Arms for Despots and the Powerlessness of Public Opinion
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Yannick David Poullie Arms for despots and the powerlessness of public opinion University of Tampere School of Social Sciences and Humanities Master’s Degree Programme in Peace, Mediation and Conflict Research / History Master’s Thesis November 2014 University of Tampere School of Social Sciences and Humanities Master’s Programme in Peace, Mediation and Conflict Research YANNICK POULLIE: Arms for despots and the powerlessness of public opinion Master’s Thesis, 108 pages, two appendices November 2014 Abstract This thesis is concerned with the influence of public opinion on unpopular but marginal policies in democratic systems. I devise a simple game theoretical model representing the strategies of government and opposition concerning such a policy. Then I test this model against the contemporary case study of German arms exports into the MENA region in 2011. To this end, I qualitatively study official government and parliamentary sources as well as certain media actors’ coverage to determine both political parties’ and the media’s impact on the debate. The putative willingness of the federal German government to export main battle tanks to Saudi Arabia during the uprisings in the MENA region caused an outcry in the German media and public. While the opposition used the opportunity for thorough criticism, it was largely inactive on the topic prior to the federal elections in 2013. The model is able to explain this difference. Both government and opposition are unlikely to problematise a policy that yields a gain for them but that is unpopular with the electorate. Although a majority of voters dislikes the policy it does not impact on voting decisions because it is marginal to almost all voters. The finding holds even under the assumption of voters making their voting decisions retrospectively. This armistice between relevant political parties constitutes a Nash equilibrium and can effectively prevent unpopular but marginal policies from modification. It shows the difficulty of making the government resolve a hugely unpopular yet minor issue, rendering public opinion effectively powerless. While the media is not identified as an effective corrective, further research on the possibilities of civil society to influence political parties is recommended. Equally, it should be possible to identify similar issues and test the model in other democratic polities. Key words: Arab Spring, arms exports, democracy, game theory, interest group, media, political party, public opinion, retrospective voting Contents 1 Introduction 1 2 Theoretical basics 5 2.1 Game theory and democracy . .5 2.2 Retrospective Voting . .8 3 Game theory applied: players and games 11 3.1 Government and opposition . 12 3.1.1 P1 – the government . 12 3.1.2 P2 – the opposition . 14 3.2 The game between P1 and P2 during non-election times . 15 3.3 Campaigning and players’ reduced unity . 18 3.4 The game between P1 and P2 during election times . 20 3.5 Other players . 23 3.5.1 P3 – the media . 23 3.5.2 P4 – interest groups . 26 3.5.3 P5 – the electorate . 29 4 Source material and source criticism 33 5 The historical and political context 39 5.1 The tenets of German foreign policy . 39 5.2 The government’s stance on the export of arms . 42 5.3 Historical context in 2011 and thereafter . 47 6 The debate on German arms exports into the MENA region 57 6.1 The government’s foreign policy applied in 2011 . 57 6.2 January to June 2011 . 62 6.3 July 2011: 200 Leopard II MBTs . 67 6.4 Identifying g ............................................... 71 6.5 August to December 2011 . 75 6.6 Coverage in selected media outlets from July to December 2011 . 78 6.6.1 Analysis . 80 6.6.2 Summary . 88 7 Election year 2013 91 7.1 January 2013: release of the Arms Export Report 2011 . 91 7.2 Media coverage in 2013 . 95 7.3 February 2013 until election day, 22nd of September 2013 . 96 7.4 Election day and aftermath . 101 8 Conclusions 105 8.1 Results of the case study . 105 8.2 Unpopular but marginal issues . 107 A Acronyms 109 B Bibliography 113 B.1 Sources . 113 B.2 Literature . 130 List of Tables 3.1 Federal government during non-election times . 16 3.2 Federal government and parliamentary opposition during non-election times . 18 3.3 Federal government during election times . 21 3.4 Federal government and parliamentary opposition during election times . 22 4.1 Main political parties in the Federal Republic of Germany . 35 4.2 Election results of the main political parties in Germany from 1994 to 2009 . 36 6.1 Selected scores of Saudi Arabia in the Fragile States Index, 2005 to 2014 . 65 6.2 Party donations by selected arms manufacturers in 2011 and 2012 . 74 6.3 Media outlets selected for analysis . 79 7.1 Selected figures regarding German arms exports from 2009 to 2013 . 92 7.2 Election results of the main political parties in Germany from 1998 to 2013 . 102 Chapter 1 Introduction “Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time; but there is the broad feeling in our country that the people should rule, continuously rule, and that public opinion, expressed by all constitutional means, should shape, guide, and control the actions of Ministers who are their servants and not their masters.” Winston Churchill, on the 11th of November 1947 Democracy is a form of government held highly by both those societies practicing it and those who seek to attain it. Wars are fought in its name and even undemocratic dictatorships seem to at least see an advantage in claiming the term for themselves. However, democracy is not without flaws. More malevolent comments imply that democracy, the rule by the people, in practice often deteriorates into a system in which the people merely vote every few years but otherwise have little means of rule. Regardless of one’s opinion on said judgment, the electoral process certainly is a vital element of democracy. In it, every single member of an electorate is called upon to cast her or his vote. This is done in order to decide which coalition of candidates and parties may constitute the government until the next elections. Casting one’s vote based on one’s own self-interest may be an obvious strategy. However, it is but one possible strategy upon which any single voter may cast her or his vote. What is more, how is a voter even to amass the information necessary to make a well-founded decision about whom to give her or his vote to? One strategy that was suggested here as opposed to mere comparisons between candidates’ campaigns and thus their announcements for the future is retrospective voting. Retrospective voting describes the phenomenon of founding one’s voting decision on the candidates’ performance in the past. Elections, at least when referring to ‘large’ elections such as national and federal ones, are not held on the question of which single candidate will have to deal with which single issue. Instead they are held on candidates’ platforms with a combination of suggested policies for several, single issues. Thus it is likely that a voter will have to find her or his priorities among the issues at hand as 1 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION issues differ in their respective saliency to any given voter. Voting on a bundle of issues is called bundled voting and is bound to happen in any major governmental election. Saari and Sieberg have shown that a bundle of policies may still withstand a vote although it contains a policy that no one prefers. They point to the fact that politicians are aware of this fact and the potential for exploitation that comes with it. Exploitation happens by bundling a desired but unpopular policy with more popular issues.1 This will ensure the unpopular one withstanding the vote as part of the bundle (Saari, Sieberg 2001). This seemingly simple insight is of major importance to democratic elections. It can be combined with the notion that policies do not only differ in their popularity with the electorate but also in their saliency to it. From this combination I derive the main question addressed in this thesis: can a government ever be made to change a policy that is unpopular but marginal? This question includes two more assumptions: First, since there is usually an incumbent government that seeks reelection the question contains the term government instead of candidate. Second, it is assumed that a post-electoral change in the government coalition may relatively easily change an unpopular policy. Thus the question deliberately focuses on changing the incumbent governmental coalition’s view, or at least the view of its dominating party that is, on that unpopular policy. In order to conduct a game-theoretical analysis of the considerations accompanying such an unpopular policy, a range of relevant players are identified. This range of players is subsequently applied in a contemporary case study. The first player (P1) to consider is the coalition in power which seeks to continue its unpopular policy, for whichever reasons, into the next legislative term. If there is a coalition of parties in power, coalising parties may have to be considered separately to a certain extent. Altogether the question of how unitary an actor effectively is, has to be addressed. The second player (P2) is the parliamentary opposition which may or may not have a conflicting view on that unpopular issue compared to P1.