What do South Africa and Massachusetts Have in Common?

By @TedFrier

There is not much that South Africa and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts have in common, but apparently a government pretty much in the hands of a single party is one of them.

Today, Massachusetts state government is about where I left it nearly a quarter century ago when I marched off to work for the state GOP following four years covering the State House as a wire service reporter: All five constitutional officers then, as now, were Democrats (Governor, Lt. Governor, Attorney General, State Treasurer, Auditor). The same was, and is, true for the Massachusetts congressional delegation. In the state legislature, Republicans had barely enough members (eight) in the 40-member Senate to demand a roll call vote and the party's representation in the 160-member House was no better, just 30 or so. If the numbers have improved since then I'd be surprised.

As much as I now think the Republican Party is filled with knaves and fools and ought to be beaten as often as possible, way back in 1989 when I thought it my patriotic duty to help smooth out the partisan imbalance, I felt the same way Washington Monthly's Ryan Cooper feels now about one-party rule -- that it is a recipe for corruption and bad government no matter which party is dong the governing.

In a post on South Africa that caught my eye, Cooper says the country "has an exquisite balance of powers on paper" but is still a one-party state ?riddled with corruption.

Cooper lived in South Africa in 2009-11 and says the tottering state "bears eerie similarity to what happened across the continent after the end of colonialism."

First, some charismatic leader shoves out the European oppressor only to replace the colonial occupier with "political repression, galloping corruption, and megalomaniacal excess," says Cooper.

Then the country's economy would stagnate and spiral down, and then the coups would start.

It is not about culture or values, says Cooper. The sinister force at work here is a lack of political competition, which Cooper says "is the number one problem with South Africa."

In South Africa, the African National Congress has won every election with over 60 percent of the vote, says Cooper, "and the lack of electoral consequences for failure hasn't done wonders for their moral discipline."

I saw the same thing covering the Massachusetts State House. There was no penalty for corruption or incompetence. How could there be since it is very hard to hold officeholders accountable when they run unopposed.

So, just as I switched my party registration from "unenrolled" to GOP in 1989 and went to work trying to get more Republicans elected, Cooper says one solution to the problems in South Africa is to "foster political competition for its own sake."

As much as I think the present Tea Party iteration of the GOP needs to be neutralized as a political force, I also share Cooper's apprehensions about talk of a "permanent Democratic majority."

A democratic system "needs a loyal opposition to keep the parties honest," says Cooper, which is why it is doubly tragic that today's Republican Party "has been overtaken with a messianic apocalypticism."

In the short run the situation is likely to get worse, says Cooper since the GOP's only strategy for winning seems to be hatching plots to rig the system in their favor, whether the voter suppression efforts we saw in the last election or the tinkering with the Electoral College system now going on among Republicans in blue states who hope to squeeze out a few extra votes by abandoning winner-take-all in favor of awarding votes on a proportional basis.

But in the process, says Cooper, Republicans will only dig their hole deeper with core Democratic constituencies who will see this as an effort to deliberately disenfranchise them.

"Let's hope they figure out soon that this is a losing strategy, for everyone's sake," says Cooper. "South Africa is an example of where that road ends."

Source: http://www.theygaveusarepublic.com/diary/11395/what-do-south-africa-and-massachusetts-have-in-common

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