Tag Archives: Peter Emerson

Readings in Nonviolence: Ukraine

December 1, 2025Nonviolent News, ReadingsHistory, Peter Emerson, Possibilities for peace, Ukraine, Ukraine-Russia warRob Fairmichael

– Peter Emerson describes and analyses –

The land is flat. It stretches for miles. And many many years ago, there were just a few settlements; they traded; they spoke the same basic language, its word for ‘word’ was ‘slovo’, and hence the name, ‘Slavs.’ Some villages became towns; then, in battle or in bed, a few bigger towns developed into city states. One of the first was Kievan-Rus, a state or an empire of the 9^th to the 13^th Century which grew to extend from Kiev, not quite to Crimea in the south, but up north to rule many smaller cities, one of which was called Moskva. Next, in 1238, from the east came the Mongol hordes; they took Moscow and two years later, sacked Kiev. They went further west to Hungary and so on, as well as to the south and east, to Baghdad and Beijing but, like every other empire before and since, they fell first into four bits and then completely apart.

A little later, while western Europeans went west to kill and conquer in the Americas, the Russians expanded militarily to the east. In 1552, Ivan the Terrible (awful, or full of awe) took Kazan, the first of many conquests; another, in 1860, was Vladivostok (the ruler of the east) and to the south, Vladikavkaz, (governing the Caucasus). To the north was the Arctic. And apart from the mountains, deserts and seas to the south – the Caucasus, Pamirs and Himalayas; the Kyzylkum, Taklamakan and Gobi Deserts; and then the Black, Caspian and Aral Seas – there was no other natural limit to what was otherwise continual expansion.

In 1867, however, the Russians decided the Pacific Ocean was far enough, so they sold Alaska to the US for $7m (about $200m in today’s money). In contrast then to the three other compass points, there were no obvious physical barriers in the west where lived the Lithuanians, whose lands at one stage went all the way to the Black Sea, and the Poles. The border here was religious: Orthodoxy versus Catholicism; Moscow, it was said, was the third Rome, blessed against the Swedes (Charles XII) in 1709 at the Battle of Poltava (in today’s Ukraine); against the French in 1812 at Borodino (Napoléon); and against the Nazis in 1941-2 in WWII in Moscow (Hitler).

The main difference between the Western European empires and the Russian (or Soviet) version was the fact that the latter was always contiguous. While the former were far flung, Moscow wanted total control. Yugo-(southern-)slavia was difficult – too far away – but after ‘adjusting’ the Czechoslovak border near Uzhhorod, now in western Ukraine, Stalin ensured he had a common border with Hungary (1956) and the Czechs (1968). Meanwhile Ukraine – the krai or border lands – was part of the empire, to which in 1954 Nikita Khrushchev ‘gave’ Crimea.

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In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev came to power. Whereupon the West, which has many ‘monolingual experts’ – an oxymoron of the highest order! – ‘advised’ Gorbachev on democratisation. “You need our system of democracy,” they suggested – majoritarianism, majority rule and all that – without accepting that the Russian word for this ‘majoritarianism’ is ‘bolshevism’ {большевизм}. That was one mistake. You also need the right of self-determination, they added; another error. So if a republic, oblast (province) or krai, or any other minority wanted to secede, and if a majority of that minority voted ‘yes’ to do so, they could succeed to secede; but if a minority of that small majority then wanted to secede as well, and if a majority of that minority of that small majority voted to secede, then they too could succeed. Etc., ad nauseam.

So just as

(i) Ireland opted out of the UK, and NI opted out of opting out to opt back in again (1920s), a status confirmed in the border poll of 1973, when 98.9% voted ‘yes’ but, led by the SDLP, some 40% abstained – and The Troubles continued;

so too

(ii) Georgia opted out of the USSR (1991) by 99.5%, and South Ossetia opted out of Georgia (2006) by 99.9%, whereupon the Georgian enclave of Akhalgori tried to opt out of opting out…

so too

(iii) Croatia opted out of Yugoslavia (1991) by 93.4% while the Orthodox abstained, so the three krajina – there’s that word ‘krai’ again – opted out of Croatia by 99.8%, where the Catholics abstained;

so too

(iv) Bosnia opted out of Yugoslavia (1992) by 99.7% while the Bosnian Serbs abstained, and the latter in Republika Srpska opted out of Bosnia by 98%… and Herzeg-Bosna also wanted to opt out of Bosnia;

and so too

(v) Ukraine opted out of the USSR (1991) – see below – so Donetsk opted out of Ukraine by 90.0% (2014) so Dobropillia (69.1%, almost 2,000,000 voters) tried to opt out of opting out and to opt back in again…

and

(vi) etc., and so on, ad nauseam.

In a nutshell, the right is wrong. It has led to so much violence. No wonder the headline in Moscow’s Pravda newspaper in 1988, when the first ethnic clashes took place in Nagorno-Karabakh ‘in’ Azerbaijan ‘in’ the USSR, was “Vot nash Olster,” {Вот – наш Ольстер}, ‘This is our Northern Ireland.’

And little wonder then that, for many years, Russia called this right of self-determination ‘Matrioshka nationalism,’ after those famous Russian dolls. In 2006, however, when the above vote in South Ossetia suited Vladimir Putin’s policies, referendums just sort of became OK.

But back in 1990, the USSR was beginning to fall apart. There was some horrible violence in Georgia, where eight protesters were murdered by the Russians; tens were killed in Azerbaijan; and then, in 1991, eleven died in Lithuania. This last, the West decided, was the final straw. So we ditched Gorbachev and supported his protégé turned opponent, Boris Yeltsin – and that was a huge mistake. Not only were our diplomats at fault, for so too was the western media, not least The Irish Times. If something was western, like Mercedez-Benz, or if someone was supported by the West, like Yeltsin, it or he was apparently brilliant. So Yeltsin was ‘good news.’ But if an Irishman published an article on consensus in Moscow News and another in ‘Novy Mir,’ {Новы Мир}, New World, (where it featured alongside a piece by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn), that was just non-news.

So in 1991 it was Yeltsin, and then came Putin with wars in Chechnya, Georgia, and Ukraine. But Boris, not unlike his English counterpart, had only ambition: no policies, certainly no principles, just (a bottle of vodka and) ambition. At that time of 1991, because some western ‘experts’ regarded the USSR as being so similar to Yugoslavia, the West decided to ditch Slobodan Milošević as well, because he was an extreme nationalist… and support Croatia’s Franjo Tudjman instead, even though he too was an extreme nationalist.

Yes, Yugoslavia was now falling apart as well. In a nutshell, “all the [Balkan 1990s] wars started with a referendum,” (Oslobodjenje, Sarajevo’s legendary newspaper, 7.2.1999). In 1995, the settlement agreed in Dayton for Bosnia recognised the ‘facts on the ground’ – acts of aggression – which define today’s legitimate borders. It was another huge mistake, with consequences for Crimea in 2014, and now, in 2025 for Ukraine where, yet again, the aggressors – and not only the aggressors – are working to reward aggression.

But back, first, to 1991. Ukraine opted out of the collapsing USSR, for otherwise, to quote the then Ukrainian communist leader, Stanislav Hurenko, “We’re in the shit.” The new state, which the West also advised to be majoritarian, first held a referendum on independence in December that year, and every Ukrainian province or oblast voted in favour by 80% or more… except Crimea, where the Tatars abstained, and where only 54% voted ‘yes’. So another blunder was to assume that such a small majority could still be regarded as ‘the will of the people’.

In 2004, Ukraine elected Viktor Yushchenko as the new president. They used the French-type two-round system: thus, with spontaneous demonstrations in Kiev’s city centre, (with many protesters sleeping in ‘spontaneously’ USA-donated tents), Ukraine, a country of mainly Slav Christians, divided into two: Russian-speaking Orthodox in the east, and Ukrainian-speaking Catholic/Uniate in the west. The two are – or were! – so similar. But divided they had now become. It’s called democracy. And divided they now are. It’s called war.

Six years later, in 2010, another presidential election, the loser of the previous contest, the other Viktor, Yanukovich, was victorious… again by a whisker. Hence the protests in Maidan, also in the city centre. They turned violent. Horribly. So the EU changed its mind; democracy, no no, it’s not majority rule at all, it’s the opposite, it’s power-sharing. A delegation rushed over to Kiev. Too late. They arrived on the very day that Yanukovich ran into exile! Yes, too bloody late.

But the West had won? Ha! Putin was not going to do nothing. He planned another referendum in Crimea where, with the ‘assistance’ of little green men everywhere, the locals voted to re-join Russia, supposedly by 96.8% – the Tatars again abstaining. Donetsk and Luhansk now followed with their referendums, 90.0% (as stated above) and 96.2%… and, as it happened, 2014 was also the year of Scotland’s poll: little wonder the word ‘Shotlandiya’ {Шотландия} was used by Russian separatists in Luhansk. ‘Everything is connected,’ as Vladimir Vernadsky, the Russian Ukrainian, once said, {Всё связано}, vsyo svyazano.

_____________

In 2020, I was travelling overland to China, a journey which involved crossing the Caucasus mountains – it is a most beautiful border – from Georgia’s Tbilisi to Russia’s Vladikavkaz. “Zdravstvuite,” I said, (the Russian word for ‘hi’); so I was detained, interrogated with ridiculous questions like, “Where was your grandmother born?” – I didn’t know – but I was eventually released. “It would have been better,” my mini-bus taxi driver said afterwards, “if you didn’t speak Russian.”

After a night in town, I caught the train which first goes west to Rostov, and then heads north round the Ukrainian border up to Moscow. And half-way there, very near the border, the train stopped at a brand new railway station; no town, no village, nobody, just a brand new railway station in the middle of nowhere. Logistics for today’s war.

On my return to Belfast in 2021, I informed BBC Radio 4 and my Irish Green Party colleagues of what I thought was very worrying. What I do not understand, however, is (i) why US spy satellites pretended not to notice these sabres being rattled – apparently, I later learnt, there were three new railway stations – and (ii) why, therefore, the West expressed surprise in February 2022, when the Russians invaded.

_____________

So, after nearly four years of war, what’s next? The first thing to acknowledge is that there are several non-military ways of confronting violence, as Mahatma Gandhi would have told us. Ambassadors and others in Moscow could have gone to Pushkin Square and joined the local protesters – they were there – or hold their own demo. We all know how difficult it is for Russians themselves to protest; for embassy staff, however, and/or for famous, preferably old westerners – retired presidents such as Barack Obama and Mary Robinson for example, old kings like Charles, old popes, Leo, et al – a few or many could go to Moscow to just stand there, in protest, and fast maybe; it could be fantastic; at the very least, it would be a tactic which would risk the lives of only a few old folk, rather than a military tactic which could endanger those of hundreds of young Ukrainians… and Russians, let alone yet more poor civilians of all ages in Ukraine.

Secondly, the West should acknowledge its own mistakes: not only (i) supporting majoritarianism and Yeltsin, for example, but also (ii) failing to understand how Putin thinks, in blaming him for everything (including the war in Georgia which, apparently, Putin started… while watching the Olympics in Beijing?! – no no; Mikhail Saakashvili, the then president of Georgia, was just as guilty), and (iii) not accepting that it was unwise for NATO to expand eastwards. Indeed, in 1985, with the then inevitable dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, formally and finally dissolved in 1991, was NATO’s job not finished? Should not the generals et al have retired?

But we are where we are. The war is still raging. Russia, which cares little for its own soldiers, is marching westwards, slowly but relentlessly, creating yet more ‘facts on the ground.’ Ukraine is losing territory. Kiev has only the moral upper hand; the way it conducts its military offensives against Moscow’s military, as opposed to the latter’s ceaseless attacks against Ukraine’s civilians and its infrastructure, in particular its energy supplies. Kiev’s morale is still high, but for how much longer? Russia meanwhile has strength in numbers, despite having lost many men of fighting age who have fled to Georgia and elsewhere, and despite a surprisingly large number of civilians opposed to the war, at least in private.

So let us accept that any peace treaty will require compromise; that we in the West must accept some difficult changes, (and I know that many Poles and others will not like what follows), but I suggest we should remember our histories, and use them to good effect. Why not, therefore, to facilitate a cease-fire, (re-)create Mitteleuropa: a neutral, nuclear-free zone, from Finland to Greece?

_____________

A ‘Mitteleuropa’ proposal.

1. Crimea to be under joint, triple or UN authority, its local administration based, not on majority voting, but on multi-optional, preferential decision-making.

2. All other pre-2014 borders to be recognised. All Russian forces to be withdrawn from Donbas, etc., and all Ukrainian forces from Russia.

3. A neutral Mitteleuropa or Middle-Europe to be created: from Finland and the Baltic States, via Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary, to Ukraine, Moldova and the Balkans, all to be non-nuclear and not in NATO but, if desired, in the EU.

–

Peter Emerson served as an OSCE election observer in six different Ukrainian contests, 2004-14; a member of the EU’s Monitoring Mission for South Ossetia, 2008-9; addressed the OSCE / ODIHR in Warsaw on the dangers of adversarial voting procedures in 2009; and recently gave university lectures on preferential decision-making in Moscow, Mykolaiv and Kiev.

The de Borda Institute, Belfast,

Berlin, 27.11.2025

www.deborda.org

The meaning of democracy

June 2, 2025Nonviolent News, Readingsde Borda Institute, Democracy, Inclusive voting, MBC, Modified Borda Count, Peter EmersonRob Fairmichael

SO WHAT IS DEMOCRACY?

By Peter Emerson

“There was rightful reason yesterday – majoritarianism was certainly better than many a minority diktat – but today, there is little or no justification for the use of binary voting and its consequence, majority rule.”

While many advocate ‘majority rule’ and believe multi-option disputes may be reduced, fairly, to umpteen binary votes, others talk of ‘the nonduality’ of supposed opposites. So could our majoritarianism be improved? Maybe the procedure which identifies Jeremy Bentham’s “greatest good to the greatest number” – the superlative to the superlative – should be something better than comparative binary voting. Let’s first question our own beliefs, and then query those of others.

Northern Ireland’s “Are you Protestant or Catholic?” was bad enough. “Are you Russian or Ukrainian?” is another blatant nonduality. In effect, this was the referendum question posed in (1991 and) 2014 in Crimea. Yet both are Slav (although many Russians are non-Slav, like the Udmurts from the Urals and the Siberian Buryats); many Russians and most Ukrainians are mainly Orthodox Christians, with a few Catholics and Uniates in Western Ukraine; they both share a common script, Cyrillic, and linguistic differences are often just dialectical. Yet they’re killing each other! When I cycled over the border in 1990, a sea of land was interrupted by the road and a slab of concrete: welcome, it said; it was as incongruous as the supposed difference between two grains of sand on the Libyan/Egyptian border.

Likewise in Croatia in 1991: the question “Are you Serb or Croat?” disenfranchised the partners in or adult children of a mixed relationship, not to mention any non-Christians and, most importantly, those who wanted to vote for peace or a compromise. It was another stupid – and dangerous – question. It too ignited a war.

Furthermore, in any multi-option debate – and in democracies which aspire to be pluralist, (nearly) every controversy will be multi-optional – a binary vote will be yet another stupid question. Let’s look at the logic of it all.

There are two types of binary voting: a singleton asks “Option X, yes-or-no?” while a pairing poses “Option X or option Y?” With singletons, there might be a majority against everything; with a pairing in contrast, there will always be an (accurate or inaccurate but nevertheless) definite outcome. (In the Brexit debacle, Theresa May used singletons and, as predicted, lost the lot; Boris Johnson used just one pairing: ‘his deal’ versus the worst of all possibilities, ‘no deal’; so he won… of course.)

Now those who want to change a status quo, option S, may propose a motion, option M, or an amendment to make it option A. So the eventual outcome of a democratic process could be A, M or S. Imagine then a committee of 9 persons with these outcomes supported by 4, 3 and 2 persons i.e., so there’s no majority in favour of any one thing. The procedure (first devised by the Greeks 2,500 years ago) is based on two pairings: (A v M) v S. {And if there are two amendments, A and B, the procedure is {(A v B) v M} v S, for three binary votes.} But all these votes are pairings, and the Greeks also knew, there will always be a definite answer, even when a majority doesn’t like it!

Sticking to just three options, imagine a dispute about the colour of the front door: should it be Amber, Mauve or Silver; and the committee members have the following 1^st-2^nd-3^rd preferences:

4 like A-M-S, 3 opt for M-S-A and 2 prefer S-A-M. This means A is more popular than M, i.e., A > M by 6:3; it also means M > S by 7:2, and S > A by 5:4.

Therefore:

A > M > S > A …..

and it goes round and round for ever: the famous paradox of binary voting. And therefore,

+ if the order of debate is (A v M) v S, we’ll get A v S and then S; but

+ ” (M v S) v A, ” M v A. ” A; but

+ ” (S v A) v M, ” S v M ” M, so

…the answer can be anything. It depends upon the order of voting. In other words, the chair can get exactly what she wants, always with a ‘democratic’ majority in favour, either 5:4, 6:3 or even 7:2!

Now maybe a majority of the committee want something, let’s say A, which the chair doesn’t want – let’s say A:M:S = 6:2:1. In which case, he could ask the committee to consider another colour, amendment B, blue; so the vote would be {(A v B) v M} v S, or {(B v M) v S} v A, whatever. If subsequently nothing has an overall majority, she can adjust the order of voting to get, again, the answer he wants. In other words, in politics, the chairperson – or in business, the majority stake-holder – is all-powerful.

The conclusion is clear: majority voting is manipulable; some politicians are manipulative; and many decisions are manipulated… but still regarded as democratic. It must be emphasised, however, that

to take a binary vote in any controversy is at least unwise, always illogical, and at worst a cause of violence and war. If the question is not contentious, then by all means take a majority vote; but when passions are high and options are many, any resort to a binary vote will inevitably infringe upon the democratic rights of many. In a nutshell, binary ballots have exacerbated countless conflicts. Yet many seldom if ever question this methodology.

___________

Others think differently. “Asking yes-or-no questions is very unAfrican,” said Senator Ephrem Kanyarukiga at a 2003 press-conference in Kigali on the Gacacas (see below); indeed, one of the biggest European mistakes in sub-Saharan Africa was to introduce majority voting, especially to Rwanda. In 1994, the slogan used by the Interahamwe to start their appalling genocide was, “Rubanda Nyamwinshi,” (we are the majority). But “majority rule was a foreign notion,” said Nelson Mandela; our “democracy meant all were to be heard… A minority was not to be crushed by a majority.” Furthermore, this non-majoritarianism was true throughout. “The elders [would] sit under the big tree, and talk until they agreed,” was how Julius Nyerere described it, talking until they found a compromise, what we might call the option with the highest average preference: the 1^st preference of few perhaps, but a good compromise preference of many. Alas, the European rulers, wazungu, were impatient.

In Ethiopia, if two people “in the village are quarrelling, then the court convened beneath the tree… will set itself the sole task of… conciliating the warring sides, while granting to each that he is in the right,” was how Ryszard Kapuściński described it. And the Kinyarwanda word, gacaca, means grass; grass grows under a tree; African decision-making was always ‘under a tree’, where people can sit in comfort and in the shade. Rwanda’s reconciliation process was called Gacaca, and Senator Kanyarukiga was speaking at the launch of the Gacaca report.

{Exactly the same slogan, ‘we are the majority,’ “Мы Большевики – [mwe bolsheviki] (we are the Bolsheviks), the word means ‘members of the majority’ – was used by Lenin in 1903, when 19 members of the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party split from 17, the Mensheviks (those of the minority), while 3 abstained. So the 19 were not a majority at all, only the largest of three minorities.}

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Asia has also long since questioned (the human and) definitely western tendency to put everything into pairs. The Hindus were maybe the first when the Bhagavadgītā said those who are “free from pairs of opposites [are] easily liberated from bondage,” while “…the nonduality of right and wrong [is] the state of a buddha,” quotes Longchenpa, a Buddhist monk of the Nyingma tradition. This is strange to the westerner, who has often heard, “He who is not with me is against me,” Matthew 12:30; (these or similar words have also been used by politicians of various persuasions).

Needless to say, (not just non-Westerners but) many Europeans have also criticised this illogical habit of reducing every dispute into binary dichotomies. Aristotle noted that Hippodamus “has a not unreasonable dissatisfaction with simple ‘yes or no’ verdicts,” and the first to suggest a non-binary voting procedure was Pliny the Younger in the year 105: hence plurality voting, (the electoral system is called first-past-the-post). Europe then descended into the Dark Ages, and I think the first government to use a plurality vote was Chinese, or should I say Jurchen, in the year 1197. The Jīn Dynasty was debating the possibility of war with Mongolia, and the 84 ministers split three ways: 5 voted for war, 33 supported an alternating policy, and 46 wanted peace. {In 1211, however, Chinggis Khan invaded China on the way to conquering all of it: the Yuán Dynasty.}

It is interesting to note that the peoples to the North of the Great Wall, those whom Beijing called ‘barbarians’ – the Khitans, Jurchens and Mongolians – all had relatively advanced forms of governance. In all three, the leader was elected (or acclaimed) in a gathering of the nobles; indeed, with the Khitans, the procedure was brilliant (Mr Putin wouldn’t say): after three years, they would hold another assembly to decide whether or not he (he was always a he) was OK.

But what was it that prompted the Jurchens to use a multi-option vote? China had used majority votes over 2,000 years ago in the Former Hàn Dynasty, albeit only in the Imperial Court. Whether or not the binary vote was introduced because, like the European rulers in Africa, the Emperor was impatient, I know not. And I don’t know if Pliny the Younger deserves some credit for the Jurchen vote. Suffice to say contacts across the Euro-Asian landmass were numerous, even when life-expectancy gave the average individual barely time enough to procreate and raise a family.

The debate resumed in Europe in 1299 when Ramón Llull spoke of preference voting, and in 1433 Nicholas Cusanus proposed a points system (which by historical accident is called a Borda Count BC). Along with the non-preferential approval voting, this was used fairly extensively in medieval Europe.

Next, what is now called the Modified Borda Count MBC was devised in 1770, closely followed by the two-round system (a plurality plus a majority vote) and the Condorcet rule (the option which wins the most pairings). Later, in 1821, England’s Thomas Hill proposed a knock-out system, the alternative vote AV (which in elections is often called the single transferable vote, STV).

Sadly, many politicians prefer the win-or-lose binary vote. The BC/MBC, for example, was adopted in France by l’Académie des Sciences… in revolutionary times. l’Académie became l’Institut Français, and it had a new boss. Not liking the concept of consensus, he reverted to majority voting. Hence the 1803 referendum. He was the only candidate. And thus he was elected l’empereur, the world’s first ‘democratic dictator’, we might say: Napoléon. Sadly, today in France, hardly anyone knows about he who first devised the MBC, Jean-Charles de Borda.

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The MBC is the world’s first always-non-majoritarian, voting procedure. Instead of reducing everything to a short-list of two options or a series of binary battles, those concerned reduce everything to a short list of about 5 options – (ideal for a multi-party parliament). Then they vote. Let’s imagine a debate on just four options, in which 100 MPs have the following preferences:

Preferences	Number of Voters
Preferences	55	20	15	10
1^st	W	X	Y	Z
2^nd	X	Y	X	X
3^rd	Y	Z	Z	Y
4^th	Z	W	W	W

Winning every pairing, option W is the Condorcet winner. But if we take every preference cast into account, then the obvious collective choice is option X, the 1^st preference of only 20, but the 2^nd preference of everyone else!

Now you might think that the W supporters, knowing that option X is very popular amongst the other members, will give option X their last preference… but that would mean that Y would win on a score of 305, compared to W’s 265, Z’s 220 and X’s 210.

Furthermore, if the debate were about tax levels – W-X-Y-Z at 30-40-50-60% – (or about Brexit: the UK in the EU, EEA, CU or WTO), there would be a logical way for anyone to vote: W-X-Y-Z perhaps, or Z-Y-X-W, or maybe X-W-Y-Z, or X-Y-W-Z or X-Y-Z-W. But the MP who votes, say, X-Z-W-Y… 40-60-30-50%, (EEA-WTO-EU-CU), oh his sanity will doubtless be questioned by his constituents and the media.

Admittedly, the W folk could submit just three preferences, vote just W-Y-Z, and give X nothing; this would reduce their own score from (55 x 4) = 220 to (55 x 3) = 165. But their leaders might find it difficult to persuade their followers to give Y and Z a preference, while giving their obvious second-best preference nothing. And if they give their favourite W a 1^st preference only, W will lose everything – W 100, X 155, Y 140, Z 110 – and come last!

___________

Human nature being what it is, people are much more likely to vote ‘sincerely’ – as the jargon describes it, giving a true representation of their preferences – with the MBC. Why then do we still use the primitive, divisive, and often extremely inaccurate binary vote, especially when we know more precise methodologies are available? And when we know binary voting can be a cause of war!? Is it because (not just Napoléon but) many politicians like a win-or-lose polity, not least because they want to win, and win everything. Indeed, some of them would prefer to maintain this system, even if it means losing today, in the hope that they might win tomorrow. And many of them – not least the likes of Putin, Trump, Netanyahu, Modi and so on – don’t like the idea of compromise. So they won’t even consider alternatives to binary voting. Alas, nor too do many in the media and even academia. That which the late Professor Sir Michael Dummett called “the mystique of the majority,” appears to be, as it were, enshrined on a tablet of stone.

Admittedly, the COPs have realised that consensus cannot best be achieved in binary voting… but not yet have they considered multi-optional let alone preferential voting. They know the very survival of our species depends on our collective decisions – and what we decide depends so much on how we decide – so they know that COP decision-making must be non-majoritarian; yet the UN and so many others fail to consider the potential benefits of the all-inclusive MBC.

And so, to answer the question – What is Democracy? – we first state the principle: democracy is for everybody, men and women, black and white, Arab and Jew, etc., and not just for a/the majority. Secondly, we all share a responsibility to reach collective agreements. And thirdly, while everyone has the right to vote, none have the right to veto. Accordingly, in debating any controversy, nothing is binary, and the democratic decision is the option which gains the highest average preference. An average involves every MP, so governance should be based on all-party power-sharing. There was rightful reason yesterday – majoritarianism was certainly better than many a minority diktat – but today, there is little or no justification for the use of binary voting and its consequence, majority rule.

Accordingly, to take a current conflict, given that the population of Israel is 20% Arab, the members of the Knesset should be about 20 (and not just 10%) Arab, and their percentage in the government should also be about 20% and not, as is currently the case, zero. As in Northern Ireland, the Balkans, the Caucasus, Rwanda, Ukraine, and throughout the Middle East, majoritarianism was/is part of the problem. So maybe those who want peace in Gaza and beyond should first initiate preferential decision-making and all-party power-sharing in the Dáil.

Peter Emerson

Inner Mongolia, 23.5.2025.

www.deborda.org

Good COP, bad COP: Decision making at an international level

February 2, 2025Nonviolent News, ReadingsConsensus, COP, Decision making, International, Majority voting, Peter EmersonRob Fairmichael

by Peter Emerson

The rules for decision-making in conferences like the recent COP29 in Baku were ‘agreed to’ in 1991. The choice was either (i) majority voting; (ii) consensus, by which is meant everyone agrees; or (iii) consensus but, if it fails, simple or weighted majority voting as a last resort.

To (iii), Saudi Arabia and its OPEC companions said ’no’ – it must be (their type of) ‘consensus’, with every country having a veto (the very opposite of consensus)! And with huge encouragement from the US oil lobby, the parties ‘agreed’. In a nutshell, everything was based on the principle (sic) of ‘either-I-win…-or-I-don’t-lose.’

Germany amongst others proposed a ‘double-majority’ process: so for example, if the small island states and the OPEC members both said ‘yes’ then, (like consociationalism in the GFA), ‘yes’ it would be.

Everyone, apparently, likes the 4,500-year-old binary vote, and no-one, it seems, in the UN (or in Belfast) has considered the 2,000-year-old multi-option voting or, better still, the 250-year-old preferential vote. And ‘no-one’ means none of the parties and, as far as I can see, none of the academics commenting on all this.

So ‘consensus’ is the procedure, which means if “there are no stated objections to a proposed decision,” it is passed. Or, in other words, decisions are subject to the veto, any country’s veto.

Then came the arguments, as in COP16 where it was argued, “consensus does not mean unanimity… one delegation does not have the right to veto.” (https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-the-challenge-of-consensus-decision-making-in-un-climate-negotiations/). But ambiguities remain. Hence, in Glasgow’s COP26, there were huge arguments over “phase out” or “phase down” – as always, all very binary.

Overall, just as politicians in parliament’s don’t like compromise, so too, countries in the COPs will not accept a decision-making procedure which almost guarantees the final decision will be a compromise.

But the COPs are (still) dominated by the oil lobby. Hence the call for a World Citizens’ Assembly in The Ecologist.

–

Peter Emerson is director of the de Borda Institute, www.deborda.org

Remembering Alexei Navalny and helping Ukraine

March 1, 2024Nonviolent News, ReadingsAlexei Navalny, Majoritarianism, Peter Emerson, Russia, Ukraine, Western mistakesRob Fairmichael

by Peter Emerson

In view of Alexei Navalny’s heroic life and tragic death, and the continuing horrors of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, it is important to understand our own mistakes in Russia’s recent history. To quote the Russian/Ukrainian philosopher, Vladimir Vernadsky, “everything is connected,” (‘всё связано’).

–

When Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union of 1985, this was the end of the Cold War. In theory, it should have led to demobilisation and huge waves of disarmament. But no; and in fact, since that time, NATO has expanded. Many western ‘experts’ went to Moscow to advise him, not on peace, but on privatisation and democratisation, with a focus on, respectively, the free market and majoritarianism, i.e., majority voting/majority rule. But the original Russian translation of this term was ‘большевизм’ bolshevism; (a replacement has now been concocted, majoritarnost).

Two years later, ethno-religious clashes erupted in Nagorno-Karabakh in the Caucasus. The headline in Moscow’s main newspaper Pravda was “Вот наш Ольстер,” (‘Vot nash Olster’), “This is our Northern Ireland.” In effect, the right of self-determination was a cause of conflict. After all, if Ireland can leave the UK, or if Azerbaijan can leave the USSR, then Northern Ireland could leave Ireland, or an enclave like Nagorno-Karabakh could leave Azerbaijan. And the Caucasus was full of enclaves. “Why should I be in the minority in your state when you could be in the minority in mine?” asked one Vladimir Gligorov in Yugoslavia, a land of one language, two scripts, three religions, four …. five republics, and six neighbours. And like the famous Russian dolls, the matrioshki, inside every majority there was yet another minority.

In those days, the Soviet Union was still a one-party state. In their first elections of 1989, therefore, every candidate was a communist… but there were green, red, blue, brown – all sorts of communists. And those who might otherwise have been in a Green Party were members of ‘the ecological union.’ They held a meeting in Moscow, in 1989, and there I met Zurab Zhvania from Georgia. We spoke about consensus and all that, and so, one year later, he invited me to go to Tbilisi to give a press conference (in Russian, my Georgian isn’t) on power-sharing.

Now initially, the West supported the maintenance of the Soviet Union, not least because of the oil in Siberia. We wanted this stuff to be available, which requires inter alia political stability. And we wanted it to be cheap, so we advised firstly, a free market – Friedman economics. But no country should ever adopt a free market at a time of deficits in the basics, like food. The law was passed; lots of unscrupulous went to the supermarket, bought up everything, set up a table outside the metro stations, and sold it all at ten times the price. Hence the oligarchs. Secondly, the West advised a freely convertible currency, i.e., Russia should float the rouble. It sank. And Russian oil was cheap.

But back to self-determination. There soon followed disturbances for independence in Georgia, Azerbaijan – Ukraine initially was relatively quiet – and then, in 1991, in Lithuania, which was different, apparently; it was more ‘European’. At this point, the West made a huge mistake: we ditched the reformer, Gorbachev, in favour of the unprincipled Boris Yeltsin. Like his English namesake, this man had one thing only (apart from a love of the vodka): ambition. Originally, he was Gorbachev’s protégé, but when given the chance, he wanted power. Over what? Oh anything, or even everything. Over the Soviet Union? And when Yeltsin realised his path to power would be better served by supporting the break-away republics, he did so. And he could become not a Soviet, only a Russian tsar.

Now Russia, in a way, was similar to England, in that in their day, both ruled empires, and both thought God was on their side. Russia with its capital of Moscow, was the third Rome. Christianity, it was argued, started in Rome, moved to Constantinople, and the one true faith was now in Moscow. And with God on its side, Russia survived the invasion of Poland during the Times of Troubles, at the turn of the 17^th Century; defeated Sweden in 1709, when Peter the Great won the Battle of Poltava (which is in today’s Ukraine); halted Napoléon at the Battle of Borodino in 1812 (and hence Tchaikovsky’s famous overture); and won the Great Patriotic War against Hitler. And today, the same good God was going to save Russia from the advances of NATO.

Now just as many a Moscovite regarded the two adjectives – Russian and Soviet – as very similar, so too (in days not that long gone), many Londoners regarded the words British and English as all but synonymous. When the Soviet Union was established, or concocted, the Bolsheviks decided that every republic should have its ‘own’ communist party; hence the Georgian, the Lithuanian, etc. But there wasn’t a Russian one. Oops. In 1989, the ‘error’ was realised; the Russian Communist Party held its founding congress. Yeltsin, now a rival to Gorbachev, stood for the presidency. But Gorbachev’s man won, and Yeltsin lost. The latter then ripped up his party card and converted to Orthodox Christianity. It was just so obvious that the man was ambitious, and nothing else. Sadly, the western media, including The Irish Times, decided to support him. (Western journalists often shared the same block of flats, and frequently the same interpretation of events.)

(By this time, my co-author and I had written an article in Moscow News on consensus, which had created a huge amount of interest… in Russia! As a result, we published a number of other essays, not least one in Novy Mir (New World), Russia’s leading literary journal with a print run of three million, where we appeared alongside Alexandr Solzhenitsyn. The Irish Times, I’m afraid, was just not interested in these achievements of another Irishman.)

In 1991, then, Yeltsin took over, not as a Soviet imperialist, but as a Russian one. The last thing he wanted was the right of self-determination to be popular among the various peoples in Russia, the Sumi and Komi up near the Arctic, the Tartars and Maris on the western side of the Urals, and all the various folk in the Northern Caucasus, let alone the dozens in Siberia, the Buryats near Lake Baikal or the Chukchis on the Pacific coast, for example. (In fact, the authorities themselves weren’t sure how many different peoples there were; the official figure was between 60 and 120). So Russia opposed any attempt by any people to hold a referendum and break away – matrioshki nationalism, they called it – and hence Yeltsin’s first war in Chechnya in 1994.

The Caucasus was in a mess. There were Georgians (Orthodox) in Chechnya (Muslim), fighting the Russians (Orthodox); Russians and Chechens in Abkhazia (Muslim) fighting the Georgians. And Russia was also supporting another enclave, South Ossetia, where everyone was Orthodox. Violence, as always, was breeding yet more violence. There followed a second war in Chechnya in 1999, and hence too Yeltsin’s own protégé, Vladimir Putin.

The Soviet Union was now dead, all the republics were now independent, including in ’91 Ukraine, a country of mainly Christian Slavs – with just a few minorities like the Crimean Tatars. Unlike Russia, other lands were also mainly Slav: Poland, Czechoslovakia (as was), Bulgaria and, not least, Yugoslavia (the southern Slavs).

Unfortunately, the West again advised majoritarianism – and Ukraine now divided into two: a Russian-speaking Orthodox ‘half’ versus a Ukrainian-speaking Catholic/Uniate ‘half’. That is what often happens when decisions are taken in binary votes, and when elections are conducted in the two-round system. The divisions worsened. In 2004, Viktor Yushchenko won the presidential election, by a whisker, and he was pro-West; in the spontaneous celebrations which followed in Kiev, some were flying confederate flags, others the Georgian flag, and many were sleeping in (spontaneous?) tents supplied from abroad. But Yushchenko was the president and, with the polity of majority rule, he could ensure Ukraine was pro-West. (At the time, I wrote in Fortnight that Ukraine could perhaps join the EU, but not NATO. As happens so often in human history, one side fails to understand how the other lot think.)

Six years later, the other Viktor, Yushchenko’s old rival, Yanukovich won, again by a whisker; oh dear, was the reaction; he was pro-Russia, and it was still majority rule. The protests in Maidan turned violent. Only in 2014 did the West change its mind: democracy was not majority rule after all, apparently; as in Northern Ireland, it was (sort of) decided that it was now power-sharing. An EU (EC as was) delegation rushed over to Kiev but…too late; on the day it arrived, Yanukovich ran into exile.

Meanwhile, the newly independent Georgia had also divided, only to fight two ethno-wars in the enclaves of Abkhazia and South Ossetia – (there was very nearly another war in Adjara) – and all over self-determination. There then followed the civil war, after which Eduard Shevardnadze restored some order. Next, in 2004, came the so-called velvet revolution, which wasn’t a revolution at all, really, but the elections did involve a changing of the guard. Shevardnadze, however, was still in his dacha in Tbilisi, not far from the hotel where I and other OSCE election observers were staying. Georgia now had a new prime minister, (my colleague), Zurab Zhvania. In 2005, he died. In a gas leak? That was the official line, but many Georgians thought he’d been murdered on the orders of the then President, Mikhail Saakashvili. They also believed that if Zhvania had still been in office on 1st August 2008, Georgia would not have gone to war with Russia in South Ossetia. But war it was. One week later – with Putin in Beijing for the Olympics – Russia recorded its first casualties. He rushed home. That war was started not only by Putin.

He now saw that referendums could be, er, useful. Russia had opposed the referendum in Kosova – yet more matrioshki nationalism – but he changed his mind (again) to support the 2006 referendum for self-determination in South Ossetia (and ignored the other referendum in Ahalgori, a Georgian enclave in South Ossetia, which voted in the opposite way). It was a repetition of what had happened in Croatia where in 1991 the Catholics had voted for independence while, one week earlier, the Orthodox had voted for the opposite; and where, in the name of democracy, partners in and adult children of mixed relationships were just, well, disenfranchised,

Back to Ukraine where, in 2014, Putin’s man Yanukovich had lost and run away, and Putin doesn’t like losing. So he wanted Crimea to reverse its 1991 referendum decision in support of Ukraine and instead to declare independence – (from Ukraine); (such a collective vacillation is also catered for in the Belfast Agreement – the seven-year ’never-end-em’). After the shambolic, ‘little green men’ referendum in Crimea, there followed other dubious polls in Donetsk and Luhansk, and 2014, you will recall, was also the year of Scotland’s referendum. A Russian separatist in Luhansk ‘justified’ his call to arms with the word Shotlandiya Шотландия, (Scotland). “Everything is [indeed] connected.”

After yet more violence, Putin wanted Donetsk and Luhansk, not to be independent at all, but to be incorporated – (into Russia). He’d changed his mind again, (like the EU). So in 2022 more referendums were held and, supposedly, apparently, and democratically, a majority of the people had also changed their minds, and quite by chance of course, in exactly the same way. This is all democratic nonsense; in many instances, as shown by Napoléon, Hitler and countless others, majority votes in referendums, parliaments and party congresses, identify not the will of the given electorate, but the will of the author(s) of the question. (Brexit, of course, a glaring exception, backfired.)

–

Can we never question our obsession with the 2,500-year-old binary vote? Even on problems that are obviously multi-optional, must everything be reduced/distorted, either into a dichotomy, as in the 2016 Brexit referendum, or to a number of binary questions, as in Theresa May’s indicative (sic) votes? In a similar fashion, the Good Friday Agreement says that Northern Ireland has to be either British or Irish; that, as in Croatia and South Ossetia, there are these two possibilities, only; that other options, for a compromise and/or peace, or an interregnum, whatever, shall not even exist let alone be on the ballot paper.

And the world blunders on, despite the facts that:

+ “all the wars in the former Yugoslavia started with a referendum,” (Oslobodjenje, 7.2.1999);

+ the same now applies to the conflict in Ukraine;

+ both Milorad Dodik in Republika Srpska want, and Anatoly Bibilov in South Ossetia wanted, yet more binary referendums, as do Sinn Féin and the SNP in their bailiwicks, as well as some Catalans, Taiwanese, Baluchis, etc., etc., ad nauseam.

Finally, and, even more importantly,

+ majoritarianism, the majority coalition in the Knesset, is (not the but) a cause of the horrible violence that is now the cause of so much suffering and devastation in the Middle East.

–

So, what is to be done now? As before but now more urgently than ever, we must support those many Russians who are opposing the war, in particular, Yulia Navalnaya. The British and US ambassadors recently laid flowers at the memorial for her husband. They should do more to help (and, as I suggested earlier) support all forms of non-violent anti-war demonstrations, if only by their presence.

In addition, it would be wise to acknowledge some of our earlier mistakes, and to change those of our political structure which Putin is also using for his military aims: simplistic electoral systems and false-flag binary referendums.

As mentioned above, another complication comes from the war in the Middle East. Here too, we should question the western political structures which, inter alia, allow Netanyahu in the name of democracy to rule with Israel’s most extreme right-wing majority coalition ever! Suffice also to say that the ideal, a one-state solution, could not work if it were to be based on majority voting; if only from that point of view, we should be seeking a more inclusive form of decision-making.

A sense of urgency is required, not least because Putin is now trying to woo the Palestinians (and the ‘global South’), implying that he opposes (Israeli) violence and that his ‘special military operation’ is an act of defence against western militarism as seen, in his eyes, by the expansion of NATO.

It is important, of course – and I wrote as a pacifist who therefore believes in the principle of minimum force – to continue to supply arms and ammunitions. In many horrible instances of violence – when someone attacks a child, for example, or a violent man attacks a woman – the true pacifist will never do nothing: he/she should always intervene, if need be by putting their own body between the attacker and the victim. But we should also emphasise our long-term aspirations for a world without nuclear weapons; for a world where military expenditures are reduced; for a world in which all nations, and all parties/factions, cooperate to confront the existential problems of Climate Change.

Conflicts in the Middle East, NI and elsewhere

February 1, 2024Nonviolent News, ReadingsBinary voting, Conflicts, de Borda, Majoritarianism, Middle East, Peter EmersonRob Fairmichael

by Peter Emerson

We start with a theoretical solution to the problem; next, we examine its most recent causes; and then propose possible steps for a less violent future.

The problem

The ideal would be a one-state solution, a country where peoples of different ethno-religious backgrounds share a territory where religion is not regarded as a distinction of nationhood. This has often been the case, not only in Israel and throughout the Middle East. Suffice for the moment to say that a single state of Israel/Palestine combined could not work, at all, if its governance were based on majority voting and majority rule.

Other jurisdictions have also been based on a religious affiliation: they include Northern Ireland, Pakistan and India, Libya, Croatia and Timor Leste. Unfortunately, in western democratic practice, problems are invariably reduced to dichotomies or series of dichotomies, and even though more sophisticated decision-making procedures have long since been devised, as often as not, decisions are still taken by a (simple, weighted or consociational) majority vote.

An alternative solution would involve the two states, Israel and Palestine, as neighbours: the former as is, contiguous, the latter split between Gaza and the West Bank. At the moment, there’s only one properly constituted nation-state, Israel, a country with a population of about 20% Arab. Therefore, in a democracy, (for as long as ethno-religious origins are considered to be so important) its parliament should also be about 20% Arab; Israel uses a closed-list form of PR, and currently, there are about 10% Arab elected representatives.

Secondly – or so it could be argued if democracy was for everybody and not just a majority – any government of ten or more ministers should include at least one or two Arabs; today’s cabinet in the Knesset consists of 28 ministers, so the number of Arabs should be three (on 10%) or six (on 20%). There are none. There were some in the previous administration, but Netanyahu now presides over the most extreme right-wing government of its history. Apparently, in current democratic practice, you can go to bed with the devil, as long as your cabinet is at least 50% + 1 of the parliament, it shall be regarded (by most) as democratic.

In a similar fashion, in 2017, Britain’s Tories teamed up with a bunch whose policies (but not necessarily the persons) were extremist, the DUP; the Labour Party did something similar in 1978; (so both of the UK’s big parties have and have always had a vested interest in keeping NI in the UK, so its majoritarian – and sometimes hung – parliament would always include a small number of malleable outsiders). Meanwhile, elsewhere, other extremist parties have also prospered. Austria’s coalition of 1999 included its Freedom Party on 52 seats but excluded the Socialists on 65. A similar party was in government (with no ministers) in the Netherlands in 2010, and in the wake of their 2023 election, the Dutch may soon be ruled by a coalition led by this party. Meanwhile, with its Alternative für Deutschland the right in Germany and elsewhere is also on the rise.

Majority coalitions, they say, lead to stable government… yet in some instances, as in Israel in 2015, the government has had a majority of just one MP: a tail which then wags the dog.

Israel often claims it is the only democracy in the Middle East. So part of the problem there is the fact that democracy here, as practised, is so adversarial; that some electoral systems are not preferential and proportional; that most cabinets are not all-party power-sharing administrations – indeed, the only one currently in existence but not in a conflict zone is in Switzerland; and thirdly, that decision-making almost everywhere is based on majority votes.

Recent causes

The most immediate cause of the current war was the horrific violence of October last year. The situation has been exacerbated by Israel’s excessive use of force since those events. Apart from outsiders like the USA, the UK and Russia, other players in the conflict include Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and of course Iran; their histories in this problem go back a little further.

Lebanon

In 1943, Beirut benefited from the fact that there were no ‘western experts’ (because the latter were all fighting WWII), so the Lebanese devised their own political structure. They now have an almost brilliant electoral system, albeit based on Britain’s useless first-past-the-post. In any constituency of, say, 50:25:25 Sunni:Maronite:Shi’a, parties may nominate candidates, but only if they too are in the same ratio of 2:1:1; accordingly, there shall be 4 or a multiple of 4 elected representatives, always in the same 2:1:1 ratio. Voters may vote for only one party, which means in this instance they also vote for four people in that same religious ratio of 2:1:1; if they don’t want a particular candidate, they can cross him/her out and put in another one… of the same religion! In effect, then, the election takes religion out of politics. Well, not quite; but it was a nice idea.

If NI also had that rule, if standing two candidates in North Belfast, for example, the DUP would have to include a Catholic!

Their elections, then, are pretty good. Their religiously most diverse constituency elected 17 representatives, so there were lots and lots of candidates! And a typical result for a 128-member parliament included Shi’a, Sunni, Maronite, Greek and Armenian Orthodox and Catholic, Druze, Alawite and Protestant MPs… as well as, just in case, one more for the minorities!

The Taif Agreement also catered for a form of power-sharing, with appointments to various important posts – the likes of the president, premier, and speaker – subject to religious affiliation: a Maronite, a Sunni and a Shi’a, respectively. Sadly, therefore, their power-sharing arrangement perpetuated the very problem it was supposed to overcome.

In like manner, the designations used in Stormont in consociational votes enforce the sectarianism they were designed to obviate.

In all, the authors of the Taif Agreement accepted the fact that, in every election, the voters should have a good choice. But, they continued, in decision-making, both the MPs in parliament and the voters in any referendum would have choices which were only binary.

Similarly, the authors of the Belfast Agreement agreed that, when choosing their local representatives, the voters in any council or Assembly election should be offered a choice of more than two candidates; and we still have PR-STV. When making decisions, however – ah, that’s different, apparently – the MLAs in Stormont or the voters in a referendum are to be given choices that are only binary.

This tendency is universal. In 1949 in Germany, which had caused so many to suffer in, and/or as a consequence of, the Weimar Republic – which had a polity based on PR elections but majority voting in the parliament – the new post-Hitler settlement was to include a different form of PR in elections, but decision-making in the Bundestag still had to be binary, apparently. It’s in the Basic Law: “The fact that members of the Bundestag take decisions on behalf of the whole German people is a requirement for majority decision-making.” This oxymoron is pure gobbledegook! There is however one good proviso: all future elections of the chancellor are to be so-called constructive votes, so nobody is to vote ‘no’; rather, if they didn’t like option A, they could propose option B. In the USA, where two of the founding fathers actually invented a form of PR, decision-making in Congress has to be dichotomous. Trump is only the denouement of a binary polity.

And so it goes on, in Moscow, Beijing and Tehran, decision-making on all sorts of disputes – and nearly all of them are multi-optional – is invariably binary! Even in Pyongyang, the North Korean constitution, article 97, stipulates majority voting, (not that it’s used very often).

Lebanon today is a multi-multi society, with a very fragile form of power-sharing in Beirut, while the mainly Shi’a sect of Hezbollah is concentrated in the South, close to the Israeli border.

Syria

The Golan Heights were taken by Israel, by force, during the six-day war of 1967.

In the wake of the Arab Spring in Tunisia in 2010, democracy was on the move. Whereupon a Sunni majority in Syria decided to oppose the rule of Bashar al-Assad, a member of a Shi’a sect called the Alawites; therefore, he belonged to a minority of a minority. The protest started in 2011, peacefully, but it turned violent within a year; the rest is yet more bloody history.

Yemen

Yemen has long since been split, with a mainly Sunni population in the eastern ‘half’ opposing the Shi’as in what had been the British colony of Aden, where today’s Houthis are based. Yet again, the country is divided in a majority-versus-minority conflict, as if being a majority (no matter how defined) gives them the right to rule.

A civil war started in 2014, with the Houthis trying to take over the whole country. Saudi Arabia intervened, militarily, on the side of the Sunnis (of course), while Iran supported and armed the Houthis (again of course). In 2022, the UN brokered a cease-fire, but the events in Gaza have prompted the Houthis to attack ships in the Red Sea, supposedly in support of their fellow religionists in Gaza in Palestine.

Iran

In 1906, in Iran, Britain discovered oil, which was sort of OK, and then decided that the oil was not Iranian but British. Mossadegh thought that was not OK, so in 1953, he held a referendum to nationalise it all, and he won, massively. That was just not good enough, apparently, so the British organised a coup, installed the Shah, and he had a referendum to reverse that decision… massively. Next, in 1979, the revolutionary Ayatollah had another poll, this one to prove that the people did not want to be socialist (by 99.8%) or capitalist (by 99.9%) and actually preferred to be Islamic (by 99.5%). As usual, a majority identifies, not the will of the people, not the will of the majority, but the will of he – it’s usually a he – who sets the question. The turnout was always high… except in the last plebiscite it was only 65%, as the Shi’a voted ‘yes’, of course, but the mainly Sunni minority of Turkmens in the North abstained, of course.

In like manner, the Catholics boycotted our 1973 border poll, as did the Orthodox in Croatia’s independence plebiscite of 1991, so too the Muslims in Nagorno-Karabakh in 1994, and the Georgians in South Ossetia in 2006, etc., etc., ad nauseam. Yet still there are people in these islands who want binary referendums, and academics in University College London and elsewhere who think of nothing else.

The future

But back to the problem of violence in the Middle East. There are at least two ways we can help:

a) at home, we could practice a form of democracy that, at least in theory, could work in a one-state solution;

and

b) in the conflict zone, where maybe a few of the great and good – religious leaders of all faiths, politicians, and retired but famous folk from many professions, with Arabic and Hebrew speakers among them – could walk, slowly, from Gaza to Jerusalem.

At Home

If we want all-party power-sharing in the Knesset, we should first practise it ourselves: the British people electing their parliament in a colour-blind, preferential and proportional system (like PR-STV); the British and Irish elected representatives then voting in a procedure which allows every member to choose, in order of preference, both those whom they wish to be in cabinet, and the ministry in which they want each of their nominees to serve – so the ballot paper is tabular. Like PR-STV, this matrix vote entices every party to nominate only as many as it thinks it can get elected; and it’s based on a Modified Borda Count which entices the parliamentarians to complete a full ballot. In effect, therefore, the voting procedure encourages every elected representative to cross the gender gap, the party divide and even the sectarian chasm! In the Knesset, it would mean that the a 28-member cabinet would invariably include about three to six Arabs.

Both Dáil Éireann and the House of Commons should not only preach all-party power-sharing; they should practise it. So too should Stormont, such that every executive would be cross-party; and governance, throughout these islands, could be more inclusive.

In the Dáil, Sinn Féin would also be in cabinet. In Ankara, the Kurds would be sharing power. And in the House of Commons, with only 1.5% of the MPs, the DUP would never be in government, (unless perhaps their number included one individual of exceptional talent). Meanwhile, the AfD would be in government in Berlin, the PVV in The Hague, and so on. And such cabinets would take all decisions in consensus, either verbally, and/or by using an MBC.

In the Middle East

By definition, in the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi perhaps, anti-war protests should always be ‘peace-ful’. Those involved – the more famous the better – should best be old: persons like the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury, an Imam, a Rabbi, a Buddhist, a Hindu, perhaps a serving or retired president like Mary Robinson, Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Angela Merkel, along with a few interpreters and some younger persons perhaps to care for the donkeys carrying the tents and so on. They could walk, slowly, meet the victims, discuss the problems with whomsoever, not least the press… and talk peace.

–

Peter Emerson

The de Borda Institute

www.deborda.org

Ukraine – The causes and lessons of war

February 1, 2023Nonviolent NewsBinary voting, Causes of war, Majoirity voting, Peter Emerson, UkraineRob Fairmichael

by Peter Emerson

Introduction

There are numerous electoral systems in the world, quite a few decision-making voting systems, and several forms of governance. The first vary enormously. The usual forms of the latter two, however, do not; decision-making is usually taken by majority vote, occasionally in autocracies and theocracies, but nearly always in democracies; while elected parliaments are invariably ruled by a majority – a majority party or coalition. Politics therefore is adversarial, for majority voting allows the voter only to be either ‘for’ or ‘against’, and even in plural societies like Belgium, consociational voting ensures that decision-making remains dichotomous. Governance may sometimes involve all-party power-sharing, as in Switzerland and Bosnia, but here too reliance is placed on binary decision-making; a form of rule based on preferential decision-making has yet to be practised.

Likewise, when self-determination is exercised, binary voting is the norm. It implies that a minority may secede if a majority of that minority so decides… but that act of secession might produce another minority: when Ireland opted out of the UK, NI opted out of opting out, and remained in the UK. So too in the Caucasus, when Georgia left the USSR, Abkhazia and South Ossetia tried to leave Georgia; it was the same again in Yugoslavia, with Bosnia, and then Republika Srpska; and now too again with the USSR: Ukraine, Donetsk and Krasnoarmiisk.

Fearful that such referendums could lead to the break-up of the Russian Federation, and mindful that their Balkan ally, Serbia, opposed any referendum in Kosovo (as they spell it), Russia used to call the practice of holding these plebiscites ‘matryoshka nationalism’ after their famous dolls: every majority contains a minority, next a smaller one, and maybe too a miniscule one. Little wonder that when the first ethnic clashes in the USSR occurred, in 1988 in Nagorno-Karabakh in the Caucasus, a headline in Moscow read “This is our Northern Ireland,” {Вот наш Ольстер (Vot nash Olster).}

As noted, binary vote decision-making is ubiquitous. In October 1991, at a cross-party conference in Belfast, one of the guests was a native of Sarajevo, Mr Petar Radji-Histić: a war was already raging in Croatia, despite or rather because of their two referendums; so we opposed any binary referendum in Bosnia which was, after all, 40:30:20 Moslem:Orthodox:Catholic – so there was no majority anyway! Alas, via the Badinter Commission, the EU (EC) insisted that Bosnia hold such a poll, and on the day of the vote, the barricades went up in Sarajevo. Looking back, “all the wars in the former Yugoslavia started with a referendum,” (Oslobodjenje, Sarajevo’s famous newspaper, 7.2.1999). The same quotation now applies to Ukraine.

‘Democratisation’

In 1985, when Mikhail Gorbachev came to power, western advisers advocated ‘majoritarianism’, {even though the Russian word for ‘majoritarianism’ is ‘большевизм’ (bolshevism)}. Not least because of all this advice, Moscow’s new polity consisted of the French two-round electoral system, the ubiquitous binary vote in parliamentary decision-making, and a form of governance based on majority rule. The problems were only beginning…

… most especially with self-determination. Nevertheless, despite the 1989 violence in Baku and Tbilisi, the west continued to support Gorbachev, but not after the 1991 fatalities in Lithuania. The West now changed its mind and backed the populist, Boris Yeltsin; it was a huge mistake. The latter supported the break-up of the USSR (because he wanted power) but opposed any ‘matryoshka nationalism’ for the break-up of the Russian Federation: (not unlike another Boris), of principles he had none. There followed the wars in Chechnya and, in 1999, the emergence of Vladimir Putin. And because Yugoslavia was considered to be similar to the USSR, western support for the nationalist Serb, Slobodan Milošević, was transferred to another extremist, the Croat Franjo Tudjman, and this second western U-turn exacerbated the wars in the Balkans.

But back to the newly independent and now majoritarian Ukraine. In 1991, in a referendum on independence, every oblast (region), including Crimea, voted in favour. Using the same very divisive two-round electoral system, presidential elections in 2004 led to a final between the two Viktors, Yanukovich and Yushchenko. Thus the one country of mainly Slav Christians divided into two ‘halves’: the largely pro-Russian, Russian-speaking Orthodox to the South and East, as opposed to the mainly pro-EU, Ukrainian-speaking, Catholic or Uniate others. Yushchenko won, albeit by a whisker and his right to majority rule was supported by the EC/(EU).

The Caucasus was still rumbling. In 2004 in Georgia, the more diplomatic Eduard Shevardnadze lost the election in Tbilisi in what was called the Rose Revolution, but the ‘changing of the guard’ was only the result of the ballot. Then, however, the new, more pacifist premier, Zurab Zhvania, was murdered… maybe on the orders of the new President Mikhail Saakashvili, or so many Georgians think, and power was now the monopoly of the latter.

Moscow itself now did a huge U-turn: despite Kosovo, Russia chose to support (matryoshka) referendums – some of them anyway – backing South Ossetia to opt out of Georgia… whereupon, of course, a Georgian enclave called Akhalgori (Eredvi) – like Northern Ireland – tried to opt out of opting out: more matryoshki, and yet more violence! Saakashvili waited for Putin to go to Beijing for the 2008 Olympics… and then invaded. Putin responded in the only way he knows how, and the result was war.

Two years later in Ukraine, the other Viktor, the pro-Russian Yanukovich – as noted, he had lost the 2004 contest – won the 2010 election, again by a whisker, the pro-western bloc having divided into Yushchenko versus Julia Timoshenko. (*1) There followed the protests in Maidan which, in February 2014, turned horribly violent. The EU then performed its own U-turn: democracy, apparently, was no longer majority rule, it was now power-sharing! A delegation rushed over to Kiev… and arrived on the very day that Yanukovich ran into exile.

Putin doesn’t like losing. So in March, he ran a second referendum in Crimea. As mentioned above, Crimea had already voted to be in Ukraine; but now, supposedly, it changed its mind. (The Belfast Agreement caters for a similar vacillation, every seven years or so.) (*2) In May came referendums in Donetsk and Luhansk… and the word Scotland, Шотландия (Shotlandiya) – (2014, of course, was also the year of Scotland’s referendum) – was used by Russian separatists in Luhansk, to ‘justify’ the unjustifiable.

Thus, just as the UK doll had splintered into Ireland and then Northern Ireland, so too the Ukrainian matryoshka broke into the small and infinitesimal: part of Ukraine tried to opt out and become an independent Donetsk, supposedly; whereupon the Dobropillia and Krasnoarmiisk region (*3) tried to opt out of opting out and to opt back into Ukraine, in another referendum! Nearly three million people voted, and 69.1% chose Ukraine.

This particular vote Putin chose to ignore. (Just as many westerners had ignored the first referendum in Kosova, in 1991. Another instance was when Croatia voted to leave Yugoslavia, the Krajina (*4) voted to leave Croatia – as in South Ossetia, this was another pair of mutually exclusive referendums!)

Next, in 2022, Putin changed his mind: he now wanted Donetsk to be, not independent (of Ukraine), but something quite different, to be incorporated (into Russia). And apparently, by some strange coincidence, in yet another (bloody) referendum, a majority of the people of Donetsk had, it is said, done the same.

Lessons

At worst, then, the majority vote is (and always was) a means by which the powerful can manipulate those with less power: at worst, both in parliament and/or in a referendum, it can be false flag, a provocation to violence. Accordingly, if only for the sake of Ukraine, those in Scotland (*5) and Ireland who might wish to change their own constitutional status should campaign for multi-option or better still preferential ballots. (How else can a W-I-S-E option, such as a Wales-Ireland-Scotland-England federation, get onto the ballot paper?)

There is another reason. If it is seen that the 2014 and then 2022 binary referendums in Donetsk etc. do in fact succeed, it will encourage others elsewhere who are already rattling their sabres and ballot boxes, like the current and former presidents, Milorad Dodik in Republika Srpska and Anatoly Bibilov in South Ossetia, respectively; a poll in either could easily lead to yet more violence and war. What’s more, tensions in Kosova (to use the Albanian spelling) are yet again on the rise.

Meanwhile, the biggest lesson for the two governments here in these islands (and elsewhere) is as follows: both the House of Commons and Dáil Éireann should practice that which they preach: governance in both – indeed, governance in every democracy – should be based on broad coalitions, governments of national unity, forms of power-sharing based on preferential decision-making. If only for the sake of Ukraine.

Furthermore, as I first wrote in Fortnight in 2005, Ukraine itself should adopt a form of power-sharing.

Postscript

To every violent horror, there is always a pacifist response. Putin has ‘declared war’ (or special military operation) and thus, apparently, he now has the ‘right’ to kill. Those countries opposed to such violence should ‘declare peace’, so to say that until Russia withdraws from Ukraine and ceases all acts of violence therein, they will ignore all the norms of peaceful coexistence and diplomacy, and that their personnel in Russia – ambassadors and so forth – shall be at liberty to join the anti-war protests in Pushkin Square and elsewhere, for as long as such protests remain non-violent.

In addition, any (old) persons of influence outside Russia – the Pope, a retired Archbishop of Canterbury, an Imam and a Rabbi, along with a former US president perhaps, a British former prime minister, an ex-film star, whosoever – could endeavour to undertake a Gandhian protest of some sort, either in Moscow, or if that’s not possible in Minsk, or maybe just on the Belarus border: a silent vigil, a protest, a fast. It might be a policy which achieves nothing yet risks the lives of those involved; in contrast, other policies have put the lives of Ukrainians at risk.

–

Peter Emerson

Director, the de Borda Institute

www.deborda.org

A Russian-speaker; an OSCE election observer, six times in Ukraine, twice in Georgia and once in Russia; a member of the EU Monitoring Mission in Mtskheta for South Ossetia, 2008-9, and author of The Punters’ Guide to Democracy, (Springer, Heidelberg).

Footnotes:

(*1) Her bloc’s acronym was spelt B (for block), YU (for Julia), T (for Timoshenko), so to spell BYUT (‘short’ for beauty).

(*2) A procedure best called a ‘never-end-’em’.

(*3) It included seven cities such as Mariupol, and altogether its population was about four times the size of the Northern Ireland krajina (see footnote 4).

(*4) Three areas of Croatia which had long since been populated by Serbs as a bulwark against the Ottomans. The word ‘krajina’ shares the same etymology as ‘Ukraine’ – borderland.

(*5) The SNP used to be in favour of multi-option referendums, in 1992 advocating the alternative vote AV, (STV without PR). A little later on, the Scottish GP supported the preferential-points system of voting, the modified Borda count MBC. Now that these two parties are in power, however, (now that they can choose the referendum question), their support for the more inclusive methodology has waned, as has their desire to talk about it.

Readings in Nonviolence: Ukraine by Peter Emerson

October 3, 2022Nonviolent News, ReadingsPeter Emerson, Ukraine analysis, Violence, Voting, WarRob Fairmichael

What follows is an edited version of a talk given by Peter Emerson at a demonstration on Ukraine in Belfast in late July 2022. It has not been updated in relation to certain facts that have changed – .e.g. the ‘referendums’ in Russian held regions to the east of Ukraine which Russia is attempting to annex into Russia. To update it in this way would have made it a substantially different piece so it was decided to leave it ‘as was’ since the points made are still salient..

Ukraine

by Peter Emerson

Mariupol. The name Mariupol has now entered the litany of cities that humankind has first created… and then destroyed, cities like Guernica, Warsaw and Grozny. How Russia can do to others what it too has suffered, as in Leningrad, is difficult to comprehend. Sadly, however, there are still many people in this world who think problems can be solved by the threat or use of force, not least today’s, and yesterday’s leaders in the Kremlin.

In Red Square in Moscow, in 1968, when Soviet tanks went into Prague, seven individuals protested. Only seven. In stark contrast, today, with Russian tanks in Ukraine, the protesters in Russia are in their hundreds – not least the mothers of sons, soldiers, boys, who are now dead. Like the seven in 1968, today’s hundreds recognise that the Kremlin has made a horrible mistake. So we should be doing everything possible to help them… and that includes asking our ambassadors and others to join them in their peaceful, non-violent demonstrations. I’ll talk a little more on this in a moment.

Putin could hardly be more wrong. Mariupol is not a Russian word; if it were Russian or Slavic, it would be ‘Mariugrad’ or ‘Mariusky’. But it is Mariupol, like Sevastopol and Simferopol in the Crimea. And the suffix ‘pol’ is Greek; it goes back 2,000 years or so, long before Russia was concocted, and long before even the City State of Muscovy was founded. Putin distorts his history, and even his geography. Russia is not only a Slav nation: today’s Russian Federation includes Samis in Lapland, the Tartars near the Urals, the Dagestanis and North Ossetians in the Northern Caucasus, and over 50 different ethnic groups in Siberia, from the Buryats near Lake Baikal to the Chukchis on the Pacific coast. Meanwhile, other nations or regions like Slovakia, Slovenia, Slavonia and Poland, for example, are also very Slav. And in the main, so too is Ukraine.

First of all, however, I want to go back 100 years and more, to the beginning of the First World War, when Bertrand Russell sent a letter to The Times, along the following lines: if yesterday I killed a German, he wrote, I would likely be arrested, charged, tried… and punished. But if I kill a German tomorrow, I might well be praised and be called a hero. And all because someone has declared war.

Putin has declared war, or a “special military operation,” and apparently, he thinks this gives him the right to maim and murder. So we who think he is wrong should ‘declare peace,’ and until Russia withdraws its forces, our ambassadors and others in Moscow should ignore all the usual ‘peace-time’ niceties of diplomatic protocol, and they should indeed join the indigenous protesters on Moscow’s Pushkin Square or wherever, and engage in any and every peaceful, non-violent act of civil disobedience against this war. Such a tactic may well put their liberties or even their lives in some danger, but better that, surely, than policies which put the lives of hundreds or thousands of Ukrainians at risk.

More than that. Maybe certain famous individuals, preferably old people, should go to Moscow, or Minsk, or at least the Belarus border, and protest. The Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury, a rabbi, an imam, Barack Obama, Mary Robinson, Joan Baez and others – anyone who is famous and old. Maybe they should even fast, as would perhaps, if he were still with us, Mahatma Gandhi, to demand the withdrawal of all Russian forces from Ukraine.

In 2004, I was an OSCE election observer in Kharkiv, an election fought between just two candidates – Yushchenko and Yanukovich – so everything was binary, and very divisive. Yushchenko was pro-EU, Yanukovich pro-Russia. Needless to say, as in many binary contests, lots of differences were highlighted: Yushchenko preferred the Ukrainian language, Yanukovich favoured Russian… but these two languages are very similar. Western Ukraine is more Catholic or Uniate, the East opts more for the (now split) Orthodox Church… but these denominations are all Christian. (Well, as here in Northern Ireland, little differences can all too easily divide and antagonise.) In the election, both candidates had their parties of course, and in the count, their party agents. They were sitting next to each other, and I asked them, what was it like to compete against each other. “Oh today, we are opponents, yes; но завтра опять таки будем друзьями – but tomorrow, we’ll be friends again.”

How dangerous it was, we may say if only in retrospect, to use such a divisive voting procedure.

Ten years later, in 2014, in the neighbouring county or oblast of Luhansk, there was a referendum. In the same year, you will remember, Scotland had its referendum… and it is sobering to recall that the word Shotlandiya, Scotland, was used by Russian separatists to ‘justify’ the unjustifiable.

So what can we do, here, to help our fellow human beings there, in Ukraine? Yes, we can supply them with weapons; that’s quite a difficult thing to say for a pacifist… but there’s no contradiction: I believe in the principle of minimum force, I have myself used force here in Northern Ireland, and we should do what we can to allow Ukraine to defend itself.

And generally speaking, we should not be resolving our disputes in the way Putin thinks he can resolve his. Accordingly, we here in Northern Ireland should not be using weapons of war, as we did throughout the Troubles (albeit on a far smaller scale), and nor should we be using any ‘false flags’, provocations, excuses for violence. I refer in particular to binary referendums.

Donetsk is now planning another one; so too Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, (or they were until the recent Ukrainian advances around Izium). Donetsk had one already, in 1991, as did Luhansk… and Crimea of course, when they and every other ‘county’, oblast, in Ukraine voted in favour of Ukrainian independence – and we should note that in Crimea, the Crimean Tatars abstained: neither of the two options catered for their aspirations. But in 2014, these three counties then had a second vote, to reverse that earlier decision, and referendum decisions can be reversed, apparently: it is catered for in the Belfast Agreement, it is what some in Scotland now want to do.

The history of conflicts is often all very similar. In 1920, when Ireland opted out of the UK, Northern Ireland opted out of opting out and opted back in again, (albeit without referendums). In like manner, when Bosnia opted out of Yugoslavia, Republika Srpska tried to opt out of Bosnia. When Georgia opted out of the USSR, South Ossetia tried to opt out of Georgia. And a similar fate befell Kiev: Ukraine opted out of USSR, in 1991; next, in 2014, Donetsk tried to opt out of Ukraine; and then, part of Donetsk – it’s called Dobropillia and Krasnoarmiisk – tried to opt out of opting out and to opt back into Dnepropetrovsk and Ukraine. In this last referendum, 69%, i.e., some two million people – so that’s twice the electorate of NI – voted to go back into Ukraine. Alas – as in the Balkans, so too in Ukraine – the powers that be – the West in the former, Putin in the Donbas – recognise only those referendums the results of which they approve.

Crazy. It’s a bit like those famous Russian dolls, the matryoshki. Inside every doll, there’s another little one; with every majority, there’s another minority. But this is international law. The 1973 border poll here only made matters worse. Similar polls created havoc in Yugoslavia, where “all the wars… started with a referendum,” – to quote Sarajevo’s famous newspaper, Oslobodjenje. And they have now created havoc in Ukraine.

+ Everything is connected. “Всё связано,” to quote Vladimir Vernadsky, the founder of Ukraine’s Academy of Sciences. Scotland, Northern Ireland, Ukraine. Binary referendums can be false flags.

+ No one is an island. In Bosnia, Republika Srpska is rattling its sabres and ballot boxes, and so too in Georgia is South Ossetia.

Accordingly, here in Ireland (and Scotland), if only for the sake of peace in Ukraine, (the Balkans and the Caucasus) we should not be trying to resolve our own constitutional questions with referendums which are binary. Of the world’s multi-option plebiscites – three options in Newfoundland for example, six in Guam and a few others – all passed peacefully; but binary referendums in Northern Ireland, the Balkans, the Caucasus, East Timor, Catalonia… everything from non-fatal violence to outright war!

–

Peter Emerson, Director, the de Borda Institute www.deborda.org

– – – – – –

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Readings in Nonviolence: Ukraine by Peter Emerson