Democracy Isn't All That Simple And Easy

As expected President Obama just cannot leave well enough alone regarding Egypt.  The aging and now semi-retired dictator Hosni Mubarak hasn't even finished unpacking in his seaside estate and the Clueless Guy In The Oval is already exhorting (that is to say, making low key threats towards) the military regime running the show to march smartly down the parade route to full, free, and transparent elections.  If this is mere Obama style oratorical flourishing, well and good.  But, should it represent actual policy, that's a camel of a different color.

Hey!  Geek!  Are you about to get in bed with professional paranoid Glen Beck?  You got a thing about the Muslim Brotherhood or what?  Don't the Egyptians deserve democracy as much as anyone else?

Sure, bucko, they do.  So do others, say, the Iranians, a people who do not seem to cross the Obama radar scope very often.  The problem is not one of "deserving" democracy or aspiring to it, but rather of accomplishing it.  The crux of the difficulties confronting Egypt and a host of other countries where authoritarian regimes prevail is simply that democracy is a devilishly complex process in which the forming of political parties (or "factions," to use the blunt terms of the American Founding Fathers) and holding elections, even elections which meet the Jimmy Carter test of fairness, openness, and honesty, is the easy part of the job.  Without the surrounding far more difficult to accomplish contextual matters, the mere electoral process is more likely than not to be an exercise in futility and failure.

Democracy depends upon an elaborate support system to survive let alone thrive.  There must be, for example, a tradition of civic society, a legacy of law and independent judiciary, a vibrant and multifaceted media, a custom of good losing as well as non-triumphalist victory, and a general perception that the system is legitimate regardless of the specific outcome of any particular election.  While difficult to assess given the lack of historical experience, it appears that a proper separation between the institutions and systems of the political state and those of communities of faith might be very important, even central.

It is important to keep in mind that none of the prerequisites for the success of democracy exist in Egypt any more than they do in Tunisia or in many other countries.  While some of the former Warsaw Pact countries and now independent states carved from the former Soviet Union have shown a high degree of success in the rapid establishment of democratic processes and their necessary support systems, these experiences should not be extended automatically to Egypt.  In this regard it is most critical to note that the former satellite and component states of the Soviet Union which have had the greatest success are those with prior experience or a tight linkage to the evolutionary dynamics of Western Europe.  As one moves east from the old Cold War "Trace," the success rate of democracy trends downward.

None of this should be construed as implying that the Egyptian military should (or, realistically, can) fail to move in the direction of reform.  Indeed, the major task for the military is that of maintaining order so that basic liberties, the sine qua non of democratic support structures, can be instituted.  This means the Egyptian high command must do something totally foreign to their training and experience (and, in high probability personal inclinations.)  The high command must start the process of creating a genuine civic society which is open to all comers--even the members of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Perhaps the most important component of this exercise in nation-building will be the assurance of an independent judiciary, the embedding of a concept of the rule of law, and, central to this, insulating the judiciary from the strictures and commands of religion.  Egypt must avoid the grave, even fatal error of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and other majority Muslim states--it must create a judiciary which exists independent of Shariah.

A strong argument can be made for the contention that the foundation of democracy as practiced first in England and later in the US and the rest of Western Europe can be found with the concept of the King's Peace.  This English construct removed justice in all its manifold ways from the realm of the private and made it an abstract applicable to all with equality under the authority of the state.  The Islamic tradition is antipodal.  Down to the present day justice under Islamic law remains essentially private with the state playing a limited role.  Criminals are punished or not dependent upon the attitude of the victim--a plea for mercy will result in the nullification of criminal sanction even in cases of murder.  Private justice is inherently unequal justice; private law is essentially codified anarchy.

With the establishment of the King's Peace, the great foundation stone had been laid.  The state became an independent entity.  All individuals resident under the authority of the state were entitled to equal justice.  As an outgrowth each would become entitled with a right to equal representation in the lawmaking of the state.  Over time distinctions in status, wealth, landowning, gender, and other personal factors would be ruled irrelevant to the proper functioning of the state as well as the processes by which equality of voice in the affairs of the state were assured.

Independent law, impartial justice, equality of responsibility, equality of representation taken together provided the basic support structure for flourishing democracy.  These basics were necessary but, in themselves, not sufficient for the full development of democracy.  It was also necessary for people living in a democracy to be both good winners and good losers.  The US passed a great test in the election of 1800 in which power was transferred peaceably between two "factions" which had fought a hard, bitter, and very uncivil fight for power.  The transition of power marked the beginnings of a tradition of respecting the outcome of an election--no matter how disappointed the losers might be or ready to gloat the winners might feel.

While the US passed a test in 1800 the rest of the story was anything but simple or nice.  Differences of political view ultimately required a bloody settlement.  Elections were often far from clean, quite marked with corruption, often stolen.  Still, the basic legitimacy of the process was granted by the majority of citizens.

A perception of legitimacy is utterly central if democracy is to work.  Importantly, perceptions of legitimacy do not emerge rapidly.  They are not the result of any one election but rather emerge from the full play of elections with the contextual supporting structures.  If people are persuaded that they have equal voice, equal responsibilities, equal treatment under an impartially applied law, are served by a diverse and open media, have access to the full sway of political processes, then the emergence of a general perception of legitimacy is more likely than not to emerge.

There is an unfortunate but very real probability that the entire exercise in promoting democracy in Egypt will run aground on the reef of Islam.  This is not to say that Muslims do not deserve democracy, that is a ludicrous proposition.  It is to imply that Islam--as quite a few clerics have stated publicly--is incompatible with democracy.  The position taken by Muslim clerics to the effect that all law derives from the deity and, as a result, democracy is blasphemous is rooted in the sacred writings of the religion--at least as interpreted by these clerics.  Even more mainstream in the Muslim clerical world is the supremacy of Shariah.  Shariah is not compatible with the concept of the King;s Peace--and all that evolved from that small beginning.

On the hopeful side is the ground truth that in Islam as in all religions, the presumed word of the deity is spoken through the mouths of men with the result that new interpretations, new understandings, new implications cannot be overlooked.  This, of course, takes time.  In Egypt time is a luxury at the moment, but the armed forces high command must be encouraged to use the time it has to make steps in the direction of reform while putting the main emphasis where it has been each and every day since the toppling of Farouk in 1952--maintaining order.

The Geek prefers the reality of long term stability to the appearance of short term order.  But a country must survive the short term to achieve the long term.  It would behoove the Obama administration to keep that in mind as it contemplates how hard to hector the old/new rulers of Egypt.