It's hardly democracy, but it's not clear that the AU has any better choices in Côte d'Ivoire. Although Kenya's Odinga has called for Gbagbo to be removed by force, no doubt bitter about his own experiences with power sharing, he has dropped such rhetoric since the AU appointed him lead representative for the Côte d'Ivoire crisis. Because Gbagbo has the loyalty of much of the military, any AU invasion of Côte d'Ivoire would risk civil or even regional war. Even if Gbagbo were removed, partisans could terrorize West Africa for years. Gbagbo won't step down, and if the Economic Community of West African States' (ECOWAS) threat of economic sanctions can't cleave him from his military loyalists, allowing him to remain under a power-sharing compromise is the only real option for the AU.

So while the AU and its junior bodies halted Kenya and Zimbabwe from spiraling out of control, they have sent an unintentional but clear signal to presidents across Sub-Saharan Africa: if you lose reelection, even amid fraud and violence, you don't have to step down. As long as the military is loyal to you, simply threaten violence and your fellow African heads of state will let you stay on under the guise of "national unity" and "power sharing." Gbagbo has no structural incentive to step down, and neither will future election-winning incumbents.

Côte d'Ivoire's hard lesson for African leaders is that intervening in political crises after they happen doesn't work. It's too easy for corrupt leaders to play the system, and emergency compromises that are good in isolation can end up building incentives for bad behavior. The AU will have to prevent the next Côte d'Ivoire before it happens. That means fixing the problems that allow Africa's Gbagbos and Mugabes to cling to power: weak judiciaries, too much presidential control over the military, and the corruption that fuels them both. Fortunately, Africa's mulitlateral bodies have shown a clear willingness to intervene in the continent's national affairs.

The strong, swift efforts by the AU and ECOWAS to peacefully remove Gbagbo from power show that African leaders are seriously committed to furthering good governance and protecting democracy. But their strategy of reactive democratization has not worked. If the continent's mulitlateral bodies directed their energies toward democracy building in countries before they dissolved into violence, such crises could be averted. It's no simple thing for a continental collective to tell a member state to restructure its government or to allow greater transparency, but there is precedent in the European Union. The EU has used economic incentives to push post-war Balkan nations, for example, to rapidly modernize their state institutions and to enforce rule-of-law.

A functioning democracy has too many moving parts to fix on-the-fly. It requires constant maintenance and even the occasional overhaul to keep it working. If the African Union wants to prevent another ugly compromise like the ones it made in Kenya and Zimbabwe, and will probably have to make again in Côte d'Ivoire, the AU will have to take the lead in maintaining good African governance.

Image: Côte d'Ivoire President Laurent Gbagbo talks with with African Union chief Jean Ping at an summit this May. More recently, Ping has traveled to Côte d'Ivoire to try and resolve the ongoing political crisis there. By Sai Kambou/AFP/Getty.



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