Tag: Democracy and Rule of Law
Tunisia looks for a government
Nine years after the revolution, although the Tunisian government brought effective democratic change, little economic or social progress has been made. In October, Kais Said, a political newcomer, won the presidential election with 73% of the vote, beating Nabil Karoui, who was previously jailed for corruption. Ennahda won the parliamentary election and selected Habib Jemli to be prime minister-designated. However, on January 10, Habib Jemli stepped down as he failed to win a vote of confidence.
On January 14, Carnegie Endowment for International Studies hosted a discussion on the topic of what Tunisians are expecting from their new leaders and what will happen if those expectations are not met. The discussion included three young Tunisians: Amir Ben Ameur, a social activist who advocates for youth development and democracy, Aymen Abderrahmen, a program coordinator in the Leadership Division at IREX, and Oumayma Ben Abdallah, a human rights research and Tunisia analyst. The discussion was moderated by Sarah Yerkes, a fellow in the Carnegie Middle East Program.
Why the government failed to form
Abderrahmen explained the political system in Tunisia and emphasized that Tunisians are sick of the replication of political phases. They lack trust towards the previous government because it failed to fulfill its reform and anti-corruption promises. They also believed that the government was too weak to deliver economic reforms.
Abdallah attributed the failure to the lack of administrative transparency, parliamentary consensus and participation, and detailed reform guidelines. Ameur blamed lack of transparency and the lack of common ground between Jemli and rival parties. He pointed out the government’s failure to tackle real problems. Corruption galvanized doubts among Tunisians.
Remedies
Ameur thinks Tunisia needs a government with greater accountability. The government should bring out detailed, grassroot reforms in a long-term vision. Tunisians need more confidence in government despite current hardships . Abdallah wants more transparency and conviction. She also noted that since the current parliament is fragmented, the new/proposed government should result from political consensus.
To fix unemployment, the government needs a clear strategy for social and economic reform. Abderrahmen noted that the government has recently publicized some plans, but further work in this direction is needed.
Enthusiasm for the transition
All three guests indicated that Tunisians feel deprived of dignity because revolutionary demands were not met. Ameur claimed that young people still have some hope for the government because launching another revolution would be a devastating move. He and Abdallah acknowledged that Tunisia is overall a free country, but economic challenges are still severe. Politicians need to fulfill their promises.
Why the President won
Abderrahmen noted that President Said didn’t try to cater to young people. People were not voting for Said, but against Karoui. Ameur underlined that the younger generation likes Said because he made no promises. Although other candidates had more political and government experience, people were not confident in them as they previously failed to deliver. Abdallah is concerned that since the president ran as an independent, he has no parties backing him, which will make it hard to tackle corruption problems.
The next government
Abderahmen hoped to see another election so that different parties may come up with a consensus. Ameur expressed a desire to have more young people lead the government. Abdallah was not enthusiastic about a new election, which can generate political risks. Instead of presenting a new election, it is urgent to find solutions to economic and social problems.
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Stevenson’s army, December 14 and 15
December 15
NBC says Trump plans to pull 4,000 US troops from Afghanistan.
NYT says US secretly expelled two Chinese officials for spying at SOCOM base.
NYT says Chinese believe they just won the trade war with the US.
What goes around comes around: a judge has invoked a law passed by GOP Congress to limit Obama against Trump.
Trump campaign briefs press on its plans. Looks pretty good for them.
Dartmouth prof doubts effectiveness of various campaign reforms. Note especially the data on term limits.the evidence is at best equivocal on the effects of term limits. Some studies find they would actually enhance the power of special interest groups. The problem is that incumbents who lack a reelection incentive can reduce the effort they devote to their jobs, becoming less attentive to their constituents and working less on the legislative process. The political scientists Alexander Fouirnaies and Andrew B. Hall, for instance, use data from 1995 to 2016 to show that legislators facing term limits sponsor fewer bills and miss more votes. This shift can increase the influence of outside forces such as interest groups and lobbyists, who will happily fill the vacuum in expertise and effort created by term-limited legislators. These dynamics played out in California after term limits were enacted in 1990 that restricted members of the Assembly to three terms (six years) and state senators to two terms (eight years). Observers found that these short limits scrambled the legislative process, discouraging legislators from acquiring experience while in office and creating constant turnover in leadership positions. Lobbyists, staffers and other unelected figures seemed to gain power as a result. In response, good-government groups endorsed Proposition 28, which passed in 2012, reducing lifetime limits to 12 years but allowing legislators to serve all of that time in one chamber.
Prof. Brands and others say Trump has abandoned the Carter Doctrine of protecting oil fields.
December 14
– British expat Andrew Sullivan says Boris Johnson won with “Trumpism without Trump.”
– I look at the electoral maps and conclude that more and more people voted their amygdala instead of their pocketbooks. Same trend in the US.
– WSJ says USMCA sets a model for future trade agreements. I agree.
– There’s pushback on the Post’s Afghanistan series, from a Dartmouth prof and Michael O’Hanlon of Brookings.
– WaPo notes winners and losers from first US China trade deal.
– NYT says Ukraine is looking for a US lobbyist. [They all do eventually.]
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. If you want to get it directly, To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Geopolitics in the Balkans
These are the notes that used in making remarks via Skype to the Geoffrey Nice Foundation Conference on “Transitional, Post-Transitional and Strategic Narratives about the Yugoslav Wars: from Wars and Search for Justice to Geo-Political Power Games” in Pristina today.
1. It is a pleasure to be with you remotely, even if I do wish my schedule would have permitted me to join you in Pristina.
2. The world has changed dramatically since the breakup of former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.
3. That was, we know now, truly the unipolar moment, when the US had no rivals and together with Europe could do what it wanted in the Balkans and much of the rest of the world.
4. With a lot of help from Croatia, NATO ended the Bosnian war at Dayton in 1995 and forced Serbia’s withdrawal from Kosovo in 1999.
5. Europe and the US together invested massive financial and personnel resources in Kosovo as a UN protectorate mandated to build self-governing democratic institutions.
6. The unipolar moment ended with the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001 and the US responses in Afghanistan and Iraq.
7. But the state-building process in Kosovo had significant momentum and continued, first with standards before status and later standards with status, leading eventually to supervised and unsupervised independence.
8. You have not had an easy time of it, but I think your young state has risen to at least some challenges quite well: the economy has grown, after an initial spurt you managed to limit Islamist radicalization, your courts have begun to prosecute high-level corruption cases, your army is incubating with nurture from NATO, and you have managed several power transitions in accordance with election outcomes.
9. Today’s world is however dramatically different from the one that existed in 2001 or at independence in 2008.
10. While still globally dominant, the US faces regional challenges from China, Russia, Iran and even North Korea that take priority in Washington over the Balkans.
11. Bosnia and Kosovo, the object of top-tier attention in the 1990s, now get much lower priority.
12. That is true in Europe as well, where Brexit, Ukraine, and illegal immigration are issues that, each in its own way, cast a shadow over Balkan aspirations to join Europe.
13. At the same time, Moscow and Beijing are paying more attention than ever before to the Balkans.
14. The Russians are interfering blatantly by both violent and nonviolent means in the Balkans: assassination, media manipulation, renting crowds and financing political parties are all being used to slow if not halt Balkan progress towards NATO and the EU.
15. The Chinese are using their financial strength to build and buy. Caveat emptor of course, though my own view is that Beijing’s behavior is a lot more salubrious than Moscow’s and likely to produce some positive results for those Balkan countries and companies that know how to do business.
16. Turkey—also a strong force in the Balkans for historical, geographic, and cultural reasons—has taken a dramatic turn in a more Islamist and autocratic direction. The secular Turkey that contributed forces to NATO interventions in the 1990s is moribund. Erdogan’s Turkey is building mosques, capturing Gulenists, and encouraging political Islam while trying to maintain its previous good relations with non-Muslim countries in the Balkans.
17. How does all this affect Kosovo?
18. The Turkish influence is direct and palpable: though still largely secular in orientation, Kosovo is far Islamic than it once was and has cooperated with the capture and rendering of Gulenists in ways that don’t seem right to me.
19. As for the Chinese, most Kosovars might welcome more interest in investment from Beijing. I wouldn’t fault you for that but only urge caution about the financial and political conditions, which can be onerous.
20. The Russians have no purchase on the Kosovo Albanians, but their weight with the Kosovo and Serbian Serbs is certainly felt here. Moscow is a strong advocate of land swaps and of course blocks Kosovo entry into the UN and opposes its entry into other international organizations.
21. How Moscow will be brought around to accepting Kosovo’s UN membership is still a mystery, even to those of us who think Kosovo independence and sovereignty is permanent.
22. Washington continues to have enormous influence in Kosovo, but it is not the same Washington as even three years ago. Today’s Washington has an ethnic nationalist, not a liberal democratic, administration. Trump and some of his closest advisors are self-avowed “nationalists” who do not believe in equal rights.
23. That in my view is why they were open to the failed land swap idea, which may have died in Kosovo but still survives in Washington.
24. As for Europe, it’s failure of nerve is all too evident to everyone in the Balkans: the French and Dutch vetoes on opening accession negotiations with Albania and North Macedonia—negotiations that might take a decade—was tragic. So too is the failure to provide the visa waiver to Kosovo.
25. The Western, liberal democratic influence in the Balkans has declined. The Eastern, autocratic and ethno-nationalist influence—if I can use that umbrella term to refer to the very different roles of Russia, China, and Turkey—has grown.
26. Bottom line: responsibility for keeping the Western aspiration alive now rests more than in the past with you: the government, citizens, and society of Kosovo. The Europeans have already disappointed you. The Americans may do likewise. The Chinese and Turks will try to lure you in bad directions while the Russians will give aid and comfort to your antagonists.
27. But you showed how unified and good Kosovo can be to the English soccer fans. I hope you will harness that spirit to the cause of maintaining a liberal democracy that treats all its citizens equally!
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Stevenson’s army, November 22
– Earlier, NYT said decision uncertain on Hong Kong bill. This Morning, Trump says he doesn’t like it.
– WaPo has background on effort to pardon military personnel. David Ignatius decries decision.
– Pause in South Korea-Japan spat,
CAP has ideas for reducing foreign influence in US elections.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. If you want to get it directly, To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Stevenson’s army, November 8
– The Guardian has a good piece explaining the election rules in the various states.
– I’d also draw your attention to the small number of states that still allow straight-ticket voting. It’s surprising that so few do in this era of hyperpartisanship.
– NYT suggests the US-China trade war is ending, but WSJ and Peter Navarro don’t agree.
– Excellent article in Atlantic explaining how isolated Trump is in his presidency.
– There is some movement on budget reform.
– Here’s the devastating memo criticizing the green light to Turkey to invade Syria.
– Here’s the NYT review of the Anonymous author’s critique of Trump.
I’d add: the President has been fined $2 million for blatant misuse of his family-controlled charitable foundation.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. If you want to get it directly, To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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What next?
In addition to today’s post on the Iraqi protests, I would recommend Rend Al-Rahim’s appearance on NPR this morning as well as my own appearance Monday with Namo Abdulla, Raed Jarrar, and Mazin Al-Eshaiker on CGTN’s The Heat, available below for your listening and watching pleasures. Bottom line: the likelihood of some sort of authoritarian takeover, by coup or martial law, is increasing dramatically:
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