In a speech at the African Union on July 28, 2015, President Barack Obama said, among other things: “I have also to say that Africa’s democratic progress is also at risk when leaders refuse to step aside when their terms end. I don’t understand why people want to stay so long. When a leader tries to change the rules in the middle of the game just to stay in office, it risks instability and strife”.
Interestingly, at the time President Obama was making these remarks, two events directly related to the term-limit subject were taking place far away from the shores of Africa and have sparked heated debate within the political science fraternity.
At that time Professor Jonathan Zimmerman, a history and education professor at New York University published a piece in the Washington Post stating that restrictions on how long one can serve in the USA’s highest office is bad for democracy.
“Deciding whether a president deserves a third, fourth or more terms should be left to the American people, not the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution”, he wrote. He argues that the two-term prescription does not only limit the president’s time in office, but democracy itself. This comes at a time when there are moves to amend the 22nd Amendment to the USA Constitution.
While Obama was still at the AU, news came filtering in that German Chancellor Angela Merkel (the effective head of government) will reportedly seek a fourth term in 2017. This piece of news is not earth-shattering or alarming, because the German Chancellor, just like the heads of governments of Belarus, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Italy and many more does not have term-limits.
If she manages to win a fourth term, Chancellor Merkel will be following in the footsteps of Helmut Kohl and Otto von Bismarck as the longest serving chancellors.
In the USA, Franklin Roosevelt died in office before completing a fourth term. George Washington, who departed voluntarily after his second term for “personal reasons than for reasons of philosophy”, wrote the following before leaving office: “I can see no propriety in precluding ourselves from the service of any man who, in some great emergency, shall be deemed universally most capable of serving the public”.
Scholars of politics understand democracy to be synonymous with frequent changes in government, and hold that term-limits are convenient to make that happen. There are those who argue that term-limits rob a country of an experienced group of career politicians and thereby incapacitate democratically elected leaders in that manner.
They argue that vibrant democracies like Germany and the UK would not cripple themselves by imposing term-limits. They further argue that using term-limits to force regular changes in government means that we lose the valuable experience that the old guard acquired on the job.
The strongest argument often advanced is that term-limits are unnecessary because if politicians are not doing a good job, nothing prevents them from being voted out of office. Voters can simply vote for someone else.
The problem with these arguments is that they miss the point of why term-limits are necessary, especially in fledgling democracies. One recalls Lord Acton – the English Catholic historian – who famously said that “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Only three African countries have no term-limits, Algeria, Comoros and Uganda. Does this mean that democracy is flourishing in all the countries with term-limits?
On the other side of the fence, some scholars feel that there are better mechanisms to promote accountability and responsiveness, rather than the term-limits. They argue that reformers should promote institutional changes that foster competition, lower entry thresholds for new challengers and level the playing field in campaign spending.
They further argue that the term-limits debate is more about presidentialism and parliamentarism. Advocates of the parliamentary systems argue that democracies organised on a presidential basis are inherently unstable, since they concentrate too much power in one person. If that argument were accepted, allowing presidents to seek additional terms would clearly worsen the situation.
There is a need for constitutional reforms to introduce better checks and balances that actually undermine the strength of the president, such as removing their control over the legislative agenda and by limiting government by decree and discretionary power over spending.
As long as some democracies continue to be based on institutional arrangements – both formal and informal – that concentrate power in the executive, democratic development will be undermined. This concentration of power carries the seeds of instability that will hinder, if not reverse, democratic consolidation, regardless of whether presidential term limits are imposed.
It underlines both the perils of authoritarianism and the lack of accountability that accompany good governance.
* Dr. Charles Mubita holds a PhD in International Relations from the University of Southern California.