“It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.”

Churchill’s quote rings even more true after speaking with a professor today with a specialty in ethnic conflict. After his lecture in my comparative political systems course today, I went up and asked him a question about identity and democracy that stemmed from a conversation I had with a taxi driver.

The driver was a Pashtun Afghani who had left his country in the early 1990s. As we spoke about culture and ethnicities, he told me that when he was growing up, the ethnic groups, which today drive the politics in Afghanistan, were non-existent in his life. He had no idea his wife was a different tribal group. 

This was shocking to me. How could something so powerful today be nearly nonexistent 2 decades ago. And this change wasn’t technological, it was identity, something seemingly steeped in tradition and history. 

However, I was reminded of a scene in Hotel Rwanda where a Rwandan tells the UN chief that, prior to British rule, Hutus and Tutsis were not labels used. This changed. As you know, these groups would be involved in a genocidal nightmare in 1994.

So, with these two puzzles, I asked the professor, what gives?

The answer relates to democracy and its tendency to shape identity. When people are voting for a popular government, they tend to focus on “getting what’s theirs.” When the government loses legitimacy (e.g. minority in power), ethnic groups tend to mobilize and strengthen the perceived differences. 

This explains the change in governance in colonial Rwanda and the change away from the monarchy in Afghanistan. 

Democracy is not a panacea and this realizaton really makes me wonder if it is worth spreading.