International Relations and Diplomacy ISSUE 11, November 2014

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International Relations

and Diplomacy

Volume 2, Number 11, November 2014 (Serial Number 14)

Contents

Democracy in Islamic Societies

Idiosyncracies of Democracy: Islamic Societies 697

Kunihiko Imai

The Refugees in Asia Minor and the Impact of Governance of México

The Thin Line Between Sanity and Insanity: The Case of Internment of the Asia Minor

Refugees in Dromokaition Lunatic Asylum 717

Georgios I. Kritikos

The Pact for México as a Mechanism of Governance and Legitimacy 736

Luis Enrique Concepción Montiel

Research of Angola’s Lobito Corridor and Sanjak Bosniak Volunteers in

the Turkish Military

The Challenges of the “Development From Above” and “Development From Below” in

the Lobito Transport Corridor (Angola) 748

Ana Maria Simões Ramalho Duarte

Sanjak Bosniak Volunteers in the Turkish Military Orders From Galipoli to Galicia

(1916-1918) 775

Redžep Škrijelj

International Relations and Diplomacy, ISSN 2328-2134

November 2014, Vol. 2, No. 11, 697-716

Idiosyncracies of Democracy: Islamic Societies

Kunihiko Imai

Elmira College, New York, USA

The supposedly unique impact of Islamic culture on democracy has been debated by various scholars. While some

argue that it has a deleterious effect, others explain why its effect is not any more negative than other religions.

Some even argue that there is no reason to assume Islam has a negative impact on democracy at all. The results of

empirical studies are equally confusing. While some support the negative view of Islam, others actually

demonstrate its positive effect on democracy. This article contributes to this debate by focusing its attention on the

often-neglected distinction between electoral and liberal democracies, comparing Islamic societies with the rest of

the world. Its findings demonstrate that the religion of Islam cannot be used to explain the seeming lack of the

growth of democracy among Islamic societies.

Keywords: democracy, Islamic societies, Islamic culture/religion, electoral and liberal democracy

Introduction

Democracy has been a topic of interest among many scholars and practitioners of politics alike for quite

some time. Numerous articles and books have been written on the subject of democracy. Surprisingly, however,

there are few studies that demonstrate a systematic comparison between regional and global patterns of

democracy. There are many studies that have analyzed some of the unique situations and characteristics of

disparate geographical regions of the world, but it is difficult to find a study that delineates what factors are

truly unique to a region and what other ones are commonly found throughout the world. This article attempts to

fill this gap in the literature. More specifically, it is focused on Islamic states, and pays particular attention to

the “perceived” impact of Islam on the levels of democracy among Islamic societies. By conducting an

empirical data analysis, this article attempts to determine if Islamic societies are uniquely different from the rest

of the world in the sense that their religion works as an added impediment toward improving their levels of

democracy. Further it attempts to contribute to the evolution of democracy studies by highlighting the

importance of making an often-neglected distinction between electoral and liberal democracies in measuring

democracy.

Islamic Uniqueness?

Various economic and political indices will make it obvious that many of the Islamic states are less

modernized and less democratized than the rest of the world. If one looks at the political freedom and civil

liberties scores published by the Freedom House, for example, one will find a common lack of freedom

throughout the greater Middle East region. “A non-Islamic state is nearly three times more likely to be

Kunihiko Imai, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, Elmira College.

DAVID PUBLISHING

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IDIOSYNCRACIES OF DEMOCRACY: ISLAMIC SOCIETIES

698

democratic than an Islamic state” (Karatnycky, 2002, p. 103). The important question is whether it is because of

the influence of the religion of Islam, or because of those states‟ shortfalls in some of the known requisites of

democracy.

Some scholars argue that Islamic states are uniquely different. For instance, some believe that Islamic law

differs from the laws of Western states because it is governed by the teachings of Shari‟a law, and conclude that

Islamic societies are fundamentally incompatible with democracy (Enayat, 1983). Similarly, some Muslim

thinkers argue that Islam and democracy are incompatible: (1) because of the Islamic concept of the absolute

sovereignty of God; (2) In Islam, the law was defined and promulgated by God and God‟s law, the Shari‟a,

could not be altered by elected parliaments; and (3) the concept of parliaments as sources of law was seen as

blasphemous (Voll, 2005). Some non-Muslim scholars hold similar views that Islam is basically incompatible

with democracy because it conflicts with the sovereignty of God and because Islam is an authoritarian vision

presented by the body of teachings developed by a millennium of Muslim scholars. According to Huntington

(1993b), the fact that most of the states in the Muslim world did not take part in the so-called third-wave of

democratization of the 1980s was evidence that some cultures such as that of the Muslim world are particularly

inimical to democracy.

Some other scholars argue that Islamic societies are not uniquely different from the rest of the world in

terms of democracy. Although some unique characteristics among Muslim or Middle Eastern societies are

observable, Muslim states may not be grouped together as unique in terms of their abilities to instill democracy.

In fact, many observers of Islam see no inherent or essential aspect of Islam that would make it incompatible

with democracy (Ahmad, 2003; Ayoob, 2005; Esposito, 1998). Ahmad (2003), for example, argued that, what

is called freedom in Europe is exactly what is defined in Islam as justice („adl), right (haqq), consultation

(shura), and equality (musawat), and that Islamic doctrine is conducive to democratic thought in many ways.

Some others conduct an empirical analyses to find that Islam, when applied to civil and political society, was

not exceptionally different from other religions (Sarkissian, 2012).

Some other scholars even go further to argue that Islam, rightly understood, is compatible with democracy.

By using the examples of Taiwan, South Korea, Turkey, Malaysia, Mali, Senegal, and Bangladesh, Hunter and

Malik argue that neither Confucianism nor Islam is a hindrance to democracy and that “the historical evidence

does not support a culturally deterministic explanation for failure in either modernization or democratization in

the Muslim world and elsewhere” (Hunter & Malik, 2005, p. 15).

Complicating the matter further is the fact that Islam is not monolithic. Careful analysis of the Muslim

world would reveal enormous diversities among the Islamic states. “Some of the most authoritarian regimes in

the Muslim world, such as that of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, were neither traditional Muslim regimes nor

Islamist in program” (Voll, 2005, p. 95). As Esposito (1998) urged, people should ask the question “whose

Islam?” since Islam is always presented through the voices and perspectives of Muslim groups and individuals.

Thus, an all-encompassing, culturally deterministic view faces an empirical challenge. Variables other than that

of Islamic exceptionality may explain the resistance to democratization in the Greater Middle East more

satisfactorily (Ayoob, 2005). These diverse views among scholars, however, leave us with no clear answer and,


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thus, the question on the linkage between Islam and democracy begs empirical testing.

Empirical Challenge

One of the most important challenges in the empirical studies of democracy and democratization is the

accurate operationalization of “democracy”. Democracy has been conceptualized and measured in different

ways. Different indices have different strengths and weaknesses. No single index offers a satisfactory response

to all three challenges of conceptualization, measurement, and aggregation (Munck & Verkuilen, 2002). There

are multiple indices that have been developed over the years. Among them are five well-established indices of

democracy, which have been developed by (1) Freedom House; (2) Polity IV; (3) Vanhanen; (4) Alvarez et al.;

and (5) Reich. After examining these five indices based on the three above-mentioned challenges, Hadenius

and Teorell concluded that two of them, Polity IV and Freedom House, should be preferred on the whole to the

others (Hadenius & Teorell, 2005) .

Despite various efforts to measure the concept, a universally accepted index of democracy has not

emerged. As most scholars would agree, some indices may be more valid than others in some respects, but no

single index completely captures the concept of democracy. Given the current lack of a totally satisfactory

measure of democracy, applying one, or a combination, of the existing indices to represent the entirety of the

concept of democracy may actually be inappropriate. This is because there are different stages of democratic

development, each of which may require a different index to capture the respective characteristics. Moreover,

such a usage of different indices may be essential to capture the impact of different variables upon disparate

aspects of democracy (Coppedge et al., 2011, p. 251). Treating extant indices as distinct measures would be a

more sensible approach than pretending that any one of them is by far the best measure of the concept of

democracy. Indeed, Coppedge et al. explained that “the task of constructing a global index of democracy that is

valid and precise, and universally acknowledged as such is well nigh impossible” (Coppedge et al., 2011,

p. 252). This article utilizes two most commonly used indices of democracy—Polity and Freedom House

(Coppedge et al., 2011, p. 248)—to capture the effects of some of the most representative requisites of

democracy upon the “electoral” and the “liberal” aspects of democracy, respectively.

Measure of Democracy

Most empirical studies of democracy use either the Polity IV or Freedom House scores to measure

democracy. The strength of Polity is the clarity of its measurement criteria. Although it has such strengths as

clear and detailed coding rules, it is limited as an index because of its minimalist definition of the concept of

democracy, omission of participation, and an inappropriate aggregation procedure. These shortcomings make it

unfit to capture the concept of liberal democracy (Munck & Verkuilen, 2002). Particularly problematic is its

exclusive focus on the aspects of electoral democracy with no attention to the liberal aspects of democracy.

This weakness in the construct validity prevents it from becoming an undisputed choice of scholars. With the

possible exception of freedom of organization, it pays no heed to political freedom (Hadenius & Teorell, 2005).

Therefore, Polity‟s primary weakness is at the conceptual level. If measuring the electoral aspect of democracy

is the primary interest, Polity IV would be the choice. As Plattner (2002) emphasized, however, democracies


700

often refer to “genuinely liberal democracies that protect the rights of their citizens and adhere to the rule of

law and not merely electoral democracies that are deficient in these aspects (even though they may choose their

leaders through competitive elections)” (p. 9). Polity IV, therefore, could hardly cover all aspects of democracy.

The strength of the Freedom House data set, moreover, is its construct validity. It covers essentially the

entire range of basic democratic criteria. Particularly important is the fact that it is the closest measure of the

concept of liberal democracy, whereas hardly any of the other indices covers that aspect of democracy. Based

on their definition of liberal democracy, which is focused on the degree to which a political system allows

democratic rule and political liberties, Bollen and Paxton (2000) argued that, of all the subjective measures, the

Freedom House ratings are the most conceptually similar to the definition of democracy, adding that other

recent subjective indices do not meet the necessary criteria for accurately measuring the concept. Despite its

strength, Freedom House has a methodological weakness due to the inadequate transparency of its coding

system. Outsiders cannot replicate the process. As a result, it is hard to conclude with confidence that Freedom

House is necessarily a better all-round index of democracy than Polity. Another problem is that the checklist of

civil liberties was partly changed in 1989 (Freedom House, 1990). To maintain a constant measure of

democracy, therefore, one may have to choose to limit the date to either before 1989 or after 1990.

Inglehart and Welzel (2009) argued that the essence of democracy lies in its empowerment of ordinary

citizens and that, whether a democracy is effective or not depends not only on the extent to which civil and

political rights exist on paper, but also the degree to which elected officials actually respect these rights. The

existence of such rights on paper is measured by Freedom House‟s annual country ratings. As the

“effectiveness” of a country‟s democratic institutions is not measured by Freedom House, Inglehart and Welzel

suggested the use of the World Bank‟s governance scores, in conjunction with the Freedom House scores, so

that a “rough index of effective democracy can be obtained by multiplying these two scores” (Inglehart &

Welzel, 2009). Teorell and Hadenius, however, had explained their three lines of criticism of this alternative

index proposed by Welzel and Inglehart in 2006, pointing out a serious problem with its construct validity.

Hadenius and Teorell (2005) also found a systematic tendency of the Freedom House scores to underestimate

the level of democracy, whereas the Polity scores have a systematic tendency to overestimate the level of

democracy. Consequently, they recommended an alternative index of democracy by taking the average of the

Freedom House and the Polity scores to minimize measurement bias. This last approach, however, represents

yet another effort to produce a global index that would cover all aspects of democracy. Hence, such an index is

not appropriate either.

Based on these previous findings, this study takes the view that Polity best measures the electoral aspects

of democracy, whereas the Freedom House data set is most suited for analyzing the impacts of variables on the

liberal aspects of democracy.

Determinants of Democracy

Internationalization of National Economies

The volume of international commercial transactions increased dramatically after World War II, and many


701

countries‟ economies became internationalized, with an increasing percentage of their Gross Domestic Product

(GDP) attributable to the international exchange of goods and services. Many scholars believe that this

economic globalization has weakened the individual states‟ control over their societies; thus, globalization

promotes civil liberties and, eventually, democracy through socioeconomic development. Some, however,

believe that increasing economic integration among nations has dramatically reduced the barriers between

national economies, undermining the autonomy of national governments and their political control over their

societies (Bryant, 1994; Ohmae, 1993; Rodrik, 1977; Slaughter, 1977; Thomas & Wilkin, 1997). These authors

argue that, as the flows of capital and information become too great and sudden for any state to control, and as

various transnational and international actors such as multinational corporations, the World Bank, and the

International Monetary Fund (IMF) supersede the states‟ autonomy, globalization erodes their authority (Imai,

2010). This concept of the internationalization of national economies is captured by using several economic indicators:

trade, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), foreign economic aid, and GDP.1

Culture

Some scholars reject the claim regarding the universal effect of economic globalization on politics. They

contend that the unique political culture of different nations attenuates the effects of globalization. Hence, the

effects of globalization are felt differently among the different cultural groups. States‟ control over their

citizenry remains stronger in some countries than others, thus undermining the impact of economic

globalization.

Others, however, reject such claims. Many observers of Islam see no inherent or essential aspect of Islam

that would make it incompatible with democracy. Although various economic and political indices show that

many of the Islamic states are less modernized and less democratized than the rest of the world, they do not

provide any proof that Islam negatively affects democracy. In fact, the existing literature provides alternative

explanations to such an account of cultural uniqueness. When their economies developed through their

internationalization, Islamic societies turned out to be equally as likely to become democratic as any other state

(Imai, 2006). Diamond concluded that “there is no intrinsic economic, cultural, or religious obstacle to

democracy” (Diamond, 2008, p. 315). To this date, no research has found any evidence of a systematic

association between culture and democracy (Ross, 2001; Imai, 2010).

Although the causal link between democracy and Islam has been disputed, there is an important reason to

include “Islam” in any empirical analysis of democracy. “Many states with great mineral wealth also have large

Muslim populations, not only in the Middle East but also in parts of Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei) and

Africa (Nigeria)” (Ross, 2001, p. 339).

Therefore, to separate the impact of historical—including

religious—factors from that of resource/oil wealth, for instance, it is important to use “Islam” as a control

variable (Barrett, 2001).2

1 The concept of the internationalization of national economies requires multiple measures to capture it adequately. These four

indicators will cover the important aspects of international economic activities—trade, finance, and production, and allow us to

capture the totality of the concept of the internationalization of national economies (Held, McGrew, Boldblatt, & Perraton, 1999). 2 Islam represents the percentage of the population whose professed religious affiliation is Muslim. The data after 2000 are drawn

from the CIA World Factbook (2000-2011).


702

Economic Development

Among the developing countries, which include all of the Islamic states covered in this study—their level

of economic development is generally believed to be one of the, if not the most, important explanatory

variables of democracy and democratic transition. Przeworski, Alvarez, Cheibub, and Limongi (2000), for

example, concluded that “the level of economic development, as measured by per capita income, is by far the

best predictor of political regimes” (p. 83). Indeed, many scholars have examined the causal relationship

between economic development and democracy and have found a consistently strong, positive relationship

between them (Bhagwati, 1994). Although some scholars have questioned some of the arguments over this

causal link, the basic premise that economic development generates a greater likelihood of democracy, and

Lipset‟s (1960) argument that “The more well-to-do a nation, the greater the chances that it will sustain

democracy” has never been refuted (p. 31). As Fukuyama (1989) argued, “political liberalism has been

following economic liberalism, more slowly than many had hoped but with seeming inevitability”.

Lipset (1960) argued that “economic development involving industrialization, urbanization, high

educational standards, and a steady increase in overall wealth of the society” is a requisite for democracy

(p. 85). Lerner (1968) argued that political liberalization results from urbanization because urbanization

stimulates education, which in turn promotes media liberalization and thus, democratic development. Vanhanen

(1977) argued that advanced literacy and education rates ultimately lead to enhanced resource distribution,

paving the way for democratic reforms. Thus, economic development is captured by using several indicators: (1)

GDP per capita3, representing the overall wealth of the society, measured by taking the natural logarithm; (2)

industrialization, measured by natural logarithm of industrial production4 in millions of dollars; (3)

urbanization, measured by the urban population as percentage of the total population; and (4) education.

Education

It seems clear that democracy is stable in affluent countries. The probability of [a mature democracy]

collapsing is almost zero (Przeworski et al., 2000). Przeworski et al. (2000) found that “Education, specifically

accumulated years of education for an average member of the labor force, does increase the probability of

survival of democracy at each level of income”. They contended that the probability that a democracy will die

in a country… [is] zero when the average worker has more than nine years of education. In terms of the

stability of democracy, “education helps [LDCs] survive independently of income” (Przeworski et al., 2000).

Feng and Zak (1999) argued that democratic transitions are more likely to take place in nations where, ceteris

paribus, the citizens are better educated. When authoritarian regimes fail to invest in health and education,

wealth and power remain concentrated in the hands of the elites and the people are prevented from achieving

personal autonomy, which is a necessary ingredient for democratic transformation (Diamond, 2008). As

another important requisite of democracy, therefore, education is included in this analysis. It is measured by

3 It is measured by GDP per capita, PPP, based on the constant 2005 international dollar. The data are from the World

Development Indicators CD-ROM 2011. 4 Industrial production is composed of value added in mining, manufacturing, construction, electricity, water, and gas (World

Bank national accounts data, and OECD National Accounts data files).


703

using literacy rate.5

Elites’ Efforts at Maintaining Control

When democracy fails to develop in a state or a new democracy fails, it is often because of bad

governance, which is a natural state within human societies. Once their rule is established, ruling elites use their

power “to restrict economic competition so as to generate “rents” that benefit the small minority of ruling elites

over the broad bulk of the society” (Diamond, 2008). Further, they use some of the rents to enforce and

maintain the existing political order. This manipulation of resources for social control is called “rent-seeking”,

which has the “rentier effect” to “relieve social pressures that might otherwise lead to demands for greater

accountability” (Ross, 2001, p. 332).

The rentier effect can be measured by two indicators of “Gov‟t consumption” expenditures and “Gov‟t

activities” (government activities as a proportion of GDP). Ruling elites attempt to maintain their control over

society by keeping some of their powerful clients, especially big businesses, as well as the general

public—content with the status quo. They try to achieve this goal by providing all sorts of social programs to

improve, or at least maintain, the quality of life for the target population. When the businesses and the citizens

are generally content with the status quo, they put less pressure on the regime to make changes in the political

and economic life of the country, and the democratization of the society may be delayed. This provision of

“Gov‟t consumption” (measured as a percentage of GDP) on all social programs, including wages and salaries

for state employees, is used to account for the countervailing effect of ruling elites‟ effort to minimize the

liberalizing effect of the internationalization of national economies and economic development.

The other component of the rentier effect might be called the “prevention of social group formation”.

The government can use its resources and activities to “prevent the formation of social groups that are

independent from the state and hence may be inclined to demand political rights” (Ross, 2001, p. 334). As

governments increase in size (relative to the national economy), they are more likely to prevent the formation

of civil institutions and social groups that are independent from the government, and the absence of these

groups will hinder a transition to democracy (Ross, 2001). Therefore, this component of the rentier effect is

captured by the share of the GDP accounted for by “Gov‟t activities”.

Oil/Resource Wealth

The success of the ruling elites‟ effort to control the masses, thus to impede democracy, depends on the

availability of resources with which they can co-opt the important segments of the population. The findings of

some studies suggest that “a state‟s reliance on either oil or mineral exports tends to make it less democratic”

(Diamond, 2008) and this reliance on oil/resource wealth is not limited to any particular geographical area of

the world. The above-mentioned “rentier effect”, measured by the indicators of Gov‟t consumption and Gov‟t

activities, is one of the mechanisms that help explain the “oil-impedes-democracy” claim (Ross, 2001). Since

oil and mineral wealth makes governments more authoritarian (Diamond, 2008), two additional variables of

“oil” and “total natural resources” are also included in this study; “They measure the export value of

5 The Literacy Rate represents that of all the adult population aged between 15 and 65. The data are compiled from the World

Development Indicators 2011 CD-ROM and are supplemented by different editions of the World Factbook by the CIA.


704

mineral-based fuels (petroleum, natural gas, and coal) and the export value of all natural resources, as fractions

of GDP” (Ross, 2001, p. 338).6

Ethnic Fractionalization

Democracy flourishes when all citizens enjoy equal protection by the government regardless of differences

in personal attributes. When certain segments of the population are systematically discriminated against,

democratization is hampered. In this sense, ethnic diversity may pose a particularly difficult challenge. Ethnic

differences are often visible and unchangeable. Therefore, once they become a source of a conflict within a

society, a negotiated settlement of the dispute is often hard to achieve. Some studies have shown that ethnic

diversity/fractionalization is negatively correlated with economic growth, and thus democracy (Alesina,

Devleeschauwer, William, Kurlat, & Racziag, 2003). Therefore, “ethnic fractionalization” is included in this

study to account for another countervailing effect against democracy.7

Income Categories

One of the variables that has been shown by many studies to have an impact on democracy is income.

The direction of the impact, however, is not clear. The empirical studies show that “increasing income

promotes democracy in some but undermines democracy in others” (Coppedge, 2012, p. 280). Burkhart and

Lewis-Beck (1994) showed that income had a weaker impact on democracy in the semipheriphery and

especially the periphery of the world system than it did in the core countries. Some other studies supported

these views, which were based on dependency theories that the countries in the periphery are exploited by those

in the core and, thus, are less developed and less democratic (Bollen & Jackman, 1985; Gonik & Rosh, 1988;

Bollen, 1983).

Unfortunately, their use of dummy variables for the periphery and semi-periphery made it difficult to

conclude that their negative association with levels of democracy is actually due to what dependency theories

claim to be the reason rather than some other alternative reasons such as geography, culture, religion, etc..

Nevertheless, the categorizations of states based on their income level do seem to affect levels of democracy.

Thus, income categories8 is also included as another control variable. This control variable will also eliminate

the possibly spurious effects of oil and total natural resources mentioned earlier because of the geographical

“location of most fuel- and mineral-exporting states in the non-Western world” (Ross, 2001, p. 339).

Econometric Specifications

The period of this study is between 1990 and 2010. Because of the coding change in the Freedom House‟s

data set that took place in 1989, the starting date is set at 1990. All independent and control variables are lagged

by three years. The lag renders more confidence that the causal link between the independent and dependent

6 The data are drawn from the World Development Indicators 2011 CD-ROM. 7 Most of the empirical literature on ethnic diversity uses the index of ethno linguistic fractionalization, also called ELF, which

was constructed by Taylor and Hudson. Posner pointed out a problem with the ELF measure because it is not sensitive to the

politically relevant groups such as linguistic, ethnic, racial, religious, regional or some other dimension of ethnic identification

(Posner, 2004). As this article is focused on social conflicts along the ethnic divisions, however, the original ELF seems to be

most relevant. The data are from multiple issues of The CIA World Factbook (1985-2011). 8 It is measured by using the World Bank‟s four categories, based on the states‟ levels of per capita GDP.


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variables flows in the right direction. The three-year lag also helps with analyzing factors that have an enduring

impact on democracy.9 The Generalized Least-Squares method is used, with pooled time-series, and

cross-national data on 141 countries, of which 34 are Islamic states.10

The choice of countries is based on the

size of their population (greater than 100,000) and the availability of data.

The two measures of “political freedom” and “civil liberties” of the Freedom House data set are combined

and the resulting scale is converted to a 0-10 scale. Following Londregan & Poole, the two 0-10 interval scale

variables, “DEMOC” and “AUTOC”, of Polity IV data set are combined into a single indicator by subtracting

the autocracy measure from the democracy measure and by re-scaling the resulting -10-10 scale as a 0-10 scale

(Londregan & Poole, 1996). The original values for Freedom House scores are inverted so that both Freedom

House and Polity vary between 0 (“least democratic”) and 10 (“most democratic”).

Statistical Controls

Pooled time-series models require special statistical considerations. The Ordinary Least Squares (OLS)

model, for example, is not automatically applicable to pooled time-series analyses because it ignores the pooled

structure of the data. OLS treats each case/observation as independent of all others, not as part of a set of

related observations. However, when systematic relationships among cases exist, regression analysis‟

applicability remains questionable unless statistical controls are introduced.

Two particular violations are likely to accompany pooled data. First, the cases may not be independent

along the time dimension within units, in which case autocorrelation would bias the statistical findings.

Second, a form of heteroscedasticity is likely to be present in pooled data. For a variety of reasons, some units

(i.e., states) are more variable than others at all times. For example, some states may show a wider range of

variations in the value of some of the variables than other states.

Many of the independent variables included in this study—trade, FDI, economic aid, industrialization,

Gov‟t consumption, and Gov‟t activities—are divided by GDP. Thus, their values are standardized across

countries and time, minimizing autocorrelation and heteroscedasticity problems. Any variations in these

independent variables would be independent of systemic, time-serial biases. The heteroscedasticity bias for the

other variables is minimized by conducting their log-transformation. Their possible autocorrelational bias is

minimized by introducing a set of 20 dummy variables for years (1990 through 2010, less one) and a lagged

9 Imai found that such an enduring impact is detected by lagging independent variables by three to five years, beyond which the

statistical significance of the variables begins to diminish rapidly (Imai, 2006). 10 The 141 countries included in this study are: Albania, Algeria, Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan,

Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belarus, Benin, Bhutan, Bolivia, Botsuwana, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia,

Cameroon, Canada, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Comoros, Democratic Republic of the Congo,

Republic of the Congo, Costa Rica, Cote d‟Ivoire, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Djibouti, Dominican Republic,

Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Fiji, Finland, France, Gabon, Gambia, Georgia,

Germany, Ghana, Greece, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Honduras, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Italy,

Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Republic of Korea, Kuwait, Kyrgyz Republic, Laos, Latvia, Lebanon, Libya,

Lithuania, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Mali, Mauritania, Mexico, Mongolia, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nepal,

Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines,

Poland, Romania, Russia, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sri

Lanka, Sudan, Swaziland, Switzerland, Syria, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uganda,

Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States of America, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Vietnam, Yemen,

Zambia, and Zimbabwe.


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dependent variable in the model.

Including the lagged dependent variable, democracy(t-4), in the model serves several purposes. First, it

helps capture any (historical, cultural, or otherwise) country-specific factors that may be missed by the

explanatory and control variables. In other words, it works as a proxy control for other potential determinants

of democracy not included in the model. Second, it “helps turn the equation into a change model, transforming

the dependent variable from regime type [democracy] to the change in a country‟s regime type [degree of

democracy] over a given [three-year] period” (Ross, 2001, p. 339). Third, it helps address the problem of serial

correlation, which often plagues pooled time-series, cross-sectional data such as the ones used in this study

(Stimson, 1985). Fourth, it helps to control for the possibility of “endogeneity bias; that is, causality running in

the direction from democracy to the explanatory variables instead of vice versa” (Teorell, 2010, p. 171).

Table 1

Generalized Least Squares Regression on Democracy, measured by Polity IV Data Set

Variable Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5 Model 6

Trade -0.002*** -0.002* -0.002** -0.002** -0.004*** -0.004***

FDI -0.002 -0.002 -0.002 -0.002 -0.004 -0.003

Economic Aid 0.007* 0.010* 0.007* 0.009* 0.012** 0.014**

GDP -0.034 -0.044

GDP Per Capita -0.001 -0.0001

Industrialization 0.010 0.004

Urban Population 0.008*** 0.007***

Literacy Rate 0.009*** 0.009***

Gov‟t Consumption -0.017** -0.017** -0.017** -0.017** -0.018*** -0.018***

Gov‟t Activities 0.006 0.007 0.006 0.007 0.010 0.009

Oil -0.016*** -0.016*** -0.019***

Total N. Resources -0.016*** 0.016*** -0.017***

Income Categories 0.231*** 0.230** 0.187*** 0.176***

Islam -0.005*** -0.005*** -0.005*** -0.005*** -0.004*** -0.005***

Ethnic Fraction -0.175 -0.165 -0.181 -0.173 -0.128 -0.128

Constant 21.745* 22.499* 23.738* 24.381* 32.312** 32.864**

Democracy(t-4) 0.760*** 0.759*** 0.761*** 0.760*** 0.749*** 0.751***

Observations 2,738 2,738 2,738 2,738 2,738 2,738

States 141 141 141 141 141 141

Log Likelihood -5,053 -5,053 -5,053 -5,053 -5,053 -5,058

Note. *significant at the 0.05 level; ** significant at the 0.01 level; *** significant at the 0.001 level.

All independent and control variables are lagged by three years. Generalized Least Squares regressions were run; corrected for

first-order autocorrelation using a panel-specific process. For the sake of parsimony of presentation, the dummy variables for

years are not listed.

Findings

In order to detect region-specific patters of democratization, the global patterns need to be examined first.

Tables 1 and 2 below demonstrate the global patterns based on the two indices of democracy, Polity and

Freedom House, respectively. Tables 3 and 4 show the results for a smaller data set which contains only Islamic


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countries.

As discussed earlier, the effect of increased internationalization of national economies on democracy is not

straightforward. With all the other variables controlled, two of the indicators of internationalization of national

economies—trade and economic aid—demonstrate a statistically significant impact on democracy. While trade

shows a negative effect on electoral democracy, economic aid exhibits a positive effect. Apparently, increased

internationalization of national economies does not lead directly to an improved level of electoral democracy.

The counter-intuitive finding on trade may be a result of a couple of factors. First, the elites are in a much

better position than the general public to profit from the earlier stages of economic growth and development.

They are able to continue to dominate the society by taking advantage of their control over resources, both

financial and otherwise. Despite the increase in trade, therefore, the level of democracy may stay the same. As a

result, the coefficients of the variable show a negative sign. Second, trade may positively contribute to

economic growth, but the effect of economic growth on democracy is not linear. As made famous by Kuznets

in his “inverted-U curve” theory, economic growth initially contributes to increased income inequality, which

reduces the level of democracy (Kuznets, 1995). As a middle class begins to develop and becomes larger over

time, however, the negative effect of economic growth on income inequality may begin to taper off and

eventually, trade may positively affect democracy. The majority of the states included in this study are

economically under-developed and that may be another reason why the coefficients of trade turned out

negative.

Some of the indicators of economic development prove to be important requisites for electoral democracy.

Two of its indicators, urban population and literacy rate, are highly statistically significant and exhibit a

positive effect. As a state becomes more urbanized through economic development, its level of democracy

improves. Likewise, as a state‟s literacy rate improves, the state becomes more democratic. Democracy is

believed to be stable in affluent societies because their citizens are more able to organize themselves into a

political force to promote democracy. They are also more highly educated than those in poorer states, and more

highly-educated people are more likely to embrace democratic values. The findings on Urban Population and

Literacy rate provide support for this explanation.

Elites‟ efforts to maintain control over the society show some limited success. Among electoral

democracies, elites seem to be able to control the society, and thus stymie democratization with the use of

Gov‟t consumption expenditures. The coefficients of Gov‟t consumption show a statistically significant,

negative effect on electoral democracy. Although Gov‟t activities does not show any impact, the findings on

Gov‟t consumption indicate that elites are able to hamper the progress of electoral democracy by keeping the

general public satisfied with all sorts of social programs and subsidies, distracting the public‟s attention away

from democracy.

The aforementioned “oil-impedes-democracy” claim is also supported by the evidence in Table 1. Both oil

and total n. resources show a highly statistically significant, negative impact on electoral democracy. When oil

is a country‟s dominant export, huge amounts of revenue flow from outside the country directly into the coffers

of the state, and the state becomes the most powerful economic actor. Consequently, the people become


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dependent on the state and the democratization of the country is compromised (Diamond, 2008). As total

n. resources shows, this effect of “external rents”, or the “rentier effect”, is observable whether the revenue

comes from the export of oil or some other natural resources such as gold, natural gas, coal or diamonds.

As for the control variables, income categories indicates clearly that economic development is an

important requisite for electoral democracy. All its coefficients show a strong, positive influence. Islam, on the

other hand, shows a statistically significant, negative impact throughout the six models shown in Table 1. This

finding, based on the variable which is measured as proportion of Islamic population in each state, does not

provide evidence that the religion of Islam per se hinders electoral democracy. Nevertheless, it clearly shows

that the unique characteristics of Islamic societies that negatively affect their level of democracy. Moreover,

this study has enabled us to exclude: (1) the levels of internationalization of their national

economies—measured by trade, FDI, economic aid, or GDP; (2) economic development—measured by GDP

per capita, industrialization, urban population, and literacy rate; (3) elites‟ effort to maintain control; (4) rentier

effect; and (5) ethnic fractionalization as a source of this common phenomenon among Islamic societies. None

of its coefficients shows any statistically significant effect.

Table 2

Generalized Least Squares Regression on Democracy, Measured by Freedom House Data Set


Trade -0.001* -0.001 -0.001 -0.001 -0.001 -0.001

FDI -0.003 -0.003 -0.003 -0.003 -0.005 -0.005

Economic Aid 0.008* 0.009* 0.002 0.003 0.004 0.005

GDP -0.010 -0.018

GDP Per Capita 0.414** 0.342**


Urban Population 0.010*** 0.009***

Literacy Rate 0.005** 0.004*

Gov‟t Consumption -0.004 -0.004 -0.003 -0.003 -0.004 -0.004

Gov‟t Activities 0.001 0.001 -0.001 -0.001 -0.001 -0.001

Oil -0.018*** -0.017*** -0.017***

Total N. Resources -0.017*** -0.017*** -0.016***

Income Categories 0.179*** 0.185** 0.359*** 0.344***

Islam -0.580*** -0.613*** -0.583*** -0.612*** -0.535*** -0.573***

Ethnic Fraction -0.021 -0.019 -0.093 -0.082 -0.173 -0.168

Constant -9.864 -11.519 -7.049 -8.354 -21.549* -22.184*

Democracy(t-4) -0.760*** -0.762*** -0.765*** -0.766*** -0.784*** -0.787***

Observations 2,738 2,738 2,738 2,738 2,738 2,738

States 141 141 141 141 141 141

Log Likelihood -4,613 -4,615 -4,617 -4,617 -4,625 -4,627




years and countries are not listed.

The regression results in Table 2 appear similar to those of some of the variables in Table 1, but they

contain some important differences that suggest different utilities for the Polity and the Freedom House data


709

sets for measuring democracy. Although GDP shows no impact on liberal democracy, two other indicators of

the internationalization of national economies—trade and economic aid—demonstrate the same impacts as

before. Their impact on liberal democracy (see Table 2), however, seems less robust than on electoral

democracy (see Table 1). In terms of economic development, urban population and literacy rate continue to

show a positive effect on liberal, as on electoral, democracy. In addition, GDP per capita shows a positive

effect on liberal democracy as well.

Further, the findings on trade in Table 2 are not as robust as in Table 1.11

In fact, its null findings on trade

and economic aid support the aforementioned argument about the non-linear effect of internationalization of

national economies. Trade hardly seems to be an important factor for liberal democracy. The contribution of

economic aid seems tenuous as well. These findings may also indicate the different degrees of impact these

variables have upon liberal, as opposed to electoral, democracy.

Table 3

Generalized Least Squares Regression on Democracy, Islamic States


Trade 0.001 0.001 0.002 0.002 0.003 0.004

FDI -0.018 -0.017 -0.017 -0.017 -0.015 -0.013

Economic aid 0.359* 0.351* 0.324* 0.312* 0.284* 0.277*

GDP 0.001** 0.001**

GDP Per Capita -0.028 -0.032


Urban population -0.011 -0.012

Literacy rate -0.000 -0.001

Gov‟t consumption -0.019 -0.020 -0.016 -0.017 -0.003 -0.003

Gov‟t activities 0.007 0.007 0.009 0.009 0.006 0.006

Oil -0.015*** -0.016*** -0.016***

Total N. resources -0.016*** -0.016*** -0.017***

Income categories 0.015 0.003 0.079 -0.019

Islam -0.000 -0.000 -0.000 -0.000 -0.000 -0.000

Ethnic fraction 0.010 0.053 0.052 0.101 0.028 0.064

Constant -45.642 -44.493 -41.527 -39.951 -44.935 -46.116

Democracy(t-4) 0.684*** 0.681*** 0.683*** 0.680*** 0.667*** 0.663***

Observations 647 647 647 647 647 647

States 34 34 34 34 34 34

Log likelihood -1,269 -1,268 -1,268 -1,268 -1,264 -1,264





Another difference is that the level of economic development seems to affect liberal democracy more than

11 Ordinarily, the coefficients from one regression cannot be compared with those from another regression. In this case, however,

all the variables, and their combinations, remain exactly the same. Furthermore, the range of values of the dependent variables, the

Freedom House and Polity scores, are set to be exactly the same; a scale of 0-10. Therefore, it is reasonable to compare the

coefficients between the two Tables and draw an inference for the purpose of analyzing how much each of the independent

variables affect either electoral or liberal democracy.


710

it does electoral democracy. Unlike in Table 1, GDP per capita, representing the overall wealth of the society,

now shows a statistically significant, positive effect, indicating its importance for liberal democracy. As in

Table 1, urban population and literacy rate promote the level of democracy in Table 2 as well.

Another difference in Table 2 is that Gov‟t consumption expenditures and Gov‟t activities show no effect

on liberal democracy. It seems that, once a society evolves from an electoral into a liberal democracy, it

becomes difficult for elites to maintain control over the society and hinder the advancement of democracy

through public programs and projects. The null findings on these two variables demonstrate that elites have

only limited ways to manipulate public sentiment to distract their attention away from their desire for increased

rights and freedom.

Table 4

Generalized Least Squares Regression on Democracy, Islamic States


Trade -0.002 -0.002 -0.001 -0.001 0.000 0.000

FDI -0.015 -0.014 -0.013 -0.013 -0.014 -0.013

Economic Aid 0.034*** 0.035*** 0.043*** 0.044*** 0.040** 0.039**

GDP 0.224 0.222

GDP Per Capita 0.000 0.000


Urban Population -0.004 -0.004

Literacy Rate -0.001 -0.001

Gov‟t Consumption -0.009 -0.009 -0.006 -0.007 0.002 0.004

Gov‟t Activities -0.012 -0.012 -0.011 -0.011 -0.012 -0.012

Oil -0.012*** -0.011*** -0.011***

Total N. Resources -0.012*** -0.012*** -0.011***

Income Categories 0.053 0.036 0.043 0.030

Islam 0.001 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000

Ethnic Fraction -0.170 -0.143 -0.116 -0.085 -0.056 -0.033

Constant 66.014*** 65.375*** 63.728*** 63.015*** 66.772*** 67.406***

Democracy(t-4) -0.691*** -0.0687*** -0.689*** -0.685*** -0.691*** -0.687***

Observations 647 647 647 647 647 647

States 34 34 34 34 34 34

Log Likelihood -1,100 -1,100 -1,100 -1,100 -1,099 -1,098





The results on income categories are consistent between the two Tables. All the coefficients of this

variable show a statistically significant, positive impact on liberal democracy. Even after the effects of (1)

internationalization of national economies; (2) economic development; and (3) oil and total natural resources

are all controlled for, the categories of states based on their levels of national income make a statistically

significant difference in terms of their levels of democracy. This finding further demonstrates the primacy of

economic development for the levels of electoral and liberal democracies.

For oil and total natural resources, the regression results in Table 2 are consistent with those in Table 1.


711

Whether you are analyzing electoral democracy or liberal democracy, “oil/resource wealth” turns out to be a curse

for their successful development. Regardless of the extent of a state‟s level of internationalization of its national

economy or economic development, when the regime has abundant wealth from oil and other mineral resources,

it succeeds to thwart the growth of democracy by co-opting the important segments of the population.

The highly statistically significant, negative impact of Islam found in both Tables 1 and 2 is another

contribution of this study. Some studies find that Muslim countries are less democratic, while some other ones

(Barro, 1999) report no significant difference between them and the rest of the world (Herb, 2005; Ross, 2001;

Ross, 2004; Muller, 1995). Yet some other studies demonstrate that, controlled for the effect of other variables,

Islamic states are actually more democratic than others (Imai, 2006). Given such an array of vastly different

findings, and also given the fact that it is controlled for the effects of the explanatory variables that are most

consistently found in studies of democracy, this finding demonstrates the need to investigate the impact of

variables that have not been closely examined—such as “female empowerment” and “gender (in)equality”—to

explain the lack of Islamic societies‟ progress toward more mature democracies.12

As in Table 1, ethnic fractionalization fails to show any statistically significant effect in Table 2. Although

it has been found by some studies to be an important explanatory variable for the transition to, and the survival

of, democracy, ethnic fractionalization turned out to have no impact on the levels of either electoral or liberal

democracy.

When the data is limited only to the Islamic states, the empirical findings demonstrate dramatically

different patterns compared to those obtained from the global data. For one thing, internationalization of

national economies seems to engender less impact on democracy. While economic aid continues to positively

affect both electoral and liberal democracies, and while GDP, representing the total production within a state,

provides an added evidence of the impact of internationalization of national economies on electoral democracy

among Islamic societies, trade shows no effect on either electoral or liberal democracy in Islamic states.

Moreover, economic development bears no effect on democracy either. None of its indicators exhibits any

sign of affecting the levels of democracy in Islamic societies. The absence of the influence of economic

development upon either type of democracy is further corroborated by the complete lack of the effect of income

categories.

The findings on the elites‟ efforts to maintain control over the societies also demonstrate a contrast

between the global data and the smaller data set composed only of Islamic states. While elites worldwide are

generally able to hinder the development of electoral democracy by Gov‟t consumption (see Table 1), such an

effort bears no fruit in Islamic societies. Neither Gov‟t consumption nor Gov‟t activities exhibits any sign of

affecting either electoral or liberal democracy among them. This does not mean that their elites have no leeway

of stymying the democratic development. As the consistently negative, statistically significant coefficients of

oil and total natural resources in Table 3 and Table 4 indicate, elites in Islamic states can be as successful as

those in the rest of the world in obstructing the democratization of their societies if they have access to

12 Until a better measurement of “Islam” is found, however, it is wrong to conclude that the religion of Islam per se is responsible

for the lesser levels of either electoral or liberal democracy.


712

abundant natural resources. As the null findings on Gov‟t consumption and Gov‟t activities show, however,

Islamic elites may have fewer options, aside from their control of oil and other natural resources, than the elites

elsewhere for compromising democracy in their societies.

The complete absence of the impact of Islam, measured as a proportion of Muslim population in each

state‟s total, might appear surprising at first glance. This finding, however, makes sense in light of the

afore-mentioned warning against the premature conclusion that the religion of Islam is necessarily incompatible

with the concept of democracy. While the negative findings on Islam in Table 1 and Table 2 may seem to

support the general perception of its negative impact, the null findings in Tables 3 and 4 clearly indicate that the

former findings represent the influence of factors other than that of the religion of Islam. These results

demonstrate a strong need for finding the exact cause of the lack of democracy among Islamic societies, which

is often detected when scholars rely on global aggregate data.

Discussion

Global Patterns

Once again, based on the assumption that Polity measures “electoral” democracy and Freedom House

measures “liberal” democracy, the above findings in Table 1 and Table 2 can be re-stated as follows.

First, although the internationalization of national economies affects both electoral and liberal democracies,

its negative impact is felt differently between them. Trade seems to, albeit negatively, affect electoral

democracy more than it affects liberal democracy. Further, the negative effect of trade and the positive effect of

economic aid on both electoral and liberal democracy indicate that the maturity of electoral democracy does not

depend on how much a state‟s economy is open to international trade. In fact, elites are able to continue to

frustrate the maturity of electoral democracy despite the increased international trade.

Second, economic development positively affects both electoral and liberal democracies. Once again,

however, its effect is felt differently between the two types of democracies. The maturity of liberal democracy

seems to depend more heavily on the full industrialization of the society. Increases in GDP Per Capita proved

to be more critical for the emergence of liberal democracy than electoral democracy. Moreover, urban

population and literacy rate consistently contribute positively to both electoral and liberal democracies.

These findings indicate that a state has to achieve economic development beyond a certain threshold level

before it grows as a liberal democracy.

Third, the success of elites‟ efforts to maintain control over the society depends on the maturity of

democratization. In particular, as the economy develops, elites become less able to hinder or stymie the

advancement of liberal democracy, although they seem to have more leeway in compromising electoral

democracy by co-opting the important segments of the population through Gov‟t consumption expenditures.

Furthermore, the utility of such tools of manipulation dissipates quickly as the society matures as an electoral

democracy and begins to move toward liberal democracy with increased political liberalization.

Fourth, oil/resource wealth is a curse, regardless of the maturity of democracy. One could argue that, as a

consequence of economic development and all the social changes it brings about with it (particularly if they are


713

reinforced by economic and political assistance from Western democracies to reform governance, build

democracy, and strengthen civil society), democracy may continue to spread throughout the world. In fact,

despite recent reversals, democracy seems to be slowly, but surely, becoming an increasingly universal value

(Diamond, 2008). However, such a transition to democracy may not happen when the elites/regimes have

abundant natural resources such as oil, which give them almost total control over the nation‟s economy. When

the main source of national income is controlled by the state, the “classic driver of Western

democratization—the bourgeoisie, or independent capitalist class—does not emerge” (Diamond, 2008).

Fifth, aside from the overall positive effect of economic development, where a state is in terms of the

stages of economic development—measured by using the World Bank‟s four categories of per capita national

income—makes a difference in the maturity of both electoral and liberal democracies.

Sixth, this study has enabled us to rule out (1) the levels of internationalization of their national economies;

(2) economic development; (3) elites‟ effort to maintain control; (4) rentier effect; and (5) ethnic

fractionalization as the source of the seemingly unique characteristics of Islamic societies. Moreover, it has

shown that the complete absence of the impact of Islam among the Islamic societies rejects some scholars‟

claim that the religion of Islam is incompatible with the concept of democracy.

Seventh, ethnic fractionalization has been found by some studies to affect, either positively or negatively,

the probability or survival of democracy, but it has not been found to affect the levels of democracy. This study

has confirmed the literature. It has demonstrated that ethnic fractionalization shows no direct impact on the

levels of either electoral or liberal democracy.

Against these backdrops, we can detect various differences and similarities in the patterns of democratic

development between Islamic societies and the rest of the world. In order to highlight the idiosyncracies of

Islamic states, the next section is focused on their unique patters of the democratic development. The

comparison of the findings from Muslim countries and those from the entire world will provide additional

insights into the above-summary of the global patterns.

Patters Among Islamic States

The internationalization of national economies exhibits some idiosyncracies as well as some

commonalities between Islamic states and the world. As in the rest of the world, increased trade does not

automatically, linearly contribute to the democratization of Islamic societies. Most of all, trade does not affect

their levels of either electoral or liberal democracy at all. Economic aid, on the other hand, shows a consistent,

positive effect on both types of democracy in Islamic societies just as it does in states around the world. The

difference is that economic aid has turned out to be the most important contributing factor among Islamic states,

while some of the other variables prove to have greater influence on the growth of both electoral and liberal

democracies throughout the rest of the world. While GDP does show some positive, albeit limited, effect on

electoral democracy, neither Trade nor FDI affects democracy in Islamic societies.

The absence of impact from these variables, and the complete lack of influence from the indicators of

economic development in Table 3 and Table 4, may suggest a dramatically different characteristics of Muslim

societies from the rest of the world. Alternatively, the null findings on these indicators of internationalization of


714

national economies and economic development may indicate that the elites in Islamic societies have greater

than (global-) average success in maintaining the control over their societies—perhaps through corruption and

co-opting the important segments of the population such as the economic elites.

The findings on some of the other variables of this study, however, contradict the latter argument. More

specifically, the incongruence in findings on the effect of the “elites‟ efforts at maintaining control” between

the global aggregate data and the data limited only to Islamic states support the former argument rather than the

latter. While the findings from the global aggregate data demonstrate the negative effect of Gov‟t consumption,

neither Gov‟t consumption nor Gov‟t activities shows any effect on electoral or liberal democracy among

Muslim countries. Although oil and total natural resources continue to show a statistically significant, negative

impact of the “rentier effect”, the null findings on Gov‟t consumption and Gov‟t activities demonstrate the

limited number of options the elites have to control their societies. All these findings indicate that, compared to

the elites elsewhere, the elites in Islamic societies have fewer options in stymying the advancement of

democracy.

The findings in Table 1 and Table 2 support the argument on the positive contribution of economic

development to the levels of electoral and liberal democracies throughout the world. Indeed, numerous

empirical studies have reached the same conclusion based on the analyses of global aggregate data. The

findings on Islamic societies, again, show their unique characteristics. Most of all, the complete absence of

impact from the indicators of economic development is puzzling. According to the global aggregate data, most

of the commonly used indicators such as GDP per capita, urban population, and literacy rate show the positive

effect of economic development on both electoral and liberal democracies. The findings from the Islamic states

strongly suggest the need to delve into the non-linear impact of economic development and they demonstrate

the need for a more nuanced and qualified explanation of its effect on electoral and liberal democracies.

Finally, the null finding on Islam among Islamic societies illustrates another important contribution of this

study. It presents clear evidence that the predominance, or lack thereof, of Muslim population in Islamic

societies has no bearing on the growth of either electoral or liberal democracy among them. The commonly

found lack of democracy among Islamic societies now has to be explained by using some variables other than

the religion of Islam. This null finding clearly refutes the argument that the religion of Islam per se negatively

affects the levels of democracy—whether it is measured as electoral or liberal democracy.

This study attempted to detect the idiosyncracies of democracy in Islamic states. As it turned out, there are

various unique characteristics as well as some commonalities between Islamic societies and the entire world in

terms of the determinants of the levels of democracy. While this article has accomplished what it has set out to

achieve, it has also raised some very interesting questions that need to be answered in future research. The

scope and the limited space of the current article does not allow any further discussion of the unique findings

here, but the findings indicate the strong need for further empirical studies to establish a detailed body of

knowledge that delineates a systematic link between the determinants of democracy and their effects on

different states, such as those grouped by geographical regions or religions. This article has shown the need to

go beyond the one-size-fits-all explanations on the determinants of democracy based on the global aggregate


715

data, and, instead, to move more toward region-based quantitative analyses of the levels of democracy. The

findings further suggest the need to incorporate some of the variables, such as the empowerment of women,

that have received less scrutiny than necessary in empirical studies of democracy.

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November 2014, Vol. 2, No. 11, 717-735

The Thin Line Between Sanity and Insanity: The Case of

Internment of the Asia Minor Refugees in Dromokaition Lunatic

Asylum

Georgios I. Kritikos

Harokopio University, Athens, Greece

Drawing on the completely unsearched case-books of the Dromokaition Lunatic Hospital of Athens, this paper

gives the reader a chance to understand the origins of the mental disorder of the Asia Minor refugees who were

interned there after the end of the Greek-Turkish war in 1922, and to bring to light for the first time in Greek history

their spatial relations with physical as well as mental dimensions. On the one hand, the present research will

attempt to investigate the trauma of war as well as the experiences of the refugees in Asia Minor that led to their

personality disorder. On the other hand, it will illuminate their experiences of being refugees in the social, cultural

and economic space of the Greek state that also led to their internment and the labeling of these refugees as

mentally unstable. To explore the limits between sanity and insanity, these experiences will be presented in parallel

with those of the refugees who were not interned in Dromokaition but were successfully settled in Greek society.

Keywords: asylum, refugees, internment, trauma, mental disorder, exclusion

Introduction

In the early 1920s the majority of the patients who were hospitalized in the Dromokaition Lunatic Hospital

in Athens were refugees from the war in Asia Minor. They had come before or after the conclusion of the

Lausanne Treaty of 1923 that provided for the end of the Greek-Turkish war in Asia Minor as well as for the

first obligatory exchange of populations in world history under the exclusive criterion of religion. As a result of

this war and the subsequent population exchange almost 1.3 million Greek-Orthodox refugees fled to Greece.

The stories and experiences of those who were characterized as insane have been registered in the patients‟

records of this mental institution.

From this perspective, this study will attempt to bring to light the voices of those refugees who were

interned in the asylum and were thus condemned to silence for all these years. It will examine two different

dimensions of refugee experience in terms of time and space. It will analyze their treatment not as patients but

as human beings who suffered a lot during their uprooting from their homelands in Asia Minor as well as

during their settlement in the Greek state. In this context, it will try to provide a better understanding of the

exchange between madness and reason during the period under examination, by exploring the differences and

similarities in the experiences of sane and insane refugees.

Georgios I. Kritikos, Associate Professor, Geography Department, Harokopio University.

DAVID PUBLISHING

D

THE THIN LINE BETWEEN SANITY AND INSANITY

718

It is worth mentioning that despite the extensive literature dealing with various aspects of the refugee

question (economic, political, settlement in rural or urban space, etc.), there is no research published about the

refugees‟ confinement in a mental hospital and in particular about this dimension of their internment. The

paucity of research of this kind not only emphasizes its originality, but also lends an imperative to this survey.1

Additionally, access to completely non researched primary sources, such as that of the Lunatic Hospital of

Athens, as well as the use of material from the League of Nations Archives and the Centre of Asia Minor

Studies Centre, along with many other archives and libraries in Greece and abroad, guarantee the originality of

the present research. The case-books that record the voices of the patients through the surveillance of the

doctors were compiled by the directors of the hospital during the 1920s and were examined by the writer of this

study on a yearly basis. The research ended in 1927, this being the last year that new refugee from Asia Minor

was hospitalized for the first time. After that year all the refugee patients were hospitalized for a second time in

Dromokaition asylum, whose name was connected with refugees since its establishment.

Contemporary studies agree that “psychiatry needs a historical and cultural perspective in order to fairly

understand psychiatric disorders or to make a diagnostic determination” (Hollar, 2001, p. 339). Within this

framework, the understanding of the origins of the refugees‟ madness demands a trip backwards in their

experiences from war in Asia Minor and forwards in the time of the refugees‟ settlement. A short introduction

will be made about the history of the asylum that hospitalized these people. After this introductory part, the

experiences of refugees who were detained in the Lunatic Hospital of Dromokaition will be surveyed along

with the evidence of those who were characterized as completely sane to survey the experience of being

refugee in the Asia Minor as well as in Greece.

The Lunatic Hospital of Dromokaition

Dromokaition has a great dynamic in terms of refugee history. It was initially founded in the island of

Chios in 1880, by Georgios Dromokaitis, a wealthy Greek trader, who witnessed the hanging of his father by

the Turks in the massacre of the Greek population of Chios in 1822.2 Dromokaitis was transferred to

Constantinople (Istanbul) to be sold as a slave. By chance he was spotted by his uncle Michael Agelastos, who

bought him and henceforward protected him as his own child (Rombotis, 1987). After making his wealth as a

trader, Dromokaitis left in his will 300,000 French francs for the Greek high school in Chios and 500,000 for

the foundation of a mental hospital in Athens (Rombotis, 1987).

One hundred years after its foundation Dromokaition in Athens was to hospitalize many Asia Minor

refugee patients who all had unique characteristics in the sense that they were being hospitalized for the first

time, and almost all of them had no medical history whatsoever. Although the hospital was established as a

private institution for those families who could pay the hospital charges, it upheld a long philanthropic tradition

1 I am deeply indebted to the director of the Asylum (Dr. Tsikis) who allowed me to search in the archives of the Asylum in the

late 1990s as well as to Pembroke College at Cambridge University (England) who granted me with the status of the Visiting

Scholar during the last academic year, giving me the opportunity to work in one of the best academic environments in the world to

complete this research. I wish also to thank my friend Chris Flint who kindly offered his corrections in the first draft of this text in

terms of English language. 2 This massacre has been immortalized by Delacroix in his famous painting.


719

of hospitalizing people who could not afford these expenses on equal terms with the well-off patients

(Karamanolakis, 1998). It thus constitutes the best study-case, since it provides a greater variety of socially and

mentally excluded people that represented the configuration of Greek society, than a public hospital where

poverty signified the main motive of psychological defection.

In our case, the stories of the refugees will be placed firstly in the context of military landscapes through

the terrible events of war and uprooting.

Being a Refugee in Asia Minor

In May 1919 the victorious Allies from World War I gave Greece a mandate to land its forces at Smyrna.

This order gave Greece the chance not only to protect her minority but also to fulfill her irredentist dreams of a

state of two continents and five seas (i.e. the nationalist vision of the Great Idea). Nevertheless, Mustafa Kemal

rejected the terms of the Treaty of Sevres (August 1920), which would have resulted in the partition of Turkey

to the advantage of Greece. He managed to organize military resistance and signed a treaty with the Soviet

Union as well as gaining support from the former allies of Greece. In April 1921, the war in Asia Minor was

reaching deadlock for the Greek troops. The failure of a diplomatic compromise, proposed by the British side,

led to the Turks mounting an overwhelming offensive against the Greeks, who lost the decisive battle on the

Sakarya River on August 24, 1922. The Greek campaign, only 40 kilometers out of Ankara, escalated the crisis

between the Christian and Muslim populations. Fearing Turkish reprisals after the defeat of the Greek army,

hundreds of thousands of refugees followed its retreat on foot. They abandoned their home towns and

converged on the overcrowded port of Smyrna and the coastal towns. When the Greek soldiers evacuated the

coast first, the punishment visited on the Christians for the mere presence of the Greek army, and those

activities committed when it was in retreat, was severe. During the departure of the Greek troops, Michael

Llewellyn Smith argues that “the symbols of order existed. Turkish police patrols toured the city. But it soon

became clear that the discipline was superficial and confined to the main streets, while in the back streets

Turkish civilians and later Turkish troops were taking their revenge for three years of humiliation by the

Greeks” (Llewellyn-Smith, 1999, p. 306). Reprisals were not limited to the centre of the city but extended all

along the coastline. In fact, the Turkish occupation of the city was accompanied by a massacre of some 30,000

Greek and Armenian Christians (Clogg, 1992, p. 97). Smyrna was set on fire, and “only the Turkish and the

Jewish quarters survived” (Clogg, 1992, p. 97).

The extension of the Greek-Turkish war to the civilian population and their violent uprooting meant that

there was much fear and mental destruction not only in terms of a lower public morale, but also of a

psychological breakdown for many civilians. It is not a coincidence that in the case-books of the period

1921-1922, which ends on the 20th August, there are 80 patients, and only one was a refugee from

Constantinople (Istanbul).3 He had syphilis, which was connected to his mental illness. What is striking is that

the overwhelming majority of the patients, who were hospitalized after 1923, had no case-history and suffered

from persecution mania.

3 Dromokaiteion Hospital Case-Book, Case-book (DHCB), 1921-1922.


720

Starting from the 20th August 1922, the register of patients at Dromokaition records 64 patients, 18 of

them being refugees from Asia Minor and none of them having either a hereditary mental illness or any other

serious disease. All these refugees developed fears of death and persecution. However, it is interesting to

examine some of their cases individually, as they were described by the psychiatrists and the testimonies of

practising analysts. One of these cases was Stavriani E. (a married housewife of 35) from Philadelphia in

Smyrna. According to the description of her case:

Her illness dates back 20 days, due to the incidents in Smyrna. The patient displays (at short intervals every month)

psycho-kinetic excitement and fear. She starts shouting that she sees fire burning the people; also Turks on horses, running

and slaughtering children. Terrified because of these, she cries out in agony.4

Many of the absolutely sane refugees recall with horror their experiences and persecution by Turkish

irregulars (Tsetes). Theodoros Tsakalis from Biga remembers how the English told the Greek people to open

their windows and no one will harm them. However on the same night that they left the massacre of the

Christians began. The Tsetes were massacring till dawn. All the Greek people were driven mad and they did not

know where to hide themselves”.5

In the same context Charles Howland, Chairman of the Refugee Settlement

Commission, pointed out,

When the Turkish armies entered Smyrna many of the Greeks and Armenians from the countryside and a large part of

the city population still remained there. The Turkish soldiery received license to work their will upon these people, and

there followed scenes of carnage such as would have warmed the heart of Tamerlane on one of his black days. The

Christian quarters were destroyed by a general conflagration started by incendiary bombs, and the fugitives were

bayoneted in the streets or shot as they tried to swim to boats in the harbor. Pillage, arson, rapine and massacre are words

in the English dictionaries and in the criminal codes; in Smyrna in 1922 they stalked the streets and did the work of fallen

Lucifer. (Howland, 1926)

Even such a sane refugee as Eleni Karadoni recalls how during the night her co-villagers “saw a septic

tank full of heads, the decapitated bodies flopping about on the edge. It was a horrifying sight. Whoever saw

that went mad. The mental hospital was filled with mentally deranged people”6.

Due to these experiences the situation in the Lunatic Hospital in 1923 was not improved in terms of

percentages of patients from Asia Minor. The refugee patient Ioannis P. was a 36-year-old unmarried engineer

from Ordou in Pontos without any hereditary mental illness. His illness, once more, dated to five months prior

to his arrival to Greece. It was reported that, the patient displays fears that he is being chased to the death. He

says that he was destined by God to be crucified and that this is the Apocalypse7.

Furthermore, we cannot fail to stress that the demographic composition of the waves of refugees further

implied proof of the persecution and abuse they suffered. Indeed, the RSC (Refugee Settlement Commission)

officials reported that 90% of them were old women, old men and children, since all the men of military age

4 DHCB, 1922 [Patient number: 1665, date of hospitalization: September 23, 1922] , p. 16. 5 Oral Evidence of Theodoros Tsakalis from Biga. (1980). In F. D. Apostolopoulos (ed.), Hi Exodos Martyries apo tis Eparchies

ton Dytikon Paralion tis Mikrasias [Exodus: Evidence from the provinces of the west coast of Asia minor], vol. A’ (p. 258).

Athens. 6 Oral Evidence of Eleni Karadoni from Pinarbasi. (1980). In F. D. Apostolopoulos (Ed.), Hi Exodos [Exodus], vol. A’ (p. 26).

Athens. 7 DHCB, 1923 [Patient number: 1779, date of hospitalization: September 23, 1923], p. 131.


721

had been detained in Anatolia by the Turks,8 and had been deported into the interior to form the labor

battalions.9 In his report on their situation Fridtjof Nansen regarded this detention of “the entire male

population between the ages of 15 and 55” as “the chief disaster which had befallen these refugees”.10

He

estimated that at least 100,000 male refugees had been detained in Asia Minor.11

In this setting, the “unprotected” bodies of women were considered “as sex objects whose natural role

[was] to be subordinate to sexually aggressive males” (Hubbard, Kitchin, Bartley, & Fuller, 2002, p. 51).

Anastasis Charantis, entirely sane, was the son of a church-warden in the village of Geren. He states that when

“the Turks passed through the village they picked the most beautiful girls and did what they liked. They also

picked my niece. „Grandpa‟, she was shouting, „Save me!‟ My father wept to hear her. He who was powerful

once could not help her”.12

After the settlement in Greece, as the RSC in Volos: “reported that many of the

younger women were raped before escaping”.13

Let us not forget that Greece was one of those societies where

the virginal, untouched woman is of great value in the rhetoric of hegemonic masculinity (Coffey, 1999, p. 9).

The loss of virginity as a result of sexual abuse implied not only the loss of an identity, but it also signified the

loss of mind. In the event, many women patients complained that they were sexually abused. In this context, for

example, was the illness of Anna Ch. from Prousali. She was a 30-year-old from Attaleia, without any

background of mental illness. During her hospitalization on October 7, 1924,

She was possessed with growing ideas of various senseless feelings of persecution based on visual delusions. Turning

around repeatedly, she said: “Don‟t come near me. What do you want from me? I‟m a virgin; I don‟t want you to do me

harm; I‟m not a prostitute!” etc. At the same time, trying to defend herself against her persecutors, she attacks them with a

piece of wood, trying to hit them.14

Moreover, many completely sane women refugees were recalling their dreadful experiences that were not

so different from the delusions of the refugee patients. As an old refugee, Maria Chappa, from Gumaovasi—a

small village 19 kilometers south of Smyrna—recalls how, when her family went down to Smyrna Point, the

Tsetes were kidnapping girls.

The Turks were crawling up to us and attacking the girls. At that time you would have liked to be 100 years old.

Many of the girls masqueraded as old women in order to avoid them. They were attacking and the people were screaming.

The ships were flashing their searchlights. They (the Tsetes) would stop for a while, and then they would start again. We

left, and went to the cemetery. We would hide the girls inside the graves and sit on them. In that place, there was no danger

of fire, either.15

In same setting, Saroula Skyfte from the village Erikevi recalls that some young mothers chocked their

8 League of Nations Archives (LNA), R 1763, 48/25485/25485, Memorandum regarding the re-settlement of refugees in Greece,

sent by Johnson to James W. Verity, Geneva, (March 3, 1923). 9 LNA, R 1761, 48/24722/24337, Report of Dr. Nansen on the refugee situation in Greece, Part I, (November 28, 1922), p. 2. 10 LNA, R 1761, 48/24722/24337, Report of Dr. Nansen on the refugee situation in Greece, Part I, (November 28, 1922), p. 3. 11 LNA, R 1761, 48/24722/24337, Report of Dr. Nansen on the refugee situation in Greece, Part I, (November 28, 1922), p. 3. 12 Oral Evidence of Anastasis Charanis, in Exodos [Exodus], vol. A‟, p. 61. 13 LNA, R 1762, 48/25154/24077, Report of the League of Nations‟ Epidemic Commission on present conditions in Volos, sent

to Dr. F. J. Nansen, (November 26, 1922), p. 1. 14 DHCB, 1924 [Patient number: 2016, date of hospitalization: October 7, 1924]. 15 Oral Evidence of Maria Chappa, in Hi Exodos [Exodus], vol. A‟, p. 28.


722

babies by closing their mouths not to cry and betray their location.16

Asa Jennings (Assistant Director of

Y.M.C.A. (Young Men‟s Christian Associations)—the American youth organization in Smyrna) recalls how he

had taken over two of the few houses which had not been burned and remained on the northern line of the quay

in Smyrna. According to the same sources, when the plans of the Turks to exterminate the Christians became

clear, he raised the US flag and turned it into an emergency hospital to which the sailors and the care workers

brought pregnant women and small children who had lost their parents. Some of them had been killed before

their eyes. The naval patrols found that it was possible to save young girls “from a fate worse than death” by

running after the Turkish officers and soldiers who were dragging them away. The Americans pretended that

these girls were their own girlfriends. It was estimated that all those who were brought to those two houses by

some urgent need amounted to more than one thousand souls. Jennings named these houses “my own

concentration camps”.17

Nansen, a famous Norwegian explorer, who was entrusted by the League of Nations

with the protection of the Asia Minor refugees, pointed out that there was “a striking absence of young women

among the refugees”.18

In Dromokaition hospital, Maria Ph. was a 19-year-old girl from Aydini without any case-history, who

suffered from megalomania. She also had visual illusions and heard distant crashes, rumbling and thunder.

Megalomania was also diagnosed through her attacks of delirium. She would say: “I can see God, I‟m the

Virgin Mary, and I‟ll save the world”. At other times she would say: “I am pregnant and I have snakes in my

womb. Call the doctors to save me”.19

Metaphorically speaking, a communication between suffering, madness and divinity was always present.

As Foucault (2004) reminded us, “Christ did not merely choose to be surrounded by lunatics; he himself chose

to pass in their eyes for a madman, thus experiencing, in his incarnation, all the sufferings of human

misfortune” (p. 75).

Even sane refugees, however, imposed on God or on their religious symbols all their hopes of salvation

and a successful flight to Greece. There was a strong belief in a continuous interaction between the human and

divine realm during their exodus. Ioannis Loukakis from Pontus (Propontis) wrote:

The ship sails on the Aegean Sea; we got a glimpse of the island of Limnos and we left it behind. We came into view

of Mount Athos, and from miles away adults and children made the sign of the cross in order to get the help of the Saints

for the unknown trip.20

Religion often appeared in the context of events which would be described by an empirical scientist as

transcending the normal order, and were therefore attributed to a supernatural agency more than meets the eye.

It was what the refugees called in one word a miracle, and became a reference point for them even at the most

difficult moments of their expulsion from Asia Minor. At that time, the so-called miraculous happenings 16 Oral Evidence of Saroula Skyfte, in Hi Exodos [Exodus], vol. A‟, p. 121 17 Asa Jennings, Diary, in O. E. Jacob & S. Jacob (Director of Smyrna‟s Y. M. C. A., “The Diaries”, The Historical Reference

library of Y. M. C. A. Quoted in Jean De Murat, The Great Extipration of Hellenism & Christianity (Miami, Florida, 1999,

pp. 161-162). 18 LNA, R 1761, 48/24722/24337: Report of Dr. F. J. Nansen on the refugee situation in Greece, Part II, (November 28, 1922),

p. 3. 19 DHCB, 1925 [Patient number: 2159, date of hospitalization: July 29, 1925]. 20 Archive of the Centre for Asia Minor Studies, 169, Vythinia (Proussa), Memoirs of Loukakis Ioannis, p. 6.


723

through the veneration of icons or relics of Saints, which are believed to have a mediatory role central in

Orthodox worship, were said to play a significant role in the survival of refugees. Many refugees attributed to

them a metaphysical power which defied any rationality. They claimed that these symbols of Greek-Orthodox

Christianity helped them to get away from their persecutors. Evangelos Galas describes the panic in the port of

Smyrna, when everybody tried to embark on the ships and save his own life. According to his description,

Armed Turks were searching even the clothes of the refugees for money. Somebody ordered the women and the

children to sit down, in order to gather the men who were to be sent to Ankara. God showed his hand and we managed to

sit down without being noticed.21

In the event, although the refugees interviewed differed in their pattern of flight and had different origins,

they all claimed that the icons saved them from death. For instance, Zoi Tikmoglou from Magnesia told how

her

…brothers were imprisoned by Turks when they went to the railway station of Cordellio to hear from Smyrna, which

was cut off. They felt washed-out and they decided to escape from their prison. A woman holding an icon of St. Eleftherios

was with them. They passed the guard and God blinded him. He did not see them and they returned to Cordellio, where her

parents were mourning for their lost children.22

Many of the Greeks who were exchanged under the provisions of the Lausanne settlement attempted to

collect their iconostasis and the icons from their churches in Asia Minor. Antonia Chatzistefanou had hidden a

silver icon of the Eleousa [Merciful] Virgin Mary in her chest. She carried it all the way to Greece from her

house in Mougla (named Mentechion in Byzantine times or Menteche in Ottoman ones)—a small town 371 km

South-West of Izmir and 86 km South-East of Aidin).23

The refugees from Prokopi claimed that the relics of their Saint saved their lives in their trip to Greece.

Calliope Mouratoglou recalls that their ship fell into a tempest. It was a rotten craft and filled with water. The

crew started unfastening the boats and threw them at sea. At that time the captain asked if they carried any

icons or bodies of Saints. They found that the chest of Saint John turned upside down. They put his relics back

in order and their priest Isaak prayed. Then the storm suddenly ended and they were soon speeding on their way

to the Greek shores.24

The case of these refugees, settled in Nea (New) Nazianzeno Charvatis, was also singled out in the course

of a parliamentarian discussion. In 1925, the MP Constantinos Filandros addressed the Minister of Welfare

(Anastatios Misirloglou) on their request to erect a church in this settlement. It was stressed that 500 refugee

families fled almost naked to Greece from their Asia Minor community, which had a lot of gold and wealth

21 Evidence of Evangelos Galas, from the District of Koldere (Kol-dere in Turkish). (1980). In F. D. Apostolopoulos (Ed.), Hi

Exodos: Martyries apo tis Eparchies ton Dytikon Paralion tis Mikrasias (Exodus: Evidence from the provinces of the west coast

of Asia minor), Vol. A’ (p. 111). Athens. 22 Evidence of Evangelos Galas, from the District of Koldere (Kol-dere in Turkish). (1980). In F. D. Apostolopoulos (Ed.), Hi

Exodos: Martyries apo tis Eparchies ton Dytikon Paralion tis Mikrasias (Exodus: Evidence from the provinces of the west coast

of Asia minor), Vol. A‟ (p. 107). Athens. 23 Evidence of Antonia Chatzistefanou from Mougla (a small town 371 km South-West of Izmir and 86 km South-East of Aidin).

(1980). In Apostolopoulos, F. D. (ed.), Hi Exodos: Martyries apo tis Eparchies ton Dytikon Paralion tis Mikrasias [Exodus:

Evidence from the provinces of the west coast of Asia minor, vol. A‟ (p. 213). Athens. 24 Evidence of Calliope Mouratoglou. (1982). In Prokopi Mourelos G. (ed.), Hi Exodos: Martyries apo tis Eparchies tis Centrikes

kai Notias Mikrasias, vol. B’ (p. 57). Athens.


724

(which Venizelos had asked unsuccessfully to be returned), carrying with them only two icons and the relics of

their Saint which they hid in their clothes and placed in a hut when they arrived in Greece, where they

worshipped them from morning till night. It was argued that they did not complain about their misfortune or the

lost gold and wealth, but for the lack of a church to house the relics of their Saint.25

The first President (Charles

Howland) of the Refugee Settlement Commission in Greece illustrates how in Euboea, in the refugee

establishments from Procopi, the young people guarded the relics to prevent them from being stolen by other

refugees. Moreover, he reported that

500 families originating from Karvali in Asia Minor were established in a malaria-infested area close to Cavalla in

northern Greece. The insanitary conditions and the swamps made the place unhealthy and the climate unwholesome.

Despite official encouragement, the refugees would not move to another site. Nothing would move them to leave the place,

since they were more afraid of being split up. Thus, all the community had been gathered around the body of its Saint

(Gregorios Nazianze who is considered to be the Father of the Eastern Orthodox Church). In fact, he was Patriarch of

Constantinople in the fourth century AD), which was brought from Asia Minor and was “legated” from generation to

generation for 12 centuries.26

In the asylum, Vassilia Th., an unmarried 14-year-old from Magnesia in Asia Minor, was one of those

who did not manage to overcome the nightmare of experiencing abuse and persecution. On 23rd January 1923

it was noted that her illness dated back five months, to the Smyrna disaster.

Because of the murder of her father, she displays psycho-kinetic excitement with vague fears (...). The patient is

constantly moving, sometimes crying, sometimes speaking. She moves her hands and legs continually. Sometimes, when

the attack comes to an end, she regains consciousness and says, “Virgin Mary, will I recover?” She makes the sign of the

cross repeatedly. She eats unwittingly.27

Once more, reference to the divine realm was a characteristic reaction of the insane patient. The line

between rule and nature or between sanity and insanity is very thin in religion.

According to Foucault (2004), “In the dialectic of insanity where reason hides without abolishing itself,

religion constitutes the concrete form of what cannot go mad; it bears what is invincible in reason, it bears what

subsists beneath madness as quasi-nature” (p. 232). Even in the modern, sane world, when psychological or

emotional differences were attributed less and less to demonic possession and treated more and more through

hospitalization, “the doctor replaces the priest as the custodian of social values” (Turner, 1987, p. 37), and

religion still played a dominant role in the treatment of mental instability. In the sane Greek world of 1994,

51% of mothers having children with mental disturbances sought a solution or treatment from the Church, and

30% resorted to magicians, astrologists or fortune-tellers with cards before consulting a doctor (Karamanolakis,

1998, p. 66).

The line between sanity and insanity is also quite thin when someone examines the good intentions of

some refugee patients to provide help for their destitute compatriots. This was the main preoccupation of the

League of Nations, of the Greek state as well as of many philanthropic institutions (Save the Children, Red

Cross, etc.) after 1922. In the mental hospital, Alexandros K., a 32-year-old employee from Amnissos, was

25 Efemeris ton Syzeteseon [Gazette of the Debates], Vol. IV, Session 175th, April 8, 1925, 947. 26 Société des Nations, L’ Etablissement des Réfugiés en Grèce (Gevena, 1926), pp. 26-27. 27 DHCB, 1923 [Patient number: 1724, date of hospitalization: January 23, 1923], p. 67.


725

hospitalized on the 18th June 1923 without any case-history in his past. He displayed psycho-kinetic excitement,

with rambling delirium about the political situation and his job. He also claimed to hear the telephone, and

answered or cried out for no reason. Usually he shouted that,

I will telegraph the American President Wilson to send me 200 American ships in order to protect the working class; I

will also send notification to Venizelos to protect the working class and the Greek population of Pontos; the American

Government will give me millions of dollars to consolidate the protection of the working world.28

In reality, when Smyrna was set on fire and irregular Turkish troops were attacking the Christian

population, thousands of refugees leapt into the sea and sought to find a way of escaping to the neighboring

Greek islands. The Americans offered to escort the Greek ships on their entrance into and their exit out of the

harbor. Asa Jennings (Assistant Director of Y. M. C. A.) describes his actions taken to save the refugees who

waited in vain some ship to come and take them from Smyrna till the 21st September, whereas Kemal‟s

ultimatum which was until 1st October, was running out. He managed to gather a small fleet of Greek

passenger ships in the confusion, instability and the political turmoil prevailing in Greece. He ordered the

Greek flag to be taken down and the US flag to be flown in its place on his ship and the convoy met the

battleship “S. S. Lawrence”. On Sunday September 24, 1922, they all sailed to the Turkish harbors and saved

“15,000 old men, women and children from the hell which the once rich and famed city had now become”.

Two days later, Jennings returned with seventeen ships and took another 43,000 refugees to Mytilene. A

convoy of cargo ships under British charter was added on the third day in the attempt to rescue refugees. By 1st

October 1922 around 180,000 refugees had been taken out of Smyrna alone, according to the estimates of Near

East Relief. Another 60,000 refugees were taken from the coastal towns of Vourla, Tsesme and Aivali to where

they had flocked in the space of two weeks.29

The other allied ships, for fear of not complying with the agreement of neutrality and offending the Turks,

refused to come to their aid or even to allow any refugee embarkation. “In addition to the paucity of

conveyances, the captains of the foreign warships had strict orders not to interfere”. The completely sane

refugee Nota Diamanti asserts that Turkish irregulars (Tsetes),

Wreaked all their anger, for what they suffered from the Greeks, on these unfortunate refugees, to say nothing of the

French! Some lads swam up to their ships, got a purchase on the gunwales or the bulwarks, and they [the French] chopped

their hands off. (Apostolopoulos, 2004, p. 145)

A typical case of moral distress is identified in the observation of the patient Elpinike Ph., a 40-year-old

married landlady from Smyrna without any case-history, who was hospitalized in April 1926. Among other

psychological disorders, drapetomania was diagnosed. It was noted in the case-books that,

Signs of moral distress were shown mainly because of the death of her father, whom she loved excessively, four years

ago during the disaster of Smyrna. A year ago she displayed persecution mania, aural and visual illusions. She says that

she sees people whom she hears knocking on the windows of her house seeking to harm her and steal her money. She tries

28 DHCB, 1924 [Patient number: 1934, date of hospitalization: June 18, 1923]. 29 Asa Jennings, Diary, in O. E. Jacob & S. Jacob (Director of Smyrna‟s Y. M. C. A., “The Diaries”, The Historical Reference

library of Y. M. C. A. Quoted in Jean De Murat, The great extipration of Hellenism & Christianity (Miami, Florida, 1999)

(p. 169).


726

to escape and run towards the railway station.30

It is worth noting that the railway represented the main means of transportation, of which the refugees

were deprived in Asia Minor during their escape to the western coast of Asia Minor. The Greek army was

demobilized and was carried by trains to the coast, where ships transferred the soldiers to Greece. The people

were left unprotected to follow the retreat of the army on foot and—as has been said—without any ships

waiting for them on the coast of Smyrna.

In another case, a single woman from Alikarnassos named Foteni Vl., 24 years old, without any hereditary

problems in her mental case-history, ad delirium also. Drapetomania as an impulse to escape would be the term

to describe some of her psycho-emotional disorders. During the night she would awake from her sleep and cry

out that

She was being chased by pigs, snakes, dogs, etc. She was terrified, saying that they wanted to poison her, and that she

was being chased by Turks who wanted to murder her. She said she wanted to commit suicide. She would strike her head

against the wall, trying to kill herself. She would ask for a knife to stab herself or a rope to hang herself with. When she

was asked why she wanted to die, she shouted: “Why would I want a life like this?” She would also ask to go to the sea to

swim. She wanted long journeys...31

In September 1923, the illness of Petros D., a pupil from Smyrna without any case-history, was also dated

to 12 months previously. It was noted that

The patient was suddenly overtaken by vague fears. He was afraid of everybody. He would rave on that he was

telegraphing Queen Elizabeth every day, claiming that she has to invite him. The patient suffered from megalomania. He

said that he was in a position to recapture Smyrna, and that he was a General, and so on.32

Within the same context, Emmanuel S. was a 26-year-old employee from Constantinople (Istanbul), who

had no hereditary mental problems either. His mental disturbances were also diagnosed in January 1924.

Doctors said that

He was serving in the Greek army when he was affected by mental illness. Sixteen months ago, the patient displayed

psycho-kinetic excitement with vague fears and persecution stress. He says that he is superior to the King and that he will

seize Constantinople.33

Normally, nobody would take seriously the insanity of a 16-year-old civilian or a simple soldier suffering

from mental disturbance. However, military power was still strong and manipulated by people who had the

right to continue waging war due to their rank, and who could thus objectify themselves in the eyes of “reason”.

It should be recalled that the general leader of the military campaign in Asia Minor, Field-Marshal Giorgos

Chatzianestis, was characterized by the British Prime-Minister Lloyd George as a typical psychiatric case who

had the obsession that “his feet were of sugar and that they were so fragile that if he had to stand up they would

break”.34

The British military attaché (Hoarne Nern) agreed with the British prime-minister when he argued

30 DHCB, 1926 [Patient number: 2298, date of hospitalization: April 23, 1926]. 31 DHCB, 1923 [Patient number: 1782, date of hospitalization: November 14, 1923], p. 134. 32 DHCB, 1923 [Patient number: 1783, date of hospitalization: September 17, 1923], p. 135. 33 DHCB, 1924 [Patient number: 1799, date of hospitalization: January 19, 1924], p. 151 34 Ta Nea [Newspaper: News], Issue dedicated to Asia Minor disaster, No 21, Tuesday 23, September, 2003, p. 1.


727

that Chatzianestis was totally dedicated to his wife and that he was driven mad a few years after her death.35

Moreover, in the sane world Constantinople (Istanbul) was the main military target, even after the defeat of the

Greek army in Asia Minor. In 1922, Colonel Plastiras told the British Representative at the Mudanya

Conference that he had gathered Greek troops on the border of eastern Thrace, threatening to seize

Constantinople, and wired Venizelos that the army could hold eastern Thrace (Psomiades, 1968, p. 42). Finally,

Greece abandoned Asia Minor and eastern Thrace under the pressure of the Allies in order to improve her

diplomatic position at the Lausanne peace conference (Psomiades, 1968, p. 43).

In Benedict Anderson‟s terms imaginary level is the main status of every nation (Anderson, 1983). In the

case of refugee patients, the spatial images and the feeling of attachment to the old homeland were more

powerful than the empirical construction of a new space that “presupposes a whole knowledge of measurement

and standardizations” (Thrift, 2003, p. 87). They “chose” to live mentally in their past homeland, and thus

continued their lives in an undisturbed virtual and imaginary reality. This mental torment from the uprooting as

well as from the persecutions drove these sufferers to become apathetic, withdrawn and alienated or to develop

“bizarre” behavior. The Greek medical system diagnosed their deviance from normal, sane social patterns of

thought and behavior as mental disturbance and insanity.

Sometimes, however, the trauma for the refugees often confirmed once they had reached the seeming

safety of their new “home”. The lunatic hospital sheltered those people whose minds could not cope with the

psychological pain inflicted on bodies and souls after the persecutions or abuses suffered in their Asia Minor

homelands or after the exploitation and hardships experienced in Greece. Within this framework social and

economic powers contributed to their mental and social alienation. The next chapter of this study will examine

the experience of being a refugee in the process of settlement in order to understand their vulnerability to

mental disorder.

Being a Refugee in Greece

In the Case-book of the Lunatic Hospital it is recorded that from September 1924 until the end of the year,

50 patients were hospitalized. Eight of them were refugees, and only one of them had an alcoholic father as a

case-history. All of them were described in a language that was a constituent form of their madness. In other

words, the madness was defined in the simple structure of a discourse or gave it “a hold over the totality of soul

and body; a discourse that was both the silent language by which the mind speaks to itself in the truth proper to

it, and the visible articulation in the movements of the body” (Foucault, 2004, p. 94).

One can imagine that the situation becomes worst when the patients are deprived even of these basic

means of interaction and communication with their doctors due to the fact that they are non-Greek speakers.

Armenia K., a 25-year-old seamstress from Asia Minor, remained melancholic without responding to

external stimulation from the day she was admitted to the hospital. The patient, who spoke an Armenian dialect,

was completely isolated, and according to the doctors, “because of the Armenian dialect, we are not able to

confer with her”.36

In the microcosm of the Lunatic Hospital, her case is a reflection of the big problem of

35 Ta Nea [Newspaper: News], Issue dedicated to Asia Minor disaster, No 21, Tuesday 23, September, 2003, p. 1. 36 DHCB, 1924 [Patient number: 1796, date of hospitalization: January 11, 1924], p. 148.


728

linguistic composition and the alienation of those non-Greek speaking refugees who fled to Greece. Among

them, there were about 31,000 Armenians.37

Psychiatric research focuses on the cultural factors that lead to the development of unconscious and

irresistible impulses. From this perspective, the first phase of cultural psychiatry in the United States—during

the interwar period—paid significant attention to the mental problems of those—mainly immigrants—who

clearly seemed culturally “different”, in an ethnic or religious sense (Moffic, 2003).

The 30-year-old Anna Ch. came to the asylum in 1924 and was re-hospitalized in May 1931. At that time,

it was also recorded that “she raves in the Turkish language, and, unaware of her environment, she is possessed

with illusions”.38

In the “sane” world of the Greek state, language was also an impediment to communication among the

refugees. Since religion was the sole criterion of exchangeability, many of the Greek-Orthodox refugees

experienced alienation and discrimination based on their language differences with the native population. The

myth of brotherhood and the integration of the refugees were challenged by the lack of communication, and the

feeling that they were aliens on the grounds of their linguistic diversity appeared to be widespread.

In this respect, the refugee Ioannis Mousaeloglou from Neo-Caesaria in Ioannina recalls how the boat

brought them to the island of Corfu, where they lived in the army barracks for nine months and were supported

by the Red Cross. Normally they were not allowed to go into town to the market. Once, however, they were left

to go shopping. He noted that,

We entered a grocer‟s shop. The grocer asked, “What do you want?”. We did not understand. He asked again:

“What‟s your name?” I thought he was asking us for a woman, some Helen!39 I went mad. I attacked him and beat him up!

A police officer came. We could not communicate. The officer told me: “Write down your name! I wrote: Ioannis

Mousaeloglou”. “Amazing”, he said, “you are Greek!”.40

In many cases, hostility to the refugees is widely recorded, the indigenous population referring to the

newcomers in abusive terms such as Tourkosporous (originating from Turkey) and Yiaourtopaptismenous

(baptized in yoghurt).41

The memories of the refugees shed a new light not only on the degree of abuse and

prejudice they encountered.

The refugee from Kerasous (Pontos), Nazou Kyriakopoulou, recalls that they were chased by the native

population in Patra, who called them Venizelists and wanted to send them back to Turkey. The locals

“welcome” them:

“What do you want in our country, sons of Turks? Go and see your friend Venizelos”. They made us sleep in open

37 Census of 1928, in Statistical Annual of Greece (Athens 1931). 38 DHCB, 1924 [Patient number: 2016, date of hospitalization: October 7, 1924]. 39 It should be noted that in Greek the spelling of the question “What‟s your name” (pos se lene) is quite close to the Greek

spelling and sound of the name Helene (Elene) and, thus, quite confusing for someone who has a knowledge of language at only a

beginner‟s level. 40 Evidence of Ioannis Mousaeloglou, Athens 12/7/1960. (1982). In G. Mourelos (ed.), Hi Exodos: Martyries apo tis Eparchies

tis Kentrikes kai Notias Mikrasias [Exodus: Evidence from the Provinces of the Central and South Asia Minor], vol. B’ (p. 81).

Athens. 41 Evidence of Ioannis Mousaeloglou, Athens 12/7/1960. (1982). In G. Mourelos (ed.), Hi Exodos: Martyries apo tis Eparchies

tis Kentrikes kai Notias Mikrasias [Exodus: Evidence from the Provinces of the Central and South Asia Minor], vol. B’ (p. 81).

Athens.


729

sheds. They saw our babies lying on the cement and didn‟t even say, Here‟s a sack to put over your baby. From there they

spread us out to the villages around Patras. They put us in wagons covered with coal dust, and took us to the villages. They

didn‟t even wait to give us our belongings. We lost them and so did others like us, who didn‟t have men folk to chase after

their belongings.42

This was the second action of looting against the refugees. In actual fact, the overwhelming majority of

refugees left their homes with such haste that they had no possessions of any kind other than the light summer

clothes which they wore”.43

Even the refugees who managed to carry some valuables with them were relieved

of their belongings in the harbors of Asia Minor before embarking on the ships which transferred them to

Greece.44

The typist Anna Ch. who was a 20-year-old typist from Naukli in Asia Minor could not cope with these

abuses. She had no case-history when she started suffering from persecution mania. She kept on saying: “They

will kill me, I am under a spell; the witch brings men and they make indecent gestures which I cannot stand, for

I come from a good family”. She also claimed that “they stole her shoes and money”.45

In the sane world a link

between foreign labor and racism or xenophobia in popular conceptualization can be detected since the time of

industrialization in Europe, in the tensions that were also fomented by foreign immigration.

Immigrants were regularly greeted with prejudice and, on occasion, xenophobia. The roots of this hostility are to be

found in a complex mix of distrust of the “other”, whose customs and language varied so much from one‟s own, and fear

of competition for jobs, housing and (not least) women, as well as the immigrants‟ possible depressive effect on wages.

(Berger & Smith, 1999)

In the Greek rural environment, the indigenous population resented the presence of the newcomers on the

grounds of land allocation and had clashes with them. As a result, tragic events were reported in the course of

parliamentary debates in particular from Serres, in the prefecture of Macedonia. As was noted, “Locals or

refugees could be massacred for a stremma”.46

In the event, there were vivid descriptions of the frictions that

occurred in Plevna in the district of Serres, where the indigenous inhabitants started fighting the refugees in the

fields: “In their efforts to enforce discipline, the police clashed with them and arrested 18 refugees, who

attacked the policemen in the general confusion”.47

According to the same MP‟s reports, all the refugee huts

were burnt in Nigrita. The bloodiest incident happened in the village of Koupji, a clash which effectively

undermined the prospect of a stable settlement (Kritikos, 2005).

Studies that examine the psychological aspects of immigrant or refugee adaptation emphasize the

experience of “social displacement syndrome”. In their cases, an incubation period may be followed by

paranoid symptoms, hypochondria, anxiety and depression (Richmond, 1988). Mental disturbances are also

faced by migrants who struggle to adjust to alien natural and social surroundings. People were made

42 Oral evidence of Nazou Kyriakopoulou, Researcher: Chara Lioudaki (2/7/1962). In G. Giannakopoulos (ed.), Prosfygiki Ellada

[Refugee Greece] (p. 50). 43 League of Nations, Official Journal, 4th Year, 1923, Document No. C.7, 36 (a) 1922. Extracts from a report by Dr. Nansen, 18

November 1922, part II: The Question of Refugees in Greece and in Asia Minor. 44 LNA , R 1761, 48/24722/24337: report by Dr. Nansen on the refugee situation in Greece, Part II, November 28, 1922, p. 3. 45 DHCB, 1926 [Patient number: 2247, date of hospitalization: January 30, 1926]. 46 Efemeris ton Syzeteseon [Gazette of Debates], 190th Session, May 25, 1925, p. 223. 47 Efemeris ton Syzeteseon [Gazette of Debates], 63rd Session, June 25, 1924, p. 479.


730

psychologically vulnerable by what was supposedly “saner” simply because they could not cope with the

difference between living in the country and living in the city (Phillo & Parr, 2004).

In the case of the Asia Minor refugees, being uprooted from their homeland and past lives as well as the

lack of basic infrastructure in their urban settlements resulted in a lot of tension that pervaded the life of the

new settlers. For instance, in many cases the refugees had to get water with tins “because the RSC had

remained unconcerned and insensible to their misery and had not opened those large wells”.48

It was, thus,

reported that “the resulting effect on the daily life of the refugees was quarrels”.49

Moreover, the claim to the same land that had to be redistributed to more than one refugee group created a

great deal of tension even among the refugees. As the refugee Christos Kambanides points out, in Anavysso (in

Attica) “the people who came from Phokaia refused to live with the Aretsiani; they caused trouble for them and

forcibly pulled down their tents”.50

Unfortunately, even the state officers, who had been associated with refugee petitions, were not immune to

anti-refugee sentiments. Sometimes the refugees encountered an insane brutality in the respective

administrative mechanisms. According to the Greek MP A. Iasonides, two RSC Greek officials (Troulinos and

Pantazides) were accused of having behaved in an exceedingly tactless way. It was claimed they had beaten the

refugee Miltiades Papadopoulos and thrown him down the stairs of the Office of Colonization. The Greek MP

asked that they be punished as an example, since the Public Prosecutor‟s office had taken no action against

them. It was also stated by the same MP that the RSC had enlisted “neurasthenic employees”.51

Though it would be an oversimplification to identify a collective anti-refugee sentiment throughout the

country, a dislike of refugees can also be traced in many localities on the grounds of their impoverished

situation. In the event, the League of Nations officials reported that the bulk of the refugees in Volos came from

Smyrna, and were in the usual state of poverty, lacking blankets and clothing, with few men but many old

women and children. It was stated that “there is apathy on the part of the population, who did not like these

refugees”.52

It was also noticed that “neighboring villages on the hills are all very rich, but a general antipathy

to refugees and lack of room does not allow of much relief from the congestion in the town”.53

Psychiatric research has argued that in a world where people as individuals or as members of a country or

a region are continuously suffering from serious social and financial setbacks (unemployment, job dismissal,

eviction, homelessness, discrimination and exclusion), the burden of mental health is bound to increase (Mental

illness, 2003).

After 1922, the Asia Minor refugees were those who suffered more than anyone else from social or

financial setbacks during the transitional period of their settlement. These people were not only abruptly and

violently cut off from their homeland on the other side of the Aegean, but they were also exploited as a cheap

48 Efemeris ton Syzeteseon [Gazette of Debates], 69th Session, June 30, 1924, p. 549. 49 Efemeris ton Syzeteseon [Gazette of Debates], 69th Session, June 30, 1924, p. 549. 50 ΑΚΜΣ, File: Settlements in Attica, Oral evidence of Christos Kambanides, Researcher: Aglaia Loukopoulou, 18/9/56. 51 Efemeris ton Syzeteseon (Gazette of the Debates): 67th Session, June 27, 1924, p. 509. 52 LNA, R 1762, 48/25154/24077, Report of the League of Nations‟ Epidemic Commission on present conditions in Salonica,

sent to Dr. F.J. Nansen, November 26, 1922, p. 1. 53 LNA, R 1762, 48/25154/24077, Report of the League of Nations‟ Epidemic Commission on present conditions in Salonica,

sent to Dr. F. J. Nansen, November 26, 1922, p. 1.


731

labor force in Greece. They lost their past life, their properties and finally their dignity. The refugee Nota

Diamanti recalled her experience from the settlement in the island of Mytilene. She says that the refugees were

accommodated in the public gardens and they were given a small allowance. “Some worked as day-laborers,

others went charring at rich houses and shops, and others worked as lace-makers or stocking-makers to make

ends meet. The invalids and the children went begging”.54

In the event, their impoverished situation was largely instrumental in causing these refugees to be looked

on as a separate group and to be severely exploited by the natives. The evidence of Maria Birbili from

Yargciler55

of Asia Minor outlines this treatment by the native population in a village of Crete:

On the first of September we went to Chios. We found not one door or window open on the island. On the second of

October we got to Chanea, in Crete. Somebody came and collected us to pick olives in Paliochora. It took us two days and

one night to reach there. We went up hill and down dale. Once we arrived at the village, he wanted to get us to sleep in a

hen-coop. I told him: “I will not go inside. Had I wanted to stay in prison I would have remained in Asia Minor”. Then the

president of the village council came and settled us in a cell. That was big enough. However, there was neither mattress nor

quilt to lay down. A crowd gathered round us and eyed us with curiosity, as if we were a different species.

“Do you speak any Greek?” we were asked. “Did you have any churches in your country? They are dressed up like

Europeans!”

After a year we packed up and went back to Chanea. We were established in a Turkish dependency. It belonged to a

Turk and it was portioned out among sixty families. Just think how much we each got!56

Some of these refugees could simply not cope with various forms of exploitation or discrimination, both

obvious and covert, in the sane world. It is worth mentioning the case of Kleareti P., a 41-year-old married

woman from Smyrna, who was hospitalized in 1925. The causes of her illness were given as poverty and

psychological factors. It was explained that after her rent was doubled, the owner of the house - whom she said

she was going to refer to the police commissioner in order to find out what she really had to pay according to

the terms of the rent restriction act-accused her of having had an affair with the police captain.57

The doctors

observed that she was depressed; she kept on saying that “I am innocent. How can my children be told that they

have such a mother? It is better to die”.58

Some patients could not come to terms with this kind of abuse. Sometimes they developed the same

protective feelings that had been adopted as principles of all the international institutions involved in the

settlement plans. In vain, however, Alexandros K., a 32-year-old employee from Amnissos, who displayed

psycho-kinetic excitement, with delirious ramblings about the political situation and his job, shouted that “I will

establish a business and give jobs to thousands of workers; I will protect the working class which is being

persecuted”.59

Anastasios X. was a 46-year-old pastry-cook from Smyrna without any case-history of mental disturbance 54 Oral evidence of Nota Diamanti (From Dikeli of Magnesia or Mannesa). (1980). In Hi Exodos [Exodus], vol. A’ (p. 145).

Athens. 55 A small village with 1,000 Greek residents, which was 10 km southwest away from the town Urla in the peninsula of Erythraia. 56 Oral evidence of Maria Birbili (From Yargciler 10km from Vurla of Smyrna). (1980). In Hi Exodos [Exodus], vol. B’ (p. 73).

Athens. 57 DHCB, 1926 [Patient number: 1926, date of hospitalization: July 4, 1926]. 58 DHCB, 1926 [Patient number: 1926, date of hospitalization: July 4, 1926]. 59 DHCB, 1924 [Patient number: 1934, date of hospitalization: June 18, 1923]


732

either. In 1924 he displayed the first symptoms of his illness while he was living and working very quietly,

without giving any cause for alarm. What is strikingly described as a symptom in his case-history is the fact

that “sometimes he would say that he would do everything for the refugees in order to return all of them to their

homes; he was hoping to accomplish this through his work, his persistence and his competence, which was

widely recognized”. It was also noted as a symptom embodying the populist propaganda of many sane

inter-war politicians, who questioned the conclusion of the Lausanne Settlement and nurtured the temporary

character of the refugee settlement by promising a return to Turkey.60

His words sound insane considering the fact that it was forbidden by the Lausanne Treaty to return the

exchangeable populations to their homelands or properties. However, the RSC had to fight against this view,

stressing “that it was useless to embark on constructive work in Greece when the refugees themselves are

anxious to return to homes in Asia Minor, and they may possibly have the opportunity of doing so”.61

Throughout the Greek parliamentary discussions of the mid-1920s one issue, which provided a serious

explanation of the low agricultural production problem, was constantly coming up. It was suggested that there

was, at least during the first years of the influx of refugees, a nurturing of the temporary character of the rural

settlement by the State. It was emphasized that “the refugees had to know that the occupied land was their own

property, in order to cultivate it properly”.62

In this context, the words of our refugee patient do not sound so strange. And then the worst came, when

the family of the patient realized that “he was saving the money from his work mainly to help the needy poor”.

Confinement and treatment in the Lunatic Hospital became the only solution when:

About a month ago his condition deteriorated. He was staying clear of friends and acquaintances. During the day he

would sleep and during the night he liked to wander in the dark, for he wanted to see nobody, because—as he said—people

brought to his mind many recollections of happy days. He said that he needed a home in the countryside in order to see

nobody at all.63

Since the nineteenth century, eminent opinion considered the segregation of lunatics to be merely a police

matter, designed to cope with a public nuisance (Philo, 2004, p. 535). According to doctors; observations the

pastry-cook from Smyrna did not display any megalomania or persecution mania. As was noticed, “He eats

well, but he does not sleep well. Twice he has attempted to throw himself into the sea, because of the vanity of

the world as he calls it”.64

That was a world where people witnessed the loss of family members in horrible ways, or the rape, abuse

and humiliation of young women without any power of reaction. In the same “sane” world, refugee mothers in

the port of Smyrna were desperately trying to embark on a ship or to throw themselves to the sea, to save their

lives. Despite their efforts, they saw their babies been trampled to death by a panicked crowd, without anyone

60 Efemeris ton Syzeteseon [Gazette of the Debates], 38th Session, Friday, February 17, 1930, pp. 650-665. 61 LNA, R 1763, 48/25483/25483, Geneva, March 3, 1923, Memorandum regarding the re-settlement in Greece, sent by Johnson

to James W. Verity (Royal Colonial Institute in London), p. 2. 62 Efimeris ton Syzeteseon [Gazette of the Debates]: 63rd Session, June 23, 1924, p. 428. 63 DHCB, 1925 [Patient number: 2054, date of hospitalization: July 4, 1925]. 64 DHCB, 1925 [Patient number: 2054, date of hospitalization: July 4, 1925].


733

caring about it.65

Sometimes refugee women committed suicide for things that seem to our modern world less

serious or sane. In actual fact, for a young girl from Smyrna to have her long hair cut off was considered a

disgrace to her beauty and dignity. Nonetheless, after their uprooting the refugees had to remain on board for

more than three weeks and the fear of becoming lousy was strong. In many cases, trouble occurred when the

authorities attempted to remove the hair of refugee women by force.66

Some of these women could not bear

this humiliation. One of the women did not manage to prevent her hair being cut off, and died from the incident

on the following day. Eleni Serafimidou argues that due to their sorrow a girl fell into the sea and another

woman had a miscarriage.67

Efthalia Antoniadou from Neapoli also stresses that one girl from Adana could not

stand this humiliation and committed suicide by throwing herself into the sea.68

The same story of another

woman is being reported by Sofia Devletoglou from Anavysos (in Turkish: Arapsum) who was established in

Kokkinia in Attica. She argues that they got all their hair cut after their disembarkation in Piraeus one girl

committed suicide by throwing herself into the sea. The other refugees protested and the RSC stopped cutting

women‟s hair.69

One of them did not manage to prevent her hair being cut off, and died from the incident on

the following day.70

Epilogue

The confinement in Dromokaition, as this is depicted in the case-books, mirrors the persecution and

abuses of all the Asia Minor refugees who were “cast away” on the shores of Greece. Through the oral

testimonies and the records of Dromokaition one can detect that all the refugees were psychologically

vulnerable after their uprooting and persecution, a state worsened by being made unwelcome, regarded with

suspicion and subjected to various kinds of exclusion or exploitation.

In the same context, internment reflects the isolation and discrimination of those sane refugees who also

experienced terrible hardships during their uprooting, those who witnessed the loss of members of their families,

or those who were personally abused and persecuted on the soil of their homeland. In both cases, the oral

evidences of the sane refugees and the descriptions of their cases in the patients‟ records point out how similar

were the experiences of sane and insane refugees.

In this respect, confinement mirrors a network of spatial and social interaction between society and

hospital, which radiates outwards from the hospital walls. Society‟s response to the refugees‟ psychological

distress involved spatial segregation; by shutting away the people thus afflicted behind the high walls and

locked doors of a lunatic asylum. Such a segregationary response was in effect demanded for the simple reason

of putting physical distance between the Greek majority and its unwanted, troubled newcomers. The cases of

65 Oral Evidence of Violeta Amorgianou (from Aydin). (1980). In Hi Exodos [Exodus] vol. A’ (p. 156). Athens. 66 Oral evidence of Prodromos Evreniades (from Chortsa of Caesaria). (1982). In Hi Exodos: Martyries apo tis Eparchies tis

Kentrikes kai Notias Mikrasias [Exodus: Oral Evidence from the Provinces of Central and South Asia Minor], vol. B’ (p. 340).

Athens. 67 Oral Evidence of Eleni Serafimidou (from Neapoli of Caesaria). (1982). In Hi Exodos [Exodus], vol. B’ (p. 74). Athens. 68 Oral Evidence of Efthalia Antoniadou (from Neapoli of Caesaria). (1982). In Hi Exodos [Exodus], vol. B’ (p. 141). Athens. 69 Oral Evidence of Sofia Devletoglou (from Anavysos or Arapsum of Caesaria). (1982). In Hi Exodos [Exodus], vol. B’

(pp. 155-156). Athens. 70 Oral evidence of Athanasia Navrozoglou (From Tsat of Cappadocia). (1982). In Hi Exodos [Exodus], vol. B’ (p. 127). Athens.


734

those refugees who were locked up in Dromokaition were condemned into silence. On the one hand, their

internment depicts the whole exclusionary dynamic whereby those labeled as mentally unwell are hastened to

spaces set apart from the rest of “us”.

On the other hand, as Foucault said, confinement added to the social role of segregation and purification a

quite opposite cultural function.

Even as they separated reason from unreason on society‟s surface, they preserved in depth the images where they

mingled and exchanged properties. The fortresses of confinement functioned as a great, long, silent memory; they

maintained in the shadows an iconographic power that men might have thought was exorcised. (Foucault, 2004 )

Among the patients were refugees who on the one hand were uprooted, raped, persecuted in Asia Minor,

alienated and exploited by their new native compatriots in Greece and on the other those who could not afford

continuing their lives with their reputation sullied by discrimination based on wealth, gender or cultural origins.

However, the case-books of Dromokaition kept their voices “alive”. One may also argue that in a clear analogy

with the experiences recorded in the case-books of Dromokaition, the refugees of 1922 experienced an insane

world, in which the loss or the preservation of human life had no value, and obeyed no logical principle

whatsoever. It was a world where death and human abuse were a rule that defied the values of sane and

civilized people. In such a world, the line between sanity and madness was getting thinner and thinner. Laing

(1960) rightfully point out that, in an insane world, only the mad were sane because their response to it was the

only honest and possible one. In this perspective, madness is a reasonable reaction to unrealizable demands in a

world where the line between sanity and insanity was arbitrarily drawn.

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November 2014, Vol. 2, No. 11, 736-747

The Pact for México as a Mechanism of Governance and

Legitimacy

Luis Enrique Concepción Montiel

Autonomous University of Baja, California, USA

Governability is the quality of a political community, according to which its institutions of Government act

effectively within its space, in a way considered legitimate by the citizens, thus allowing the free exercise of the

political will of the Executive branch through civic obedience of the people. Recently in Mexico, it has referred

repeatedly to the precariousness of the governability by the incidence of insecurity, unemployment and extreme

poverty. The Pact for Mexico—attempts to answer to these problems—is a political agreement between the

President of the Republic and the three main parties—Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the National Action

Party (PAN), and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD)—for big actions and specific reforms which,

according to the signatories, will see Mexico toward a more prosperous future, leading the democratic transition

and drive economic growth that generates quality jobs and allow to reduce poverty and social inequality. In this

sense, the main axes of the Pact include those related to economic growth, competitiveness, employment, security

and agreements for governability. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the Pact for Mexico from the perspective

of governability, since its dimensions of legitimacy and effectiveness. It will analyze the main reforms and political

agreements, the role of Congress and the main actors; as well as the arguments of those who defend the Pact stating

that it is a mechanism of governability and those who reject it that it overshadows the work of the legislature.

Keywords: governability, governance, legitimacy, pact

Introduction

The Mexican political system requires of a radical change, deep enough to be able to consolidate the

democracy, generate wealth and provide social justice. The presidential system as demonstrated during the

presidency of the alternation (2000-2012) depleted its possibilities to answer to big problems proposed by the

society; therefore the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) presidency (2012-2018) has the opportunity to

build an effective government.

The divided government, that is a reality now, during the alternation had not generated the covenants, the

alliances and the consensus required to elaborate a public policy agenda that is able to resolve the most

important public problems, generate greater legitimacy and governance in Mexico.

Remember that the term “governance” is used to indicate basically two things that are like reflection axes

in this theoretical field: The first issue is related to the “excessive demands” to the political regime by the

citizens; and the second aspect, is related to the issues of the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of the government

Luis Enrique Concepción Montiel, Professor, Department of Political Science, Autonomous University of Baja.

DAVID PUBLISHING

D

THE PACT FOR MÉXICO AS A MECHANISM OF GOVERNANCE AND LEGITIMACY

737

to assume the generated demands.

Governance is deeply related to the issue of legitimacy and effectiveness and is the general conditions for

democracy to be possible.

In this vein, governance is the very attribute of a political community, according to which government

institutions act effectively within its space in a manner considered legitimate by the citizens, allowing the free

instruction on the political will of the executive branch through civic obedience of the people.

Recently in Mexico, has been repeatedly recognized the precariousness of governance by the incidence of

insecurity, unemployment and poverty. The pact of Mexico—tried to resolve these problems—it is a political

agreement between the president and the three main parties—Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the

National Action Party (PAN), and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD)—to generate specific actions

and reforms, as signatories to Mexico will be driven towards a brighter future. It will culminate in the

democratic transition; it would boost the economic growth, quality jobs would be created and would reduce

poverty and social inequality. In this sense, the main axes of the pact include those related to economic growth,

competitiveness, employment, security and governance arrangements.

The purpose of this document is to analyze the Mexico Pact from the perspective of governance with the

dimensions of legitimacy and effectiveness. Major reforms and political arrangements, the role of Congress and

the main actors will be analyzed, and the arguments of those who defend the Pact by affirming that it is a

mechanism of governance and those who reject it, by arguing that it eclipses the work of the legislature.

For the development of this article first is considered the history of the Pact for Mexico, especially as

regards to the eighties and nineties where there were un-governability risks; secondly, the mechanisms of

governance were established, particularly in legitimacy and effectiveness; third, it is argued the meaning of

governance for democratic systems; finally, arrangements for governance were established arising from the

Pact for Mexico.

The Mechanism of Governance and Legitimacy

On governance there are several ways to conceive, however, recently prevail the one that has to do with

the government’s ability to meet the main demands of citizens. Paquino (1982) said: The most genuine

positions are those who attribute the crisis of governance there are several ways to conceive, however, recently

prevail the one that has to do with the government’s ability to meet the main demands of citizens.

(pp. 703-704).

Defining these second approach un-governability as an overload of demands. These two approaches have

their meeting point of view and therefore should be integrated.

A proposed definition given by Arbos and Giner (1996),

Governance is the particular quality of a political community according to its governance institutions operate

effectively within their space in a way considered by the citizens, allowing the free practice of political will of the

executive through civic obedience of the people. (p. 13)

The same author, regard this quality as a governance process that requires a minimal acceptance and


738

obedience from the citizens. This process is facing basic problems that degenerate into anarchy or more

specifically on what is called an ungovernable society, this phenomenon should not be confused with riots or

civil war or revolution. Un-governability, is one of the three problems considered within Norberto Bobbio

situations that contradict and threaten to overthrow democracy, the other two situations mentioned are the

privatization of the public and the invisible power. Un-governability is understood “as a result of the

disproportion between demands coming increasingly number of civil society and the ability of the political

system to respond them” (Bobbio, Pontara, & Veca, 1985, p. 14). The author continues claiming that the state

power has become too slow and weak to satisfy the demands of citizens and groups. Linz (1987), when

speaking of crises that undermine the consensus and include within the process of the fail of democracy tells us

that: “Ultimately, the collapse is the result of processes initiated by the government’s inability to solve

problems for which unfair oppositions offer a solution” (p. 93). Definitely, the lack of efficacy and the enemy

offering an alternative are decisive for the fall of democracy.

In synthesis, we can group the theories of governance in the following: (1) The serious un-governability

caused by an overload on the demands of citizens, in which the state tries to solve by increasing services, but by

causing a fiscal crisis (O’Connor, 2002); (2) Un-governability had a political nature regarding to its institutions

for autonomy, complexity, cohesion and legitimacy; and (3) The set of a crisis of administrative management

system and a lack of citizen support to the authorities is the cause of un-governability. In other words,

lawlessness would be a crisis in and out, in the words of Habermas: Rationality crisis and legitimacy crisis

(Bobbio, 1982; Habermas, 1975).

The issue of governance cannot be approached from a reductionist interpretation, as a simple overload, a

fiscal crisis of the state or a simple crisis of the political system, but must be face up in a general or global crisis

from the same bases of the entire social system. It is important to the concept of “Social totality” that Luhman

introduced to study the methodological issue of governance (Bobbio, 1982). Taking this into account let’s

move to the governance dimensions.

Governance Dimensions

Retaking some of the dimensions outlined in the hypothesis of governance and following Arbos and Giner

(1996), considering at least, four minimum levels in which governance processes move: (1) the legitimacy

dilemma/effectiveness; (2) the pressures and demands of the governmental environment, or the burden of

responsibilities; (3) corporative restructuring of civil society; and (4) the expansion and technological change,

and associated to demographic, ecological and social impacts.

The legitimacy and effectiveness are two basic characteristics that should be considered when there are

governance problems1. So the government can meet its basic functions and achieve a stabilized social order

which must be a minimum of legitimacy and effectiveness. From this point of view, governance is the ability of

1 “Two things have to be present: effectiveness and legitimacy: Effectiveness is a technical concept. It simply means that

governments have to be able to do things which they claim they can do, as well as “Two things have to be present: effectiveness

and legitimacy: Effectiveness is a technical concept. It simply means that governments have to be able to do things which they

claim they can do, as well as those which they are expected to do; they have to work. Legitimacy, on the other hand, is a moral

concept. It means that what governments do has to be right” (Dahrendorf, 2005, p. 396).


739

the Government to exercise these functions. When talking about government effectiveness, we refer to the

ability to achieve its objectives. This efficiency can be determined by the expectations of society and may affect

the legitimacy of political power. The condition of having the authority acceptable to the citizens.

Currently, it’s repeatedly to the precariousness of contemporary governance in democracies. One of the

reasons for modernity is to become at once the cause of lawlessness, as well to promote good governance

(Arbos & Giner, 1996). Undoubtedly, un-governability is related to the same contradictions of the system.

Daniel Bell, sees contemporary society as consisting of three different areas “divided society, analytically, in a

techno-economic structure. These areas do not consist with each other and have different changing rates: follow

different rules that legitimize different types of behavior and even opposed” (Bell, 1981). This division and

contradictions were reflected in the demands and decisions of the Government to meet those demands.

The pressures and demands of the environment, or overload of responsibilities come from: The

increasing need for services of new and old government usually involves persistent political pressure for an

expansion of an expansion of government functions and greater relative incidence of the public sector in the

national economy (Deutsch, 1981, p. 143). Bobbio (1989) said that the debate has emerged un-governability

overload from the state providing services that are demanded. By other hand, Offe, when presenting his ideas

on what makes ungovernable through the terms: diagnostics, forecasts and therapy.

From the diagnostic standpoint, the problem of governability is due to two factors. First, the expectations

overload or its disproportionate increase, it is subjected to state power in terms of competitions with other

political forces. Second, it relates to guarantees of economic and political freedom.

The forecast is the discrepancy between the demands and the ability to perform or response, “so unruly

systems become more unmanageable”. Therapy refers to a process that has two variants related to diagnosis, or

system overhead is reduced or state effectiveness is increased.

N. Luhmann, proposes strategies to reduce the systematics requirements. Through political power, market

mechanisms and market exchange, through cultural norms, through truth or knowledge. Regarding the increase

in the carrying capacity of the state, this is possible in two variants, the administrative version and release

policy (Offe, 1996, pp. 27-53).

It is important to mention that the government faces other areas of requirements, such as external demand

to the State, from the social sphere.

The restructuring of civil society, which refers to a set of associations relatively stable that represent

interest groups. Offe (1992), claims a reordering of the system of interest representation, which has become a

new political issue. “In an advanced economy, interest organizations have the power to interfere in the

implementation of public policies” (p. 125). The pathways that take interest groups can be negative or positive

to the system.

Technological change has perverse political effects. The intensity of technological changes can increase

governance. By transforming the nature of social structure there are found new governance problems.

Legitimacy. There are four essential notes from the state legitimacy, pointing Morodo: peace, freedom,

democracy and welfare (Pastor, 1994, p. 65). These characteristics are worth of being considered for a


740

definition of legitimacy.

As regarding to political community, it is relevant that in the population is spread feelings of identification

with it. In a national state, loyalty and fidelity form the belief in legitimacy. At the government level, that

qualifies as a power legitimate need has been formed in accordance with the rules and to perform the power in

accordance with these standards.

Moreover, legitimacy and effectiveness are closely interrelated. But it does not necessarily establish a

causal relationship between legitimacy and effectiveness. We cannot say that efficiency gains greater

legitimacy and thus, stability. Because it may be the case that:

From a restricted point of view, a highly effective but illegitimate system, such as a well-governed colony, is more

unstable than regimes that are relatively low in efficiency and high in legitimacy. [...] Moreover, a prolonged efficacy

during several generations can provide legitimacy to a political system. (Lipset, 1995, p. 71)

Linz says about this, that the efficiency and effectiveness over time can strengthen, maintain or weaken the

belief in legitimacy. This depends on the perception that each one has about effectiveness, because it tends to

be biased by the initial commitment to their legitimacy. Legitimacy, in turn, can operate as a positive factor by

multiplying the values and benefits of the efficiency and effectiveness of the regime, at least for some time; it

can even ensure the persistence and stability of a system even though its effectiveness is in deficit. Linz, as

represented by the following formula:

If the value of legitimacy [...] is close to zero or negative, the failures of the efficiency and effectiveness multiply [...]

The more positive are the values in each of the relations over time, the greater the stability and performance of the system.

(Linz, 1993, p. 93)

Regarding to the issue of efficiency and effectiveness, following Offe (1990), the goal that inspires the

capitalist state is aimed at placing private actors so they can increase their efficiency and effectiveness by the

standards of private exchange and accumulation, because it cannot be measure the efficiency and effectiveness

correctly in the same State. It is important to reach a harmonious balance between legitimacy and efficiency,

and this is given like this: (1) the material results of governmental measures and policies reinforce the

acceptance of the rules legitimizing democratic and constitutional system; and (2) If those measures and

policies are efficient.

Governance in Democratic Systems

Regarding to governance in democratic systems there must be considered that between the concepts of

efficiency and legitimacy as noted Morlino (1985) in a precise relationship is

In a democracy that is effective, although it is only apparent, you can increase the degree of legitimacy. While on the

opposite, an effective democratic regime, hardly get to keep the same levels of support. (p. 222)

Considering the relationship between legitimacy and effectiveness is an issue that has not been well

studied. Therefore it is proposed that the maintainability of the system must be differentiated from legitimacy.

If this distinction is not made, the effectiveness can be absorbed by the legitimacy and the legitimacy would be

the only determining process. According to Morlino (1985), the difference between performance and


741

decision-making efficiency, lies in the “regime performance” is a wider phenomenon than effectiveness (p. 226)

The legitimacy and effectiveness relationship proposes several questions, as the following by Linz (1983), “that

are analytically distinguishable dimensions that characterize the regimes, and in reality are intermixed in a way

of which it is known a little” (p. 48).

The first to formulate the hypothesis that the stability of a democratic system depends on both, its

effectiveness and its legitimacy was Lipset2. This author also relates the stability of democracy with other

social aspects, basically linked with economic development, “this means in particular that the more prosperous

a nation is the greater the chance of maintaining democracy” (Lipset, 1992, p. 119). In the modern world

economic development involves industrialization, urbanization, higher education and increasing the level of

wealth in society, then a fundamental condition for democracy support; although it is only an indication of the

effectiveness of the system. Because the stability of a determined democratic system also depends on the

effectiveness and legitimacy of the political system, thus, the legitimacy and effectiveness are necessary

conditions for the stability of a democratic system. Efficiency, which is the ability of government to meet the

basic needs of the majority of the population and powerful groups that demand, and where legitimacy, involves

the ability of the system to generate the belief that existing political institutions with the most appropriate.

Although efficacy is primarily instrumental and legitimacy is more affective and evaluative. The groups

considered legitimate or illegitimate political system as their primary values match the values of the system.

Although, the political system is reasonably effective, the legitimacy of a political system can be put into

questions, either because the main conservative groups are threatened or access to policy relevant groups is

denied. Hence the importance of integrating all groups, and to know the degree of legitimacy of a political

system when face with a crisis of effectiveness.

In democratic systems, you can also talk about governance. According to Bobbio (1989) the theme of

un-governability is democracies can be articulated in three points:

(1) Much more than autocratic regimes, democratic regimes are characterized by a growing disparity

between the number of demands from civil society and the responsiveness of the political system, phenomenon

is the theory of system is called surcharge [...]

(2) In democratic regimes in social conflict is higher than in autocratic regimes [...]

(3) In democratic regimes the power is more distributed than in autocratic regimes, in them is the contrast

to what happens in the opposite regimes, the phenomenon is now called the diffuse power. The complaint of

lawlessness has led to the proposal authoritarian solutions, either by strengthening the executive power, giving

preference to the semi-presidential or presidential to parliamentary system and to put new limits on the areas of

decisions. Regarding the surcharge, the solution can be given in two days: either the better functioning of the

bodies that make decisions or drastic limitation of its power.

2 To analyze the crisis of a political concrete system, there has often confused the two terms. This hypothesis emerged from

discussions with Lipset, and published in his essay “Political Sociology”, in Sociology Today: Problems and Prospects, New York,

1959. Although, in September 1958 meetings of the American Political Science Association in St. Louis, Missouri. Lipset,

presented an article entitled “Some Social Requirements of Democracy: Economy Development and Political Legitimacy”, which

was published in 1959 in American Political Science Review. This argument raises in his book Political Man: The Social Bases of

Politics, 1959 and is assumed by Linz in his book The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes, 1978.


742

In Mexico, the two key elements of governance such as the effectiveness and legitimacy have been

undermined by the lack of ability to solve problems especially security, employment, economic development

and poverty. As the challenges facing the government of Peña Nieto (2012-2018) are enormous. Remarkably,

as a governance mechanism the Pact for Mexico was signed under the terms set below.

Background: Agreements and the Pact of the Eighties and Nineties

The legitimacy and effectiveness of governments fluctuate trough time. The government of Mexico had a

phase called “Mexican miracle” (1940-1970), which was characterized by an acceptable political stability and

economic growth development; and a legitimizing-ideological element as it was the Mexican Revolution. These

elements established the basis of governance. In the seventies this stage end, and the eighties comes a severe

economic crisis, what resulted in profound changes.

Recounting the eighties and the nineties of the transformation of Mexico, we need to remember that in the

period 1983-1988, to the changes in society itself and the deep economic crisis that existed, a “governance

challenge” was clearly perceived. The challenge was faced in the economic and democratic scope, through a

series of agreements and covenants.

To overcome the crisis of 1982 there was held under the government of Miguel de la Madrid (1982-1988),

a program of macroeconomic adjustment and structural reform of the economy. Between 1982 and 1987 the

Immediate Economic Restructuring Program, that sought to laid the foundations for economic recovery in the

medium term as well as the correction of public finances by cutting public expenses and increasing public

sector prices. There was a need to carry out consequences, but it was not possible due to the financial crisis in

1987 which interrupted the process of economic recovery.

To overcome the crisis and risk of ungorbernability, gaining control of inflation and continuing the

structural change, a Pact of Economic Solidarity3 was designed. In this covenant can highlight the following

objectives: sustain the commitment to permanently correct the public finances; apply a restrictive monetary

policy; correct salary inertia; define price agreements in leader sectors; produce trade liberalization, control

inflation, negotiate leader prices instead of the total price freeze, control measures based on negotiated prices

(Aspe, 1993). This pact had its different stages; with Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988-1994) was signed, on

January 1989, the fourth phase of the pact, under the name of Pact for the Stability and the Economic Growth.

By 1993 issues appear as a result of global transformation and national changes: (1) the economic

integration, basically with the United States of America; (2) a level of financial capital, increase qualitative of

the foreign investment and increasing the labor movement; and (3) the state transformation (Gilly, 1990). The

restructuring of Mexican capitalism implies a transformation of the state, which necessarily included the

democratization on the political regime for overcome the political crisis. The new era of growth announced by

Carlos Salinas de Gortari, had to take into account these elements. Carlos Salinas de Gortari, in its statement,

postulated a new era of growth: “Take up a new development strategy around the National Agreement for

Economic Recovery” (Speech by Carlos Salinas, 1990, p. 12). With this agreement, it supposes to re-grow, to

3 This pact was signed on December 15th, 1987 by the President of Mexico, Miguel de la Madrid, Workers, Peasants and

Corporate sectors representatives.


743

recover economically, to achieve social objectives.

Sponsored by the New Liberalism, State Reform announced by Carlos Salinas de Gortari, was set up with

certain reforms in the political scope. The same should be done in depth, responding to the demands of society

and to the plan of the government. There was an intense economic crisis that had undermined the political

scope and the legitimacy of the government was at stake and the same governance. Gilly (1990) said that more

than an economic crisis, what he lived was a political crisis: “The crisis in Mexico is concentrated in the realm

of politics. It has become a national conscience crisis”.

The same Carlos Salinas de Gortari is aware of this demand and since the campaign for the Presidency

states that: “We then have to ask ourselves seriously and with great responsibility the necessary readjustment of

our schemes of political life through democratic reforms and progressive our institutions” (Speech by Carlos

Salinas Gortari, 1988, p. 44).

At the inauguration, Carlos Salinas de Gortari raises three national agreements to meet the challenges of

the nation: (1) The National Agreement for the Extension of the Democratic Life; (2) Economic Agreement;

and (3) The agreement for the People Productive Welfare Improvement. From the first, we refer in this section,

the other two will be discussed later.

The first: The National Agreement for Expanding Our Democratic Life. After July 6th, 1988, “There is a

new Political Mexico”, was requiring political transformations, new balance, more democracy. The President

Gortari affirms: “My government will be opening in our democratic life. To do this I propose a new political

agreement that strengthens our unity and accommodates our differences”, in order to improve electoral

processes, ensuring transparency.

The National Development Plan (PND) sets the basis of these agreements. It seeks to adapt our

fundamental political institutions, and practices that emerge from them, the new political Mexico. It aims to

preserve and enforce the Rule of Law; improve electoral processes and the expansion of political participation;

modernize the exercise of authority within the balance of power and between levels of government and the

performance of each public servant; give new impetus to the agreements between the social organizations and

the State driving the development (Federal Executive Power, 1988, p. XVI).

In political news, there was an electoral reform. On social issues, the National Solidarity Program is

implemented. All these programs fit within the called Modernization and State Reform.

The government of Ernesto Zedillo (1994-2000) deepened neoliberal reforms faces and solves the serious

economic crisis inherited by the Government of Salinas de Gortari. Politically, it shares power with Congress in

1997 when the PRI lost its majority in the Chamber of Deputies and is given for the first time in a divided

government.

The government of alternation (2000-2006), politically was also characterized by a divided government

and so it is called the legislative paralysis, where the President was unable to push through reforms called

structural. In 2006 the PAN holds the presidency, and continues to rule but this time a polarized society, and

due to the serious problems of public safety and organized crime, governance risks were presented.

With the recovery of the presidency by the PRI in 2012 is established in the political Mexican system, a


744

new stage has been described by some as the return of authoritarianism, which would mean the concentration of

power. Others consider it; a democratic government that creates consensus, the proof of this is the “Pacto por

Mexico” (Pact for Mexico), which allowed 11 major structural reforms to be done (energy, economic

competence, telecommunications and broadcasting, taxation, financial, educational, new law of protection,

criminal procedure code, electoral politics, transparency, labor) to transform the life for Mexico.

The Pact Mexico: Arrangements for Governance

The pact Mexico, according to the official discourse:

it is the most important political agreement that has been made for decades in our country. Its scope may be similar to

the famous Moncloa Pacts, as the Mexico Pact is an agreement to perform great deeds and specific reforms to Mexico to a

brighter future plan. The President elected and the three major parties in Mexico, PRI, PAN and PRD were the main

architects of this covenant (Pact for Mexico ¿How was it possible, 2012).

Also, it has been considered that the Pact for Mexico is a kind of supra-constitutional legislative body, an

informal institution that strikes with great weight on formal institutions to establish a program of consistent

reforms in 95 points divided into five thematic agreements, which are:

(1) Agreements for a League of Rights and Freedoms (36 points);

(2) Agreements for Economic Growth, Employment and Competitiveness (37 points);

(3) Agreements for Security and Justice (8 points);

(4) Agreements for Transparency, Accountability and Combating Corruption (5 points);

(5) Arrangements for Democratic Governance (9 points).

The Pact of Mexico is formed of those who signed: the President, the Secretary of the Interior and the

National Presidents of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, National Action and from the Democratic

Revolution. It has a Governing Council, in charge of structuring the reform agenda. It is integrated by

representatives from each one of the political parties and the federal government, headed by the Secretary of the

Interior.

The pact of Mexico were established a number of commitments divided in five sections, covering nearly a

hundred of specific agreements. The five sections are titled: Society Rights; Freedom of Economic Growth,

Employment and Competitiveness; Security and Justice; Transparency, Accountability and Combating

Corruption; and Democratic Governance.

Regarding to democratic governance arrangements the most outstanding are: to push a constitutional

reform to give the President the constitutional right to choose between governing a political minority or rule

through a legislative coalition and from the government. The inauguration of the Mexican President on

September 15, General Law of Parties, Electoral Reform, Law of Political Reform (independent candidates,

citizens initiative, preferred initiative and referendum). These agreements led to political reform. The changes

introduced by this reform, can be grouped into six major topics:

(1) System of government in which the coalition government figure is highlighted, legislative reelection

introduced, (the States should regulate the re-election of municipality presidents, councilors and trustees);

(2) Electoral authorities, there is a substantive change in the structure and the electoral organization


745

faculties. The Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) disappeared and the National Electoral Institute (INE) was

created. The basic task by this Institute will be to organize the federal elections, however, more faculties to the

local level will be adopted, more empowerment to punishment procedures;

(3) Party regimen, rise and sets the threshold of 3% of the valid votes at the elections for the Executive or

the Houses of Congress Power; it demand to create the General Law on Political Parties. Flexible coalition is

introduced and the concept of the partial coalition is modified;

(4) Fiscalization control, a new method of control campaign spending is introduced, which, will be

conducting a simultaneous way for election campaigns. The INE is responsible to conducting the control and

surveillance of resources by origin and destination to the parties and candidates during the campaign;

(5) Political communication, a new cause of invalidity is set, in cases related to the purchase in coverage

on radio and television informative. Mass media coverage in radio and television is provided by INE;

(6) Referendum, it could be called by the President of the Republic; the 33% of the senators or House of

Representatives; or 2% of the people enrolled in the voters list. INE will be responsible to organize the

consultations and it must be done on the same day for federal Election.

Although the Pact of Mexico is planned as a six-year agreement reached, the Pact has achieved reforms in

various fields, particularly concerning the Agreements I and II, getting at least until December 2013, a total of

28 commitments legally achieved. For the Federal Government, the recent reforms passed in the first year of

management in office of the President to meet the following commitments:

(1) National Crusade Against Hunger;

(2) Telecommunication Reform;

(3) Educational Reform;

(4) Tax Reform;

(5) Financial Reform;

(6) Reform to Federal Institution of Access to Information (IFAI);

(7) Energy Reform;

(8) Victims Law Publication, and Political Reform.

While recognizing that the Pact of Mexico has succeeded to unlock the legislative activity at the federal

level, it is obvious that there is still much progress to advance, because of the 95 points that it contains, still

pending on discussion and approval 59 points until December 2013, which added to the nine Commitments

from the Agreement V, giving a total of 68 points without passing.

It should be noted the critics who believe that the member and agreement of the Pact of Mexico have not

only eclipsed the work of the legislature but have supplanted the constitutional powers. So consider it an

instance of illegitimate nature and transgress the popular will, because representatives of citizens are the

members of the chambers of the Congress of the Union, not the members of the Pact of Mexico.

Conclusion

The Pact for Mexico has increased the legislative “productivity” at the Congress of the Union. In just one

year, the Peña Nieto’s government (2012- 2018), has succeeded in reversing the legislative gridlock that were

characterized by the Mexican political system from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), it lost its


746

majority in the Chamber of Deputies in 1997, paralysis that was accentuated with the arrival of the National

Action Party (PAN) to the Presidency of Mexico in 2000. The reforms that have been approved contain in part,

not entirely, part of the political program by the signatory parties.

However, despite their relative success, the Pact for Mexico seems to have entered to the terminal phase:

first, the PAN party is opposed to Tax Reform as at the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, plus the division

of the parliamentary group of PRD party in the Legislature power, with a majority of PRD deputies members in

favor, and other majority of senators against the reform, showed that the speech handled by the leaders of the

signatory parties aren’t fully agree with the position federal legislators. On the other hand, the PRD’s leave

from the Pact for Mexico was dissatisfied with the Political Reform at the Senate, and the secondary law

discussion in Energy Reform were virtually represented as the pact’s conclusion.

The Pact for Mexico seems to have come to the end, but its importance as a political strategy is undeniable.

I assure that it was not just a way to legitimize the structural reforms, especially the energy reform, in this way,

the Enrique Peña Nieto’s government against the possible wave of opposition and manifestation groups,

-situation that never happened- he wouldn’t have direct responsibility. The groups named #yo soy 132 (#I am

132), anarchist groups, dissident teachers, and other opposition groups, expressed great dissatisfaction were

diminished in their demands, the government had the acceptance of the political elite, criminalizing marches

and using the mass media to control the society.

The Pact for Mexico occurred in a context where political party leaders agreed to participate in looking

after their own interests, in each reform had a particular interest and conflictive points, as they were educational

reform, the Taxation and energy reform.

Clearly the taxation and political reform, the PAN and PRD were opposed; in energy reform, there was a

section of the left party that was disagreed, generally PRD has historically rejected the privatization of Mexican

oil (PEMEX) and the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), however PRI had announced in many occasions

that they are not looking for privatization, but is looking for a modernization of these parastatal organizations.

As regards the Pact for Mexico in its dimension of democratic governability, reforms that were introduced

with the electoral political reform has important changes: the option of a coalition government that could lead

to greater inclusion and plurality in the design of public policies, although this figure is more suitable for a

parliamentary system. The Establishment consecutive reelection, may allow the retention of good legislators

and mayors, as well as the continuity of public policies. The new electoral authority could centralize the

elections and power. The Gender equity is included to be pustuled in candidates for federal and local legislators;

this beats a major deficit in democratic terms. Greater supervision of expenditures to political parties is good,

even it represent a hard work to INE. The referendum, is also celebrated as an Element of participatory and

direct democracy. However, it was established with some limitations, due to the topic relevance will be

established by the Supreme Court of the Nation, and organized by INE, taking place at the federal Election Day,

restricted because of the major national issues are not decided in election periods.

Finally, we need to realize that the Pact for Mexico has archived its purpose for the Federal Executive,

facilitating the structural reforms approvals, specifically energy. Even the recent social problems with the 43


747

students disappeared in Ayotzinapa, Iguala, Guerrero; Tlatlaya’s massacre and the wave of violence across the

country. The federal government doesn’t have an effective strategy to protect the citizens but the government

nowadays intends to reactivate a new security pact that allows peace and democratic governance.

References

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Aspe, A. P. (1993). Mexico’s path of economic transformation. Fondo de Cultura Economica, Mexico.

Bell, D. (1977). The cultural contradictions of capitalism. Madrid: Editorial Alliance.

Bobbio, N. (1982). “Governance” in Political Science Dictionary. Madrid, 21st Century.

Bobbio, N. (1989). Liberalism democracy and liberalism. Economic Culture Fund, Mexico (1st Ed. in Italian, 1996).

Bobbio, N., Pontara, G., & Veca, S. (1985). Crisis of democracy. Ed. Ariel, Barcelona.

Dahrendorf, R. (2005). Effectiveness and legitimacy: On the “governability of democracies”. On Political Quarterly Review,

50(4), 393-410.

Deutsch, K. (1981). Social mobilization implications for development policy. In J. studies, Alliance University, 1981.

Federal Executive Power, Plan Nacional de Desarrollo. (1988). National development plan presentation 1988-1994. Secretaria de

Programación y Presupuesto, México.

Gilly, A. (1990). The Mexican regime in his dilemma. Nexos, 148, 40-43

Habermas, J. (1975). Legitimation problems in late capitalism. Amorrortu Editors, Buenos Aires.

Linz, J. (1993). The breakdown of democratic regimes (1st Edition in Spanish). University Alliance, Madrid.

Lipset. S. M. (1959). Political sociology. Sociology Today: Problems and Prospects, New York.

Lipset. S. M. (1992). Some social requirements of democracy: Economic development and Political legitimacy. In A. Batlle (Ed.),

Ten basic texts from political science (pp. 113-150). Barcelona: Editorial Ariel.

Lipset. S. M. (1995). The political man, social bases of politics. Buenos Aires, Ed. Tecnos,

Morlino, L. (1985). How the political regimes change. Madrid, Constitutional Studies Center.

O’Connor , J. (2002). Fiscal crisis. Peninsula, Barcelona.

Offe, C. (1996). Politic parties and new social movements. Madrid: editorial system.

Offe, C. (1992). Political management, labor and social security. Ministry, Madrid.

Offe, C. (1990). Contradictions of the welfare state. Madrid, Editorial Alliance.

Paquino, G. (1982). “Governance” in Gianfranco Paquino. Political Dictionary, T. I. Madrid 21st century.

Pastor, M. (1994). Political ideologies. In Manuel Pastor (coord.), Fundamentals of Political Science Madrid, McGraw-Hill. 1994.

Speech by Carlos Salinas de Gortari in his inaugural as President of the Republic in Mexico, at Secretaría de Información y

Propaganda of PRI, Mexico, 1990.

Speech by Carlos Salinas Gortari, the PRI candidate for the Presidency of Mexico, at the opening ceremony of the National

Commission of International Affairs at Cuatrociénegas, February 9th, 1988, El reto de la Soberanía in J. C. Carlon (Ed.),

Carlos Salinas de Gortari, El reto. México, Diana, 1988.

Pact for Mexico ¿How was it possible? (2012). Retrieved December 2, 2013, from http://pactopormexico.org/como/

http://pactopormexico.org/como/


November 2014, Vol. 2, No. 11, 748-774

The Challenges of the “Development From Above” and

“Development From Below” in the Lobito Transport Corridor

(Angola)

Ana Maria Simões Ramalho Duarte

University Lusíada of Angola, Luanda, Angola

As the efforts to modernize the Lobito Transport Corridor in Angola advance, people’s lived experiences are

shaped by the interactions between official “developments from above” efforts and a myriad of inventive, often

messy, adaptations that could be seen as “developments from below”. As a result of a combination of a variety of

adaptive strategies (of coping and accumulating) pursued by diverse kinds of rural and urban Angolans and of

official projects to improve transport infrastructure and services, a transformation of society is in progress. Beyond

the obvious utilitarian function, the transport system provides a window on many socio-economic and political

facets of the region. From an assessment of the dynamics, effects, impacts and linkages, the modernization of the

Lobito Corridor can be made part of a sustainable development and poverty-reduction strategy in the development

process. Nevertheless, those dynamics have not induced maximum multiplier effects in terms of increased

employment and income earning opportunities of the poor despite their improved mobility. The transport economy

is a site of capital accumulation and change where social stratification goes in parallel with increased

socio-economic inequality and precarious conditions in the labor transport market. To some extent the government

is bound to reinforce long continuities by improving infrastructure. People then adapt to this framework and it

partly serves but partly constrains development. In this context, an improved regulatory and institutional framework

for the transport system (top-down approach) and an integration of the non-formal dynamics that have been

developed within the real transport system with the formal ones (bottom up-top approach) is essential.

Keywords: development from above, development from below, Lobito transport corridor

Introduction

Hirschman (1958) argued that economic development might be achieved through the positive effect of

imbalances that push the economy forward as economic agents exploit the possibilities created by bottlenecks

in the market. Such imbalances are conducive to change and provide more benefit than any other strategy. This

is apparent in the real transport system, particularly in the Lobito Transport Corridor. In the intersection

between people’s material and social lives (“reconstruction from below”) and the infrastructure and social

relations around transport and mobility (“reconstruction from above”), this is what characterizes the “real”

transport system along the Lobito Corridor.

Ana Maria Simões Ramalho Duarte, Ph.D., Department of Economics, University Lusíada of Angola.

DAVID PUBLISHING

D

“DEVELOPMENT FROM ABOVE” AND “DEVELOPMENT FROM BELOW”

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The paper will first summarize historical events and developments related to the transport and trade

systems in Benguela (the starting point of the Lobito Corridor) under the Portuguese colonial rule. In the

context of infrastructure and the development process, reference will be made to the impetus behind Benguela

railway construction in Angola during this period.

The Lobito Transport Development Corridor is a multimodal road and rail system anchored to the port of

Lobito. Lobito itself is one of the biggest commercial ports on Africa’s Atlantic seaboard and the network it

supports runs deep into the heart of the continent (specifically to the Democratic Republic of Congo—DRC and

Zambia). The corridor includes a rail network, named the Benguela Railway Company—CFB, which runs from

Lobito Port to DRC and Zambia through the Luau-Dilolo border post (1,344 km)1, and a road network from the

Lobito Port to DRC and Zambia through the Luau-Dilolo border post (TAH 9 is parallel to Benguela Railway).

The road also links with the National System Cong road at Kolwezi (DRC), a road from Luena (Angola)

through Cazombo to Solwezi in Zambia via the border post at Jimbe, and a planned direct rail link from

Solwezi in Zambia through Jimbe border post to Luena in Angola2. This paper will look beyond the primary

function of the transport system of the moving of people and goods along the Lobito Corridor, and will identify

and characterize the dynamics and the effects that have developed within the transport system (and across other

sectors). It will identify both direct and indirect ways in which people use the transport system and therefore

ascertain direct and indirect impacts, and forward and backward linkages of its development on Angolans’ lives,

particularly on the welfare of the poor. It will assess how communities are using the transport system to meet

their needs and wants and what constraints are imposed on their socioeconomic conditions by the state of

transport infrastructure and services.

Transport, as with other infrastructural investments, can make other activities possible and enhance the

welfare of poor people, and transport investments can contribute to economic growth that may expand the

economic opportunities available to the poor and provide additional resources for poverty reduction. However,

the linkage is not an inevitable one because other political, socioeconomic, and cultural factors are likely to be

important in determining the poverty impact. In addition, the attempt to understand the extensive and complex

economic activities within the transport system has led to conceptual difficulties and produced a variety of

overlapping terms. For the purpose of this paper the term “real transport system” is considered and its

significance will be presented.

In attempting to account for the development of the provision of transport services in the Lobito Corridor,

an assessment of key actors operating will be considered. Investments by private transport operators and their

dynamics and effects, including increased income and stimulation of entrepreneurship (terms of accumulation

and class formation), employment opportunities (labor market), increased social mobility, and better

1 The rail links with the National System rail of DRC at Kolwezi. 2 The Southern African Development Community (SADC) and its transport corridors strategy have identified 18 regional

transport development corridors that are grouped into four clusters (western, southern, eastern and north-south corridor clusters).

Each cluster serves a set of common members and shares nodes/internodes. Angola anchors three of the corridors and is also a

part of the western corridors cluster that includes: Lobito/Benguela (Angola, DRC, Zambia); Namibe (Angola, Namibia, Zambia);

Malanje (Angola, DRC); Bas Congo (DRC, Angola); Trans-Cunene (Angola, Namibia, Zambia); Trans-Kalahari (Namibia, South

Africa, Botswana); Trans-Caprivi (Namibia, Zambia, DRC); and Trans-Orange (Namibia, South Africa).


750

distribution of goods, will also be assessed (“development from below”). Finally, this paper will also examines

the formal dynamics that are developing along the Lobito Corridor, such as the transport infrastructure

reconstruction projects implemented by the government and international firms, and how these influence

economic development (“development from above”).

Colonial Benguela and the Development of the Transport and Trade Systems

In the 19th century, the fact was that the Benguela highlands were thickly populated and strategically

placed between the producers of the major export commodities and the coast contributed to the prominence of

the Ovimbundu—the inhabitants of the highlands—in the transport system of the area (Heywood, 1985). The

opening of the central highlands route was linked to the need to transport goods from Central Africa to the

Atlantic coast: initially slaves, and later products such as ivory, wax, honey, and other agricultural products,

which replaced the slaves as trans-Atlantic exports (Pössinger, 1973; Heywood, 1985).

The Ovimbundu responded to the demand for the transport of these goods mainly intended for export by

organizing a system of long-distance trading based on royal caravans, omaka, and formed complex trading and

political alliances among their states on the highlands (Soremekun, 1977). In 1840, Catumbela, on the coast,

was built up by Portuguese traders because the Ovimbundu liked to stop there on their way to Benguela.

Bastos’s writing in 1912, told us a great deal about the Ovimbundu trade with the coast in the 19th century,

especially with the towns of Catumbela and Benguela. Those years of trade in slaves and items such as wax and

ivory heralded a “new era of unfolding prosperity and riches” (Bastos, 1912, p.13, p.18), no doubt in response

to increased European trading demands in the wake of the Industrial Revolution.

The geography of the highlands made human porterage the most feasible means of transport and the

emergence of the Ovimbundu as renowned porters was primarily due to the nature of human porterage itself,

and not to any special attributes. Humans, for instance, could travel under all conditions in the highlands, and

thus porterage was faster than other alternate means, such as the use of boats or ox-wagons. Porters, who could

carry as much as 35 kilograms, could travel along any route in the highlands, while the lack of navigable rivers

hindered the use of boats for transporting goods. The journey using ox-wagons was not possible when there

was no grass for the oxen to eat along the way or when the holes in the river beds were so dried up that water

could not be found for the animals even in the deepest diggings (Birmingham, 2008). In addition, ox-wagons

could only make the 550-kilometre trip in two months, travelling five hours a day (Malheiro, 1903)3, whereas

porters could cover more than 19 kilometers per day and thus make the same trip in less than half the time

(Heywood, 1985). While carrying their heavy loads, porters would only stop after a five-hour walk, then they

would prepare a camp (which involved construction work) and gather water and wood before resting, and all on

relatively limited rations. Short journeys from the agricultural lands to the coast were even more demanding.

People carried little or no supplies, and many ate nothing during the journey, obtaining their sustenance from

water (Johnson, 1969; Cameron, 1877)4.

3 Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino, Angola, 2ª Repartição, Caminho-de-Ferro de Benguela, “Tarifos”. 4 Porters were largely slaves or dependants who were relatively powerless and thus easily subjected to such precarious conditions

(Candido, 2008).


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Some observers remarked that the return route was like a graveyard, littered with the bodies of those who

died on the way back home (Silva Porto, 1840-1887; Johnson, 1969). Eyewitnesses were able to report that the

bodies were Ovimbundu traders since items of their trade were often left on the hastily dug graves. Ox-wagons,

however, were more susceptible to natural disasters than human carriers. For example, heavy rains might

destroy the road and bridge system necessary for the wagons, but humans could bypass such impediments

(Brásio, 1970). When the rains began, travel was equally difficult because constant repairs and modifications to

the wagons because of heavy rains made them expensive to maintain (Birmingham, 2008). Even in good

weather, an ox-wagon might take twice time as long to reach the plateau as a caravan of experienced porters,

but the weather was not always good and oxen could either be left gasping with thirst or be waylaid by raging

torrents.

With the legal abolition of slavery in the late 1870s and the rise of commodity production, trade in

Benguela had expanded into a complex pattern of local exchange alongside the trade oriented to the coast. The

port of Benguela was opened to overseas trade and agricultural products were exported to England, France and

Portugal (Dilolwa, 1978). Between 1870 and 1900, individuals in Ovimbundu society came to dominate trade

between the producing areas of Central Africa and the coast and gained the opportunity to enhance their social

position and to increase their political standing. Most caravans belonged to high-ranking Ovimbundu officials

or Portuguese traders (Heywood, 1985).5 The trading caravans must have impressive sights with some ranging

as far as Lake Tanganyika from the central highlands (Clarence-Smith, 1983). The largest one ever recorded in

East and Central Africa left Bié for the coast in 1873, comprising some 20,000 people (Bastos, 1912). A normal

caravan, however, was about 50 people, with the larger ones containing up to two hundred. Cameron (1877),

for example, noted in November 1875 that on his way to Benguela he met 10 caravans, numbering on average

between 70 and 80 people.

The rise of rubber as the main export (followed in importance by ivory and wax, with some slaves still

being offered but no longer as a major trade commodity) was in large measure responsible for this development.

Raw rubber had become the main merchandise for the caravans and the main export product of Angola, owing

to a growing demand from European industry at a time when Brazilian rubber export was rather limited

(Pössinger, 1973; Dilolwa, 1978). A substantial proportion of the population indeed engaged in trade

(Heywood, 1985)6. It is also important to highlight that the long-distance trade caravans with their African,

Luso-African and European leaders played a prominent role that went beyond the economic and commercial

aspects. Heintze (2008) argued that as carriers of information that connected small-scale (local) with wider

areas of communication, the caravans had created “tightly woven information” and communication networks of

considerable political and economic significance for the shaping of West Central Africa. The exchange carried

on by trade caravans comprised not only goods, skills and knowledge but also information, news and rumors.

5 While the rapid increase in the level of Ovimbundu trade in the second half of the 19th century, which came to dominate all

aspects of Ovimbundu society, swamped out European competitors from the Highlands, at the coast it was different. By the 1870s

“the life of a European in Benguella is purely and exclusively a commercial one. The caravans which come in… the products that

are brought forward, the prices made through the competition of others, and his negotiations with the natives absorb every

moment of daylight” (Capello & Ivens, 1882, pp. 15-16). 6 O Jornal de Benguela, 23 August 1918, p. 3.


752

News and information regarding what had previously been unknown now travelled much more quickly were

available in more detailed form and were transmitted across cultural boundaries. Heintze (2008) also

emphasized the flexible and changing nature of the information and communication networks created by the

caravans. They were not static but subject to change, such as when caravan routes were abandoned or moved

elsewhere.

In the highlands, the number of Portuguese traders (now government officials, both military and civilian

too) increased dramatically because of the economic prosperity that the rubber boom had brought7. The new

Portuguese community soon realized that the success of government activities depended on the willingness of

Africans to provide transport services. By the 1880s, porters were increasingly hired or people carried their own

products. In one month in 1885, a total of 14 caravans entered the city of Catumbela, seven of them brought

agricultural products. Most of these came from Bailundu, which was nearest to the coast and usually included

small-scale operators transporting their own agricultural products for sale on the coast; those that came from

Bié, further east, generally brought wax, ivory, or rubber (Silva Porto, 1840-1887).

The profitable inland large-scale trade, mainly in rubber, that mushroomed following the opening of the

road to Bailundo and Bié was the basis for Catumbela’s quick development. As the rubber trade boomed,

Catumbela grew in importance, reaching its peak in the last two decades of the 19th century. Porters gained the

reputation of being competitive traders as they combined porterage services with trading activities. Caravans,

often comprising over 1,000 people, entered the rubber producing areas and split up, so that porters bartered on

a one to one basis with the individual producers (Johnson, 1969). Such trading techniques tended to expand the

market to include even the lowliest porter who exhibited a preference for transporting and marketing his own

products over working for someone else. Furthermore, as the control that the Ovimbundu upper classes (and

Portuguese traders) maintained over the porters of caravans going to the interior was not very rigorous, porters

could engage in entrepreneurial activity on their own account, and had no compulsion to report it, or their

profits, to the caravan leaders. Wages were increasingly converted into commercial profit, as some porters

carried trade goods in addition to their contracted loads. Some who made the outward bound trip on behalf of a

Portuguese trader, a member of the Ovimbundu dominant group or any group of foreigners, would invariably,

on the return trip, transport a few kilograms of rubber bought with the cloth they received as wages. This rubber

was then sold in the interior, provided the opportunity for anyone to try his luck at trading. Even though the

majority of the men remained porters, there were always a few who put to good use the strategies that made

successful entrepreneurs (Heywood, 1985).

The thin line between petty trader and hired porter was easily crossed, depending upon whether or not an

individual had access to some capital of his own. The distinction between porters and traders among members

of such caravans was not particularly noticeable since both groups contributed labor for the transport of

commodities. However, it would be incorrect to argue that porters were transformed as a class into traders

7 The final years of the 19th century and the early years of the 20th century, after the Berlin Conference (1884-1885) and the

official end of slavery, correspond to the period during which the map of Angola was defined through intense military activity

(Clarence-Smith, 1983). The history of Angola suffered a volte-face and the traffic of slaves was replaced by military occupation

to enable a “peaceful” exploration of Angola (Dilolwa, 1978).


753

(Heywood, 1985). For the most part, porters continued to be porters, even though some of them traded on their

own account. In any event, the tendency of many Ovimbundu porters to become petty traders was a

development that had serious consequences for those groups who relied on the porters—the Ovimbundu upper

class and the Portuguese traders, both in the highlands and on the coast. Whereas in the 1850s ordinary

Ovimbundu normally went out on someone else’s behalf, by the 1880s it was increasingly difficult to induce

people to trade or carry for anyone but themselves8. Due to the scarcity of porters, no-one was spared; there

were even “successful African traders who cannot get carriers for their goods, so numbers of loads are stored

up at Catumbela”.9 Thus, the competition for porters intensified when the Ovimbundu no longer wanted or

needed to do such service for others. This problem was a particular concern to the new Portuguese traders,

many of whom were bent on making it rich quickly and returning to Portugal (Heywood, 1985). Portuguese

officials and merchants tried to control Ovimbundu labor through force by obliging the conquered upper class

to supply them with porters. Merchants competed with each other and with the government and missionaries to

obtain adequate numbers of porters for their goods, but still demand was greater than supply.10

By 1885,

Benguela was more a trading station than a city (Robson & Roque, 2001).11

As away from the coast, trade was

in the hands of the local population, the coastal district of Benguela was crucial for the development of colonial

trade.

Under such conditions the colonial government had to intervene more directly in the control of the

transport system and plan its transformation altogether. The first step was to bypass porters by building roads

for ox-wagons and by studying the feasibility of using some of the rivers for transport (Heywood, 1985). These

actions were partly facilitated by the arrival of several dozen extended families of South African Boers. They

reached Angola, after crossing the Namibian “thirst-lands”, thanks to the technology of the ox-wagon, in

response to the chronic shortage of porters to carry rubber to the coast (Clarence-Smith, 1983; Birmingham,

2008).12

Since the building of the roads depended on the control and availability of laborers and the

government did not have the capacity to enforce Ovimbundu labor, road construction had represented an

unsuccessful measure in the short run. In addition, it was soon realized that ox-wagons, even when proper roads

were available, were unable to compete with porters for speed and cost—a point that has already been noted.

The fact that the climate and the geography of the highlands were more favorable to human labor made it even

more important to control porters while at the same time continuing the efforts to find alternate means of

transport. The speed and reliability of transport on the wagon trails of Angola in 1906 left much to be desired.

Bringing goods up to the plateau from Benguela by porter was both faster and cheaper than bringing them up

8 At this time, women and children often provided the labor needed by ambitious Ovimbundu porters who wanted to become

independent traders. In one caravan bound for the interior in 1890, nine of its 97 members were pombeiros (that is, itinerant

merchants connecting the interior markets with the coast) who carried no load, 50 were porters, and the remaining 36 were youths,

many of them slaves who had to carry their masters’ loads. Some were no older than nine or ten years (Johnson, 1969). 9 National Archives of Zâmbia, HM9/F13/1/1, Diary of Annie Fay, vol. 29, 1889. 10 In this period both members of the nobility and Portuguese traders found it difficult to use the coercive power of the state and

the labor of kinsmen to acquire wealth and transport services (Heywood, 1985). 11 In 1900 there were just two cities in Angola: Luanda with 20,000 inhabitants and Benguela with 10,000 (NEPO, 1992). 12 In 1900 there were just two cities in Angola: Luanda with 20,000 inhabitants and Benguela with 10,000 (NEPO, 1992).


754

by wagon even when 20 oxen had been spanned.13

But porters were very hard to recruit, and were sometimes

less than trustworthy, so wagons were used as the next best option. There were some merchants who

experimented with the transport of rubber by ox-wagon between 1911 and 1914, but the experience was costly

and proved a time consuming lesson (Birmingham, 2008).14

The consideration of the difficulties of wagon-trail transport in southern Angola and the potential for

profits from the control of transport led several local Portuguese merchant houses, companies, and private

speculators to apply formally to the government for a concession to build a railway from the coast to the

highlands. Although the Portuguese bourgeoisie was keen to trade with Angola, it was much more reluctant to

invest in the colony. The amounts needed to build a railway were enormous, and the risks were extremely high

(Clarence-Smith, 1983). In 1902, the government gave the British capitalist Robert Williams a concession to

build the Benguela railway from the Atlantic Port of Lobito through the central highlands in Angola to the

copper producing area of Shaba (Katanga) on the Zambia-Zaire border, along the traditional route followed by

traders (Katzenellenbogen, 1973).15

Williams was granted a concession for 99 years on November 28, 1902,

and his CFB commenced construction on March 1, 1903.

Even though the railway authorities looked to the profits from the transport of copper as their main reason

for building the railway line, they were aware that they could also displace the porters. Therefore, between

1902 and 1914, as the railway was extended from the coast to Bié, 520 kilometers inland, systematic attempts

to eliminate porters as a means of transport were witnessed. In 1906, the railway contractors concluded that no

other intermediate region was as important for the railway as the heart of the Ovimbundu domain.16

They

wanted to tap the labor as well as the extensive trading network that had developed in the 19th century.17

In

this process, they hoped to replace all traditional forms of transport in the area of the railway, especially

porterage, which they argued did not contribute to the formation of “civilized life” among the Ovimbundu

(Caminho-de-Ferro de Benguela, 1912). The construction of the Benguela railway and the investment in

developing roads and markets was also a response to the urgent need to complement the colonial occupation of

the interior areas of Angola during the early years of the 20th century. Angola lacked the requisite

infrastructure, for most of the 1900-1950 period, to execute the settlement policies legislated (Carvalho, 1940; 13 The number of Boer in Angola grew from about 300 in 1879 to approximately 2,000 at the time of the trek out of Angola in

1928 (Bender, 1978). 14 The uncompetitive cost of wagons was also the result of the fact that they has three major requirements: large-scale financial

credit for the capital outlay, veterinary knowledge to keep the teams of twenty oxen alive and healthy, and carpenters or

blacksmiths to repair the wagon beds or to refit the great metal hoops which rimmed the wooden wheels. None of these services

could be adequately supplied by African merchants, stockmen and artisans nor indeed by Portuguese-speaking settlers moving up

from Benguela coast (Birmingham, 2008). 15 In 1914, a total of 70 wagons arrived in Huambo after a three-year trip from Huambo in the south to Luanda thus bypassing the

central highlands. During this journey the organizers lost 1,500 oxen and 22 wagons. Bridges had to be built along the way. Only

2,000 kilograms of rubber were transported, and the venture was deemed a failure (Tanganyika Concessions Holdings, London,

Extracts from Africa Reports, 1915; Report of General Manager, December 31, 1914). 16 Tanganyika Concessions Holdings, London, Benguela Railway, Letter from contractors J. Norton Griffiths, 24 February, 1960;

Tanganyika Concessions Holdings, London, File 39, Sir D. Fox and Partners, 1903-1932, letter from Company, 25 May 1905. 17 The huge numbers of shovel-wielding laborers who could be made to work long hours on the short rations and minimal pay

needed to build the Benguela railway were not easy to recruit; not only because the south of Angola through which the British

wished to run the railway was scantily populated, but also because of fierce competition, from long-distance merchants needing

hundreds of bearers for their rubber caravans and brandy distillers needing cheap labor to work the sugar-cane plantations

(Birmingham, 2008).


755

Baião, 1966; Almeida Santos, 1966).18

Until the mid-1920s, for example, Angola had practically no roads or

rail lines, which meant that settlers had to transport their agricultural produce from the interior by expensive

Boer ox-carts or African porters (Wheeler & Pelissier, 1971; Norton de Matos, 1926). The renowned Benguela

Railway was completed only in 1929.

The rapidly growing slave trade was the basis for the opening of a second port at Benguela (south of

Luanda) in 1617, from where access to the southern part of the highlands was much easier. The dynamics of the

Benguela Railway and Lobito port construction were the new factor behind the economic, political and

strategic importance of Benguela. In this context, the economic interaction between the Portuguese and

indigenous societies in the 20th century moved beyond its early slave-trading nature (Guimarães, 1998). The

railway became a symbol of colonial stability. For the Portuguese, the Benguela Railway was a new means of

transport that opened up the hinterland for effective military deployment and the realization of their colonial

plans, not to mention the disciplining of the population. Economically, it served to control the established main

trade route and open up new areas for economic development (Esteves, 2000). Furthermore, the railway

construction was one of the largest examples of investment held by foreign investors under the New State’s

colonial rule and allowed for equilibrium in the Angolan exchange market (Dilolwa, 1978). This combined

with the fact that during the New State’s colonial rule, local industry in Angola had little opportunity to get off

the ground, meant that infrastructural sector development gave Benguela a unique role within colonial trade

development.

The pressure on Ovimbundu trade and carrying services came not only from the railway but also, and most

directly, from the colonial government. Essentially, the government’s intervention led to a decrease in the

wages received by porters and other restrictions such as colonial laws constrained the expansion of Ovimbundu

activities. Initially, Ovimbundu porters were able to combine agricultural, trading and porterage activities under

the relatively lax system of controls that existed up to the First World War. Registers of passports issued to

caravans show that caravans under the direction of Ovimbundu greatly exceeded both the size and numbers of

those under European direction. However, in 1908, a local Benguela newspaper noted the gradual

disappearance of the caravans, which “do not come down here with the frequency of happier times”19

.

Ovimbundu caravan trading was almost paralyzed in 1912 instantly the railway line reached Huambo in the

highlands in 1911, although even then “traffic is still carried by the natives on their backs”.20

In that year, the

railway statistics showed that the bulk of the rubber (2,221 tons) was transported by rail, whereas only 473 tons

were brought to the coast by porters, generally from areas far removed from the rail line, from where it was still

more convenient to carry rubber to Benguela and Catumbela (Caminho-de-ferro de Benguela, 1912). However,

it was genuinely believed that ox teams would haul all freight to the areas to either side of the railway line and a

report of 1914 noted that once the line reached Bié the company would introduce special rates to encourage the

18 Between 1900 and 1950, the government devised scores of programs and passed innumerable laws designed to bring about the

fruition of the planned settlement dream. For a summary of pre-1950 settlement schemes in Angola see Galvão (1937). 19 A Voz de Angola, 1908, February 16, p. 2. 20 American Board Conference of Foreign Missions, Boston University, vol. 19, Doc. 262, Hollenbeck letter, July 1911.


756

Boer wagons to carry freight from the terminus of the line to the interior.21

As the action of railway authorities

contributed to the quick demise of porters and traders as professional groups among the Ovimbundu, they had

to find alternate means of employment, mostly in agriculture.

By the beginning of the World War I, the era of prosperity and social mobility for the Ovimbundu, which

could see a humble man rise to a minor official and village ruler in his lifetime, had effectively ended

(Heywood, 1985). The colonial era that dawned would bring the Ovimbundu much harder days than they had

known. As the structure of commerce changed in Angola in the 1920s, sales for cash become frequent as

taxation was imposed on Africans, and traders became labor recruiters. The corruption of officials was

compounded by the ignorance of laborers, who had no idea of their legal rights. State labor fell heavily on

women, who built the network of dirt roads, often with their own tools (Ross, 1925). The disappearance of the

Ovimbundu caravans and with the decline of African porters aspiring to be merchants also coincided with the

sudden collapse of rubber prices in 1913-1914 (Boletim Oficial da Província de Angola 4, January 24, 1914).22

The demand for rubber carriers or rubber carrying wagons in Angola vanished overnight when prices for wild

rubber fell so low that it was not worth harvesting it (Birmingham, 2008).23

Against this background, the Ovimbundu intensified the production of maize (Clarence-Smith, 1983) and

Ovimbundu themselves began to export agricultural products such as maize and maize flour (fuba) to markets

in Benguela and Catumbela (Heywood, 1985). In the 1920s, Ovimbundu maize became the colony’s second or

third largest export by weight, and with the sustained increase in agricultural production in the late 1930s,

maize became the largest-volume crop, accounting for 75% of Angolan exports. The Benguela Railway

provided transport to the coast, and colonial maize received protection on the Portuguese market. Since

production was low-grade maize for pig-fodder, profit margins were low and the crop did not attract white

farmers. Therefore, land alienation did not become a serious problem and the Ovimbundu could easily pay their

taxes by selling maize across a broad swathe of territory on either side of the railway24

.

Lobito was the maize port of Angola, with more than 90% of the country’s crop coming from Benguela’s

Bié Plateau. Lobito was also the major port of Angola for African-grown beans, manioc, rice, and for sisal

grown on European-owned estates. Maize, beans, dry manioc, and salt, though low in volume, made up more

than half of the domestic exports shipped through Lobito. Other important domestic agricultural commodities

shipped via Lobito were castor seed, groundnuts, sugar and hide (Hance & Van Dongen, 1956). It was therefore

not surprising that for most of the period of Portuguese presence in Angola the urban and commercial centre of

21 Tanganyika Concessions Holdings (London), BR 7, Report of General Manager, 31 December 1914. 22 Angolan raw rubber, then the only important merchandise besides wax and honey, was replaced on the world market by rubber

from Brazil and Asia (Pössinger, 1973). The explosive demand for rubber to insulate electric wires and cushion vehicle wheels

outstripped the supplies available in Africa and the industrial world turned to plantation-grown rubber from Malaysia, a

competition which killed off the long-distance commodity trade in Angola (Birmingham, 2008). 23 The old Boer communities of farmers and transport-riders held on for another 18 years but eventually they returned to South

Africa after 50-year sojourn on Angola soil. Ox-wagons did not make a comeback, though oxen continued to be used as draught

animals and ploughing continued to be practised in southern Angola. In southern Angola, as in the north, it was the small lorries

of bush traders that brought about a transport revolution in the 1920s (Birmingham, 2008). 24 Railway statistics show that the export of maize from Benguela increased from 490 kg in 1909 to 1,355 tonnes in 1913, of

which most was produced by the Ovimbundu. Export of maize flour also grew from a low figure to a total of 2,244 tonnes in 1914

(Caminho-de-ferro de Benguela, 1915).


757

Benguela was, alongside Luanda, the focus of colonial trade. This was further demonstrated by the completion,

in 1949, of the longest tarmac road in Angola (30 km) linking Lobito to Benguela (Dilolwa, 1978). Data from

1950 and 1960 illustrated not only increased traffic on the Benguela Railway, but also the fact that the

movement of loads, passengers and receipts exceeded that on the other three railway lines (see Table 1).

Table 1

Number of Passengers, Tonnes of Goods Moved, and Receipts Registered by the Four Railway Lines in Angola

in 1950 and 1960

1950 1960

Caminho-de-ferro de Amboim

Passengers 5,413 10,246

Goods 12,755 tonnes 34,026 tonnes

Receipts 1,801 contos -

Caminho-de-ferro de Benguela

Passengers 540,618 725,500

Goods 1,211,882 tonnes 3,604,242 tonnes


Caminho-de-ferro de Luanda

Passengers 438,208 221,941



Caminho-de-ferro de Moçâmedes

Passengers 34,024 73,797



The Benguela Railway connection with the border was completed in 1929. While the primary purpose

of the project had been to capture the export trade in Katanga minerals, until the Belgians connected with the

border in 1931, Sir Robert Williams was left with only the domestic Angolan traffic. In the original plans this

was considered to be of secondary importance; however, it developed and supported the line over the years

and proved to be its main source of revenue until Congo’s independence in 1960. It was at this point that a

new political and economic calculus enabled the Benguela Railway to realize its original goal, and the line

jumped from carrying only 24% of Katanga minerals to 40% (Katzenellenbogen, 1975, p. 395). Williams had

paid his first stockholder dividend in 1956 largely based on the domestic Angolan traffic. The combination

rail-water-rail route through Matadi built by Belgian interests had carried about 40% of the Katanga minerals

until independence, and thereafter the primary routes were the more efficient direct rail connections through

the Portuguese Atlantic port of Lobito and Indian Ocean port of Beira, both of which were far quicker, more

direct, and hence more cost effective. The Benguela Railway was proved very successful and profitable, and

increased in importance, particularly in 1973 after Rhodesia closed its border with Zambia, and mineral

exports had to find a new rail route.25

The Benguela Railway was predominant also because the seaport

Lobito was the only seaport in Angola that had connections with rail networks of adjacent territories and thus

handled a good volume of extra-territorial trade (Hance & Van Dongen, 1956).26

For almost two decades,

25 The Tanzam Railway from Zambia to the Tanzanian port of Dar es Salaam would not be completed until 1975, so for Zambia

the Benguela Railway was its key economic lifeline. 26 In 1973, sisal was the third largest export from Angola (12% of total exports), and the concelho of Cubal and Caimbambo in

the distrito of Benguela were producing 80% of the total production of sisal in Angola (Dilolwa, 1978).


758

Lobito ranked first among Angolan ports in the volume and value of total overseas trade and in the total

volume of domestic trade. Communications were modernized, and settled agriculture slowly replaced raiding,

hunting, collecting and caravan trading. Fixed stores along roads and railways replaced the itinerant traders

of earlier years.

As a consequence of its importance in terms of transport linkages and because it was extensively used for

transporting Portuguese troops, the Benguela railway line was a target for sabotage under colonial rule. The line

was first seriously damaged on Christmas Eve in 1966, when National Union for the Total Independence of

Angola (UNITA) launched its first major operation (Cornwell, 2000; Marcum, 1978; Bailey, 1976). After

several attacks and traffic disruptions, on 10 August 1975, the line was closed completely and services were

halted. At this time, while much of the railway was under Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola

(MPLA) control, part of the line was taken over by UNITA forces (African Development, 1976). The invasion

against southern Zaire in March 1977 prepared by mercenaries of Katanga who had been underground in

Angola since 1963 and which started at Dilolo, the crossing point of the Benguela line, jeopardized any chance

of re-opening the line. The movement of goods and passengers was a dream of the future and a major disaster,

not only for Zambia and Zaire, but also for Angola and the CFB.

The “Real Transport System” and the Non-Formal Sector

The attempt to understand the extensive and complex economic activities within the “real transport

system” has led to conceptual difficulties and produced a variety of overlapping terms, such as “informal”,

“parallel”, “second”, “black”, “underground”, “shadow”, and so forth (Meagher & Yunusa, 1991). For the

purpose of this paper, the terms “parallel” and “underground” have been dropped because, first, activities

within and linked to the transport system intersect with formal ones in many complex ways and, second, many

of its activities are carried out quite openly. The real transport system as considered by this paper includes the

formal and non-formal sectors and the direct/indirect effects and linkages related to, and within, the transport

system, which developed as war mechanisms, have expanded in the war-to-peace transition and continues to

develop under the reconstruction process.

The non-formal sector is an integral part of the “real transport system”.27

In this paper it is used the

“non-formal” concept in order to go beyond the concept of the informal sector as coined by Keith Hart in his

study (1973) on informal income opportunities outside the wage economy in (Accra) Ghana.28

In Hart’s study,

informal activities were found to be opportunities for increasing the income of the poor. The main message of

the paper was that Accra’s poor were not unemployed. They worked, often casually, for erratic and generally

low returns, but they were definitely working. He found that people solved the problem of the inadequacy of

urban wages by holding more than one job or by engaging in petty enterprises of all types often in addition to

27 The formal sector consists of those activities linked to and within the transport system that are taxed, licensed and subject to

other regulation. Because those activities fall inside the scope of the nation’s technique for monitoring and accounting economic

activities are officially reported and measured. 28 The starting point for the subsequent notoriety of the “informal sector” was the 1972 International Labor Office report on

employment and poverty in Kenya.


759

wage employment.29

In distinguishing between formal and informal income opportunities, “the key variable is

the degree of rationalization of work, that is to say, whether or not labor is recruited on a permanent and regular

basis for fixed rewards”, that is, the presence or absence of bureaucratic form (Hart, 1973, p. 68). At the same

time, most economists saw informal income in quantitative terms as a sector of small scale, low-productivity,

low-income activities without the benefit of advanced machines. However, the non-formal sector of the “real

transport system” in Benguela should not be viewed as a peripheral sector but as the base of the real transport

system in the province, and as a permanent rather a short-term phenomenon.

While it is important to understand the concept of informal employment in relation to the legal framework

in any given country, and in this context to consider the informal sector as comprised of unregistered and

unregulated enterprises whose owner operators choose to avoid registration and, thereby, taxation (Chen, 2007),

this is far from being the whole story. Non-formal sectors also comprise entrepreneurs and self-employed

individuals who produce legal services, such as the transport of goods and people, albeit through irregular,

unregulated and unregistered means, because the regulatory environment is too punitive, too cumbersome or

simply nonexistent. In this context, it is possible to identify those transportation activities that in some way

avoid taxes, licensing and other regulation, and second, those activities that are unreported and unmeasured

because they fall outside the scope of the nation’s technique for monitoring and accounting economic activities.

Using these two dimensions, this paper follows other writers who have used the term “unofficial” because they

found it important to distinguish between activities that are merely unmeasured and those that are concealed in

order to evade taxation, licensing and other regulations (Smith, 1985; Mattera, 1985; Blades, 1982; Gershuny &

Pahl, 1980).

In addition to the characteristics of micro and small enterprises and self-employment, the non-formal

concept focuses on the nature of employment arrangements. The objective is to include non-standard wage

workers who are not protected and whose employment relationships are not clearly defined and regulated.

Some wage workers have found themselves without legal recognition or social protection because their

employment relationship is ambiguous and not clearly defined. An employment relationship clearly exists, but

it is not regulated, nor is it registered who is the employer, what rights the worker has, or who is responsible for

securing these rights. In some instances, it may be doubtful as to whether an employment relationship really

exists. However, this is not to say that the labor market within the real transport system is of limited

significance. Rizzo (2002) argued that the “informal” transport system in Dar es Salaam goes beyond

home-based or individual enterprises with few or no employees, consisting in fact of a labor market where it is

possible to distinguish between those who own the capital (the class of bus owners) and those who own the

labor (the class of casual workers whom the former class employs). Small-scale transport operators (whether

regulated and registered or not) choose ambiguous employment relationships as a means of avoiding their

formal obligations as employers. It is not the nonstandard wage worker that decides to operate non-formally

and enjoys the benefits of it; most non-standard wage workers would welcome more stable jobs and workers’

29 Neither size nor productivity can be intrinsic to the definition of the informal enterprises (Hart, 1985). Hart is also careful to

point out that the term “informal sector” refers to activities and roles and not to persons (Hart, 1973).


760

rights.

Finally, when defining the term “non-formal”, it has been borrowed from Chingono’s (1996) argument

that there is a need to add a dimension of war, which has given the economy distinctive features. These are

usually lacking or less amplified in other countries where alternative economies have evolved gradually over

time and under relatively peaceful conditions. It is in recognition of this uniqueness that Chingono (1996),

when researching Mozambique, used the term “grass-roots war economy” in preference to others currently in

vogue. It relates to a set of social relationships, a number of different ideas and processes, many of which are

often impossible to define precisely. In addition to the war and post-war dimensions, the non-formal sector has

a political one. A non-formal sector represents a community’s spontaneous and creative response to the state’s

incapacity to satisfy the basic needs of the impoverished masses. The fact that people travel and goods are

transported in a context of non-existent public transport services is a significant indicator of the enormous size

of the non-formal sector and of the dynamism of the real transport system in the war-to-peace transition. Finally,

the non-formal sector has both a component of survival and rent-seeking because unregulated, unregistered and

irregular activities conducted within the sector can be characterized as having two groups linked to each other.

Economic elites are engaged in non-formal sector for profit and exert control over the production and

distribution of assets and opportunities, while elements of the general populace participate in the non-formal

sector as a coping or survival strategy (Pugh, Cooper, & Goodhand, 2004; Nordstrom, 2004). Relations and

activities linked to and within the real transport system using family bonds or particular group networks are

used, not only to create rent-seeking opportunities (imposing high transport fares and paying low wages), but

also to organize reliably ordinary economic transitions such as the transport of basics and the movement of

people.

Development From Below

Relative low vehicle ownership, the absence of public transport services and an increased demand for

mobility and access have resulted in the expansion of passenger transport services provided by small-scale

private operators named candogueiros ou hiaces to meet the transport needs of urban and peri-urban areas.30

Some of the few large operators who own three or more hiaces employ full-time drivers to operate all their

vehicles and concentrate on running their business. The employed vehicle drivers have to return a specific

target income to the vehicle owner each day and are paid according to how much they make. In an economy

where the scarcity of basic skills is one of the main bottlenecks the importance of the driver is very great and

they represent a key actor in the sector. When owners do not drive their own vehicles, much of the

entrepreneurial skill required in the sector is concerned simply with choosing good and reliable drivers.

Another key actor involved in the provision of transport services are the owners-drivers who had started

under severe warfare conditions. They are individuals who had entered the transport sector by driving their own

motorized vehicles on a particular route and because they had accumulated disproportional gains which are

called “winners” from war (Cramer & Goodhand, 2003). They comprised politically and economically

30 Candongueiros or hiaces are motorized vehicles (normally a Toyota Hiace van) that can hold 7 to 12 people.


761

well-connected individuals within Angolan society. Under the transport sector modernization dynamics,

previous drivers and owners-drivers who have enough money from their existing operation, place a deposit for

the purchase of another vehicle, and employ a driver to operate the second or more vehicles, then small-scale

entrepreneurs emerge. As a consequence of private accumulation by transport entrepreneurs in the road

transport sector, it is possible to identify a nascent bourgeoisie which enjoys a middle-class lifestyle, puts its

children and itself through university, and passes on wealth to those children. It is therefore beginning to

establish itself as a class.31

Through the transport economy, the members of this class are able to sustain their

livelihood and in some cases enrich themselves. In this context, road freight transport for example, an arduous,

costly and time-consuming undertaking, has increased from the near-zero level and now involves activity such

as the collection of small-scale production from scattered rural buying posts by urban-based small-scale

transport operators.

When private actors involved in the transport economy (goods and passenger haulage) discovered that the

provision of transport services using an intermediary means of transport could be another form of private

accumulation, a new class has emerged. Parallel to the social stratification that occurred within the Angolan

contemporary elite with the formation of a class of transport entrepreneurs using motorized vehicles, it is also

possible to identify new strata within the rest of population, namely the family groups of operators of a taxi

type of service performed by a motorcycle and motorcycle with a small back wagon (called kupapatas and

kaleluias, respectively). They are ordinary, struggling individuals who have scraped together enough money to

buy a motorcycle and offer a taxi service. The new service provided is important not only as a mean of

passenger and goods transport but also as a way of reducing poverty by providing regular income-earning

opportunities for communities and therefore improving living conditions (Barwell et al., 1985; De Veen, 1991;

Riverson & Carapetis, 1991); Airey, 1992; Dawson & Barwell,1993); Howe & Dennis, 1993; Edmonds & De

Veen, 1993; Malmberg-Calvo, 1994); Grieco et al., 1996; Porter, 2001; Starkey, 2001; Heyen-Perschon, 2005;

Hook, 2006). In addition to their complementary role in boosting commercial trade and thus earning

opportunities for poor and isolated households, the kupapatas and kaleluias have played a key role in the

creation of employment in two different forms: self-employment for those who own and drive the motorcycles,

and wage labor for those who are only drivers. This form of job creation, non-formal though it is, has been

beneficial for those previously unemployed, mainly young people, who now have an income-generating

activity.

Despite the popularity and importance of the transport services provided by candongueiros, kupapatas and

kaleluias, the emergence of an almost insatiable demand for transport, has resulted in the exposure of their

failures and inefficiencies as a road transport services. For example, regarding the motorized taxi services,

candongueiros’ inadequacy, unreliability and inefficiency are critical. In spite of the significant role

candongueiros have played in the transport of people since the beginning of the 1990s, communities tend to

display an ambivalent attitude towards them and are unsatisfied with the services the taxis offer. There are

31 Similar arguments have been presented by MacGaffey (1991) when researching the real economy of Zaire and also by

Hawkins (1958) for the road transport sector in Nigeria.


762

always some complaints from the travelling people about breakdowns of hiaces and the resulting long delays

and discomfort. Users also claim that the candongueiros tend not to be roadworthy, are overloaded, and are

frequently irresponsibly driven, flouting the most basic traffic rules. Predictably, candongueiros and kupapatas

are one of the most dangerous means of travel in the world and their users as a group are losing out from the

present developmental state of road transport services. Reckless driving and high speeds combined with several

other factors, such as the increase in traffic density, the narrowness of the road, and the reconstruction work,

have resulted in a high daily percentage of fatal road accidents. Young taxi drivers are renowned for driving at

high speed, overtaking on the left and right, stopping without warning, doing U-turns and exposing themselves

and their passengers to untold further dangers. Some candongueiros and kupapatas are convinced that they have

the right of way anywhere on the road, simply because they perform essential transport services for the

population.

When assessing the adequacy and efficiency of the service provided by candongueiros, another crucial

issue has to be considered. The candongueiro operates on a specific pre-set itinerary or zone, which might be

within the city, between cities or even between different provinces, depending on the owner. However, if at any

moment, the driver identifies a more profitable route he may well change immediately to it, even without the

owner’s knowledge and without regard to the needs of transport users on the original route. Attempts to assign

candongueiros to specific routes, in order to provide a public service, may thus be ignored by drivers if the

returns obtained from operating on quieter, less busy routes are perceived to be too low. In this context, thought

should be given as to what extent the candongueiros are efficiently stimulating passengers’ mobility,

particularly that of the most vulnerable transport users.

The extensive nature of the transport system results in often complex, and sometimes unanticipated,

impacts of its development (Simon, 1996). However, any assessment of this development depends on the

balance of socio-economic gains and losses, both directly within the transport system itself and indirectly in the

wider social economy. In this context, it has to be considered that a significant number of people (the hiaces’

potential passengers) sustain their livelihood by an array of non-formal activities that are likely to produce a

very irregular pattern of travel demand. On the one hand, the flexibility of itineraries reveals candongueiros’

ability to meet spatial and temporal travel patterns that are likely to be diffuse in character. On the other hand,

the result of candongueiros’ actions is that some itineraries are particularly badly served as long as there are

more profitable ones in the same area. Therefore, transport users using such unprofitable itineraries are forced

into a relatively static state, in which lack of mobility and poverty are clearly related. This latent demand for

transport is invisible to market forces and remains unfulfilled as transport provision is not efficiently

responding to demand. This lack of provision of the transport services that would normally be expected from a

local government arises because of the concrete class interests associated with a specific pattern of

accumulation. As transport operators may be more concerned with private accumulation of wealth than the

efficient provision of transport services, increased road transport services may become a cause of social

stratification. The pursuing of individual economic interests widens income differentials, increasing inequality

not only between those who demand and those who provide the transport services, but also within the group


763

(the class of employers and workers) that provides the services. The result is that socio-economic development

does not follow from real transport system growth or at any rate that the development that follows is highly

uneven.

Another essential dynamic of the real transport sector that affects its adequacy, efficiency and reliability is

the conflict of interests between workers and their employers. The distinctive feature of the transport labor

market arises because of the existence of a class of small-scale owners whose interests are distinct from the

class of workers whom they employ, particularly candongueiros workers and the drivers of lorries owned by

small-scale operators. Transport operators and owners take advantage of the high levels of formal

unemployment to employ young men under unfavorable conditions. Employers do not offer candongueiro

drivers a formal or written contract and, in a strict sense, workers are not “waged”. There is a verbal contract

that requires the candongueiro driver to hand over a substantial proportion of his daily earnings to his employer.

The magnitude of the worker’s daily revenue in turn depends on the number of journeys per day and passengers

transported. Their attempt to make the best out of a difficult situation results in their switching to more

profitable routes, working long days and displaying risky behavior such as speeding, overloading, and other

rule violations that threaten the safety of passengers. Therefore, many of the inefficiencies characterizing the

road transport system are a consequence of the unfavorable conditions of employment and earning capacity of

employees.

The pattern of private accumulation is also facilitated by the lack of an effective legal framework or

regulation of transport services. When candongueiros circulate without a licence for the transport of passengers,

the small private entrepreneurs, drivers, mechanics, tickets’ chargers, chamadores, those who wash cars, and

those who assemble transport users are outside the government control and do not appear in the official

statistics.32

Therefore, they do not constitute legally responsible and taxable agents, which prevent the transport

system from providing the basis for building an integrated and self-sustained economy. As the class of transport

entrepreneurs expands, the lack of effective regulation and unfavorable working conditions have allowed

transport owners (in particular hiace owners) to protect their own margins of profit at the cost of their workers

and ultimately of the passengers, thus increasing social inequality. The constraints and opportunities operating

in the transport sector have clearly allowed these small-scale entrepreneurs to prosper.

Along the Lobito Corridor, the carriage of passengers interacts with the carriage of local products. The

latter is scarcely organized owing to the shortage of resources available for collection of the products from the

point of production and their transport to the place of sale.33

Local products, mostly foodstuffs and other

agricultural surplus, are moved in small quantities and their movements are financed either by the lorry owners

or by small-scale traders. The low standard of services is not a handicap for small-scale transport operators and

they have the convenience of mixing freight and passengers to increase the percentage of capacity utilized. This

mixing of traffic provides a positive advantage because so much freight is moved in small lots accompanied by

32 Chamadores (meaning “those who call”) are young men who stay at the taxi and bus stages pulling together people to get into

taxis or in the buses. 33 One aspect of the freight market is the carriage of imports, which allows lorry owners to plan more regular services with full

loads, making this section of the market more profitable to operate in.


764

the owner or the trader. Some passengers and freight are, therefore, “indivisible” and must move together. The

small size of each lot, together with the mixed nature of transportation does not yet make it a worthwhile

business for larger operators. As for the passenger business, this forms a very important part of the overall

transport market, and the routes in the urban and peri-urban areas are the most important.

Maritime

transport

7,801.075.162

Other services

376,983,128

Air transport

13,112.360.877

Road transport

2,441.641.913

Rail transport

21,413.498.523

Figure 1. Public investments in the transport sector in 2012.

Source: Ministério dos Transportes de Angola 2012.

Figure 2. Benguela Railway Network.

Source: Caminho-de-Ferro de Benguela, EP, 2012.

Despite the increased number of road transport operators, there are local transport demands that are not

being efficiently met, as more services has not equated to better services. A great number of households living

by the Lobito Corridor are on very low-incomes and their limited turnover or capital resources restrict their

opportunities to use road transport services. Furthermore, only a few entrepreneurs are willing to transport

goods and passengers to and from areas distant from all-weather road network. People living in off-road

settlements remote from the Corridor lack access to road transport services. There is a genuine inadequacy

since the few transport operators that do serve local transport needs are highly irregular and inefficient. Against

this background, the modernized Benguela Railway—Caminho-de-Ferro de Benguela, EP (CFB)—has been

particularly beneficial to the communities living close to the railway transport corridor.


765

The coming of the train has integrated their movements and economic activities. This paper suggests that

an increased traffic on the railway line has influenced the growth of trade initiatives and movement

opportunities. A stable pattern of demand for train transport has emerged, as CFB provides affordable and

regular services to and within remote areas utilized by the poor and professionals (teachers, nurses, and others).

While enabling social mobility the reconstruction of Benguela Railway has clearly made a major contribution

by supplementing the road transport services provided by private operators and impacting on poverty

reduction.

The dynamics along the railway line have also allowed the reestablishment of commercial links between

urban and rural areas and between inland and coastal areas.34

When analyzing the pattern of small-scale trade

development and railway rebuilding in the deprived interior areas there is a major evidence to suggest that the

railway’s reopening has had significant effects. CFB and the road network, operating as complementary

transport modes in the Lobito Corridor, have served to encourage the mushrooming of small trade centers at

strategic points, forming an intermediate step between urban and rural settlements. The “intermediate trade

centers” that have emerged suggest that communities made use of the passage of the train not only for their

own movement, but also to trade their agricultural surplus and charcoal. These “intermediate trade centers” act

as collection and distribution points for low-income households and also represent a fundamental social

infrastructure, because information and ideas can now spread more freely. Finally, the centers not only provide

a basis for a more equitable distribution of social services but also act as attraction points to small-scale traders

and transport operators and training grounds for rural-to-urban migrants. The villages and settlements along the

railway that appeared to be deserted in wartime are now bustling with small-scale trade, market farming and

passenger activity along the CFB.

Table 2

Estimates of the Loads Moved by Public Enterprises in the Transport Sector (2013-2017)

Denomination 2009 2010 2011 Estimated

2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017

Road transport

ETP Cabinda 199,624 252,000 172,241 177,408 186,279 195,593 209,284 228,120 253,213

TUCUL 20,496.635 26,561.390 39,605.031 40,397.132 41,609.046 41,441.226 43,290.051 45,454.554 48,636.372

Rail transport

CFB 392,621 389,303 125,405 156,756 235,134 376,215 639,566 1,151.218 2,302.436

CFL 3,558.211 2,880.627 2,861.475 3,004.549 3,154.776 3,375.611 3,713.172 4,270.147 5,124.177

CFM 96,058 21,865 0 0 506,880 608,256 790,733 1,107.026 1,660.539

Air transport

TAAG 1,087.130 1,011.920 1,017.033 1,1067.855 1,121.279 1,199.768 1,319.745 1,517.707 1,821.248


34 Both trade links were obstructed during the prolonged conflict (Cilliers & Dietrich, 2000).


766

In the Lobito corridor, the CFB and the road network help each other to play a greater role in the

redistribution of the benefits of transport sector development to areas that are geographically isolated from

national centers of economic and political activity. The present success of the railway can be traced ultimately

to the fact that it was the main transport “skeleton” of Benguela and, in a country where cross-country distances

are on a large scale, it is of prime importance.35

Development from Above

In the context of profound economic and social imbalances between various groups and a clear line

dividing the more affluent coastal areas and the neglected inland, it is critical to emphasizes the importance of

investing in infrastructure reconstruction to reconnect the interior to the coast and thus to the main markets

accessible to the poorest. Public resources together with international funding where new partners have

emerged (including China and Brazil), is being allocated to road and railway modernization of the Lobito

Corridor for the creation of provincial markets and their integration into a national and regional economy.

Table 3

Estimates of the Passengers Moved by Public Enterprises in the Transport Sector (2013-2017).

Denomination 2009 2010 2011 Estimated

2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017

Road

transport

ETP Cabinda 460 573 1,002 1,052 1,105 1,182 1,300 1,495 1,794

UNICARGAS 1,629.312 775,870 932,736 979,736 1,028.341 1,100.325 1,210.358 1,391.912 1,670.294

Rail transport

CFB 30 4 0 0 540,670 594,737 683,948 820,737 1,025.921

CFL 0 12,440 6,606 7,267 7,993 9,192 10,755 12,906 16,132

CFM 7,288 14,462 0 0 364,440 400,884 461,017 553,220 691,525

Maritime

transport

P. Cabinda 350,893 436,270 490,704 515,239 541,001 578,871 636,758 732,272 878,727

P. Soyo 44,813 246,414 240,634 252,666 265,299 283,870 312,257 359,095 430,915

P. Luanda 9,002.912 9,157.534 7,308.046 7,673.448 8,057.121 8,61.119 9,483.231 10,905.716 13,086.859

P. Lobito 2,462.084 2,396.427 2,792.054 2,931.054 3,078.240 3,293.716 3,623.088 4,166.551 4,999.861

P. Namibe 770,175 696,960 913,755 959,443 1,077.415 1,077.934 1,185.727 1,363.586 1,636.304

P. P. Amboim 111,709 130,444 240,667 252,700 265,335 283,909 312,300 359,145 430,974

Air transport

TAAG 17,674 11,962 15,366 16,134 16,941 18,127 19,940 22,931 27,517


Government efforts to reconstruct the severely damaged transport infrastructure were, firstly, a priority

when conflict ended, and latter a major objective leading up to the 2008 and 2012 elections in Angola.

According to Pushak and Foster (2011), in Angola in 2011 around 4.3 billion USD was spent on infrastructure,

which represented 14% of GDP. In 2012, according to the Balanço do Programa de Investimentos Públicos, a

35 The Benguela railway was, first, the railway served the coastal hinterland south of Lobito (second city coast in the province of

Benguela); second, it permitted the exports of Portuguese colonization centers such as Nova Lisboa and Silva Porto, and served

the distant Dundo (Lunda) diamond fields, which were connected by road from Vila Luso. Third, the railway took traffic to and

from Katanga Province of the Belgian Congo and, to a smaller extent, the Copperbelt of Northern Rhodesia (Hance & Van

Dongen, 1956).


767

governmental document which refers to the year of 2012 and is produced by the Ministry of Transports, public

investment (PIP: Programa de Investimentos Públicos) on the transport sector of approximately Akz

45,145,559,602 were toward the following subsectors (see Figure 1).

According to Figure 1, in 2012, the transport sector reconstruction efforts include huge public spending. In

fact, already in 2010 according to data from the World Bank (2012), the total road network expanded to 62,560

km, which represents approximately 83% of the total. Secondly, according to Figure 1, almost 50% of public

funding goes toward rail transport despite the Chinese credit line to this particular subsector.36

At present the

works being undertaken are in the final Luena-Luau track and are projected to be concluded by the end of 2014

(see Figure 2).

As a consequence of the infrastructural reconstruction efforts, the government expects that public transport

enterprises will have the capacity to handle tonnes of loads and millions of passengers between 2013 and 2017

as illustrated by the following tables (see Table 2 and Table 3).37

Estimates anticipate an exponential growth of

the number of passengers and tonnes of goods moved. Data projected by the CFB and presented at the

International Conference on “The Transport Infrastructure Development in The Lobito Corridor” held for

November 29-30, 2012 in Lobito (Angola) indicate that after completion of the reconstruction works the

railway will have the capacity to move four million passengers and 20 million tonnes of goods per year,

including the minerals coming from DRC and Zambia. Nevertheless, at present, freight transport is still based

on road and rail movements and despite the superior potential of the railway in terms of its efficiency. This is

particularly relevant if one considers the strategic linkages of the Benguela Railway with DRC and Zambia

where the corridor serves the major economic mining production zones.38

The Lobito Corridor constitutes the

shortest route to a port (Lobito Port) for the Katanga region (South DRC) and the Cooper Belt (Northwestern

Zambia). The mineral Port in Lobito will have a capacity to move 3,650,000 tonnes that will be expanded to

4,050,00 tonnes when the Benguela Railway is working at its full potential.

In contrast to the reconstruction of the Benguela Railway, Chinese, Brazilian and Western private

construction and engineering companies are major partners of the Angolan government in the reconstruction of

the main road infrastructure. Construction work has been done in small independent units, a suitable approach

in the present context where the market is being opened up and traffic is still small. Despite the priority that the

Angolan government has given to road reconstruction and the aforementioned expansion of the road network,

the parallel road in the Lobito Corridor is only passable from Lobito (the starting point of the corridor) to Kuito

in Bié Province. The roads stretching approximately 710 km from Kuito to Luau (the ending point of the

36 China International Fund Ltd. (CIFL), a Hong Kong based construction firm, is currently undertaking the rehabilitation and

modernization of the line using a million dollar oil-backed loan agreed with Exim Bank of China in 2004. Restoration of the

approximately 1,300 kilometer rail line from Lobito to Luau, on the border with the DRC, was planned to start in January 2006

and estimated to take 20 months and be completed by August 2007 (CCS, 2006). However, in 2007 the Benguela railway

rehabilitation came to a standstill and had restarted in early 2008. Completion of the restoration of the railway to the border with

the DRC is expected to be completed by the end of 2014. 37 Data include public enterprises and non-formal market. 38 Benguela Railway provides a vital transportation conduit for the agriculturally rich regions along railway corridor, but also

forms the main route along which copper, cobalt and manganese mined in Congo Kinshasa and Zambia can be carried to the sea

(Hance & Van Dongen, 1956; Katzenellenbogen, 1973).


768

corridor in Angola) are still in a very poor condition, implying that communities living in this area are still very

isolated and highly dependent on the rail transport—they twice per week runs from Kuito to Luena (and in the

opposite direction) in the Moxico Province, a 409 km distance lasts approximately 17 hours.

Despite the massive investment in the transport sector reconstruction and an estimate increase in the

number of passengers and tonnes of goods moved, it is argued that the infrastructural reconstruction of the

transport sector along the Lobito corridor is not fulfilling its potential for generating domestic linkages or

multiplier effects. The transport economy is a site of private accumulation and change, where social

stratification goes in parallel with increased socio-economic inequality and unfavorable conditions in the labor

transport market, that ultimately may impose high direct fares and indirect costs such as lack of access to health

centers and schools.

As railway and road modernization efforts advance, the development of competitive, as well as

complementary linkages, have become prevalent. The two modes of transport are in dispute for the

prioritization of the infrastructural funds available. However, despite competition and the fact that road and rail

can be alternative ways of meeting similar transport needs, it is possible to identify essential differences

between investments in road and railway in the Lobito Corridor.

In general, investing in railways is a very capital-intensive method of providing transport facilities. It is

not merely that the costs of construction and maintenance per mile are high, but also that railways are

indivisible investments. The reconstruction of the CFB has been particularly expensive, not only because of the

aforementioned reasons, but also because its dilapidated state bears witness to deliberate destruction and years

of neglect since the late 1970s. In the face of the Angolan government’s lack of financial capacity and

non-existent interest of Western international private enterprises and others in such a huge and risky investment,

the Chinese are reconstructing the Benguela Railway. In an under-developed area such as the ones crossed by

the Lobito Transport Corridor, the railway has to be rebuilt ahead of the demand for its services, in the hope

that the facilities provided will give rise to the traffic to justify the investment.39

This is another factor affecting

its competitive advantage over the road network. However, the importance of the reconstruction of the railway

lies in the fact that it not only provides a vital transportation conduit for the agriculturally rich regions along

railway corridor, but also forms the main route along which copper, cobalt and manganese mined in Congo

Kinshasa and Zambia can be carried to the sea (Hance & Van Dongen, 1956; Katzenellenbogen, 1973). Once

rehabilitated and equipped, the CFB will be able to handle million tonnes of goods and millions of passengers.

In the future, new railway lines may be constructed linking Angola to the Namibian and other Zambian

networks. By supporting trade relations with South Africa and offering easier Atlantic access to the Zambian

Copperbelt, these rail links may have significant effects on regional trade, they may facilitate the resettlement

of internally displaced persons, and they may consolidate the recovery of the agricultural sector.

The extent to which road and railway reconstruction works are dependent on imported materials,

equipment and machinery arriving at the port of Lobito also heightens the importance of the CFB in the port

39 There is a well-recognized danger of a project becoming a “white elephant” as a result of inadequate demand for its outputs

(Hirschman, 1958).


769

area. The reconstruction of this section is a top priority as it provides an appropriate and necessary platform for

the rehabilitation of the railway itself and of the rest of the transport infrastructure of the Lobito Corridor.

Overland transportation systems have to work in synergy in order to achieve maximum utilization of the port. A

functioning port and railway will assist in the integration of the road infrastructure and organization of road

services and therefore increase the efficiency and pace of reconstruction work by international firms.

In contrast to the reconstruction of the Benguela Railway, Chinese, Brazilian and Western private

construction and engineering companies are major partners of the Angolan government in the reconstruction of

the main road infrastructure. Work has been done in small independent units which are a suitable approach in

the present context where the market is being opened up and traffic is expanding rapidly. The relative

granularity of investment in road transport compared with investment in the Benguela Railway is an important

competitive advantage. In addition, political and economic interests have led the government to prioritize the

allocation of international aid and loans to road rehabilitation, to the detriment of the CFB. This priority that the

Angolan government has given road reconstruction is related to the exponential increase of road transport

services (including passenger and freight transport) operated by private entrepreneurs. The scarcity of

entrepreneurial skills means that successful road transport operators earn higher rewards than those obtainable

in other sectors, despite the cost of buying a vehicle.40

Within the group of transport operators who live

comfortably from their joint earnings from transport work and public service some enjoy a different status and

exercise control over government economic policy itself in order to further their own aims. By targeting

investment at road reconstruction, the government is not only looking out for those who have invested in the

provision of war and postwar road transport services, but is also securing an alternative to the public transport

services that has allowed to decay.

Despite the valuable expansion of the transport entrepreneurs, this development will probably only lead to

social sustainability of the real transport system (i.e. the future take up of the road transport services in the long

term even if sub-optimal) and thus to further growth if the entrepreneurs possess those qualities that will

stimulate the economy. The most important of these is a willingness to invest both profits and experience from

operating in the real transport sector into the development of other sectors. The most popular field of

investment (apart from transport itself) have been residential building and education. How far these

entrepreneurs are prepared to enter into more risky investments and apply their skills in new fields is dependent

on other factors. First, it requires productive entrepreneurship. Second, it depends on both provincial and

central governments’ actions. Not only transport policies have to be better managed to reduce poverty, but also

the transport sector has to be developed in tandem with a regulatory and institutional framework that establishes

private property rights and imposes legislation on private sector participation. This will have a positive effect

on the emergence of new productive enterprises, promotion of the entrepreneurial class, and wider popular

participation. Most importantly it will have a positive impact on the progressive integration and social

40 Since entry into road transport is easy, the forces of competition should operate to ensure that the profitability in road transport

is no greater than in alternative trades. Nevertheless, transport operators subvert attempts to introduce competition and particularly

the owners of lorries, are among the wealthier classes of society; some of them are amongst the wealthiest people in the province

of Benguela, the starting point of the Lobito Corridor.


770

sustainability of the transport sector where non-formal transport services are sustained alongside formal and

public sector infrastructure and services.

Ambivalent Character of The Lobito Transport Corridor Development

Notwithstanding the great importance of an efficient transport system along the Lobito Corridor where

poor and scattered communities extend over great distances, the reconstruction and modernization of the

transport sector and developments of the transport services have an ambivalent character. This was already a

feature in the first half of the 20th century as the transport network’s creation of regional and national spaces

with new centers and peripheries established a new hierarchy of social groups and gave rise to significant

cultural changes. The effects of roads, railways, and other new means of transport were experienced in very

different ways by different actors. For example, initially roads were seen for both Europeans and African

collaborators as an instrument of progress and as a symbol of the massive use of forced labor. Despite the

arguments within management of the transport system regarding its importance for economic growth and

development, according to Esteves (2008) and Neto (2008), between the late 19th and 20th centuries, road and

railway were built to open up the hinterland for effective military deployment, the realization of colonial plans

and to control the population. Thus, the construction of the transport system was seen as means of wealth as

well as poverty, inroads of repression as well as paths to personal liberation, and as tools of fragmentation as

well as of unification (Esteves, 2008; Neto, 2008).

At present, the reconstruction and modernization of the transport system, on the one hand, is a site of

accumulation where social stratification goes in parallel with increased socio-economic inequality and

unfavorable conditions of the labor transport market that ultimately may impose high direct (fares) and indirect

(lack of access to health centers and schools) costs on transport users and the population in general. The

inefficiency, irregularity and unreliability of road transport services restricts social mobility, as the transport

demands, particularly of the poor who sustain their livelihoods on small-scale trade and daily need to transport

their agricultural surplus, are not being met. Furthermore, road freight services provided by private operators

hardly satisfy local demand because the transport services that do materialize are neither physically nor

financially available to the poor population, particularly those living far from the corridor.

On the other hand, it is possible to identify complementary linkages influencing the developments and

dynamics of road and railway services that can reduce poverty. To supplement the road transport services

provided by private operators, the reconstruction of the Benguela railway has enabled mobility, stimulated trade

dynamics and thus income earning opportunities. When analyzing the pattern of small-scale trade development

and railway rebuilding in the interior areas, which are farmed well below their potential, badly populated and

deprived “intermediate trade centers” have emerged. As the centers are separated by long stretches with sparse

population and low production, the opportunity for the extension of the railway line to “open up” the interior

and rural areas is great. Nevertheless, the sustainable growth of the “intermediate trade centers” is contingent

upon an appropriate transportation strategy aimed at prioritizing basic accessibility over mobility. The paths,

tracks and unpaved and unclassified roads that link communities to the CFB and the market places provide this


771

access. Policy emphasis should be placed on a least-cost engineering solution that ensures all-weather

motorized and non-motorized access for the greatest number of households, rather than on overly high

standards of performance (Barwell & Malmberg-Calvo, 1989; Dixon-Fyle, 1998; Gannon & Liu, 2000).41

The

social sustainability of the Lobito Corridor development (i.e. the affordability and accessibility to rural

communities of transport services) demands more sensitivity to beneficiaries and their real transport needs

(rather travel patterns), especially rural poor women (Mashiri & Mahapa, 2002).

Conclusion

This paper aimed to analyze the challenges and the development of the Lobito Transport Corridor. In this

context, attention has been drawn to the formal dynamics that have developed within the transport system, such

as the transport infrastructure reconstruction projects implemented by the government and international firms,

and how they have influenced the Lobito Corridor (“development from above”). It has assessed investments by

private transport operators and their dynamics and effects within the real transport system, including increased

income and stimulation of entrepreneurship (terms of accumulation and class formation), employment

opportunities (labor market), increased mobility, and better distribution of goods (“development from below”).

The insights of this paper do not represent just a case study but a case study of causal mechanisms, aiming to

shed light on the importance of local and non-formal dynamics in a particular geographical context.

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November, 2014, Vol. 2, No. 11, 775-782

Sanjak Bosniak Volunteers in the Turkish Military Orders From

Galipoli to Galicia (1916-1918)

Redţep Škrijelj

State University of Novi Pazar, Novi Pazar, Republic of Serbia

The emergence of World War I (1914) brought the occupation of Novi Pazar by Austria-Hungary (19 of November

1915) which resulted in epidemics, famine and destitution among its inhabitants. Despite of the attenuation of the

population structure, Austria-Hungary made a strong pressure on the Muslim population of Sanjak by representing

the ongoing worldwide conflict (World War I) as a “holy war” which aimed the destruction of the Ottomans and

Islam by its enemies. By using the slogans “For creed and faith” and “Everyone Turkish must check into the

Volunteers” during 1916, with the help of local ağas and beys, a couple of thousand males at the ages between 18

and 50 were gathered and dispersed among the frontlines spreading from Arabia to Galicia. Thus, a large number of

Muslims applied to “Đurumlije” and joined the struggle because of the Ottoman Empire had been an ally and

fought together with the Axis Powers (Germany and Austria-Hungary) against Russia and other Allied (Entente)

Armies. “Đurumlije”, among their Austria-Hungarian military uniforms wore a crescent-star bandage alongside a

tarboosh on their heads. They were being brought to the Galician frontline after a very short period of military

instructions which never lasted longer than a month. A smaller number of them were sent to the frontlines towards

Arabia, while some of them lost their lives. Part became prisoners of war and afterwards most of them continued

their lives in Turkey. Nevertheless, a small number of “Đurumlije” managed to return to Sanjak. After succeeding

to return their destinies were uncertain. After the conclusion of World War I they faced repression and terror

because of their previous war engagement in the newly formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (1918). A

large part of them were forced to flee to Turkey because of poverty and fear of retaliations.

Key words: Đurumlije (volunteers), Bosniaks, ottomans, Austria-Hungary, Galicia, Galipoli, Arabia, Kingdom of

Serbs, Croats and Slovenes

Introduction: Who Were “Đurumlije”?

Although the participation of Muslim volunteers in Balkan War proved to be unsuccessful, their

engagement in World War I was largely useful for belligerents. “Đurumlije” were a recruiting phenomenon in

Sanjak that remained in remembrance as a belligerent in an experimental game of the world military industry.

This historical play with the fate of Sanjak Bosniaks will remain in remembrance by the unseen agitator

propaganda which brought many young lives to the Euro-Asian frontlines who will, far away from their

hometowns give away their lives to the interest of unknown armies which tested their ultimate achievements

and power of various anti-human murder weapons (Blaškoviš, 1939, p. 53).

Redţep Škrijelj, Historian, Turkologist, Writer, State University of Novi Pazar.

DAVID PUBLISHING

D

SANJAK BOSNIAK VOLUNTEERS IN THE TURKISH MILITARY ORDERS

776

Distant Galicia (Ukrainian; Galiţina, Polish; Galicja, German; Galizien), crowded by a huge number of

volunteers from various parts of Southeastern Europe in the World War I, is a historical region in the eastern

part of Central Europe. In the 20th century it became a location of numerous battles and a battleground where

Austro-Hungary and Germany attacked Imperial Russia.

The bare mentioning of the Galician frontline brings up memories to the Sanjak Bosniaks who were sent

to the fiercest battlegrounds across Europe because of their nativity, braveness and determination. Such are the

frontlines on Austria-Hungarian territory, on the Socha river, Tyrol, Galicia and Russia. Bosniaks thus became

victims of amortization and avoidance of Austria-Hungarian military failures and losses (Fritz, 1931). This can

be proved by the large amounts of old documents inside the Turkish and Austrian war archives. This, primarily

Bosniak war story emerges in the vortex of World War I antagonisms in which the spiritual decline of Western

civilization was materialized. The Sanjak youth waged fierce battles across the frontlines of Galicia (1916)

during the entire war. Today many historians neglect the role of the Sanjak recruits in this war made for foreign

interests (Škrijelj, 2011, pp. 349-355). On November 2, 1916, the Austria-Hungarian military embassy to the

Ottoman Army Headquarters reported the relocation of 3,954 Muslim volunteers from territories under

Austria-Hungarian occupation to 15 divisions. Corpse of the Ottoman Army in order to fill in the lack in human

resources (SAYGILI, 2013). In the same report it has been noticed that all Muslim prisoners of war captured by

the Austria-Hungarian army will be relocated to similar units (SAYGILI, 2013).

Everything was carried out with an insidious and public agitation among the instantly recruited Muslim

population which filled in the units of the Turkish ally, Austria-Hungary. When the Ottoman-Turkish authority

left, military units of the Kingdom of Serbia and Kingdom of Montenegro in October 1912 occupied Sanjak.

The Serbian army took control of Novi Pazar and many other towns which lead to a mass migration of many

families across Kosovo together with the retreating Ottoman army, which left an opportunity for the Serbs from

the countryside to occupy and populate the most fertile locations in the Novi Pazar surrounding. After the

Balkan Wars (1912/1913) a huge number of Muhacirs has left. Between 1913 and 1923 Sanjak loss a great

number of its Muslim population which during the wars, fear and terror left to the remaining territory of the

Ottoman Empire or the newly formed Republic of Turkey (Bandţoviš, 2006).

Motives of Volunteers

The Serb-Montenegrin historiography was overwhelmed by prejudices over the “decadence and the

semi-millenial darkness under the Ottoman rule” which labeled the remaining Muslim population with the

“Turkish guilt”. Their battle against the Muslim neighbors was carried out under the slogan “for the Cross of

faith and freedom”, which increased the insecurity and endangered their will to remain in their homeland.

While wishing for the Ottoman army to come back, local agas and beys alongside other citizens spread

rumours and speculations about their possible triumph in the outgoing war. Some of them went that far so they

were lying down on the grass so they could “hear the explosions of Turkish artillery in the distance”

(KONIŢANIN, 1998, p. 102). Thus losing their faith, they begun turning to Austria-Hungary and waited for

their assistence to bring the Turkish rule back. Since the declaration on February 16, 1915, in accordance with


777

the Sultans call for jihad, there were no obligations for military engagement or recruitment of Muslims who

remained outside the borders of the Ottoman Empire. Nevertheless, individuals who insisted, especially

muhajirs from the mentioned territories were allowed to participate on voluntary basis.1

When their army entered Sanjak (November 1915)2 a speculation was spread that all Bosniaks could leave

to Turkey if they wanted so.3 That agitation forced the other part of the population to join the Austrian army,

hence 2000 Muslims were recruited solely in Deţeva county4. One of the reasons of the response was the fact

that Ottoman Turkey was an ally of the Axis Powers.5

The gathering of “Đurumlije” volunteers is one of the most important events in the Sanjak military history.

The action was carried out by the occupying forces of Austria-Hungary. The aim was to gather as many

soldiers through agitation which was assisted by the local nobility, the agas and beys. One of the biggest

contributors was Rizah-bey Muratbegoviš, president of Novi Pazar municipality, and his fellow citizen Rizo

Murteziš. After the reccomendation of Novi Pazar Kreisskommando, he left to Belgrade where he was issued a

permit to agitate and gather Đurumlije. He presented himself to the gathered local population as a former

Turkish military officer. Holding a Turkish flag in his hands, he carried out the propaganda activities and

recruitment of the local population wearing a Turkish military uniform with a fes ornamented with embroidered

Turkish symbols star and crescent. By using the slogans: “Every Turk must come to the volunteers” he

managed to gather a large number of “Đurumlije”. By succeeding to gather the first volunteers with “playing

and singing” he lead them through the city gaining big attention of huge crowds of citizens. More than 300

volunteer from Novi Pazar joined the Đurumlije.

The Reason

It is well known that the Ottoman state in World War I stood on the side of Central Powers, The German

Empire and Austria-Hungary. Bulgaria joined this coalition afterwards. In the Balkans Greece and Serbia

joined the Antanta. Althoug publicly declaring its neutrality Romania was supportive of the Allies. In the year

1916 a joint Bulgarian and Austro-Hungarian offensive resulted with the occupation of Serbia while Romania

entered an open war with Central Powers in 1916. The same year a new frontline was opened against the Allies

in Greece. Meanwhile there were operations directed against Tzarist Russia in Galicia. The 6th Corpse joined

the military operations in Romania, 20th Corpse in Macedonia and 15th Corpse in Galicia. Due to a lack of

personnel the Corpse were filled with Balkan Muslim volunteers (SAYGILI, 2013). The reason for such big

response can be traced in the fact that Turkey, an ally of Germany and Austria-Hungary in the World War I

fought against Russia, England and other members of the Entente. A huge number of Muslims was recruited by

1 BAŞBAKANLIK OSMANLI ARŞIVI (BOA) (Governmental Ottoman archives). (Series: HR.SYS, 2319/4). 2 On 21. IX. 1915., after smaller clashes, Tenth Austrian Brigade and parts of the Alpine Corps enter Novi Pazar. (Dragi

Malikoviš, Pokreti trupa i borbe u nekadašnjem Novopazarskom sandžaku 1914. I 1915.godine, in: Simpozijum „Seoski dani

Sretena Vukosavljeviša“, XII, Prijepolje 1997, 178-179.) 3 НОВОВАРОШКИ КРАЈ КРОЗ ИСТОРИЈУ—НЕОЛИТА ДО 1941 (The Nova Varoš region throughout history—Since

Neolithic Times until 1941). (1991). Nova Varoš. 4 Archive of Serbia, Belgrade: Collection of General war governman, sh. 6 /XIX-37, list no. 1-2 (1916); and, same: Collection of

General war governman, t. XIX, no. 37/3 (1916). 5 The news of Ottoman Turkey joining the Axis Powers in the year 1915 was followed by a tragic event in a Novi Pazar coffee

room. The house owner Milentije Okošanoviš was killed because of his comment about the Ottoman sultan Reshad “the slob

declared war” (Koniţanin, 1998, p. 105).


778

the agitator “to help Turkey against Russia”(Koniţanin, 1998, p. 105). With the help of municipal authorities,

the agas and beys, Austrian-Hungarian propaganda carried many Muslims to the frontlines from Galicia to

Gallipoli, and from the Caucassus to Arabian Peninsula. It is very important to emphasize the lack of

documented information in relation to the participation and destiny of Rumeli Muslim volunteeers in World

War I who engaged in clashes on frontlines in Syria, Palestine, Iraq and Caucassus (SAYGILI, 2013,

pp. 234-234). It is very difficult to calculate how many “Đurumlije” were recruited, because this requires a

profound research of Austrian, German, Hungarian, Turkish, Ukrainian, and even Middle Eastern military

archives. We can certainly tell that they were exceeding the number of five thousand.

This was a period of unseen poverty, famine, epidemics and struggle for physical survival. The complete

population was exposed to daily sufferings, tribulation and dying. In December 1915 the arrival of foreign

medical teams even worsened the situation. Pediculosis and scabies spread rapidly. Infectous diseases,

especially tuberculosis and spotted fever took lives day by day. Poverty has entered every home and every

family. Patient rooms were not heated up. Starvation weakened the immunological capability of the organisms

of the population. The occupying authorities never helped the local population to fight the epidemics. The

frequent confiscation of livestock worsened their actual situation. The hungry and exhausted population was

seized by the pandemics of Spanish influenza (flu) which spread through Europe (PETROVIŠ, 2013). Ground

volunteers Unit, also known as Ottoman Rumeli unit in October 1916, the 177th engaged in military actions on

the Macedonian frontline. According to the words of the military commander published 24 years after, when

the unit reached Veles, a great part of the local population applied to join the military operations on voluntary

basis (Erem, 2006). When informed about the return of the Ottoman army many of them “walked long with

tears in their eyes” to celebrate their arrival, while paying visits to the commanders they sacrificed animals in

their honor (Erem, 2006).

The very word “Đurumlije” can be linked to the Turkish word “gonulu”6, altough there were diffent

versions like đulijani, galijani, zoromvoljci (turkish: zor = tough + bosnian. volja = will ) etc. Dressed up in the

uniforms of Austrian-Hungarian army, with a star and crescent on the bandage on their hands many of them

took one-month training in the nearby barracks (Kosovska Mitrovica, Skopje, Niš, Beograd) and were

afterwards brought to the frontlines from Galicia to Arabia (Koniţanin, 1998, p. 112).

Bosniac Folk Songs About “Đurumlije”

Among the people songs were sung by the bereaved girls whose boys were taken to the frontlines by the

waves of recruitment: May god punish Rizah-effendi; Dear Bosnia, far away we went; Water floods from shore

to shore; “Đurumlije” moving from Plevlje etc..

This song expresses the bitterness and protest of dissatisfied Muslims because of the recruitment of the

citizens to the units of Austrian-Hungarian forces.

May God punish Rizah-Effendi

6 Архив Србије, Фонд архиве Војног генералног гувернмана, св. V, одел. XVIII, бр. 737 (1916) (Archives of Serbia, Belgrade

(1916) Аrchive Collection of General war guvernman, t. V, part XVIII, no. 737.


779

My god punished Rizah-Effendi

which gathered young “Đurumlije”

girls remained betrothed

betrothed girls and not taken.7

Gender Bosnia8

Hi, gender Bosnia, we went far away!

Hi, our mothers, no hope for us!

Hi, dear sisters, do not swear with us!

Hi, faithful love, you can re-marry!

Hey, the emperor will marry us there!

Hi, with Mazer and gold grief!

Hi, with black soil and green grass!

“ĐURUMLIJE”9

“Đurumlije” , grieved mother,

from Pljevlja moving!

“Đurumlije” , hi, sad,

from Pljevlja moving!

O my dear God, grieved mother,

what the beautiful guys!

O my dear God, hi sad,

The good guys!

Each of them, a grieved mother,

7 Архив Србије, Фонд архиве Војног генералног гувернмана, св. V, одел. XVIII, бр. 737 (1916) (Archives of Serbia, Belgrade

(1916) Аrchive Collection of General war guvernman, t. V, part XVIII, no. 737, p. 113. 8 Original version in Bosnian: „Haj, rodna Bosno, daleko odosmo!/ Haj, naše majke, ne nadajte nam se!/ Haj, mile seje, ne kunte

se s nama!/ Haj, vjerne ljube, vi se preudajte!/ Haj, nas še care tamo oţeniti !/ Haj, sa mazerom i zlatnim šemerom!/ Haj, crnom

zemljom i zelenom travom! (Azemoviš, 1987). 9 In Bosnian: “Đurumlije” jadna Majko,/ Iz Pljevalja kreću !/ “Đurumlije” , haj, žalosna,/ Iz Pljevalja kreću!/ Bože mili, jadna

majko,/ Dobrijeh momaka!/ Bože mili, haj žalosna,/ Dobrijeh momaka!/ Svaka svoga, jadna majko,/ Cvijećem zakitila!/ Svaka

svoga, haj, žalosna,/ Cvijećem zakitila!/ A ja moga, jadna majko,/ Vezenom dolamom!/ A ja moga, haj, žalosna,/ Vezenom

dolamom! (Avdiš, 2000, p. 7).


780

with flowers decorated!

Each of them, hi, sad,

with flowers decorated!

And I mine, grieved mother,

with embroidered tunic!

And I mine, hi, sad,

with embroidered tunic!

Come On, Kids, Askers10

Come on, kids askeri!

For you Moskov invaded!

For you Moskov rush,

For him Vranda* hit

Scripture says Enver Bey

So he sends in Stanbol.

Do not be afraid, my Sultan,

Edirne is mine and yours!

Conclusion

A small number of volunteers were taken as prisoners by Russian and English, many of them suffered,

while the bigest part of them died despite some of them continued to live in Turkey never to come back. It is

important to note that among the “Đurumlije” there were volunteers from every sphere of Sanjak society, poor,

middle-class and the noble families of agas and beys. Altough their relatives went to fight in the army, the

Austrian authorities enforced extraordinary taxes (“Ťurumlijski porez”) to families which had members on the

frontlines.11

According to the accessible archive information gathered in this research, volunteers were

gathered from Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Kosovo, Sanjak, Macedonia, Western Thrace and Struma Valley.

This volunteers were being translocated to frontlines of Romania, Galicia, Iraq, Palestine, Syria and Caucasus.

Volunteers were also recruited in 1917, when in spring in Novi Pazar the Austrian-Hungarian police

10 In Bosnian: HAJTE ĐECO, ASKERI/ Hajte, Ťeco askeri !/ Na vas Moskov navali !/ Na vas Moskov navali, Za njim vranda

udari./ Knjigu piše Enver- bej/ Pa je šalje u Stanbol./ Ne boj mi se, Sultane, /Jedren moja i tvoja! (Azemoviš, 1987). 11 ISTORIJSKI ARHIV. RAS-Novi Pazar (RAS historical archive—Novi Pazar), doc. no. 7 (7. XII 1917).


781

alongside the Sanjak local authorities of Deţeva, Štavalj and Sjenica counties assembled lists of people which

ought to join the army. Leading figure in these events was the president of Novi Pazar municipality Rizah-Bey

Muradbegoviš. It turned out that these volunteers went under the pressure of Austrian-Hungarian authorities so

they were named by the locals as “zoromvoljci” (Koniţanin, 1998, pp. 112-113). The mobilization was carried

out inside the building of the Novi Pazar Madrasa when about two thousand people were recruited from Novi

Pazar and distant parts of Sanjak. With the mass departure of a big number of citizenry capable of work the

economic situation in the Novi Pazar region was badly affected. The year 1917, despite the recruitment and war

sufferings was remembered as a year of famine and disease. The lack of food, the bloody war clashes and

epidemics halved the population in every part of occupied, divided and warring Sanjak (Поповић, 2003,

pp. 88-94).

Muslim collaborators were helping the Austrian military authorities to carry out the recruitment. The

prominent citizen of Tutin, Ahmed-aga Hamzagiš is one of the organizers of “Đurumlije” in two actions in the

Tutin region: the first one in 1916, and the second one in 1917, which were organized by force, as it was in the

other recruiting centers in Sanjak. It could be avoided by a solid amount of money, by paying “bedel”

(compensation) (МУШОВИЋ, 1985, p. 68). One of the main motives was the defense from “the enemies of

faith” which was a stimulus for the population to respond to the mobilization.The Austria-Hungarian Chief

Headquarters responded to this warrant of the Ottoman Army Chief Of Staff two months later, on 29th of April

1917 with the promise “to take all possible measures” to satisfy the needs of their allies (Saygili, 2013, p. 245).

In these conditions the permission given by the Ottoman army for the recruitment of Muslim volunteers among

the ranks of the Austro-Hungarian army was defined as military aid. Nevertheless, the citizenry of the recruits

was never questioned regardless of the frontline they joined. The nationality problem had to be resolved after

the end of the war (Saygili, 2013, p. 245). The Austria-Hungarian military office in Constantinople reported to

the Ottoman army the acceptance of the previously mentioned terms and conditions of their allies, and the

procession of recruitment and relocation of Muslim volunteer units from the territories under their occupation

(Saygili, 2013). On the other side, on 17th of May 1917, the military summit of the Ottoman State expressed its

full agreement in relation to the given conditions. The same a response, in order to be assembled in accordance

with the current conditions and signed by the War minister Enver Pasha, has been sent to the ministry of

foreign affairs. Three days after the response of the War minister Enver Pasha, on 20th of May 1917, Ismet Bey,

the military envoy of the Ottoman State in Belgrade reported voluntary recruitment of 800 persons among the

Muslim population between the regions of Novi Pazar and Pirepol.12

In the report, Ismet Bey informed the

military summit that as late as 25th of May 1917 the mentioned volunteers will be joining a procession in four

groups of 200 person in order to relocate to Sofia via Belgrade, an later to Istanbul (SAYGILI, 2013, p. 245).

Ismet Bey, according to the information he gathered from the military administration in Belgrade, reported on

19th of July 1917 that 139 remaining volunteers whose transfer was postponed will be heading towards

Istanbul via Mitrovica and Niš (SAYGILI, 2013).

The period of Austiran-Hungarian occupation of Sanjak (1915-1918) was very specific in the Roţaje

12 BOA, HR. SYS, 2435/ 33.


782

region. It was one of the most difficult periods in its history. Those were the years when infectious diseases

took away many lives. During 1916 and 1917, about 500 people from the Roţaje region “were sent to the

Carpathian mountains (so called: “Đurumlije”)”, of which a very small number managed to return to their

homes again (AZEMOVIŠ, 1982, p. 14).

References

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International Relations and Diplomacy ISSUE 11, November 2014

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