interest that American officials warned against in developing countries clearly has a serious foothold in the US as well. The manipulation of voting rules to disenfranchise voters — especially people of colour — is called “voter suppression” in the US, but is identical to election rigging in the developing world.

The compromising of the US Postal Service just before an election where voting by mail will be all the more important because of the Covid-19 pandemic is electoral interference.

Unfortunately, America’s lapses are being broadcast into homes and onto phones all over the world, validating authoritarian regimes. The result is a more corrupt world and the important realisation, in many developing countries, that we’re on our own. This is not necessarily a bad thing.