The transition from authoritarianism to democracy is notoriously difficult, according to Council on Foreign Relations analysts Isobel Coleman and Terra Lawson-Remer. Countries like Egypt, Tunisia and Myanmar should draw on the democratization experience of Poland, Ukraine, Thailand, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria, and South Africa, as outlined in their new book Pathways to Freedom: Political and Economic Lessons from Democratic Transitions. 

1. Don’t miss the opportunity presented by a good economic crisis.

Studies show that it’s not economic growth but rather economic crisis that triggers regime change. Over the past three decades, many democratic transitions have been precipitated by serious economic shocks that ruptured the authoritarian bargain.  

2. On elections, “Fake it till you make it.”

A clear lesson from our case studies is that elections — even sham elections — lead to greater success in the transition to substantive democracy. ….Other quantitative evidence confirms that authoritarian regimes with partial political openness are the likeliest to become more democratic, especially if they provide for multiparty electoral competition.

3. Be wary of armed rebellions, but back nonviolent, mass mobilizations.

Nonviolent, mass mobilizations have a stronger track record of laying the groundwork for democratic change. Sustained peaceful protests lead to a more engaged citizenry and a better-organized civil society — critical for staying the course during the inevitable challenges of democratic transitions. Consider Poland’s experience with its trade union federation Solidarity and South Africa’s broad-based grassroots liberation movement. 

4. Encourage Inclusive Growth.

The promise of political freedom raises peoples’ expectations for economic and social opportunities. The success of emerging democracies depends fundamentally on whether democratization can also materially improve people’s lives. When citizens do see improvements in social inclusion and living standards, they reward the politicians who provide them, creating a powerful feedback loop that helps consolidate democracy. Cash transfers can also play a vital role in creating shared opportunity by enabling struggling families to invest in health and education-simultaneously cushioning the hardships of the present and laying the foundation for future economic prosperity by developing human capital.

5. Double Down on Rule of Law.

Should I believe in this new government, or not? That is the question confronting someone in a new and often shaky democracy. To answer that question, a new democracy needs to show its citizens that it can protect their core rights and establish fair economic and political rules. If people believe that legal systems and public institutions work for them, rather than against them, it gives them a stake in the system and a greater willingness to tolerate the inevitable turbulence of a transition

The establishment of transparent auctions to privatize public assets is critical. So too is the reform of laws constraining civil society organizations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). (This is why Egypt’s new, even more repressive NGO law, is so worrying.) 

6. Spread Out the Power.

Spreading power out to local regions has strong benefits. It helps dilute the dangerous concentration of central authority often inherited from authoritarian regimes; it also increases accountability by bringing administration closer to the people. 

7. Lean on Good Neighbors and Compensate for Bad Ones.

Good neighbors can help fragile democracies succeed through tough times by providing critical economic and technical assistance and exerting constructive political pressure. Conversely, bad neighbors can undermine transitions by fostering power-grabbing and corruption — or simply by failing to provide support for democratic consolidation. Neighborhoods are not merely geographic, although shared borders are an important element of interdependence between countries.  

This extract is taken from a longer article for Foreign Policy’s Democracy lab. RTWT

Isobel Coleman is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and director of CFR’s Civil Society, Markets, and Democracy program. Terra Lawson-Remer is a CFR fellow in that program. Both are co-authors of Pathways to Freedom: Political and Economic Lessons from Democratic Transitions.

Tunisia faces risks linked to its political transition and a fragile global economy but it will not be a “new Greece,” the International Monetary Fund said today:

In early June, the IMF approved a two-year standby loan for about $1.75 billion to support the government’s economic reforms after the overthrow of dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011. The money is to be disbursed in installments depending on the government’s successful implementation of the loan-supported reform program that includes strengthening a fragile banking sector and encouraging business investment.

“The growth outlook could fall short of projections, particularly if the external economic environment deteriorates further, impacting tourism and remittance inflows,” the IMF said in a report. “Also, setbacks in the political transition — such as delays in organizing the elections — could reduce political commitment to economic reforms, and increase investors’ wait-and-see attitude.”

“Two and a half years after kindling a revolution that flamed across the Arab world, Tunisians have moved on to the next chapter, a political struggle between Islamic fundamentalism and the tolerant, Mediterranean-style Islam that has characterized their nation’s 57 years as an independent state,” writes The Washington Post’s Edward Cody,

Although Tunisia is a small country of 11 million people, its looming decisions on national identity, the role of religion and political organization touch on — and are likely to become a beacon for — the main challenges facing reformers across North Africa and the Middle East. …Tunisians, in effect, have reached the point in their democracy where Syria’s opposition wants to be after that country’s civil war, where Libyans want to be after they build a post-Gaddafi state and where secular Egyptians want to be if and when an effective opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood arises.

A draft of the new constitution is behind schedule, with many of its articles hotly contested. Rachid Ghannouchi (left), spiritual leader of the majority ruling Ennahda party, recently told Washington Post editors that his party had made “many concessions” to secular demands, including abandoning an insistence on sharia as the basis of law and accepting equal rights for women.

“But outside the assembly, Ghannouchi’s party over the past two years has allowed the rise of a strong Salafist movement, hard-liners dedicated to imposing a severe form of Islam,” Cody notes.

While judges recently sentenced members of the FEMEN activist group to four months in prison,  he notes, some 20 Salafists who had been charged in connection with the September mob attack on the U.S. Embassy were given suspended sentences and released.

Ennahda bears primary responsibility for the emergence of the radical Salafist threat, says Francis Ghilès, a North Africa expert at the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs.

“By insisting for months that shari’a should be a major source of law, by inviting hard line Wahabi preachers from Qatar and Saudi Arabia to preach in what has traditionally been a tolerant country, by failing to bring to justice the authors of most acts of vandalism against Sufi shrines, and by allowing their militia, the Ligues de Défense de la Révolution, to attack the headquarters of the powerful trades union UGTT last December, the Islamist party has opened up deep lines of fracture in Tunisian society,” he wrote in a recent report, Still a Long Way to Go for Tunisian Democracy.

The assassination of labor union organizer and secular activist Chokri Belaid “shocked Tunisian society, becoming something of a turning point for the Ennahda government and, perhaps, for the struggle to redefine Tunisian politics,” notes Cody. Ennahda is also taking an illiberal approach to transitional justice, he argues, by pushing a proposed law to “immunize the revolution” by excluding officials associated with the former regime from holding political office.

“The main target is me,” said Beji Caid Essebsi, 86, who served in key positions under Bourguiba and whose Call for Tunisia party, in alliance with other secular groups, has gained enough strength in recent opinion polls to raise hopes of defeating Ennahda in the upcoming presidential and legislative elections.

Essebsi said his support is swelling because Tunisians feel that the revolution has stalled under Ennahda. He also said that people are upset over the anemic, tourist-scarce economy and that a majority of Tunisians reject the Islam promised by Ennahda and Ansar al-Sharia.

“We are for a secular state, while they are for a religious state,” he said. “The bottom line is that we stand for two different kinds of society.”

RTWT

Members of the House of Representatives believe that there is “enough support in Congress to slow, if not halt entirely, economic aid to Egypt” over the conviction of 43 pro-democracy activists, McClatchy reports.

Meanwhile, the ruling Muslim Brotherhood is using NGOs to deliver bread in a characteristically opportunist move to garner public sympathy.

“Though any NGO can get involved, the initiatives play to the Brotherhood’s strengths: the voluntary community work the group has undertaken for decades and its capacity to out-organize its opponents on the street,” Reuters reports:

Gehad El-Haddad, a Brotherhood spokesman, says the group is playing the role of a “scaffold” for a failing state. Critics say the initiative underscores the Brotherhood’s shortcomings in government and is designed to paper over its failings.

“The Brotherhood are under pressure – the pressure of failure in running Egypt – and they are trying to confront it by focusing on everyday life problems,” said Khalil al-Anani, an academic expert on the group at Durham University.

“They don’t trust state institutions. They know there is a kind of resistance. So they prefer to act by themselves to maintain their popularity.”

The prosecution of the NGOs and subsequent verdict reflected the authorities’ “insular attitude” and had the specific goal of dramatically reducing, and perhaps even effectively eliminating international support for independent civil society in Egypt,” said Kenneth Wollack, president of the National Democratic Institute.

We have to stay engaged and support those who want to build a democratic country,” he said in testimony to the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee (above), adding that Egypt was experiencing challenges in which “independent and vibrant civil society” should be engaged in democratic reforms to face the real problems facing Egyptians.

He criticized the verdict as one that represented Egypt’s isolation and “insular attitude.”

In his testimony, Lorne Craner, president of the International Republican Institute, compared the democratic transition of Egypt, which can only be described as a “mess” and appears to be headed in the wrong direction, to Tunisia’s, which “we should be modestly optimistic about.”

Democratic transitions can take decades, he said, but some issues raise serious concern, including the draft NGO law and the verdicts in the trial against IRI, NDI, Freedom House, the International Center for Journalists and Germany’s Konrad Adenauer Stiftung.

Craner went on to note the “return of the types of strictures on freedom of expression witnessed under the Mubarak regime” that present an “alarming picture in Egypt.” Specifically he noted, the Morsi government was “taking the same narrow, restrictive approach to civil society as the former regime.”

The proceedings against 43 NGO activists were politically motivated, said Charles Dunne (right), director of Middle East programs at Freedom House. But he agreed with other witnesses’ insistence that the US must continue engage Egypt as it goes through its transition.

“It’ll be a long process and a messy process, but it does require outside support,” Dunne said.

The Obama administration is wrong to dismiss the case as a turning point in U.S.-Egyptian relations, said Dunne.

“That’s a mistake. It really is a watershed moment,” he said. “Forty-three people have now been sentenced to prison in Egypt for implementing U.S. government-funded programs. That should be a wakeup call for the administration that not all is well in this relationship.”

The prosecution of the NGOs had “far-reaching impact . . . it has ruined lives,” said Joyce Barnathan, president of the International Center for Journalists, one of the organizations targeted in the crackdown. “The personal toll cannot be underestimated.”

The government’s treatment of NGOs was in “direct contradiction with the principles of democracy,” said Committee member Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla. She plans to introduce legislation setting conditions on U.S. economic assistance to Egypt in response to the crackdown.

The Obama administration should issue “a more robust public response” to the recent verdicts, says the Working Group on Egypt, a bipartisan group of foreign policy analysts.  The court judgment “calls into question whether President Mohamed Morsi, whose government receives more than $1 billion in U.S. aid each year, values good relations with the United States,” it said, adding that the verdict “has troubling implications for the treatment of non-governmental organizations all over the world.”

President Obama should “convey directly to President Morsi, in public and in private, that this matter has harmed relations with the United States and to insist that he clearly demonstrate his commitment to international standards and norms for civil society freedom,” says the group, which is co-chaired by Michele Dunne of the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center and Robert Kagan of the Brookings Institution It recommends that the administration conduct “a bottom-up review—a long-overdue step—of the Egypt-U.S. relationship. All forms of U.S. assistance (including economic aid, military aid, and support for an International Monetary Fund loan sought by Egypt) should be on the table should President Morsi refuse to address U.S. concerns.”

“Until President Morsi takes meaningful steps to rectify the harm caused by this and other actions against independent civil society, he should not receive the full support of the United States,” said the letter, whose signatories also include Tamara Cofman Wittes , director of the Brookings Saban Center for Middle East Policy; Robert Satloff, executive director of the The Washington Institute; Reuel Marc Gerecht, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, and Stephen McInerney, executive director of the Project on Middle East Democracy.

It wasn’t too long ago that Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and related Islamist groups were considered reformist or moderate enough to be trusted as credible democratic actors in the Middle East’s political transitions. But few will emerge from reading an authoritative new book on the Brotherhood “optimistic about its ability to move beyond its past and play a constructive role in the evolution of a genuine Egyptian democracy,” says a leading commentator.

In The Muslim Brotherhood: Evolution of an Islamist Movement, Carrie Rosefsky Wickham paints a picture at odds with crude depictions of the Ikhwan as a monolithic political bloc and stresses the generational and ideological divides that emerged due to divisions over democracy and forms of political participation, writes Marc Lynch, associate professor of political science and director of the Institute for Middle East Studies at George Washington University:

The generations disagreed about the meaning of sharia and its relationship to civil legislation, about the legitimacy of democracy, and about the ability of non-Muslims and women to be fully equal citizens. Members who led professional associations developed a far more tolerant and reformist discourse than was common inside the organization. The centers of power within the Brotherhood remained in the hands of a very different cohort, however: older men who came of age facing Nasser’s prisons and viewed the world outside their Islamist milieu with skepticism, caution, and fear.

“The internal rifts were real—but the conservatives invariably won,” says Lynch, noting “the limits of its moderation and the internal dominance of the more conservative forces.”

Wickham insists on “breaking into the black box” of the Brotherhood’s politics to delineate “the balance of power among its internal factions, the distribution of authority among its administrative subunits, its patterns of internal decision making, its strategies of recruitment and socialization, and its methods of enforcing internal conformity and discipline,” he writes for Democracy Journal.

“While some within the Brotherhood did evolve toward a more pluralistic and tolerant political vision, the more moderate factions have almost always lost those battles, and many of the reformers ended up being driven from the organization,” Lynch notes.

But the distinctions between ‘reformists’ and ‘conservatives’ are “blurry,” according to Egypt analyst Eric Trager because their differences are merely tactical.

Indeed, in the narrative of Alison Pargeter’s, “excellent” book, The Muslim Brotherhood: From Opposition to Power, “the ‘reformists’ seek immediate political participation and desire engagement with non-Islamists to broaden their appeal; ‘conservatives,’ by contrast, fear that this approach will water down the Brotherhood’s Islamist authenticity and thus undermine organizational integrity,” he writes for Fathom, a UK-based journal:

Yet both trends ultimately subscribe to the same ideological vision: they seek to Islamize society as a first step towards establishing an Islamic state, and ultimately creating a ‘global Islamic state,’ in the words of deputy supreme guide Khairat al-Shater. This is why even those young ‘reformists’ whom Brotherhood hardliners banished in 1996 for forming al-Wasat are now the Brotherhood’s closest parliamentary partners. The two groups merely disagreed on when the Brotherhood should form its own party, not on what that party’s goals should be.

Wickham’s book “may offer too rosy and unidirectional a view of the ideological evolution of the middle-generation heroes of her narrative and exaggerate their overall importance within the organization,” Lynch writes:

She struggles to explain why the hard-earned lesson of avoiding overreach failed to carry the day after the revolution, or why some individuals she viewed as reformists have fallen in line with the group’s controversial new policies. She sees the potential for democratic commitment, but is also unsparing in noting the “profound inconsistencies and contradictions” in the Brotherhood’s discourse, “yielding agendas in which newly embraced themes of freedom and democracy coexist uneasily with illiberal religious concepts.”

But accepting elections is only one part of a commitment to democracy. Many Egyptian liberals worry that the Brotherhood’s views remain majoritarian at their heart, with core questions about tolerance, citizenship, and the relationship between sharia and civil law unresolved.

The Brotherhood’s ideological commitments have always been vague, Pargeter notes, suggesting that this was a tactical decision – “a deliberate means of protecting the Brotherhood from factionalism.”

“Still, whenever circumstances have forced the Brotherhood to articulate specific positions, the Brotherhood has typically embraced extremes,” Trager observes:

As Pargeter observes, the Brotherhood has supported suicide bombings against Americans in Iraq and against Israelis, believes that religious law should precede individual freedoms, and promotes intolerance towards non-Muslims as well as Shiites. In other words, the Brotherhood’s ideological content, insofar as it exists, is a series of rabble-rousing reflexes, not an intellectual framework through which its stated goal of ‘implementing the sharia’ has ever been considered, let alone fleshed out.

To be sure, these reflexes allowed the Brotherhood to ‘posit itself as the authentic voice that can bring Islam to the core of every aspect of life,’ as Pargeter writes, and therefore win post-revolutionary elections in both Tunisia and Egypt. However, reflexes do not constitute a governing philosophy, much as the ability to win elections hardly implies the competence to rule.

“Meanwhile, the Brotherhood’s ultimately ‘conservative’ impulses remain unchanged,” says Trager, the Next Generation fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “Rather than embracing ‘reformist’ outreach, it has continued to priorities the organizational prerogative of power consolidation. “

Turkey’s demonstrators have claimed affinity with the pro-democracy protesters of Egypt’s Tahrir Square and taken to calling the country’s largest city  “Resistanbul.”

“But Taksim was never Tahrir, let alone Tiananmen, because Turkey is not a dictatorship,” says a prominent analyst.

“It is an electoral democracy – a very imperfect one, to be sure, with an eroded rule of law, inadequate minority rights, an intimidated or manipulated mass media – but still a democracy,” writes Timothy Garton Ash, professor of European Studies at Oxford and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford:

Politically, a realistic outcome is that the current president, Abdullah Gul, and his now more moderate tendency in the ruling party, could gain the upper hand. Even in a more genuinely liberal democracy, the “Turkish model” would not be some French Republic in the eastern Mediterranean. It would, in the best case, combine secularism and democracy with recognition of Islam as the religion of the majority.

“As such, it could again become a magnet for much of the wider Middle East, as well as a serious candidate for EU membership,” he suggests.

The protests not only present a quandary for the US, but also for the EU.

Brussels still supports opening a new “chapter” in Turkey’s accession process, the European Commission’s enlargement spokesman said today.Peter Stano, the European Commission’s enlargement spokesman, today said Brussels was still in favour of opening a new “chapter” in Turkey’s accession process, arguing it was the best forum to address Mr Erdogan’s handling of the crisis.

“The recent events underline the need to engage more with Turkey, especially in discussions working on political criteria, rule of law, respecting fundamental rights and freedoms,” said Peter Stano. “The best platform to tackle these issues, to discuss these issues, and to engage with Turkey on these issues is the accession process.”

Erdogan’s authoritarian streak is the principal cause of the protests, says Professor Omer Taspinar (above). He predicts further polarization between Turkey’s conservative religious masses and its liberal, upper class.

“Analysts noted that a growing rift between Turkey and Europe would only accelerate a shift by Ankara toward the Middle East that gained force as the euro crisis made the European Union increasingly unattractive to many Turks and as the leadership sought new regional clout in the wake of the Arab Spring,” The New York Times’ Dan Bilefsky reports.

The protests in Istanbul had exposed the extent to which the European Union had lost leverage to influence Erdogan’s behavior, said Sinan Ulgen, a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe in Brussels.

“The E.U. has lost so much leverage in Turkey,” he said. “The only way forward is to use carrots — not sticks.”

“If the E.U. had been a more visible and engaged player, the Erdogan government’s actions would have been different.”

The unrest also suggests that Erdogan’s blend of Islam and democracy is too restrictive, according to the LA Times’ Jeffrey Fleishman and Glen Johnson.

“Erdogan’s vulnerability now is the secular middle classes that have risen against AKP governance. And that genie will not go back into the bottle,” said Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “This is a new dynamic in Turkish politics and this will challenge him on his urban renewal and foreign policy programs. So far, he has had an easy ride.”

The crisis is “not defining in the sense that Erdogan and the AKP will lose elections or that there will be a fundamental shift in the balance of power,” said Shadi Hamid, director of research at the Brookings Doha Center. “There is no obvious take away from these protests of the sort we saw in Egypt and Tunisia.”

But the demonstrations will “put a real wrench in Erdogan’s plans in revising the constitution and perhaps plans to run for the presidency.”

What are the elements that shape the outcome of a country’s transition from authoritarianism to democracy? All too often policy analysts focus on the political process, while neglecting the vital role of economic reform in determining democratic success or failure.

Tunisia, the birthplace of the Arab Spring, has made significant strides towards developing democratic consensus; however, two years on, the country’s continued struggle with economic stagnation, high unemployment and lack of entrepreneurial opportunities poses serious challenges to its transition.

Drawing upon his experience in business and civil society in Tunisia, Dr. Mondher Ben Ayed will discuss why tackling these economic questions is essential for Tunisia’s future stability and success.

Thursday June 20, 2013

4.00pm – 5.30pm

National Endowment for Democracy, 1025 F Street, N.W., Suite 800, Washington D.C. Telephone: 202-378-9675

THE ROLE OF ECONOMICS IN DEMOCRATIC TRANSITIONS:
THE CASE OF TUNISIA

With

Mondher Ben Ayed
President and CEO, TMI,
Former Advisor to the Prime Minister of Tunisia

Introductory remarks by

Jeffrey Gedmin
President and CEO, Legatum Institute

Moderated by

Larry Diamond
Director, Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, Stanford University, Co-founder and co-editor, Journal of Democracy,
International Forum for Democratic Studies

RSVP (acceptances only) with name and affiliation by Monday, June 17. For further information please email forum@ned.org

The Tunisia case study is the second lecture in a joint series on “The Role of Economics in Democratic Transitions” organized by the Legatum Institute, the National Endowment for Democracy’s International Forum for Democratic Studies, and World Affairs that explores the link between economic reform and political transitions.

The elevation of Crown Prince Tamim to Qatar’s leadership “could spur Iran and other rivals to play mischief,” according to a leading analyst.  

“Although the decision is being depicted as an evolutionary change,” says the Washington Institute’s Simon Henderson, “it could prompt the state’s regional rivals to challenge parts of its activist foreign policy, which has recently included assisting opposition fighters in Syria and backing the Morsi government in Egypt.”

Emir Sheikh Hamad is expected to cede power to his son by July, the Project for Middle East Democracy reports:

As one western official commented, “there has been a clear attempt over several years to prepare the ground for an orderly succession…the concept of a planned transition… [is happening] for the first time in Qatar’s recent history.”

According to The Financial Times, while the planned transition is expected to boost long-term stability, few analysts expect the country to adopt a more democratic bent as time progresses. ”The emir has  recently been silent on his pledge made a year ago to hold elections to the country’s advisory council in the second half of 2013,” it added. And while Crown Prince Tamim’s Sandhurt education has helped his family expand  Qatar’s military and trade ties with the United States, Great Britain, and  other western countries, his ties with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and in Libya as well as support for Islamist factions in Syria suggest that he may be less liberal than his father or the current prime minister.

“Qatar’s wealth, underpinned by the world’s third largest natural gas reserves, is a potent weapon in its quest for political influence in a Middle East undergoing transition,” analysts suggest.

Its high degree of exposure partly “reflects the reluctance of western governments to intervene in Syria,” say Roula Khalaf, the FT’s Middle East editor, and Fielding-Smith, the paper’s Lebanon and Syria correspondent.

According to reports by Reuters and the Telegraph, analysts have speculated that Sheikh Tamim’s close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood could push Qatari policy in a more conservative direction, writes Foreign Policy’s J Dana Stuster, possibly straining ties with the United States. Since the beginning of the Arab Spring, Qatar has strengthened its ties with Egypt and Tunisia, where Islamist political parties have swept to power.

“Qatar’s foreign policy balances the desire for good relations with Iran (which shares one of emirate’s huge offshore gas fields) against reliance on U.S. military support (centered on the giant al-Udeid Air Base, which controls American air operations in the region),” notes Henderson, the Baker fellow and director of the Washington Institute’s Gulf and Energy Policy Program:

Tehran may be tempted to take advantage of Qatar’s transition, seeking revenge on Doha for backing opponents of the Assad regime in Syria, a key Iranian ally. Other neighbors have also been infuriated by Qatar’s behavior. For example, the Doha-based Aljazeera satellite television network has at times seemed solely focused on annoying Saudi Arabia. More recently, the United Arab Emirates has been outraged by Qatar’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt, seeing the UAE branch of the group as a challenge to domestic security.

Qatar has come under criticism for funding illiberal actors, including ultraconservative Salafist militants, during the Arab uprisings while suppressing fundamental freedoms at home.

“Qatar’s involvement in Libya also builds on its long relationship with (and subsequent perceived loyalty by) some Libyan Islamists,” notes Lina Khatib, the head of the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.

POMED is supported by the National Endowment for Democracy, the Washington-based democracy assistance group.

“The rapid unraveling of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s image at home has spilled into Egypt in what experts say is a warning to Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood as they balance the need to meet the demands of both the deeply conservative and the secular communities in the Arab world’s most populous nation,” AP reports:

The Brotherhood’s deputy leader Khairat el-Shater depicted himself as “Egypt’s Erdogan” during his short-lived presidential campaign last year before he was thrown out of the race over a Mubarak-era conviction.

“This is certainly a bad omen for Islamists. Their model is violently shaking as the man they say they want to emulate has been dealt a blow,” said Mohammed Abdel-Kader Khalil, a Cairo-based senior researcher at the East Center for Strategic and Regional Studies

He said the Brotherhood actually “inverted the model” by trying to monopolize power through the infusion of its members in state institutions under the pretext of battling the “deep state,” a term used in Turkey to refer to a network of military and civilian allies accused of trying to destabilize the country during the early years of Erdogan’s rule. The term is repeatedly used by Brotherhood leaders to refer to the legacy of Mubarak’s 29-year regime.

“They wanted to consolidate power, take control of state institutions while the streets are boiling and the economy in shambles,” said Khalil. “They are in a rush and they didn’t really benefit from Turkey’s experience.”

Other experts insist that Taksim Square is no Tahrir.

“Various parties attempt to make a connection between the so-called Turkish model and the Egyptian. They are very mistaken. The two are vastly different,” said Amr Ismail Adly, a Turkish affairs scholar in Cairo. “Portraying this as a struggle between secularism and Islam is also oversimplifying a much more complex issue given the diversity of protesters and motives.”

Members of Morsi’s Freedom and Justice Party suggest that such parallels are part of a conspiracy to undermine Islamist regimes.

“What is going on in Turkey has nothing to do with daily or economic needs. It is intended to promote the idea that Islamic regimes, which have made economic achievements and proved to the world that they can stand in the face of all external challenges, have failed,” Murad Aly, the FJP’s media adviser, said in a newspaper interview.

But the protests “have sent ripples across the Arab world, unnerving Islamist leaders who have long touted Turkey as a successful model of political Islam, analyst Jailan Zayan reports from Cairo:

Islamist-led Egypt and Tunisia “must be worried about the problems faced by Erdogan’s Turkey, a supposedly successful model” of political Islam, said Antoine Basbous, director of the Paris-based Observatory of Arab countries. Turkey’s protests are reminding the Arab world’s liberals and secularists “that they were the motor of change” during the 2011 uprisings, he said.

Tunisia and Egypt — where unprecedented revolts led to the ouster of longtime dictators in 2011 and propelled Islamists to the forefront of politics– have repeatedly pointed to Turkey as a good example of a moderate Islamist democracy. The Islamist party Ennahda which won post-revolution polls in Tunisia has openly expressed its admiration for the “Turkish model,” while Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi who addressed the AKP’s congress in September 2012 lauded Erdogan’s party as a “source of inspiration”.

But both Arab states have been suffering increasing polarisation between Islamists and secularists, with Islamists in power accused of failing to live up to their promise of guaranteeing rights and freedoms.

“At the end of the day, what matters is not the soundness of the analogy, but public perceptions of it and its ability to capture the imagination, which it seems to be doing right now,” said Hesham Sallam, Washington-based political analyst at Georgetown University.

Authoritarian regimes around the world are banding together to bypass international institutions and human rights norms that conflict with their abusive practices, writes analyst Andrew Rizzardi. Unlike the alliances of the Cold War era, these partnerships have few ideological underpinnings other than a shared rejection of democracy and the rule of law.

But such cooperation has offered aid and solidarity to dictators under pressure, and created a marketplace through which repressive regimes can meet their technology, security, and energy needs without the headaches of transparency and accountability. And if the seven-year decline in global freedom recorded by Freedom House is any indication, authoritarianism is, sadly, a growth industry.

Technology

The 2011 Arab Spring uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya demonstrated the power of new media in initiating political change from the bottom up. This did not go unnoticed by authoritarian leaders in other counties, who responded by pursuing advanced technical infrastructure and expertise with which to monitor and control cutting-edge outlets of dissent like social-networking sites and mobile devices.

China is assisting Zambia with the installation of deep-packet inspection (DPI) technology that enables the government to monitor and potentially block social media and “unfriendly” websites. Similarly, in 2010, Ethiopia purchased 150 Chinese surveillance cameras as well as satellite jamming equipment that was used, with Chinese technical assistance, to successfully block foreign satellite transmissions, including the Amharic service of Voice of America.

Both ZTE and Huawei, two largest Chinese telecommunications companies, have been accused of violating sanctions by selling sophisticated networking equipment to Iran, allowing the regime to track individuals based on the location of their cell phones.

Energy

Recent oil talks between Iran and North Korea marked a new step in their loose “one trench” alliance, a reference to the perception that they have been forced together by shared international enemies. This odd couple may represent a case of extreme necessity, but energy cooperation between friendly authoritarians is commonplace.

A case in point is Venezuela [which] has propped up Cuba’s one-party regime with approximately $3.5 billion in oil subsidies that account for nearly two-thirds of the island’s total consumption. Venezuela has also made investments in the energy infrastructure of nearby allies, such as Ecuador and Bolivia.

The Belarusian regime turned to new friends in Caracas in a bid to avoid overdependence on Moscow, and hundreds of bilateral cooperation agreements now exist between the countries.

Community

They may face criticism in some international forums, but dictators need not feel alone. Alternative multilateral bodies, such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), provide authoritarian states with opportunities for diplomacy and trade, without the nuisances of democracy and human rights. Of the six permanent SCO members, all but Kyrgyzstan are rated Not Free by Freedom House.

Indeed, the growing recognition of common interests among authoritarian and incompletely democratic governments has led to informal emulation of repressive domestic laws and practices. This is most apparent in the recent crackdown on civil society organizations in countries around the world. The wave of new laws tend to combine constraints on foreign funding, increased government oversight of groups’ financing and activities, more onerous bureaucratic and tax measures, and increased state authority to dissolve organizations.

To date, democratic countries and institutions have approached the problem in a piecemeal fashion, barring particular companies, implementing targeted sanctions, or simply stating emphatic disagreement with certain actions. But such disciplinary tactics alone do not offer a long-term solution. Meanwhile, the authoritarian warehouse only appears to be growing. To counter this alarming trend, the focus should not be on supply, but on demand. Put simply, the free world must promote democratic change in repressive states. Unless these governments are held accountable by their own people, they will always find ways to live outside international law.

*Andrew Rizzardi is a political analyst with a focus on human rights, governance, and corruption. He is currently a researcher at Freedom House.

This brief extract is taken from a longer post on the FH blog. RTWT

Supporting democratic transitions in volatile regions like the Middle East will remain a key element of U. S. counter-terrorism strategy, President Barack Obama said today.

The peaceful realization of individual aspirations for freedom and dignity in countries like Libya, Tunisia and Egypt will act as a “rebuke” to violent extremists, he said in a speech at the National Defense University. He cited the need to support Syria’s opposition, but cautioned that ending one form of tyranny must not facilitate “the tyranny of terrorism.”

The foreign assistance so vital to supporting transitions is fundamental to national security and should not be viewed as charity, he said.

Announcing a new legal and moral framework for the U.S. war against terror, he called for major revisions to the policies that emerged following the attacks of 9/11.

“This war, like all wars, must end,” he said. “That’s what history advises. That’s what our democracy demands.”

“Unrest in the Arab World has also allowed extremists to gain a foothold in countries like Libya and Syria,” said Obama, adding that the threats differed from those of Al-Qaeda and 9/11.

“In some cases, we confront state-sponsored networks like Hizbollah that engage in acts of terror to achieve political goals,” he said. “Others are simply collections of local militias or extremists interested in seizing territory.”

Consequently, a key element of U.S. strategy “involves addressing the underlying grievances and conflicts that feed extremism, from North Africa to South Asia,” he said:

As we’ve learned this past decade, this is a vast and complex undertaking. We must be humble in our expectation that we can quickly resolve deep rooted problems like poverty and sectarian hatred. Moreover, no two countries are alike, and some will undergo chaotic change before things get better. But our security and values demand that we make the effort.

This means patiently supporting transitions to democracy in places like Egypt, Tunisia and Libya – because the peaceful realization of individual aspirations will serve as a rebuke to violent extremists. We must strengthen the opposition in Syria, while isolating extremist elements – because the end of a tyrant must not give way to the tyranny of terrorism.

“Success on these fronts requires sustained engagement, but it will also require resources,” he told the NDU:

I know that foreign aid is one of the least popular expenditures – even though it amounts to less than one percent of the federal budget. But foreign assistance cannot be viewed as charity. It is fundamental to our national security, and any sensible long-term strategy to battle extremism. Moreover, foreign assistance is a tiny fraction of what we spend fighting wars that our assistance might ultimately prevent. For what we spent in a month in Iraq at the height of the war, we could be training security forces in Libya, maintaining peace agreements between Israel and its neighbors, feeding the hungry in Yemen, building schools in Pakistan, and creating reservoirs of goodwill that marginalize extremists.

RTWT