bbauska

Would you consider Venezuela a democracy? What about North Korea and Myanmar? They all had elections, after all

.
I think I've been pretty explicit about the problems inherent in the establishment of democracies...
And you know that the first question one asks about a democracy is
Were the elections free and fair?
Totalitarian regimes pose fraudulent elections in order to try and gain legitimacy for their regimes. If democracy didn't possess important attributes that provide legitimacy then the dictators wouldn't bother with the posing...

Chavez was first elected in free and fair elections, but, he has become an authoritarian through manipulation of electoral laws, media laws etc. Venezeula has never really established democratic institutions. Its history is somewhat similar to Egypts .in that the military has been the real power in the country. Perhaps Chavez's impending death will open the door to a renewal in Venezeula. In reading the Dictators handbook, there is a compelling story about the difficult life of a democratic activist in venezeula. And yet, the resistance to Chavez is significant and ongoing.
The problem is that part of the resistance is also aligned with the past elite who controlled venezeulas economic infrastructure before Chavez won election as a reforming populist.

A repeat of Chavez, is what Morsi's actions threaten. How Morsi responds to the mass demonstrations will tell whether or not he is another Chavez.... He seems to have backed off. Although I've been overly optimistic about Morsi before... I do think Egypt has the potential to move forward more as Turkey then Iran. First and foremost because the country has a number of sizable minority groups, and because the Egytptian armed forces do seem willing to accept a transition from their position of privilege and power, and may be unwilling to accept a society that is not secular.
But, and its important to note, Morsi enjoys majority support in Egypt. So did Chavez in venezeula. Chavez's personality , his narcissim and ego, strike me as different than Morsi. Morsi isn't the charismatic that Chavez is, and he seems determined to "complete the revolution". If by this he does mean establishing a constitution with typical guarantees for minorities and human rights .... then he isn't Chavez,
The Egyptian judiciary is the same corrupt bunch who kept the dictators aroung for years, so confronting their intransigence on the consitutional committee might not be, finally, an undemocratic move. It might rather be the act, of a man determined to enact real positive change.

But the most encouraging thing is that the fact that egyptians are committed to political acts like mass demonstrations. And for me, that means that they are defending what they have gained as a democracy.

rickyp wrote:I do think Egypt has the potential to move forward more as Turkey then Iran.

I believe you meant to write "than" instead of "then", since moving first in a Turkish direction and following that with a move in the Iranian way, while certainly possible, doesn't seem to be your point. Of course Turkey itself is moving a tiny bit in an Iranian direction, so maybe...

rickyp wrote:Although I've been overly optimistic about Morsi before...

And might be again. I admit that there's a chance that Morsi truly does represent the way forward against the reactionary courts who wish to stifle constitutionalism for reasons of their own. But that view, it seems to me, makes the error of seeing all constitutions as equal -- an error similar to seeing all elections as equal. (I don't accuse Ricky of that.) Morsi and the MB are anxious to get the current legislature working on a permanent constitution -- the question is why? Are they idealistic constitutionalists like James Madison? Or have they a narrower motive? I've not been overly optimistic about Morsi and I'm not now. They want the Islamist-dominated current legislature to write an Islamist constitution, enshrining sharia as the core basis of law in Egypt. They've said as much time and again, it's no secret.

Egypt is a functioning democracy to this extent: the Islamists are worried about the outcome of the next election. In the last one they had two things going for them that they will no longer enjoy to the same extent: 1) an advantage in organization and teamwork, and 2) no record of inability to govern. Since then the much newer political parties have had more time to organize; they'll perhaps never catch up to the MB, but they're gaining. And the Islamists are doing very little to restore Egypt to pre-revolutionary economic "prosperity" and will, in the next elections, pay a price for their failures. (That's one reason they're so anxious to provide the public with the circuses of renewed treason trials.)

So Morsi and the MB look at the current legislature, which due to the peculiarity of the rules employed at the time is even more heavily Islamist than the votes would justify, and they say "now or never". Getting THIS legislature to draft a permanent constitution is their best chance to enshrine sharia. They will do everything they can to make this happen, as demonstrated by recent events.

Purple wrote:So Morsi and the MB look at the current legislature, which due to the peculiarity of the rules employed at the time is even more heavily Islamist than the votes would justify, and they say "now or never".

Hmmm. The system they used was to have 120 seats elected by PR, and 60 by FPTP, with 90 appointed by the President. Not exactly exotic, and full FPTP (such as we outlandish quasi-democracies in the UK, US and Canada) would have resulted in an even greater discrepancy based on the results. We can hardly lecture on the system used if it's fairer than our own.

Even if it had been full PR, the FJP (Muslim Brotherhood aligned party) would have about 45% of seats, and the Salafist 'Islamist Bloc' would have about 28% of seats, giving them a combined total of 73% of the Shura. Which is not much less than they have now, and a clear supermajority in any case.

(Yes, I know the US system looks fair, but that's because you have an entrenched 2-party system where both main parties get around 50% of the vote and no third parties get much of a look in. If you had a more pluralistic culture, you'd soon see how disproportionate it is)

But yes, I agree that with such a majority they have the chance to enshrine Sharia Law. Personally, I think that this bogey-term could mean a lot of different things (a lot of the bad bits of 'sharia law' that we hear about is actually local tribal traditional law given credence through uneducated imams and supported by patriarchal traditional populations), and so it doesn't have to be Saudi-style full-on law in order to come under the general umbrella of sharia.

To be honest my greater worry would be that they set up the constitution to give themselves an inbuilt advantage in future elections, or to compromise the checks and balances. Additionally, provision to protect the rights of minorities is important.

Because constitutions can be changed, but locking up the system to make it hard for any opposition to gain power would be more difficult to crack.

The advantage that the MB have is that the opposition is split. There are those who are liberal or socialist, in various groups. There are also those who still like aspects of the old regime.

danivon

Yes, I know the US system looks fair, but that's because you have an entrenched 2-party system where both main parties get around 50% of the vote and no third parties get much of a look in. If you had a more pluralistic culture, you'd soon see how disproportionate it is)

You haven't considered the undemocratic nature of the senate. 2 representatives from Wyomong. 2 from California...

The point being that every democracy, as you said, has flaws in its election methods and systems of governance.
I listened to a former MB advisor to Morsi on CNBC describe the nature of the decrees Morsi made today. It sounded like a reasonable attempt to secure safe the process of writing a constitution from the encumbent courts system. A courts system filled with advocates for Mubarek,,, who don't want a new constituion and don't have much time for democracy...
If Morsi had reached out to minority leaders and involved them in the decision to make the Constitutional system immune from the courts .... he might have had a positive response to his dcree to protect the process. That he didn't is worrisome, but also speaks to his limits as a politician...
What democracy , in its formative stages didn't endure a period of uncrtainty and flux?

rickyp wrote:danivon

Yes, I know the US system looks fair, but that's because you have an entrenched 2-party system where both main parties get around 50% of the vote and no third parties get much of a look in. If you had a more pluralistic culture, you'd soon see how disproportionate it is)

You haven't considered the undemocratic nature of the senate. 2 representatives from Wyomong. 2 from California...

Are you saying that the Senate is not Democratically elected?
Perhaps you are saying that a Representative form of government is what we have, and it should not be that way. I am confused what your point is with the Senate comment.

rickyp

If Morsi had reached out to minority leaders and involved them in the decision to make the Constitutional system immune from the courts .... he might have had a positive response to his dcree to protect the process. That he didn't is worrisome, but also speaks to his limits as a politician...

One reason he wouldn't reach out, is that he might be trying to ram through an Islamist constitution, based on the make up of the constitutional forum beiing dominated by Islamists. (Due to the FPTP method of elections and resulting less tha refelctive make up of the Egyptian parliament.)
Again, the demonstrations are the surest way for the public to let Morsi know he'll have to compromise....


bbauska

Are you saying that the Senate is not Democratically elected?
Perhaps you are saying that a Representative form of government is what we have, and it should not be that way. I am confused what your point is with the Senate comment.

In an ideal form of democracy each persons vote weilds equal power.
Thats why many parliaments are formed by proportional representation.
Methods like FPTP lead to things like majority governments being elected despite on 38% of votes being cast for the majority governments candidates. (As happened in Canada)
The US Senate provides far more power to voters in Wyoming than in California. They have the same number of senate seats but California is around 70 times Wyoming. Thats far from the democratic ideal.

The reason we should consider all of this, is that characterizing the Egyptian struggle to instill democratic institutions as undemocratic .. is a case of glass houses. No early democracy was particularly close to the ideal. And In many modern democracis we've accepted laws and instituions that are short of ideal.
But they work. And the public has learned to accept them and respect them.
Hopefully Egypt will get to something that works too. Whats encouraging is that they are still massively involved. Compare what Russians seem to accept willingly. If they had been as engaged as Egyptians ...maybe they'd be further along..?

bbauska wrote:Are you saying that the Senate is not Democratically elected?
Perhaps you are saying that a Representative form of government is what we have, and it should not be that way. I am confused what your point is with the Senate comment.

He's pointing out that a Senator in California is elected by many times more people than a Senator from Wyoming. Which means that a voter in Wyoming has far more influence than a voter in California.

I didn't highlight it as part of my observation about the nature of FPTP, but it's a special feature when it's decided to have lop-sided constituencies that imbalances can be even worse. You still get it with equal sized constituencies, because there will be safe seats and close ones - the election depends on the outcome of the close seats, making them disproportionately influential. Similarly, gerrymandering cements things.

Sure, you still within each area have a democratic election and the winner is the one with the most votes who then represents the will of the plurality of voters, but that doesn't mean the system as a whole is democratic.

You can have PR forms of electoral system which preserve local and regional representation but far more evenly weight individual voters, such as Single Transferable Vote (although it's nor perfect). Ricky is not calling for Direct Democracy a la ancient Athens.

We all know the mantra that the USA is "not a "democracy', it's a 'republic'" (which is often brought out when the democratic imbalances there are raised). Which means it's a little rich to point to other republics who are not 100% democratic in the way their elections.

Exactly why we have the House of Representatives. When the US was being formed, smaller states were worried that Massachusetts and Virginia would run roughshod over the remaining states. Hence the US created a bicameral system to give states equal treatment as well as the people. I hope this helps you understand the reasons why.

The US is a conglomerate of states. Each state deserves equal treatment under the law.

BTW, was Egypt a democratic country under Mubarak? He was re-elected in 1987, 1993 and 1999. Why was the "Arab Spring" needed if Mubarak was elected? (sarcasm meant)

bbauska

BTW, was Egypt a democratic country under Mubarak? He was re-elected in 1987, 1993 and 1999

Because no one considered the Mubarek elections free and fair. Same thing for elections in places like North Korea.I thought we'd covered that ground.And I'm pretty sure we understand the rationale and history of how and why the US Constituion was written the way it was...
It sustains many institutions which are ideally democratic. For instance a candidate can win the Presidency receiving rwer votes than his opponents due to the vargeries of the electoral college. But, the system has worked reasonably well.....

The elections after the fall of Mubarek are generally considered free and fair versions of the FPTP method of election. Whether or not it produces a sufficiently representative council to write a constitution is a different matter. And thats really at the heart of the current conflict in Egypt.
Morsi is proving to have less vision than he needs to found a nation. More interested in the product of governance than the process of governance.

bbauska wrote:Exactly why we have the House of Representatives. When the US was being formed, smaller states were worried that Massachusetts and Virginia would run roughshod over the remaining states. Hence the US created a bicameral system to give states equal treatment as well as the people. I hope this helps you understand the reasons why.

The US is a conglomerate of states. Each state deserves equal treatment under the law.

I know full well why it is that way, and what it means. It's still more democratic than my country, where our upper chamber is made up of mainly political appointees, withe some hereditary peers and a couple of dozen bishops. There's no need to be defencive. The point is that Purple was being snotty about Egypt's system, when none of us can claim a true democratic state exists in our countries.

And the thing about State sovereignty is that when it trumps citizens, it ain't necessarily a good thing.

BTW, was Egypt a democratic country under Mubarak? He was re-elected in 1987, 1993 and 1999. Why was the "Arab Spring" needed if Mubarak was elected? (sarcasm meant)

Egypt was effectively a one-party state. The USA is effectively a two-party state. So you have that massive distinction...

Purple was being snotty?

Yes, in talking about how the 'peculiarity' of the rules meant the FJP and Islamists got more seats than the votes would justify. Our far more established 'democracies' have no better a way, really. The Egyptian system may not be wholly democratic, but itls not 'peculiar'.

Here's a link to a paper from the New England Complex Systems Institute. I don't think they are partisan.

http://necsi.edu/research/social/revolutions/

They compare the development of democracy to that of biological evolution. It happens gradually with the need to meet certain thresholds before going on to the next stage. You cannot go from fish directly to human, and it is extremely difficult to go from autocracy to democracy.

From the extract:

We describe the dynamics of governmental change as an evolutionary process similar to biological evolution, in which complex organizations arise by replication, variation and competitive selection. Different kinds of governments, however, have differing levels of complexity. Democracies must be more systemically complex than autocracies because of their need to incorporate large numbers of people in decision-making. This difference has important implications for the relative robustness of democratic and autocratic governments after revolutions. Revolutions may disrupt existing evolved complexity, limiting the potential for building more complex structures quickly. Insofar as systemic complexity is reduced by revolution, democracy is harder to create in the wake of unrest than autocracy. Applying this analysis to the Middle East and North Africa, we infer that in the absence of stable institutions or external assistance, new governments are in danger of facing increasingly insurmountable challenges and reverting to autocracy.

ray jay

They compare the development of democracy to that of biological evolution. It happens gradually with the need to meet certain thresholds before going on to the next stage. You cannot go from fish directly to human, and it is extremely difficult to go from autocracy to democracy

Kind of what I was saying all along, based mostly on "why Nations Fail" and The Dictators Handbook"
But also contradicted by successful "revolutions" from autocracy to democracy in places like Slovakia, The Czech Republic, The Baltic States etc.
The problem with using the historical record as a base, is that modern communications seem to have accelerated much of the evolutionary speed of human developments like democracy.
And with that, also comes unrealistic expectations like expecting Egypt to succeed as a full fledged democracy without years of tribulation..

I agree on years of tribulation and that history is a guide but not a dictum.

Regarding the examples that you have chosen, they all argue against your thesis. All three Baltic states and the former Czechoslavakia had varrying levels of democracy with supporting institutions between the two world wars. After WWII they were occupied or controlled by the Soviet Union. They are also within a cluster of many democratic countries. I would say those are very different situations than Egypt which has never been a democracy and by and large has not developed the corresponding institutions.