The obvious answer is: people voted it into power. But that's completely wrong.People voted Hitler into power. The Nazi party won by far the biggest single share of the vote in the 1932 elections, which were as "free and fair" as any in the world at that time. The next election was less free, but only thanks to a, technically constitutional, emergency Decree. Hitler's assumption of all executive and legislative powers was aided by dirty tricks, but it was pretty much above board.
The current provisional government of Tunisia has not won any elections. The overthrown dictatorship won many, though they weren't free because most opposition was banned. The current government, however, is seen as more democratic, because its role is to facilitate free and fair elections. It will then dissolve and give power to whoever wins them.
Maybe the provisional government of Tunisia isn't entirely democratic. But it's clearly more democratic than Hitler, even though Hitler won more elections.
So being elected into power has nothing to do with being a democrat or a dictator. Don't forget that. What is a democratic regime, then? I think it's this: a regime is democratic if it would peacefully hand over power were it to lose an election. If and only if you respect the people's choice to kick you out, you're a democrat. It's not about winning elections, it's about losing them.
Dictators aren't dictators because their people don't like them. It's because they're going to rule whether or not people like them. They rule: that's the basic political fact. If the people agree, great - and many are genuinely popular. If not, too bad.
What we've seen in the Ivory Coast recently, and in Zimbabwe over the past few years, is what happens when elected dictators lose elections: they don't accept it, and blood flows. If you want a soundbite: a dictator is someone who's willing to get blood on their hands, if it meant they keep a grip on power.
5 comments:
Democracy is culture bound. From the our perspective it's the best thing since sliced bread. But that's a wholly ethnocentric view.
In other cultures it's the worst thing possible.
People aren't equal. If you come from a culture with millenia of imprint, culture becomes part of your being. As such you'll react according to your cultures imprint, not the constitution of the USA.
'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights' is about the most ethnocentric (and incorrect) statement ever.
This stems from a superiority belief ingrained in the selfrighteous religious fanatics people who wrote it.
'Men' aren't created, they are born. They are born with the right to die, for the rest it's anybody's guess.
Democracy works (somewhat) in the west. It doesn't work at all elsewhere.
Enlightened Dictators did worlds of good in past history.
The term democracy is not rarely misused to mean pretty much anything positive. In essence, it means elected by the constituency - which isn't necessarily the entirety of a people. Nor does it mean that the society is free (e.g. Iran).
What's really important is living in a free society. Democracy seems to be the best way make sure society stays free from one ruler to another. That's its raison d'être, IMHO.
I guess by now Egypt is busty proving the point that democracy only works if the participants are somewhat of sound mind.
To us is seems like the citizens are struggling for freedom, whilst in reality the Muslim Brotherhood and other extremist groups are fueling this 'revolt' to pave the way for government participation.
Once Mubarak, a staunch secular, is out of the way the transition of Egypt from a relatively secular state to a full on theocratic 'democracy' as in Iran is a matter of time.
Give religious fanatics the right to vote and they'll democratically will vote in a theocracy.
Which is their right in principle, the only problem with it is that with Lebanon (Hezbollah), Gaza (Hamas), and soon Egypt (Muslim Brotherhood) being a fiefdom of the Iranian Democratic Republic it'll form a huge powershift to the nutcase end of the political spectrum.
Interesting times lay ahead.
Very democratic. Yay.
petrossa: Well that's the worry but it's not clear it'll work. The Muslim Brotherhood seem to have been caught off-guard by these protests and the Tunisian Islamists likewise. In fact the MB didn't even endorse the Egyptian ones until Friday I believe.
The risk however is that the Islamists will win by default because all the other parties are so disorganized and fragmented that you'll end up with say 40 moderate parties each with 2% of the vote and the Islamists get 20% and win. The numbers are a slight exaggeration but you see what I mean.
So the question of the electoral rules becomes crucial, also the timing, 6 months is not long to build a political party but it's a lot better than say 1 month.
Goodness, there's so much effective information here!
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