Alpha Dogs

"The Sawyer Miller Group was a political consultancy firm and I was one of the partners in it and as a result I feature heavily in the book. After Cambodia I came to believe that countries needed to have this democratic middle way choice and I came to realise that the way to help build competitive democratic politics was through working as a hired adviser to leaders struggling to prevail in a democratic context. Democracy was going to succeed if strong leaders embraced it as a means of coming to power and accepted its value and its disciplines. So I had almost ten years working with different candidates and parties in various countries to help to bring this about. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . I think I could have actually made it into the Guinness Book of Record as someone who had worked on more elections in more different countries than anyone had ever done in the history of humankind at that time! Corazon Aquino in the Philippines, Yeltsin in Russia, Mario Vargas Llosa in Peru, presidential candidates in countries like Colombia, Bolivia, Argentina and Eastern Europe. My first was the Philippines and Cory’s success gave me the consultant’s moniker as a winner. I was a hot ticket. The first one I did after Aquino was the ‘No’ campaign in Chile. Yes, and they chose me equally carefully because they liked the idea of someone who had a clearly progressive commitment to like-minded, democratic leaders, who were often fighting authoritarian regimes. That is right. But I think I left the business just ahead of the critics. When I was doing it, it was rather glamorous and exotic and these were the first elections in countries moving from authoritarian governments to democracy. I was a little bit of a Robin Hood figure. I myself started to grow sceptical as more and more of these big American political consulting firms started to pour into this space and the fees became a real burden on the cost of politics. Yes, and I therefore hung up my sword and moved on to work for the World Bank. I did that because I felt I had taken this democracy thing as far as an outsider could and secondly I thought that economic reform was critical as well."