Tag: Democracy and Rule of Law
Responding to the Islamist wave
Islamists have now won pluralities in recent Tunisia, Morocco and the first round of the Egyptian elections. There is every reason to believe they will continue to do well in Egypt and in Libya. How should the U.S. and Europe respond?
Calmly. It is not surprising that relatively well-organized Islamists, who for decades led often underground opposition to nominally secularist and nationalist autocrats in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya (and to the monarchy in Morocco), are doing well in the first sort-of free and fair elections. Yes, relatively secularist youth led the protests earlier this year, but they are not reaping the electoral fruits. There has not been nearly enough time for them to organize, and in Egypt they have been more inclined to protest in Tahrir than to get out to the hustings. Secularism, stained by autocrats and often viewed as synonymous with atheism (not only in Muslim countries), faces a long uphill struggle. Separation of mosque and state is not even on the horizon.
In Tunisia and Morocco, the parties winning pluralities seem determined to avoid the worst excesses of Islamism, but there are going to be constant tussles over veiling, alcohol, status of women and other religious/social issues. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood has also been toeing a relatively moderate line, but the far less moderate and Salafist Nour party is also doing well. In all three countries, at least some of the Islamists would like to imitate the success of the ruling Turkish Islamists, who have managed to gain a clear majority by moderating their once more militant views.
The Islamists who do well this year will have an enormous challenge ahead of them, as economic conditions are going to be difficult. This may force some degree of moderation, or at least reduce the saliency of social/religious issues and give secularists some time to get their act together.
The key battleground in my view will be rule of law. Rule of law is where secular regimes in Muslim countries have most obviously failed. It is also the area where many Muslims regard Islamists as offering a credible alternative.
Islamists think Sharia should be the basis of law in Muslim countries, as in fact it nominally was even under supposedly secular autocrats. The question is one of degree and interpretation. If Europe and the United States want the 2011 Arab spring to result in democratic regimes that respect human rights and see eye to eye with the West, they are going to need to engage seriously on rule of law issues. This would mean helping the judiciaries of these countries to rid themselves of corruption and enabling them to establish the kind of independence from executive authority and moderate interpretations of Sharia that might lead to legitimacy in the eyes of the people.
Sincere secularists have advantages in this struggle for hearts and minds. The more than 50 per cent of the population that is female cannot expect equal rights under the more extreme interpretations of Sharia. It is hard to picture the substantial middle classes of Tunisia or Morocco accepting public stoning of adulterers. Egypt’s Christian minority will want a more moderate legal regime.
But to take advantage of these advantages, secularists and more moderate Islamists will need to regroup after these elections and get serious about protecting individual human rights and independence of the judiciary. Their friends in the West should provide support.
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Even bad elections may beat none at all
While some worry that an “undemocratic party” will win Egypt’s parliamentary elections and others worry about violence and irregularities in presidential and parliamentary elections in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), it appears that the voting in both countries Monday and Tuesday went off unexpectedly well.
That is a low bar. There were lots of problems of course–names missing from voter rolls, missing, confusing and inaccurate ballots, campaigning too near polling places, paying for votes–but violence was relatively minor and people were clearly enjoying the opportunity to register their preferences. We of course have to await the considered judgment of observers, and there are several more rounds to go, but it is looking as if this first phase of elections in Egypt will be credible. DRC is less certain. Four opposition presidential candidates have already rejected the results, but Kabila’s main opponent, Etienne Tshisekedi wa Mulumba, has not yet spoken. He seems still to harbor hopes of winning.
If it happens, something like credible elections in these two countries would be excellent news, whoever wins.
The Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party in Egypt certainly advocates things I find distasteful, including applications of sharia that are blatant violations of human rights. But that does not really make them undemocratic. It wasn’t so long ago in the United States that politicians regularly advocated segregation, which we now recognize as a blatant human rights violation. I shouldn’t even mention capital punishment.
DRC President Joseph Kabila, who is likely to win the first-past-the-post contest in DRC for a second term, is also not my kind of guy. In office for 10 years, he has not managed to move DRC from its unenviable position at the very bottom of the development scale. But what counts now is not the results but the process, which for the first time is being administered by the DRCers themselves. If the population believes the election was even remotely acceptable, that would be a big step forward.
I’m not keen on elections as a way of solving problems. Egypt will have just as many next week as it had last week, as will DRC. But as a marker of change, and an opportunity for citizens to participate and express their preferences, elections have virtue. Just look at Burma: its grossly unfree and unfair elections in 2010 have opened the door to reforms that were unthinkable only a few years before. Even bad elections may beat none at all.
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Showing up is half an election
Egypt’s first post-Mubarak election, run according to astoundingly complex rules, looks as if it passed its first test today: a lot of people showed up. There will surely be lots of reports of abuses and improprieties, and there are several more rounds to go in the effort to choose members of a parliament whose only clear responsibility is to choose a committee to write a new constitution. But the big turnout will validate the decision of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) to proceed despite continuing protests against military rule and complaints about the electoral system. Many Egyptians don’t like the instability that deprives the country of foreign tourists and weakens an already struggling economy. They voted with their feet today.
One tweep opined before the election: “…losing an election is far more politically advantageous than boycotting them.” Unfortunately, some of our dear democratic friends in Egypt seem to have decided the opposite. Even if they did not boycott, they spent far too much time and energy trying to get people to demonstrations in Tahrir square against the military’s blatant efforts to insulate itself from civilian control rather than getting out the vote and trying to make the elections go their way.
Their fear is that the military is establishing a regime in which it will remain above and apart from civilian authority, unaccountable and protective of its privileges. Many of the most determined demonstrators also fear that remnants of Hosni Mubarak’s National Democratic Party (NDP) or the Muslim Brotherhood’s newly organized Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) will do well in the elections. That will almost surely be the case for the FJP, which has the advantage of a well-ensconced infrastructure, great discipline and a history of determined opposition to a regime that fell less than a year ago.
It is difficult to say you are in favor of pushing the military out of power and at the same time oppose the elections that are a prerequisite for pushing the military out of power. It is time for secularist democrats to realize that organization and coherence count. They are unlikely to win big in any event, but they would surely do better if they focused more on grassroots organizing and less on challenging the SCAF in the piazza. That will be especially important for the presidential elections next year, where fortunately the main protagonists appear to be from the moderate middle of the political spectrum.
Democracy is a long-term game: showing up is half an election, but an election is just a moment in a decade-long transition. The important thing is to put in place a mechanism that people regard as legitimate and useful, one that can be used many times in the future. It will be great for Egypt if these elections lead in that direction.
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Elections in conflict zones
Post-conflict zones are prone to violent outbreaks. Competition for power in any form, elections included, runs the risk of reigniting violence.
These issues were discussed at a Carnegie Endowment event yesterday featuring Susanne Mueller, Benjamin Reilly, and Francesc Vendrell, with Thomas Carothers as moderator.
Election timing is one delicate matter that can spoil democratic progress. Though traditionally the inclination has been to hold elections quickly, thereby restoring legitimacy to the new government in a timely manner, recent scholarship has revealed important flaws in this approach. Premature elections often result in relapses of violent conflict, Ben Reilly points out, because previously repressed parties and factions feel indignant about the time constraints placed on their campaign preparation. Reilly thus worries that, because the civil war is only just ending in Libya, elections scheduled for only eight months from now could trigger a violent backlash.
One way to mitigate the issue of timing, Reilly argues, is by phasing elections in gradually. While the tendency is to hold national and sub-national elections simultaneously, experiments with gradualism in East Timor and Kosovo have cast doubt over this policy. By holding sub-national and municipal elections before those at the national level, both governments and populations can ease their way into the democratic process. Equally so, sequencing can allow national parties more time to organize and campaign, at least creating the perception of a fairer process.
Another virtue of delaying elections is the additional time gained to decide upon the proper voting system, which is often selected out of expediency rather than concern for long-term viability. As Reilly insists, the electoral system is a pivotal factor influencing the government’s ability to guide policy after elections. Too often inclusivity wins out over efficiency, leading state-building groups to favor proportional representation arrangements over those inviting the formation of larger, more centralized parties.
Inclusivity, of course, is crucial, especially in environments where key groups have been marginalized for decades. Blowback from the exclusion of low-level Baath officials in Iraq provides one among many clear examples.
But if, in Reilly’s words, we “reify factions” to the extent that inclusivity undermines functionality, the purpose for creating a democratic government in the first place can be jeopardized. Lebanon’s post-Ta’if environment illustrates clearly the pitfalls of highly factionalized and decentralized governmental frameworks forged in the pursuit of inclusivity. And, as Reilly argues, an overly-representative arrangement in Libya will undoubtedly lead to tribalization, potentially producing another version of the Qaddafi regime.
Technical analysis of this sort, however, is only so useful. Susanne Mueller reminds us that even the most finely tuned electoral apparatus is not averse to exogenous political factors unique to individual countries. Political cleavages, as Mueller reiterates, are capable of derailing the electoral process in the short and medium term regardless of the electoral framework in place. When players in the democratic process perceive there to be no returns on further participation, they may resort to violence in an attempt to solidify some gains.
Elections in Kenya, Mueller’s area of expertise, offer a useful illustration of this reality. Members of parliament employed gangs before and during the 2007 presidential election to scare-off supporters of the president, no doubt a reaction to vote tampering by the governing coalition and the failure of non-violent protests to effect change.
Perhaps the broader point then, as panelist Francesc Vendrell offers, is that scholars must be cautious when generalizing about electoral models in post-conflict countries. Political science can offer useful guidelines, but these must be flexible. Placing too much trust in one model can lead to myopic analysis. Political realities in Libya are different from those in Egypt, so it is unwise to simply assume, for example, that delayed elections in each will be favorable. Egypt’s military has, for better or worse, maintained a monopoly on force and deployed units to maintain relative order, which at least creates the potential for peaceful elections in the near term. Libya, on the other hand, must reconstitute its armed forces entirely, rendering the prospects for orderly and transparent voting dim in the near term.
These distinctions must be central to any decision concerning election timing and voting systems, an assertion upon which yesterday’s panelists expressed clear agreement.
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