The Arab Fall

Protestors in Egypt

This past year, when many were waxing euphoric about the “Arab Spring,” I expressed skepticism about the prospects for anything that Americans would recognize as democracy in the Muslim-dominated nations of North Africa and the Middle East. Political systems, I’ve argued repeatedly, are not produced by theoretical blueprints. The government of a nation exists within that nation’s larger social setting; it rests on social institutions, interpersonal networks, historical traditions, and cultural practices that go much deeper than politics. A liberal democracy, in the classical sense, cannot be created by efforts to reshape a society because this type of governance simply represents the interests that exist in a society that is sufficiently stable to work out its differences through elected spokespeople.

The recent events in Libya and Egypt offer more evidence that these countries do not have societies do not have societies that can give rise to liberal democracy. Obviously, part of the problem is the cultural influence of radical Islam. In both countries, the violent protests broke out in response to a film made by someone known as “Sam Basile,” who reportedly lives in California. I watched part of the film, and I can certainly see why a Muslim would regard it as offensive (I don’t think anyone will defend it on artistic grounds). Still, the violent reaction of the protestors and their demands that the United States ban the film and imprison its maker clearly demonstrate that they understand neither how the American system works nor the basic principles of a liberal democracy. They may be minorities in their countries, but a substantially large rambunctious minority is all it takes to ensure that liberal democratic processes just won’t work.

I argued earlier that the central role of mass movements in the Arab Spring made me pessimistic about the chances for democracy.  Masses are not conducive to democratic behavior. In neither Egypt nor Libya can one find behind the mass demonstrations the types of orderly patterns of community interaction necessary to democratic processes.

Libyan Guards at the US Consulate in Benghazi

The lack of an orderly society to create a government is especially clear in Libya, a collection of tribal groups that is a nation only in the sense that it has internationally recognized borders.  The tragedy in Libya, I think, resulted in part from a failure to acknowledge this. Our State Department has said that the Libyan government had primary responsibility for protecting our consulate in Benghazi. But just as Libya isn’t really a nation, it doesn’t really have a government. If we are going to send an ambassador into a wilderness of warring tribes, we should make sure he’s ringed by heavily armed Marines.

We cannot bring peace and stability to countries in upheaval. What we can do is keep our expectations for those countries realistically low for the near future and prepare to protect our personnel and our interests.

Social Order and Nations

The current upheavals in North Africa and the Middle East are reminders that the question of how a stable social order comes into existence should be fundamental to social and political thought.  This is the problem associated with the work of seventeenth century philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who suggested that fear of mutual destruction leads people to hand over power to a state.  His answer presumes a state of conflict that can only be kept under control by authoritarian direction.  Up to the present, at least, this presumption seems generally to fit the societies along the east and south of the Mediterranean, although the conflict is not, as Hobbes suggested in his abstract model, among individuals but among ethnic and religious groups.  Human beings cooperate, but they tend to cooperate within the groups to which they have strong attachments.  The “state of nature” is not conflict among individuals, but among groups.  

Alexis de Tocqueville’s central interest in Democracy in America was less America’s general egalitarianism than it was egalitarianism as a social order.  To his surprise, given his background in France, Americans managed to live together more or less as political equals without falling into conflicts that would produce a Napoleonic dictatorship. Part of his answer to this conundrum was that the widespread American practice of joining together in multiple voluntary associations created social connections that made their democracy possible. The democratic political system, in other words, came out of a pre-existing cooperative society.

The problem of transition to democracy in societies that do not have the cooperative basis is that the societies tend to split among the ethnic and religious groups that promote cooperation within groups.  Divisions among Shiites and Sunnis, Kurds and Arabs, or (as in Libya) multiple tribal groups can endanger democratic political institutions. In addition, democracy can give majorities power over minorities, so that minority groups generally have a vested interest either in native dictatorships (such as the Alawite regime of Assad in Syria) or in foreign rule.  Minorities stand to benefit most by the authoritarian solution of Hobbes, as they have the most to lose in an emerging sectarian democracy, as we can see in the stepped-up persecution of Christian Copts in Egypt since the downfall of Hosni Mubarak.

There is, then, a serious question about what kind of political order the societies of North Africa, the Middle East (and Afghanistan) can create.  They may revert to dictatorships or they may find resolution in loosely-bound federal states or they may devolve into smaller, more workable nations based on ethnic and religious identities.  While we can speculate, though, I think there is very little we can actually do unless we want to play the role of the Hobbesian ruler.  At present,  we are struggling to get out of that role in two very disorderly parts of the world.