Why Leaders Lie - Mearsheimer, John J_.original_ [32]
There are also likely to be more situations that encourage leaders to lie to help conceal a controversial policy in a democracy than a nondemocracy. It is commonplace to have vigorous and contentious public debates about weighty issues in democracies, which means that leaders are almost certain to be asked tough questions about their preferred policies. There is also a powerful norm of transparency in democracies, which means that leaders are expected to provide serious answers to those questions, which includes providing the public with some reasonable amount of information on the issue at hand. These circumstances make it hard to hide a controversial policy without lying. In contrast, there are usually not big public fights over policies in nondemocracies, which makes it easier for leaders to hide potentially divisive policies without having to lie about them. Thus, when dealing with controversial policies, there is a stronger incentive for democratic leaders to lie than their counterparts in nondemocracies.
The bottom line is that the likelihood that states will cover up a policy debacle or conceal a controversial policy is usually determined by the same set of conditions that influence inter-state lying, but with two important twists: covering up failed policies is especially likely in wartime, and concealing a contentious policy is especially likely in democracies.
CHAPTER 6
Nationalist Myths
With the rise of nationalism over the past two centuries, numerous ethnic or national groups around the world have established or have tried to establish their own state, or what is commonly called a nation-state. In the process, each group has created its own sacred myths about the past that portray it in a favorable way and portray rival national groups in a negative light.1 MIT political scientist Stephen Van Evera argues that these chauvinist myths “come in three principal varieties: self-glorifying, self-whitewashing, and other-maligning.”2 Inventing these myths and purveying them widely invariably requires lying about the historical record as well as contemporary political events. “Historical error,” as the French political theorist Ernest Renan succinctly put it, “is a crucial factor in the creation of a nation.”3
WHY ELITES CREATE NATIONALIST MYTHS
The elites who dominate a nation’s discourse are largely responsible for inventing its myths, and they do so for two main reasons. These false stories help fuel group solidarity; they help create a powerful sense of nationhood, which is essential for building and maintaining a viable nation-state. In particular, these fictions help give members of a national group the sense that they are part of a noble enterprise, which they should not only be proud of, but for which they should be willing to endure significant hardships, including fighting and dying if necessary. This need to accentuate the positive in a nation’s past is reflected in a law passed by the French government in February 2005, which mandated that high school history courses and textbooks must henceforth emphasize the positive aspects of French colonialism.4
The creation of national myths, however, is not simply a case of elites concocting false stories and transmitting them to their publics. In fact, the common people invariably hunger for these myths; they want to be told stories about the past in which they are portrayed as the white hats and opposing nations as the black hats. In effect, nationalist mythmaking is driven from below as well as from above.
Elites also create national myths to gain international legitimacy.5 The payoffs on this front are usually small, however, because