Losers’ Consent
| Author | Camilla Gjerde |
| Published date | 01 November 2006 |
| Date | 01 November 2006 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0022343306069291 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
751
Anderson, Christopher J.; André Blais,
Shaun Bowler, Todd Donovan & Ola Listhaug,
2005. Losers’ Consent. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. xii + 222 pp. ISBN 0199276382.
This book underlines the importance of electoral
losers rather than winners for understanding
instability and conflict. It studies how voters react
to losing and how losing affects their support for
the political system, in established as well as in
post-communist democracies. Through the use of
survey data, the authors analyse losers’ attitudes
and behaviours at the individual level in 40
countries. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they find that
losers affect instability across a range of dimen-
sions: losers are generally more critical towards
the political system and the electoral process than
winners and more so in new democracies than in
old. Furthermore, if consistently excluded from
power, citizens have diminished incentives to play
by the rules and are more willing to radically
change the rules of the game. Although filling a
gap in comparative politics, Losers’ Consentsuffers
from two weaknesses. First, I miss an analysis of
the role of the losing political elites. It is likely
that the losing voters’ attitudes and behaviours are
closely connected with the actions and reactions
of the losing political elite. Second, the study
would have gained from a discussion of different
types of losers. Losers are defined as citizens
voting for parties that, after elections, do not par-
ticipate in government. But winning and losing is
about more than who ends up in government.
What about those who see themselves as electoral
winners but are excluded from government, or
when the winners of the presidential race become
losers of the parliamentary game in semi-presi-
dential systems? Despite these shortcomings, the
book is highly readable and a significant contri-
bution to understanding the impact of losers’
consent for securing democratic stability.
Camilla Gjerde
Anderson, David, 2005. Histories of the
Hanged: The Dirty War in Kenya and the End of
Empire. New York: Norton. 406 pp. ISBN
039332754X.
The 1952–59 Mau Mau rebellion in colonial
Kenya is one of the best-documented and most
thoroughly researched Third World civil con-
flicts. Yet, David Anderson’s Histories of the
Hanged is a highly original and illuminating work
which contributes significantly to our under-
standing of this traumatic and complex period of
Kenya’s history. The book also provides food for
thought for students of insurgencies and state
violence. The discussion of the ‘psycho-docs’ who
defined Mau Mau as a mental illness and sus-
pected rebels as ‘patients’ who needed ‘treatment’
(i.e. year-long detention under brutal, humili-
ating and unhealthy conditions) instead of politi-
cal and economic emancipation, illustrates the
potential dangers of ‘scientific’ explanations of
complex and idiosyncratic historical phenomena
such as civil conflict. Histories of the Hanged is
multifaceted both in the sense that we see the ‘dis-
turbance’ through the eyes of the different parties
involved and because it provides separate analyses
for the manifestations of Mau Mau revolt in the
‘White Highlands’, Nairobi, the Kikuyu reserves,
the forests and, in particular, the courtroom.
Anderson’s discovery and brilliant utilization of
the court records from the hundreds of Mau Mau
trials is one of the book’s greatest strengths, but
also perhaps its only weakness. Apparently, the
availability of court records has led the book to
document at great length the judicial aspect of the
‘emergency’, in particular the many summary
trials and miscarriages of justice. These are
important and revealing cases but sometimes tend
to overshadow the other aspects of the Mau Mau
rebellion. This does not diminish the fact that
Histories of the Hanged is a showpiece of the
historian’s craft.
Øystein H. Rolandsen
© 2006 Journal of Peace Research,
vol. 43, no. 6, 2006, pp. 751–761
Sage Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA
and New Delhi) http://jpr.sagepub.com
DOI 10.1177/0022343306069291
BOOK
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