There are clear and disturbing signs that Egypt’s democratic transition is in danger, says a leading analyst.

“Loud grumblings can be heard all over Egypt. There is even nostalgia for autocratic rule and some are calling for a return of the military,” writes Hafez Ghanem (right), the head of the Brookings Institution’s Arab Economies project:

According to the Pew Center’s “Global Attitudes Project” more than 70 percent of Egyptians are unhappy with the way the economy is moving, 33 percent feel that a strong leader is needed to solve the country’s problems, and 49 percent believe that a strong economy is more important than a good democracy. The number of people disillusioned with the revolution is likely to increase as the economy weakens further.

In addition to freedom and dignity, the young people who started the Egyptian revolution on January 25, 2011 were demanding better living conditions and greater social justice,” Ghanem writes for Real Clear Politics:

Their demands are far from being met as economic growth has declined and unemployment has risen (figure 1). Industrial growth which was at a healthy 5-7 percent a year before the revolution has fallen to about 1 percent, and the official unemployment rate rose from 9 to 12.5 percent. About 95 percent of the unemployed are youth with at least a secondary education. Nearly three-quarters of those who are lucky enough to find jobs end up working in the informal sector where wages range between $2.60-3.70 per day.

Ending corruption was a key demand of the revolutionaries, Ghanem notes, but graft has increased since the revolution, with data from the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) showing deterioration in corruption safeguards.

The transition is also suffering from the growing sectarianism and authoritarianism on the part of the Muslim Brotherhood-led government, say observers.

President Mohamed Morsi’s decision not to attend this Sunday’s Coptic Easter mass was entirely predictable, writes a leading analyst.

“Morsi, after all, declined to attend Pope Tawadros II’s November investiture and, during his previous stint as chairman of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political party, Morsi visited a church on Christmas but made a point of emphasizing that he exited before services started,” Eric Trager writes for The Atlantic:

Yet because Morsi’s decision comes on the heels of a Brotherhood fatwa prohibiting Muslims from wishing Christians a “Happy Easter,” Morsi’s coldness towards Christians reflects a central paradox of the Brotherhood’s Islamism: despite its longtime promise to “implement the sharia” upon achieving power, the Brotherhood only offers specific interpretations of Islamic legal principles when it needs to justify its most intolerant impulses.

The Islamist-led government “appears to be in a no-win situation,” argues Ghanem, a senior fellow in the Brookings Global Economy and Development program. 

“Implementing reforms could lead to greater unrest and political instability and jeopardize the democratization process. On the other hand, doing nothing will imply a deepening economic crisis and more hardship,” he writes. “This will also lead to unrest and instability, and ultimately jeopardize the transition process.”

So how can Egypt’s transition be saved?

“A national consensus needs to be reached and the reforms have to be broadly owned and accepted,” he suggests:

The opposition (which itself is divided between liberals, Nasserists and Salafists) will have to buy into the economic reform program. This is unlikely to occur unless a consensus is also reached on outstanding political issues (e.g. election law, revision of the constitution, reform of the judiciary, etc.). Both government and opposition will have to make compromises. But do they have the required level of political maturity to do that?  

But is the Islamist-led government likely to adopt a more inclusive, less ideological approach to governance?

The Brotherhood will probably maintain its embrace of “content-free sharia”, for two reasons, argues Trager:

First, by keeping its sharia approach vague, the Brotherhood is able to prevent internal fissures from emerging that could potentially undermine its organizational integrity, which it views as vital to consolidating its power. The Brotherhood thus envisions itself as a disciplined vanguard, which — according to former Brotherhood spokesman Ibrahim al-Houdaiby — “focuses on recruitment and empowering the organization while postponing all intellectual questions”……….

Second, the Brotherhood’s vague sharia approach allows it to justify everything it does as Islamic, while casting its opponents as enemies of Islam who are thereby deserving of punishment. Barr, the Brotherhood leader who issued the fatwa prohibiting Muslims from wishing Christians a Happy Easter, was actually quite explicit on this point when I interviewed him in July 2012. …  

“So while the Brotherhood is certainly an Islamist organization,” notes Trager, the Next Generation fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, “the vagueness of its Islamism reveals its most salient characteristic: namely, its totalitarianism, which deploys Islam primarily as a rhetorical device for maintaining internal unity and distinguishing itself from its potential enemies.”

Credit” RFE/RL

As coalition forces prepare to leave Afghanistan, two leading observers consider what the international community should do to ensure that the country’s next elections are freer and fairer than the last.

“Since the U.S. has promised at least $5 billion a year in future aid (for half a decade or more) and is considering spending $10 billion a year or more on a post-2014 military presence, Americans in particular have a stake in the electoral process and outcome,” according to the Center for a New American Security’s Michele Flournoy, undersecretary of defense from 2009-11, and the Brookings Institution’s Michael O’Hanlon:

Put more bluntly: If Afghans either hold a fraudulent election or elect a corrupt future leader, the odds of the U.S. Congress providing the expected aid are slim to none. This is also the case for other countries. The U.S. should, therefore, voice its views now rather than simply cut off aid later if the election goes badly.

“Millions of Afghans, like the foreign governments with financial and strategic interests in the country’s survival, agree that there are two crucial political phases that need to be navigated before Afghanistan can have a chance of peace and stability,” the FT’s Victor Mallet reports from Kabul:

First, a presidential election a year from now to replace Mr Karzai after his maximum two terms in office; second, negotiations with the Taliban to end the insurgency.

“The single biggest challenge for us is political transition,” says Saad Mohseni, the Afghan media entrepreneur and owner of television stations. “The elections will not be perfect – we know that – but they have to be credible.”

Afghanistan remains wracked by war, terrorism and poverty, even though the longest war in US history has cost Americans $642bn in direct spending, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The election will take place against a backdrop of an uptick in attacks on government officials and civil society activists by the Taliban, which highlight the serious threat to Afghanistan’s fragile gains in rights and freedom following the forthcoming withdrawal of international security forces.

Afghan civil society groups are concerned about fragility of democratic institutions and the threat to human rights, especially women’s freedoms, once international security forces leave Afghanistan.

Afghan politicians “need to make sure that there is a constitutional, democratic and orderly change of government,” says Zalmay Khalilzad, a former US envoy to Kabul, who recently returned, he said, “to facilitate an agreement among key personalities and forces on a possible consensus on key issues confronting the country, and the formation of a team to lead a broad public discourse on those issues.”

Afghan politicians want to avoid the trauma of the fraud-ridden 2009 presidential election, said Khalilzad, a board member of the National Endowment for Democracy, the Washington-based democracy assistance group.

While some observers fear a Taliban resurgence and resumption of power, Afghan officials and their NATO allies dismiss that prospect.

“If you measure it by liters, the amount of blood that we have lost would constitute a river in the last 30 years,” says Ashraf Ghani (right), the former finance minister and academic who is overseeing the “transition” of security control from Isaf to Afghan forces:

But he insists that the Afghan army and police commanders he meets around the country are confident and not defeatist, a view shared by journalists who have accompanied them on anti-Taliban missions. The soldiers they have seen in action lack training and modern equipment but they are not short of bravery or motivation.

“The army has acquired the capability to provide state continuity so I don’t think the continuity of the state is at serious risk,” says Mr Ghani. “The threat to the state is political, not security.”

In such a context of uncertainty, “the international community can help by focusing on a few goals,” Flournoy and O’Hanlon write for The Wall Street Journal:

First, remind Afghans that Americans and others will exercise their own sovereign rights to determine future aid levels once Afghanistan exercises its sovereign right to choose a new leader. The quality of the election process and the quality of the new president’s leadership will both affect decisions on aid. ….

Second, help ensure the independence and integrity of the Afghan watchdog groups charged with overseeing the electoral process. For all the criticism of past Afghan elections, it was these Afghan groups—the Independent Electoral Commission [above] and the Electoral Complaints Commission—that uncovered the fraud and threw out the bad ballots. ……

Third, watch how the campaigns play out starting later this year. Afghan state media need to give reasonable time to all candidates, including the opposition. ……

Fourth, give technical, moral and if necessary financial support to fledgling Afghan political parties—provided they have multiethnic memberships and platforms, and promise to eschew violence. When U.S. officials visit Afghanistan, they should meet not only with members of the executive branch but also with a broad range of next-generation Afghan politicians and civil-society members who are the real hope for the country’s future.

But even the freest and fairest election is unlikely to dispel the widespread disappointment and disillusion prompted by the failure to leave a legacy of democracy and development in Afghanistan.

“After more than two decades of conflict, people were expecting a very, very quick improvement of the economic situation, and they were also expecting this nation of democracy and human rights to have some tangible effect on their day-to-day life,” says Niamatullah Ibrahimi of Afghanistan Watch, a group promoting human rights and transparency.

“Judging by those standards, Afghanistan has not achieved much. The sense I have is that Karzai has wasted a golden opportunity for this country. These 10 years brought huge international attention to Afghanistan, a lot of money. There was a lot of goodwill in the international community and inside Afghanistan. I don’t think we could have made Afghanistan into some sort of Switzerland but we could have achieved much more than we have.”

“Egypt’s parliament approved a revised election law setting rules for a parliamentary poll later this year, but opposition politicians denounced the new statute and repeated a threat to boycott the vote,” Reuters reports:

The Islamist-dominated upper house will now send the text to the Supreme Constitutional Court to check the legality of the voting procedures for a new lower house. The court has 45 days to review the bill. Members of the opposition alliance said the adoption of the new law gave them no reason to participate in the polls.

“There are many signs that the Mursi government and the Muslim Brotherhood have no intention of allowing fair elections,” said Mohamed Abolghar, head of the opposition Egyptian Social Democratic Party and a member of the NSF. Abolghar said the NSF would not participate in the polls unless Mursi met conditions announced by senior opposition figure Mohamed ElBaradei on Monday, including the appointment of a panel to draft a new elections law.

“The law passed today gives us no new assurances of legal elections,” Heba Yassin, a spokeswoman for the leftist Popular Current party, told Reuters. “This law will only help the Morsi government and his Islamist allies in their effort to dominate all of Egypt’s institutions.”

The Brotherhood is trying to frame the election process for its own advantage, analysts suggest, amid indications of widespread disillusionment with the Islamist group, as demonstrated by its deteriorating performance in student and trade union elections.

“After overwhelming wins in student union elections last year, the Brotherhood looks likely to have a drastically reduced influence on campuses,” the Financial Times reports:

Results compiled by the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression, an Egyptian rights group, also show the Brotherhood and other Islamists likely to lose elections for the national students’ union. Elections for syndicates representing pharmacists and journalists have also been won either by independent candidates or by those openly hostile to the Islamist group, which controls the presidency and legislature.

Salafis, or puritan Muslims, who polled well in parliamentary elections that concluded in early 2012, are faring worse than the Brotherhood on many campuses.

The results reflect opinions polls showing support dropping for Morsi, the former Brotherhood leader, whose approval ratings dropped from nearly 80 per cent in September to less than 50 per cent this month, according to the Egyptian Center for Public Opinion Research.

Recent sectarian violence, perceived to be condoned or excused by the Brotherhood, is also prompting ordinary Egyptians to take a stand, says a prominent analyst.

”There is more frustration with extremism,” said Hisham Kassem. “The people are beginning to see how unnecessary it is, okay, that it does not improve their life in any way.”

“In fact, it takes it to the opposite direction,” he noted. “But, right now, there is only one solution in the short term, which is the firm application of the law. Many feel the government has failed to do just that.”

The shift in opinion may prompt the anti-Islamist opposition to reconsider its decision to boycott the forthcoming polls, the FT suggests:

Regardless of the reasons for the Brotherhood’s losses, they suggest a potentially novel political dynamic that could provide a fresh incentive for secular, liberal and leftist opposition groups to campaign fiercely in the upcoming parliamentary elections. Until now most of these groups have said they would boycott the poll because the Islamists have skewed the electoral rules in their favour.

Another recent analysis paints a picture of “an electorate that is increasingly polarized and far from unified in its support for Islamists,” providing further hope for the Brotherhood’s rivals.

Furthermore, the liberal-secular National Salvation Front would be making a strategic mistake by abstaining from the parliamentary elections since such boycotts “generally have disastrous consequences for the boycotting party,” judging by the results of a Brookings study of 171 election boycotts.

Nevertheless, the recent anti-Christian violence, which left six dead, has amplified calls for the military to reclaim power, notes a prominent analyst.

“Liberal and secular parties have criticized the removal of a ban on using religion slogans in campaigning, which some say opens the door for political abuses of faith among a deeply religious population,” Reuters adds:

Abdel Ghaffar Shokr, another member of the NSF, said the upper house of parliament is dominated by Islamists who refused to listen to secular politicians.”A candidate should campaign on how he will help solve the problems of society, not on his religious beliefs,” he said.

Tarek Radwan, Egypt analyst at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center in Washington, said permitting religious slogans could increase polarisation along sectarian lines, particularly in the wake of Muslim-Christian violence this month.

Religious and NGO leaders have also condemned the sectarian violence, notes the Project for Middle East Democracy,  a grantee of the National Endowment for Democracy:

The fallout from last weekend’s sectarian clashes continues to make headlines this week, with religious leaders, officials from Egypt’s presidency and international organizations all weighing in.

A Wednesday report from Human Rights Watch urged the Egyptian authorities to bring the perpetrators of the violence to justice, and called on President Morsi to ““to acknowledge the deep and longstanding problem of sectarian violence in Egypt and take decisive steps to address it before it escalates further.”

Father Makary Habib, personal secretary to Coptic Pope Tawadros II, identified five demands for President Morsi to counter sectarian tensions: “We demand the president to apply the law to everyone, ensure safety and security in the entire country, activate fully the principle of citizenship, amend religious discourse, and teach Coptic history in schools.” Habib said that “we are tired of painkillers” and that “we need concrete steps” towards permanent solutions.

A non-government reconciliation session was held yesterday in Khosous, the town where sectarian violence first broke out last Friday, with representatives from Al-Azhar, the Coptic Church, the Salafi Call, and the Muslim Brotherhood taking part. Presidential spokesperson Ihab Fahmy defended a statement made earlier this week by presidential advisor Essam al-Hadaad, saying that al-Hadaad did not blame Christians for starting the violence and that he only stated what happened.

back to top

Sources
“Human Rights Watch urges Egypt to solve Muslim-Christian strife,” Aswat Masriya (English), 4/11/13.
“Presidential Statement did not blame Christians says spokesperson,” Egypt Independent (English), 4/10/13.
“Coptic Church submits demands to Morsi,” Egypt Independent (English), 4/10/13.
“Haddad’s statement not reflective of presidency: Church official,” Daily News Egypt (English), 4/10/13.
“Dignitaries attempt to resolve sectarian tensions,” Ahram Online (English), 4/11/13.
“Killing of Christians helped bring down Mubarak: Brotherhood’s Al-Erian,” Ahram Online (English), 4/11/13.
“Abbasiya Cathedral suspects arrested: Egyptian Security Official,” Ahram Online (English), 4/11/13.

The Obama administration appears to be responding to complaints from local activists, expert analysts and the regime’s own excesses by criticizing Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood government.  

The US envoy to Cairo criticized President Mohamed Morsi’s Islamist government for economic mismanagement and intolerance of dissent this week in an unprecedented critique of its authoritarian drift.

“Every economy goes through bad periods, but economies only recover when they are tended,” said ambassador Anne Patterson (right). “The most catastrophic path is for the government and the political leadership of the country – whether in power or in opposition – to avoid decisions, to show no leadership, to ignore the economic situation of the country.”

She also expressed concern at the illiberal provisions of the new constitution, drafted by an Islamist-packed committee.

“Those, like me, who find themselves in the public eye, are well-advised to work on acquiring thicker skins instead of wasting time and resources suing their detractors,” she said.

Patterson suggested that the government was responsible for a backlash against the “dramatically changed landscape” of “reinvigorated” media.

“We have seen court cases launched against journalists simply for speaking their mind. We have seen quite alarming attempts to intimidate journalists by encircling their studies at Media City, with little response from the authorities,” she said.

“One leading and reputable journalist told me a couple of days ago that his news outlet had been sued 200 times. This is clearly harassment and a distraction from the important work of the media.”

The apparent shift in US policy will be welcomed by Bahieddin Hassan (left), a human rights activist who last week wrote an open letter accusing the Obama administration of “giving cover” to Morsi’s regime and “allowing it to fearlessly implement undemocratic policies and commit numerous acts of repression.”

Washington’s criticism of the Islamist government coincides with calls for the Obama administration to change its approach from ‘velvet glove’ to ‘tough love’.

“Under Morsi’s rule, Egyptian society has become polarized between Islamists and non-Islamists,” according to the Brookings Institution’s Robert Kagan and Michele Dunne, director of the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East:

Enraging the political opposition late last year, he railroaded through a new constitution that contains inadequate protections for the rights of women and non-Muslims and leaves open the possibility of Islamic clerical oversight of legislation. …. Morsi is moving ahead to legislative elections based on an electoral law to which the opposition objects. Meanwhile, his government has cracked down on journalists, brought spurious charges against opposition leaders and limited the right to public protests. It is considering legislation that would constrain the activities of non-governmental organizations even more than Hosni Mubarak did.

Morsi attracted further criticism from rights activists and appeared to confirm his authoritarian instincts last month when he replaced the minister of interior not with an outsider but a former occupant of the post and veteran Mubarak apparatchik accused of rights violations.

“We are also against the current interior minister and want to see him replaced,” said a police officer protesting in Alexandria against government policies.

“I believe that he is a Muslim Brotherhood loyalist and he is trying to ‘brotherhoodise’ the whole ministry. He is working to serve the brotherhood’s political interests and leaves us to be confronted by angry protesters because of his policies to serve and protect the brotherhood while he is sitting at his office not caring what happens to us in the streets when we face angry demonstrators.”

The episode will contribute to the “disillusionment [that] runs particularly deep among young men who have proved a political powder keg and feel new Islamist regimes have done little to combat poverty and high youth unemployment,” analyst Daragahi suggests:

Their anger is heightened when police resort to the same harsh tactics they used in the Mubarak era in spite of claims from the security services that they have mended their ways. In short, little has changed.

The absence of rapid reform has created an environment that is even more volatile and dangerous than two years ago, rights monitors warn. As a result of the revolution, Egyptians are more defiant of authority and more willing to put themselves in the line of fire. The tactics of the police, under the authority of the mammoth interior ministry, threaten stability. This is crucial for a country of 83m that has long been seen as the centre of gravity of the Arab world but has struggled to rebuild foreign investment and tourism since the revolution.

“Within the ministry, the laws they work under, the regulations they work by and the untold rules they work by – nothing has changed,” says Magda Boutros, a lawyer working for the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, one of the country’s main human rights groups. “In terms of their practices, nothing has changed. But the relationship between the people and the police has changed, and sometimes we find that things can become more violent than they used to be, and the police are becoming more brutal than they used to be.”

Pointing to comments by security officials complaining of weak laws and soft penalties for crime, some observers have concluded that the Morsi government and its Islamist allies have been forced to cut a deal with the ministry’s stalwarts to restore order on the streets and get the economy back on track, the FT’s Daragahi reports:

“They say, ‘You want security on the streets, you want Egypt to look like a good investment, you want tourism back, that means business as usual’,” says Heba Morayef, of Human Rights Watch, the advocacy group.

On February 5, a group of human rights activists stormed out of a meeting with Ahmed Mekki, the justice minister, after he refused to acknowledge the need for reform of the legal and security systems and instead accused activists and the media of stirring up the recent unrest that has hurt the economy.

“I refused his argument that the police could be reformed from within, and [said] that calling for reform from outside does not mean that we want the downfall of the police,” Khaled Fahmy, a professor at the American University of Cairo who attended the meeting, wrote in an account posted on Facebook.

The Islamist government’s media curbs prompted the Obama administration to “back-pedal” over the constitution, said Michael Hanna, an Egypt analyst at The Century Foundation.

“Freedom of expression has all along been something of a red line,” he said. “In private discussions this was one of the issues that was laid down as something that shouldn’t be crossed.” 

Egypt has been agitating for the US to invite Morsi to Washington, but that should be put on hold until the regime demonstrates a more liberal and inclusive approach to governance, say the co-chairs of the bipartisan Working Group on Egypt.

“That means supporting a law that meets international standards on regulating civil society, allowing watchdog organizations to operate freely and finally resolving the controversial status of foreign and foreign-funded NGOs,” according to Kagan and Dunne, a board member of the National Endowment for Democracy, the Washington-based democracy assistance group:

It means ending the persecution of journalists and opposition figures, committing to reform the police and hold them accountable and building a consensus on such critical matters as the constitution and electoral law.

The United States made a strategic error for years by coddling Mubarak, and his refusal to carry out reforms produced the revolution of Tahrir Square. We repeat the error by coddling Morsi at this critical moment. The United States needs to use all its options — military aid, economic aid and U.S. influence with the IMF and other international lenders — to persuade Morsi to compromise with secular politicians and civil-society leaders on political and human rights issues to rebuild security and get the economy on track.

Bulgaria’s parliament has voted to accept the resignation of Prime Minister Boiko Borisov by a vote of 209 to 5, following widespread street protests against corruption and poor governance.

The demonstrations — the biggest in 15 years — were sparked by electricity price rises and corruption scandals, including reports that the nominee to head the government electricity regulatory commission was selling cigarettes illegally online.

“Apparently Borisov is trying to save the political capital he still has, and this was the reason for his resignation,” said Daniel Smilov, an analyst at the Centre for Liberal Strategies think-tank in Sofia. “I am not sure this will be a successful strategy, but he is a very skilful communicator.”

Bulgarians were disillusioned that the overthrow of Communism in 1989 and the country’s subsequent democratization had not delivered the expected prosperity, Smilov, told The New York Times:

Bulgaria has struggled to shed a reputation for lawlessness and corruption. It remains poor, with an average monthly wage of just $480, the lowest in the European Union.

“What we are seeing is the result of a general distrust in government and the political system,” said Smilov, noting that protests had engulfed wealthy as well as poorer regions of the country. “These are not the bottom layers of society, but people in the middle strata who have been hit hardest by the financial crisis. They fear they are losing their status, and they might become poor very fast.”

“My main worry is that there are no clear alternatives at the moment. The fear is that we may have a fragmented new parliament and strengthening of populist parties which could put governability at risk,” said Smilov.

“There are not too many immediate problems but long-term, the situation is not good,” he said.

The Centre for Liberal Strategies was a grantee of the National Endowment for Democracy, the Washington-based democracy assistance group. 

There are two ways to be wrong about the Internet, writes Evgeny Morozov:

One is to embrace cyber-utopianism and treat the Internet as inherently democratizing. Just leave it alone, the argument goes, and the Internet will destroy dictatorships, undermine religious fundamentalism, and make up for failures of institutions.¹

Another, more insidious way is to succumb to Internet-centrism. Internet-centrists happily concede that digital tools do not always work as intended and are often used by enemies of democracy. What the Internet does is only of secondary importance to them; they are most interested in what the Internet means. Its hidden meanings have already been deciphered: decentralization beats centralization, networks are superior to hierarchies, crowds outperform experts. To fully absorb the lessons of the Internet, urge the Internet-centrists, we need to reshape our political and social institutions in its image.

Internet-centristsalso make a fetish of the virtual over the real world and assume that political problems have technical solutions, he notes in a critique of Steven Johnson’s Future Perfect: The Case for Progress in a Networked Age.

“Better systems for aggregating and dispensing knowledge can certainly help to solve many problems, but those are problems of a very peculiar nature,” Morozov writes in The New Republic:

Can Washington’s reluctance to intervene in Syria—to take just an extreme example—be blamed on a deficit of knowledge? Or does it stem, rather, from a deficit of will, or of principle? Would extending the participatory logic of Kickstarter [an online platform for artists to raise money from their fans] to the work of the National Endowment for Democracy or to the State Department’s Policy Planning staff lead to better policy on democracy promotion? Or will it result in more populist calls to search for Joseph Kony? ⁴ Can’t the lowering of barriers to participation also paralyze the system, as some would argue is the case with the proliferation of ballot initiatives in California?

The Internet does facilitate the dissemination of knowledge and decentralized structures that may enhance participation – and yet the ‘liquid democracy’ techniques of the German Pirate Party recommended by Johnson have hardly enhanced democratic participation.

As Der Spiegel dryly put it, “It’s a grassroots democracy where no one is showing up to participate.”

“If one assumes that political reform is long, slow, and painful, hierarchies and centralizing strategies can be productive. After all, they can keep the movement on target and give it some coherent shape,” notes Morozov:

Ideas on their own do not change the world; ideas that are coupled with smart institutions might. “Not by memes alone” would be an apt slogan for any contemporary social movement. Alas, this basic insight—that political reform cannot be reduced to the wars of memes and aesthetics alone, even if the Internet offers an effective platform for waging them—has mostly been lost on the Occupy Wall Street crowd.⁹ Challenging power requires a strategy that in many circumstances might favor centralization. To reject the latter on philosophical grounds rather than strategic grounds—because it is anti-Internet or anti-Wikipedia—borders on the suicidal.

RTWT

Evgeny Morozov’s new book, To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism, will be published by PublicAffairs in March.

Since the collapse of Communism, the Council of Europe has “become the first way station for former Soviet bloc nations aspiring to join a web of Western alliances,” writes Judy Dempsey, editor in chief of Carnegie’s Strategic Europe:

As a result, some council members, notably Central Asian states and Russia, have tried to influence the organization’s parliamentary assembly with lavish gifts and trips….They also hire lobbyists to fend off criticism of their human rights records.

“Kicking these countries out is not an option,” Thorbjorn Jagland, the council’s secretary general, tells her. “The council is introducing new rules about what kind of gifts should be given. If political bodies want to combat corruption, then we have to start with ourselves.”

“It is the biggest threat to democracy in Europe today. It undermines citizens’ trust in the rule of law,” he said.

Has corruption really become so prevalent that it demands campaigns and new agencies to combat it? Dempsey asks.

“I don’t think the corruption was less a few years ago than it is today,” said Alina Mungiu-Pippidi (left), director of the European Research Center for Anti-Corruption at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. She believes the institutions are too timid and bureaucratic:

The Council of Europe should name and shame. It should be much more outspoken in the defense of values and take a much tougher policy towards member countries that flout the rule of law and values of the council.

The European Union’s efforts are also hampered by its own structures. Even though the Union prides itself on exporting its values, the way it goes about this “is bureaucratic and nontransparent. It undermines good governance,” says Mungiu-Pippidi, a former Reagan-Fascell fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy, the Washington-based democracy assistance group:

The European Union, for example, knew that funds earmarked for improving infrastructure were misappropriated in many of the 27 member countries, she argued. In many cases such abuses were tolerated. The euro crisis, however, seems to have changed public attitudes.

Because of the austerity measures in Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain, voters there are no longer prepared to tolerate corruption. They want an end to the kickbacks, undeclared taxes or overseas bank accounts held by politicians — for decades a routine way to conduct business and politics, particularly in Southern Europe.

Above all, Dr. Mungiu-Pippidi argued, they want transparency and accountability.

Corruption also reflects an underlying crisis of values, says Jagland, who also chairs the Nobel Peace Prize awards committee.

“This crisis and sense of disillusionment in the political system is reflected in the rise of extremism and hate speech, new nationalism, vilification of immigration and any other forms of otherness,” he said.

RTWT

The ongoing global shift toward democratic government, vividly joined in recent years by the Arab World, is tempered by the many challenges of democratic transitions, writes Joseph Siegle.* The toppling of an autocratic leader does not automatically mean the rise of democracy. Elections do not guarantee the protection of civil liberties. And democratic leaders are not immune from the seductions of power and the incentives of dismantling democracy’s institutional checks and balances.  

The costs to a society and the international community for democratic reversals are high in terms of civil liberties, human rights, human development, and political instability. Strengthening international legal instruments including mechanisms to enhance accountability for violence against journalists and proscribe the subversion of democratic institutions as a Crime against Democracy can help overcome these conundrums.  

Experience has shown that the early years of a democratic transition are most risky. More than half of all democratic backsliding takes place in the first 5-6 years of a transition. This risk diminishes over time, with less than 10 percent of backsliding occurring once a country has been engaged in the democratisation process for 15 years or more. In other words, momentum for democracy builds the longer a country stays on a democratic path. Still, instances of backsliding even 20 or more years into the democratisation experience do occur. This includes a military coup in Mali in 2012 that reversed a democratisation process that had been underway since 1991. The ongoing risk of backsliding faced by democratisers underscores the reality that democratic consolidation is typically a decades’ long process.  

A key factor for democratisers’ uphill struggle is that they must overcome entrenched and overlapping autocratic political and economic interests. Lacking popular support, exclusive regimes rely on strong ties to key constituencies – political party, security sector, ethnic group, and geographic region – to stay in power. Regimes reward these groups through patronage – political appointments, jobs, contracts, educational opportunities and other benefits. As in other

monopolistic or oligarchic relationships, the privileges that accrue to those in the network come at the expense of the rest of society who suffer from fewer opportunities, services, and overall lower economic productivity. Over time, this arrangement leads to deep and widening disparities in a society.

The problem often persists after an autocratic regime has been toppled because of significant collective action challenges. Supporters of a former autocratic regime have much to lose if their privileged positions are threatened. Moreover, because of their close knit networks, they are well-informed, organised, and resourced. Thus reformers do not begin a transition with a neutral playing field but one that is highly unbalanced and embedded in a society’s economy. Reformers represent the interests of the majority but they are fragmented, difficult to organise, and operate with limited information. Old guard supporters play on this lack of cohesion through misinformation campaigns that further impede organization and mobilization. In short, given the institutional history, pushback from rearguard interests is not only common but to be expected – often from the earliest days of a transition. 

Meanwhile, democratic reformers are under intense pressure to deliver jobs, services, and a stronger economy in the first months and years of a transition. The euphoria of toppling an autocrat may soon give way to democratic disillusionment with citizens questioning whether democracy brings any tangible differences. In fact, because of the entrenched autocratic institutional legacies – corruption, patronage, limits on access to credit and business licences, undefined property rights, stunted markets, etc. turning an economy around quickly in the early years of a transition is very difficult.  

Typically democratic reformers inherit an economy that is contracting – a trajectory that often continues for 3-5 years – until new, more broad-based institutions can be established. After this point, democratic transitions tend to yield increasingly more steady growth. It is in the first five years that most democratic backsliding occurs, however. That is, economic stress feeds political dissension, opening the door to a return of an autocratic system. 

Democratic transitions then can be seen as periods of norms-setting or, perhaps more accurately, norms competition. In addition to pressures from rearguard interests, democratic transitions are also vulnerable to hijackings by those with divergent ideological, religious, or economic interests. Seizing the opportunity of a transition, such spoilers redirect the momentum toward their ends.  

Arguably, this is the sequence that took place following the protests against the Shah of Iran in 1979. Iranians had mobilized to reject the tyranny of this autocratic model only to have this groundswell redirected under the banner of a charismatic religious leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, who affirmed his desire to see democracy take root in Iran. Instead, nationalist and Islamist fervor were fused to justify a theocratic governance system that while adopting certain democratic practices, in fact, did not respond to popular preferences or allow checks on the Supreme Leader. 

Since most democratic transitions are emerging from a political context where power is consolidated within the executive overcoming autocratic inertia requires establishing checks and balances on the Office of the President or Prime Minister. Insights from earlier transition experiences reveal that such state institutions can emerge but they take time, typically a decade or more. Consequently, non-state actors play a vital role in upholding new norms of democratic accountability during this interim period.  

In particular, civil society groups, media, and public access to information and communications technology are essential forces for accountability. These actors and tools generate independent information – the lifeblood of accountability. Information enables independent assessment and oversight as well as educating the general public, effectively empowering them to protect their interests. Civil society networks, moreover, create links between and across social, geographic, and economic groups in a society. The density of such networks enhances the social cohesion of a population enabling them to sustain popular pressure for democratic reform over the extended period until state accountability institutions can gain traction. While it should be recognised that not all civil society actors represent the public good (e.g. racist organizations, gangs, criminal networks), depth of civil society networks is a key predictor of successful democratic transitions. 

RTWT

This is a brief extract from a longer article published in a Special Issue of the Nordic Journal of International Law to commemorate Raoul Wallenberg’s 100th anniversary.  

*Joseph Siegle is Director of Research at the National Defense University’s Africa Center for Strategic Studies.

The European Commission today allocated € 6 million to launch the European Endowment for Democracy (EED):

The funds will finance the establishment and initial functioning of the Endowment, which was conceived in the framework of the renewed European Neighbourhood Policy. Its aim is to help political parties, non-registered NGOs, trade unions and other social partners in a coherent, concerted effort to promote deep and sustainable democracy as well as respect for human rights and the rule of law.

“I am delighted to see the European Endowment for Democracy becoming a reality, thanks to a truly joined-up effort between the EU institutions and the Member States,” said EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton. “The EED sends a concrete signal to our neighbours and beyond, that we are 100% committed to supporting democracy and the values upon which the EU was founded.”

The endowment’s geographical focus will be initially, although not exclusively, in the EU’s European Neighbourhood.

“The EED will be an important new actor and I hope that the contribution decided today, together with those of the Member States, will lead to the establishment of an effective, efficient organisation, and a swift start of its operational activities,” said Stefan Füle, European Commissioner for Enlargement and European Neighbourhood Policy.

The EED will aim to help actors of change and emerging players who face obstacles in access to EU funding. It will offer a rapid and flexible funding mechanism for beneficiaries who are unsupported or insufficiently so, in particular for legal or administrative reasons. Such actors may include: journalists, bloggers, non-registered NGOs, political movements (including those in exile or from the diaspora), in particular when all of these actors operate in a very uncertain political context. This will be precisely the added value of the EED.

The core activities of the EED will be to allocate financial support to the targeted beneficiaries. This will be funded by voluntary contributions from Member States or other stakeholders, such as private foundations. The € 6 million allocated today will also finance conferences, seminars, publications, networking events, training courses and other activities under the EED.

The endowment is a private foundation, organizationally autonomous from the EU, and governed by its own statutes and executive.

The European Union established the endowment earlier this year with the aim of supporting pro-democracy actors quickly, flexibly, and audaciously, but questions remain whether the body can secure stable, long-term financing; actor-centered democracy promotion in complex situations of radical change, is highly risky; and it remains unclear how the EED is to complement existing EU instruments with similar tasks. Yet the endowment could stimulate “a new dynamism in EU democracy promotion,” analysts suggest, if it secures Member States’ financial and political backing, avoids duplication and develops a long-term strategy with other democracy promoters.

The endowment is expected to encourage deep and sustainable democracy in countries in transition and in societies struggling for democratization. The initiators’ expectations are high: although the EED is to be autonomous from the EU institutions, it is to ensure that the EU plays a more active role in democracy promotion and so compensate for serious shortcomings – particularly the bureaucratic slowness – of such existing programs as the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR).

In February 2011 Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski put forward a proposal for a democracy fund, an idea that had already been hotly debated in Brussels for some years. The USA’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED) was repeatedly held up as a model during the debate on the EED.

The launch of the EED is taking place in the context of a realignment of the EU’s foreign, development and neighborhood policies. Under the “more-for-more” approach formulated in 2011, countries in the European Neighborhood are to receive more support if they undertake further democratic reforms. In June 2012 the Council also adopted a Strategic Framework and Action Plan on Human Rights and Democracy, with the aim of increasing the relevance of human rights and civil society in all the EU’s policy areas and instruments.

The revolts of the Arab Awakening moved the goal of active democracy pro-motion higher up the EU’s agenda and led to a revival of an almost forgotten debate on appropriate instruments.

Two migrant workers were killed and a third seriously injured in five explosions in two areas of Bahrain’s capital Manama today.

The bombings came less than a week after the Sunni monarchy banned all public protests in a move that observers feared would play into the hands of more militant opposition factions.

“As always, we condemn violence,” said Maryam al-Khawaja (right), acting head of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, “but, given the Bahraini authorities’ background in spreading disinformation, we call for an independent investigation into the deaths of the two migrant workers.”

Matar Matar of the opposition Shiite party Wefaq said he doubted that opposition activists were behind Monday’s attacks….

“This incident is strange – why would anyone target workers?” he said. “I’m worried that police and military are losing control of their units or it is [preparation] before declaring martial law.”

Leading Shiite clerics had called on followers to avoid escalating the conflict with the government. He suggested the police or military might have been responsible, or a rogue unit.

The explosions are “definitely a side effect of cracking down on peaceful protest,” said Claire Beaugrand, Gulf senior analyst for the International Crisis Group. “The radicals will probably say that Wefaq has lost its credibility … The grassroots have become more and more disillusioned, more desperate, and more willing to tacitly or silently support alternative action.”

Bahrain is under pressure to implement the recommendations of a report by a team of international lawyers and human-rights experts that accused the government of widespread torture and violence against protesters during the unrest last spring.

“In the absence of a political solution, things can only get worse,” said Jasim Husain, a member of Wefaq,. “Extremists are exploiting the lack of political reform.”

Today’s violence is in stark contrast to the peaceful mobilizations that have marked the country’s pro-democracy movement to date, as The Washington Post reports:

Three hundred people marched peacefully through streets filled with charred debris one recent night, waving Bahraini flags and shouting slogans against King Hamad and the United States. Without warning, helmeted riot police in SUVs came screeching up and began firing tear gas at the demonstrators, who panicked and ran.

Screaming women stumbled over their long black abaya robes, old men and children in sandals sprinted as hissing tear gas canisters whizzed past. A group of about 20 teenage boys began throwing molotov cocktails at the police officers.

Eyes watering and coughing up gas, human rights activist Said Yousif al-Muhafdah ran to his car and tapped out two messages reporting news of the clash, in Arabic and English, to his more than 70,000 followers on Twitter.

“We only want democracy,” Muhafdah said recently. “In the United States, you have a new elected president every four years. But here we are living with a king and the same prime minister for 42 years.”

Nabeel Rajab, head of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, hired Muhafdah “to set up Facebook and Twitter accounts and to start posting video to YouTube and photos to Flickr,” the Post reports.

In August Rajab was sentenced to three years in prison, a punishment that prompted local protests and international criticism from human rights groups and the U.S. State Department.

But pro-democracy and human rights groups criticized the U.S. failure to oppose the candidacy of Bahrain’s nominee, a career official in its Foreign Ministry, to the UN Human Rights Council.

“In a letter to [US Secretary of State Hillary] Clinton, 14 nongovernmental organizations, including the Project on Middle East Democracy, Human Rights Watch and Freedom House, urged the United States to oppose the candidacy in light of Bahrain’s egregious record on human rights,” writes Stephen McInerney, executive director of the Project on Middle East Democracy.

“The United States joined the Human Rights Council in 2009 promising to fight against “the pernicious machinations of countries seeking to obscure and deny their abuses” through the council,” he writes:

The U.S. administration could limit military assistance and training to Bahrain; sanction Bahraini officials responsible for gross human rights violations; more strictly enforce the rights requirements of the U.S.-Bahrain Free Trade Agreement; or call for a special session on Bahrain at the U.N. Human Rights Council. Any of these steps would signal that Washington is finally willing to walk and chew gum, backing up its rhetoric with action.

The Project for Middle East Democracy is supported by the National Endowment for Democracy, the Washington-based democracy assistance group.