Demonstrations against Egypt's authoritarian government are unlikely to spark regime change, a new study suggests (Credit: globalvoicesonline)
Egypt’s political evolution will “shape the timing, character, and success of democratization throughout the Arab world”, claims a new study. The country provides a particularly insightful case for understanding regional prospects for democracy, writes Bruce Rutherford, because of the relatively open and historically rooted rivalry between the “liberal, Islamic, and statist conceptions of political order that compete for preeminence in the Arab world.”
The current regime exhibits a growing contradiction: on one hand, it is a “classic example of stable authoritarianism“, controlling much of the media and political life, while suppressing opponents with legal and extra-legal instruments and monitoring and manipulating political parties and civil society groups; on the other hand, a vibrant judiciary, an assertive Judges’ Club, and a large and well-organized Islamist opposition are poised to take advantage of “a fundamental change in the character of Egyptian politics since the early 1990s”, namely the declining legitimacy and sustainability of the Nasserite statist order.
Egypt typifies the dilemma facing many of the region’s regimes, namely that a consequence of economic restructuring is that “the massive welfare states that enhanced regime legitimacy in many countries have proven financially unsustainable.” The region’s autocratic institutions are not threatened by color revolution-style transitions even if “the tools of centralized state power are gradually eroding,” Rutherford contends. The result is a hybrid regime that combines autocratic elements - a powerful and largely unchecked executive - and democratic institutions that constrain the state and increase accountability.
He notes the role played by the democracy assistance and human rights community in supporting indigenous demands for democratic reform:
These measures were reinforced by a growing network of transnational civil society groups that promoted democracy and human rights. These organizations included human rights groups, international party foundations, and media advocacy groups. They drew international attention to human rights abuses and lobbied Western governments to monitor and punish autocratic regimes. Some of the groups also sought to protect and strengthen pro-democracy forces through lobbying, funding, and training. In addition, international election observers became an important force for identifying and documenting electoral fraud. Their efforts led to substantial improvements in the fairness and transparency of elections.
Despite the challenges to the regime, Rutherford concludes, Egypt is “likely to remain a hybrid regime that contains some legal and institutional constraints on executive power, but which falls short of Western norms of democracy.”
While the European Union’s gravity model has been an incredibly successful engine of democratization within its borders, the EU is doing a poor job promoting democracy in its near neighborhood, a new report concludes. “Overall trends have been disappointing in most cases,” according to a report from FRIDE’s Richard Youngs.
“Democracy and human rights assistance remains extremely limited, although increased amounts have been allocated for broader governance reform,” Youngs notes. EU support through the European Neighbourhood Partnership “remains heavily state-centered” and even where it has supported media, civil society and opposition figures - as in Belarus - the aid has been has been small scale.
In Morocco, only 4 per cent of ENP funds go towards democracy and human rights, in Lebanon the focus is “overwhelmingly” on economic governance and capacity-building for state institutions, while EU assistance to Jordan stresses economic and poverty alleviation at the expense of public administration reform.
In the EU’s North African periphery, Moroccan modernization has failed to generate democratization; Jordan “remains essentially a ‘security state’”, having curtailed the countervailing powers of parliament, parties, the judiciary and civil society, and NGOs; while
Lebanese stability and confessional power-sharing have been secured at the cost of postponing essential democratic reforms.
To the EU’s east, Ukraine has failed to embed robust democratic institutions and culture; Azerbaijan continues to manipulate elections and restrict the opposition and civil society, although intra-regime divisions hint at prospects for future reform; and in Belarus, the release of political prisoners has yet to lead to meaningful political liberalization.
“The general trend has been towards increasing the share of aid given for direct budgetary support (that is, flowing directly into governments’ coffers) rather than investing significantly in democracy support,” the report states, concluding pessimistically:
In sum, our case studies do much to confirm a relatively pessimistic view of democracy
policies within the EU’s Neighbourhood. Democracy-related challenges are getting harder and political reform processes continue to disappoint despite partner countries having now been in structured partnership with the Union for many years. Within the EU there is an apparent absence of political will fundamentally to revise approaches to democracy support, even if the shortcomings of these policies have been apparent for some time.
“Alongside every religion lies a political opinion which is linked to it by affinity,” wrote Tocqueville. The religious motivation of political forces, not least in the world’s conflict zones, is one reason why the incoming U.S. administration must integrate issues of religious freedom into foreign policy in the areas of democracy promotion, counter terrorism, and public diplomacy, a new book argues.
“Religion is seldom a purely private matter,” writes Thomas F. Farr, visiting professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, as people “draw on their religious beliefs to shape the laws and policies under which they live their lives.”
The new administration should reinstate the position of Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, created by the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act, and appoint an individual “capable of mainstreaming this issue into democracy promotion, counter-terrorism and public diplomacy”, Farr suggests.
“In the 21st century the challenge for American policy is to help shape the religion-state relationship in key countries — such as Iraq, Pakistan, Egypt, India, Russia, and China — so that religious ideas and actors are accommodated to the public good,” he contends.
The National Endowment for Democracy and its affiliates have done excellent work in seeding democracy, and assisting groups cultivating the “civil society of those voluntary associations and non-governmental organizations that teach citizens the habits and the virtues that democracy needs.” But religious freedom should also figure more largely in the work of democracy assistance groups, he says.
“We have got to include religious freedom in the National Endowment for Democracy, the National Democratic Institute, the International Republican Institute, the USAID, and all of our democracy promotion efforts,” he writes. “We’ve got to mandate it, because it’s not going to happen unless it is required. The habits of thought are too entrenched.”
Others appear to share his view. “The National Endowment for Democracy promotes programs largely indifferent to the question of religious freedom,” wrote Joseph Loconte in a recent review of Farr’s book. But the NED’s grantee profile does include many groups that actively promote religious liberty, tolerance and inter-faith dialog.
Sudan’s Inter-Religious Council, for example, publicizes violations of religious liberty, surveys educational institutions to identify religious biases and trains Christian and Muslim youth on issues of religious freedom.
The China Aid Association’s quarterly journal analyzes and documents human rights abuses of religious believers, and maintains an online library of Chinese and English-language laws and regulations governing religious practice in China.
In Pakistan, the Lahore-based Democratic Commission for Human Development runs an educational and advocacy program to counter the influence of religious extremism and to foster principles of religious freedom and tolerance.
Que Me, the leading international advocate of human rights in Vietnam, has worked extensively with the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam and the Paris-based International Buddhist Information Bureau in promoting freedom of worship in the communist state.
The International Forum for Islamic Dialogue supports and assists liberal Muslim democrats in promulgating modern interpretations of Islam and highlighting the compatibility of Islamic values with universal values of human rights, democracy, pluralism, cultural diversity, and women’s rights.
Promoting democracy inevitably requires an appreciation of the fact that freedom of worship is inextricably bound up with basic democratic rights, including freedom of speech, association and conscience. Religious freedom is, to coin a cliché, the canary in the coal mine: where freedom of worship is denied or compromised, other liberties are invariably and equally vulnerable.
The United States should abandon both the “myth of externally-orchestrated regime change” and the “illusion of imminent revolution” in Iran, a new analysis suggests. Highly-publicized initiatives to support Iranian reformers have backfired, exposing activists to repressive measures and playing into the hands of a regime eager to portray indigenous democrats as agents of foreign powers, argues Brookings’s Suzanne Maloney, a former State Department advisor.
“Abandoning the regime change fantasy means disbanding or significantly retooling democracy promotion programming for Iran, she contends in a report for the U.S. Institute for Peace. It is understandable that policy-makers seek to replicate the apparent success of democracy assistance in supporting democratic transitions in the likes of Ukraine and Georgia. But Western intervention is the “third rail” in Iranian domestic affairs and conspicuous democracy promotion is likely to backfire on local activists.
The various agents for change within Iran include students and youth, reformist clerics like Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri and a technologically-empowered women’s movement. But, despite what Ladan Boroumand describes as the remarkable resilience of civil society, the opposition currently lacks leadership, organization and a convincing strategy for political change. It also needs to challenge and transcend the current rules of the game.
“The fundamental shortcoming hampering Iran’s democratic aspirations has been the general unwillingness of Iranians to risk their lives and livelihoods to demand the change they want or to defend the dissidents who have been imprisoned for their own advocacy,” she writes.
Meaningful change is unlikely to occur without significant mobilization, but a mixture of repression-induced timidity and fear of political turmoil. “The disinclination of Iranians to mobilize on a mass basis reflects a widespread aversion to unrest and violent change, she notes, “an understandable, if unfortunate, legacy of the Islamic revolution.”
Another analyst notes “Tehran’s trepidation” at the new U.S. administration’s signals on U.S.-Iranian relations:
Tehran’s reception of the early warning signs from Washington are focused on calls for increases in military spending, NATO expansion, boosting intelligence agencies, strengthening of the “nation-building, democracy-promoting” National Endowment for Democracy, …..
Mehdi Khalaji, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute, won’t be surprised at the Islamic Republic’s hostile response to the prospects of a new administration in Washington. Despite occasional suggestions of Tehran’s openness to dialog with the United States, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei’s ideological commitment has led him to sabotage any serious initiatives:
Khamenei considers himself not only the leader of the Islamic Republic but also the highest authority on Islamic ideology in the world. He therefore sees himself as responsible for the survival of Islamic ideology and its values, as well as his image as its leader. Because the Islamic Republic has failed to meet its economic, cultural, and social promises, Khamenei has made anti-Americanism the cornerstone of that Islamic ideology.
The plight of Iranian dissidents was recently highlighted by the Omid, the virtual memorial database of the Islamic Republic’s victims, specifically the peaceful dissidents and intellectuals slain in Iran in the fall of 1998:
Ten years ago, on November 22nd 1998, Darioush and Parvaneh Forouhar were brutally murdered in their home by agents of the Ministry of Information. While the Iranian society was still chocked by the news of this abject crime, two members of Iran’s writers’ association, Mohammad Mokhtari and Mohammad Ja’far Pouyandeh disappeared and were found dead on December 3rd and December 10th, 1998, respectively.
(The Forouhar, Mokhtari, and Pouyandeh families are appealing for an independent investigation into these deaths. To support this appeal please send your name and city of residence to daadkhahi@googlemail.com)
Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono refutes "Asian values" arguments against democracy in the region
Australia is committing $3 million towards a new Indonesian-based forum to improve governance in the Asia-Pacific region. Controversially, the forum is open to all states across the region, including non-democracies, and will be backed by a new Institute for Peace and Democracy.
The Bali Democracy Forum confirms “the need for an organized learning process and comprehensive dialogue on democracy,” said Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. It is also a significant indicator both of the “changing global landscape, a shifting of the central power from the United States and Europe to Asia over the last 15 years” and of the fact that Asia, a melting pot for various civilizations, “will be very dynamic in the future, especially in terms of politics, culture and economy and technology.”
Dismissing the “Asian values” argument that democracy is ill-suited to Asian culture, Yudhoyono insisted that democratic practices are historically and culturally rooted in Asian societies.
The forum defines Asia along geographic rather than cultural lines in an attempt to bridge civilizational schisms, notes Benjamin Reilly, director of the Centre for Democratic Institutions at the Australian National University, an approach which includes the region’s repressive regimes, including Burma, China and Vietnam. The United States, which has sponsored the Asia Pacific Democracy Partnership of genuine democracies, was excluded.
But Reilly believes the Bali forum has the potential to stimulate democratic progress across the region, as it “underlines the fact that, contrary to proponents of ‘Asian values’, Asia’s past record of authoritarianism is unlikely to guide its future.”
Other observers are concerned that the new forum should not become an intergovernmental talking shop. ”Diplomatic procedures will limit the capacity of government officials in reaching out to the potential democratic forces of a targeted country,” writes Aleksius Jemadu, a Bandung-based academic. The forum “needs to encourage the participation of the transnational networks of civil society organizations as the social foundation of democracy.
The forum is a first for Asian region government officials addressing the relationship between democracy and its development, says Jakarta-based analyst Pribadi Sutiono, by “extracting best practices and experiences, fostering greater collaboration and encouraging mutual cooperation to strengthen national institutions to build a more democratic Asia.” If it can maintain its democratizing momentum, definitely Indonesia “could become a strategic ambassador for democracy in the region.”
The U.S. should maintain financial and moral assistance to Arab reformers, despite concerns that such support provokes a backlash, a new analysis concludes. “The value of programs like the Middle East Partnership Initiative should not be discounted just because they are a legacy of the Bush administration,” say Isobel Coleman and Tamara Cofman Wittes.
“In the end, American support - both direct (through the U.S. government) and indirect (through the National Endowment for Democracy and regional foundations) - should be offered to Arab activists, leaving them free to decide whether they can afford to accept it,” they argue.
Despite the shortcomings of the Freedom Agenda, “regional activists credit American attention to democracy and human rights for creating an umbrella under which they can better press their own demands for change.”
There is considerable scope to marry reform imperatives to wider interests through new partnerships that engage regional states while also empowering independent actors. In Egypt, for example, a strategic dialogue on economic development should be broadened to include counter-terrorism and human rights issues, while new economic assistance should be conditional on Cairo meeting benchmarks for reform.
Hosni Mubarak’s regime has tried to impede democracy assistance to local activists or divert funds to GONGOs and the next president “should insist on the principle that the U.S. government must be the one to determine the recipients of its democracy and governance funding.” Democracy assistance funding should also take advantage of renewed activism in Egypt’s labor movement.
Even in Saudi Arabia, there is potential for promoting a human development agenda and supporting the country’s emerging civil society groups. “While there is potential for backlash against U.S. involvement, reformers within the kingdom are best placed to judge, and they still view U.S. support as important to maintain momentum behind reform initiatives,” they write.
While noting “no Arab leader has made either an unqualified commitment to or any significant progress toward full-fledged electoral democracy,” Coleman and Wittes believe it is imperative that the U.S. continue to sustain support for reform in moderate Arab states like Jordan and Morocco, even if local, bottom-up initiatives will be critical to genuine democratization.
“Wherever possible, reform should be encouraged by supporting the demands of indigenous activists and by using international norms, positive incentives, and societal and cultural exchange and learning,” they conclude.
Suggestions that the incoming U.S. administration might abandon a Freedom Agenda that “overpromised and underperformed” may be unnecessarily alarmist. But the Washington Post cautions that while welcoming more humility, caution and realism in foreign policy, “abandoning the promotion and support of democracy as core American goals would be a terrible mistake.”
Mr. Bush was right to see freedom as integral to all other foreign policy objectives. The stifling of democratic alternatives in Arab countries fuels terrorism. China’s succor of dictators in Africa impedes healthy development in poor countries. Democracies are more likely, over time, to cooperate honestly with each other on global challenges such as climate change and disease control. And the United States can regain and retain the stature to lead in the world, on any issue, only if it is using its power on behalf of universal ideals.
“Defining a credible, effective, globally accepted approach to promoting democracy is a vitally important objective for the next administration,” writes Suzanne Nossel, chief of operations for Human Rights Watch. Democracies often need to engage authoritarian regimes, including autocratic allies. But analysis of democratic transitions suggests that “the driving force in each case came from local movements”, so the United States must continue to “educate, empower, and equip-through money, training, technology, and expert advice-local human rights advocates to press for reform rather than expecting that its own leverage will be sufficient.”
“The notion that democracies in general, and America in particular, are at a disadvantage in the rough-and-tumble world of geopolitics must be jettisoned,” argues A. Wess Mitchell of the Center for European Policy Analysis. The new administration will also be well-placed to take advantage of an increasingly multipolar world that more closely resembles the U.S.’s own political pluralism since the tools and concepts required - tending to the base (foreign allies); negotiating trade-offs; balancing powers - are deeply rooted in American democracy.
The most critical challenges facing the world - from climate change and nuclear proliferation to infectious diseases and terrorism - are transnational in nature, demanding a transnational response. New approaches to global governance require the exercise of ‘responsible sovereignty’, argues Carlos Pascual, foreign policy director at the Brookings Institution.
Style and message were also important to realizing foreign policy objectives. Democracy could only be nurtured from within societies, said Pascual, a board member of the National Endowment for Democracy. He was speaking today at the launch of the Managing Global Insecurity (MGI) Project’s Plan for Action, a set of foreign policy recommendations for world leaders, he stressed the importance of building civilian capacity for renewing U.S global engagement, contrasting the $750 billion military budget with the $38 billion available for diplomatic, foreign assistance and other foreign policy commitments.
Imposing democracy is an oxymoron, said former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Highlighting her role as chair of the National Democratic Institute, she stressed that real democracy promotion involved “systematic work supporting the nuts and bolts of democracy”, including independent media and rule of law.
Canada’s new government is formally committed to establishing a “new, non-partisan democracy promotion agency.” Yesterday’s ‘throne speech’ outlining official policy said the initiative would “support the peaceful transition to democracy in repressive countries and help emerging democracies build strong institutions.”
While the proposal reflects a manifesto pledge by Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party, it enjoys cross-party support. “Both parties are now sort of recognizing this idea that promoting democracy abroad is a necessary and useful foreign policy tool,” said David Donovan, former research director at Queen’s University’s Centre for the Study of Democracy.
“It would have to be on a multi-party basis,” he said. “If it involved going into oppressive regimes, you would have to work with all political parties, which is the model that’s kind of the way it’s going, not sort of picking one kind of political opposition party and supporting that to overthrow a regime.”
The new center is partly inspired by existing democracy assistance foundations, including the UK’s Westminster Foundation and the U.S.-based National Endowment for Democracy.
The Economist Intelligence Unit recently highlighted the possibility of the global financial crisis undermining democracy and democracy assistance.
Richard Youngs notes that even before the economic downturn, many commentators had drawn attention to the declining appeal of ‘Western’ democratic and human rights. But the key, he argues in a new analysis for FRIDE, the Madrid-based think-tank, is how democracies deal with the crisis:
If they succeed better than non-democratic states then pluralism’s appeal could actually rise. If they demonstrate that - in the spirit of Amyrta Sen - openness and robust democratic debate can help mitigate crises better than autocratic guidance it is not inevitable that the crisis will be entirely negative for democratisation.
“Current seismic shifts in the world economy will need to be factored in by national and international democracy-building actors when assessing their future strategies,” writes Vidar Helgesen, Secretary-General of the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA). Democracy assistance practitioners have learnt many lessons, including the importance of “domestically-driven and nationally-owned democratisation processes” and an appreciation that democracy assistance should be “holistic, long-term and carefully contextualised.”
But, he suggests, a changing environment and political challenges merit a fresh look at established institutions and practices:
In an environment characterised by high levels of uncertainty and volatility, distrust, polarisation and the meltdown of global frameworks of economic governance, democracy-building efforts cannot and should not remain static and conditioned by old assumptions. Rather, they are increasingly in need of fresh questioning and testing.
