Former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak’s resignation marks the beginning of an important stage in the country’s transition to a new political system, but will the political transition ultimately lead to democracy?
We cannot know with certainty, but based on the history of democratic government and the experiences of other countries, we can identify the obstacles that Egypt faces, as well as the advantages it enjoys in building political democracy.
Understanding any country’s democratic prospects must begin with a definition of democracy, which is a hybrid form of government, a fusion of two different political traditions. The first is popular sovereignty, the rule of the people, which is exercised through elections. The second, older and equally important, is liberty — that is, freedom.
Freedom comes in three varieties — political liberty, which takes the form of individual rights to free speech and association; religious liberty, which implies freedom of worship for all faiths; and economic liberty, which is embodied in the right to own property.
Elections without liberty do not constitute genuine democracy and here Egypt faces a serious challenge — its best-organized group, the Muslim Brotherhood, rejects religious liberty and individual rights, especially the rights of women. The Brotherhood’s offshoot, the Palestinian movement Hamas, has established in the Gaza Strip a brutal, intolerant dictatorship.
In conditions of chaos, which Egypt could face, the best organized and most ruthless group often gets control of the government. This was Russia’s fate after its 1917 revolution, which brought Vladimir Lenin’s Bolsheviks to power and condemned the country to 75 years of totalitarian rule. In the same way, the Brotherhood could seize power in Egypt and impose a far more oppressive regime than Mubarak’s ever was.
Even if Egypt avoids control by religious extremists, democracy’s two-part anatomy makes swift and smooth progress to a democratic system problematic. While elections are relatively easy to stage, liberty is far more difficult to establish and sustain, for it requires institutions — such as a legal system with impartial courts — that Egypt lacks and that take years to build.
In other countries that have become democracies, the institutions and practices of liberty have often emerged from the working of a free-market economy. Commerce fosters the habits of trust and cooperation on which stable democracy depends. It is no accident that a free-market economy preceded democratic politics in many countries in Latin America and Asia in the second half of the 20th century.
Here, too, Egypt is at a disadvantage. Its economy is a variant of crony capitalism, in which economic success depends on one’s political connections, rather than on the meritocratic free-market competition from which liberty grows.
Egypt suffers from another political handicap — it is an Arab country and there are no Arab democracies. This matters, because countries, like individuals, tend to emulate others that they resemble and admire. After they overthrew communism in 1989, the peoples of Central Europe gravitated to democracy because that was the prevailing form of government in the countries of Western Europe, with which they strongly identified. Egypt has no such democratic model.
However, Egypt is better placed to embrace democracy than the other Arab countries, because the obstacles to democracy in the Arab world are less formidable in Egypt than elsewhere. Other Arab countries — Iraq, Syria and Lebanon for example — are sharply divided along tribal, ethnic and religious lines.
In divided societies, the most powerful group is often unwilling to share power with the others, resulting in dictatorship. Egypt, by contrast, is relatively homogeneous. Christians, who make up 10 percent of the population, are the only sizable minority.
The oil that the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf have in abundance also works against democracy because it creates an incentive for the rulers to retain power indefinitely. Oil revenues enable them to bribe the population to remain politically passive, while discouraging the creation of the kind of free-market system that breeds democracy. Fortunately for its democratic prospects, Egypt has only very modest reserves of natural gas and oil.
The fact that the large protest movement that suddenly materialized has, until now, been a peaceful one also counts as an advantage for building democracy. When a government falls violently, the new regime usually rules by force, not by democratic procedures, if only to keep at bay those it has defeated.
The cause of democracy in Egypt has one other asset, the most important one of all. Democracy requires democrats — citizens convinced of the value of liberty and popular sovereignty, and who are committed to establishing and preserving them. The political sentiments of many of the hundreds of thousands of people who gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square over the past three weeks leave little doubt that they do want democracy, and that they are willing to work and even to sacrifice for it.
Whether they are numerous enough, resourceful enough, patient enough, wise enough and brave enough — and whether they will be lucky enough — to achieve it is a question that only the people of Egypt can answer.
Michael Mandelbaum is professor of US foreign policy at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington.
COPYRIGHT: PROJECT SYNDICATE
Congressman Mike Gallagher (R-WI) and Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) led a bipartisan delegation to Taiwan in late February. During their various meetings with Taiwan’s leaders, this delegation never missed an opportunity to emphasize the strength of their cross-party consensus on issues relating to Taiwan and China. Gallagher and Krishnamoorthi are leaders of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. Their instruction upon taking the reins of the committee was to preserve China issues as a last bastion of bipartisanship in an otherwise deeply divided Washington. They have largely upheld their pledge. But in doing so, they have performed the
It is well known that Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) ambition is to rejuvenate the Chinese nation by unification of Taiwan, either peacefully or by force. The peaceful option has virtually gone out of the window with the last presidential elections in Taiwan. Taiwanese, especially the youth, are resolved not to be part of China. With time, this resolve has grown politically stronger. It leaves China with reunification by force as the default option. Everyone tells me how and when mighty China would invade and overpower tiny Taiwan. However, I have rarely been told that Taiwan could be defended to
It should have been Maestro’s night. It is hard to envision a film more Oscar-friendly than Bradley Cooper’s exploration of the life and loves of famed conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein. It was a prestige biopic, a longtime route to acting trophies and more (see Darkest Hour, Lincoln, and Milk). The film was a music biopic, a subgenre with an even richer history of award-winning films such as Ray, Walk the Line and Bohemian Rhapsody. What is more, it was the passion project of cowriter, producer, director and actor Bradley Cooper. That is the kind of multitasking -for-his-art overachievement that Oscar
Chinese villages are being built in the disputed zone between Bhutan and China. Last month, Chinese settlers, holding photographs of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), moved into their new homes on land that was not Xi’s to give. These residents are part of the Chinese government’s resettlement program, relocating Tibetan families into the territory China claims. China shares land borders with 15 countries and sea borders with eight, and is involved in many disputes. Land disputes include the ones with Bhutan (Doklam plateau), India (Arunachal Pradesh, Aksai Chin) and Nepal (near Dolakha and Solukhumbu districts). Maritime disputes in the South China