In his book The Future of Freedom, Fareed Zakaria—editor at a Newsweek International, a magazine I string for (and one which has devoted this week's whole issue to tourism issues! Synergy!)—cites research about the connection between per capita income and successful liberal democracies. Basically, if your democracy emerges when you’ve got over $6,000 per capita income, you’re set. Elect a pro wrestler as your governor, do whatever you want—your democracy is going to hold up. Between $3,000 and $6,000, your chances are very, very good,
Below $3,000? You could clone and combine the genes of George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Jefferson a la Serpentor and you still will not be likely to see your glorious new republic last more than six years. The bad news: Kenya's GDP last year was $328, down from the year before. This at a time that the country is trying to merge from the shadow of Moi's 20-year reign.
Which brings us to terrorism and the clusterfunk it makes of the tourism industry. Last night Kenya's tourism minister spoke to reporters about how he and the new government are going to try and keep the flow of tourism cash going in Kenya. The details are mundane. What's not mundane is that the safari companies sitting idle, the taxi drivers without rich tourists to overcharge, the empty hotel rooms aren't just a drag on family incomes. They're an anchor on this new government that's trying to reach high above the sad status quo of the past twenty years. The government is trying to do a million optimistic things right now: create a new constitution, dilute the power of the executive, come down hard on corruption. History states pretty clearly that if terrorism does succeed in smashing Kenya's tourism industry, it'll smash people's chance for a better government, too.
