The following is a quote from the book We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch. The book covers the history, execution, and after-effects of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. I don't know if it's the best book on the subject, but I can say that it's an amazingly good book and an astonishingly quick read.
The passage I'm posting here (and I'll apologize for any typographical errors—I had to transcribe the thing by hand, and I'm not the world's best typist) describes the author's conversation with Yoweri Museveni, the President of Uganda, and his take on the attitude of Western sponsor states (like the United States) toward multiparty elections and "cosmetic democracy" in undeveloped client states (like Iraq). Given the current situation in Iraq—the mounting attacks by Sunni groups and the withdrawal of Sunni political parties from the ballot—the passage is more than relevant. It borders on prescience.
Toward the end of the war in the Congo, when Kabila's victory appeared inevitable, The New York Times ran an editorial headed "Tyranny or Democracy in Zaire?" –as if those were the only two political possibilities, and whatever was not one must be the other. Museveni, like many of his contemporaries among the leaders of what might be called post-colonial Africa, sought a middle ground on which to build the foundations for a sustainable democratic order. Because he refused to allow multiparty politics in Uganda, many Western pundits were inclined to join with his Ugandan critics in withholding admiration for his successes. But he argued that until corruption was brought under control, until a middle class with strong political and economic interests developed, and until there was a coherent national public debate, political parties were bound to devolve into tribal factions or financial rackets, and to remain an affair of elites struggling for power, if not a cause of actual civil war.Museveni called his regime a "no-party democracy," based on "movement politics," and he explained that parties are "uni-ideological," whereas a movement like his National Resistance Movement or the Rwandese Patriotic Front is "multi-ideological," open to a polyphony of sensibilities and interests. "Socialists are in our movement, capitalists are in our movement, feudalists—like the kings here in Uganda—are members of our movement," he said. The movement was officially open to everyone, and "anybody who wants" could stand for election. Although Museveni, like most African leaders of his generation, was often described as a former Marxist guerilla, he was a staunch promoter of free enterprise, and he had come to favor the formation of political groupings along class lines, in order to produce "horizontal polarization," as opposed to the "vertical polarization" of tribalism or regionalism. "That's why we say, in the short run, let political competition not be based on groups, let it be based on individuals," he told me, adding, "We are not likely to have healthy groups. We are likely go have unhealthy groups. So why take the risk?"
Museveni's complaint was with what might be called cosmetic democracy, in which elections held for elections' sake at the behest of "donor governments" sustain feeble or corrupt powers in politically damaged societies. "If I have got a heart problem and I try to appear healthy, then I will just die," Museveni told me. We were speaking of the way the West, having won the Cold War and lost its simple template for distinguishing bad guys from good guys around the world, had found a new political religion in promoting multiparty elections (at least in economically dependent countries where Chinese is not widely spoken). Museveni described this policy sas "not only meddling but meddling on the basis of ignorance and, of course, some arrogance also." He said "These people seem to say that the developed parts of the world and the undeveloped parts of the world can all be managed uniformly. Politically this is their line, and I think this is really rubbish—to be charitable. It's not possible to manage radically different societies in a uniform way. Yes, there are some essentials which should be common, like universal suffrage, one person one vote, by secret ballot, a free press, separation of powers. These should be common factors, but not the exact form. The forms should be according to the situations."