The Great Debate UK
from The Great Debate:
Why democracy will win
Philip N. Howard, an associate professor at the University of Washington, is the author of "The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Information Technology and Political Islam". The opinions expressed are his own.
The Day of Rage in Saudi Arabia was a tepid affair, and Libyan rebels have suffered strategic losses. Only two months ago, popular uprisings in Tunisia inspired Egyptians and others to take to the streets to demand political reform. Will the tough responses from Gadaffi and the Saudi government now discourage Arab conversations about democratic possibilities? It may seem like the dictators are ahead, but it’s only a temporary lead.
Ben Ali ruled Tunisia for 20 years, Mubarak reigned in Egypt for 30 years, and Gadaffi has held Libya in a tight grip for 40 years. Yet their bravest challengers are 20- and 30-year-olds without ideological baggage, violent intentions or clear leaders. The groups that initiated and sustained protests have few meaningful experiences with public deliberation or voting, and little experience with successful protesting. These young activists are politically disciplined, pragmatic and collaborative. Where do young people who grow up in entrenched authoritarian regimes get political aspirations? How do they learn about political life in countries where faith and freedom coexist?
The answer, for the most part, is online. And it is not just that digital media provided new tools for organizing protest and inspiring stories of success from Tunisia and Egypt. The important structural change in Middle East political life is not so much about digital ties between the West and the Arab street, but about connections between Arab streets.
Research has demonstrated three clear democratizing effects of the Internet, especially among young people in the region: more individuals are using the Internet to openly discuss the interpretation of Islamic texts, more people are forming individuated political identities online and creating their own media, and more citizens are actively debating gender politics and pan-Islamic identity. Satellite television has fed a transnational Middle East identity for several decades. But it is only in the last decade that people have started transnational conversations about politics and shared grievances.
Some experts thought the Internet was going to be a boon for radical voices and fundamentalist Islam. But it turns out that digital media more often push such extremists to the side, and bolster the networks of civil society groups over terrorist groups. Individuals learn that they can become sources of information, and that Dropbox accounts, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Google and a host of other tools provide ways for people to spread information beyond the reach of their despot.
“Democracies” can be a very broad range of governments. The word “Democratic” appears in the names of countries western liberal semi socialist democracies would consider autocracies or anti capitalist societies.
The countries that claim to be democratic are not necessarily going to be best friends or agree on fundamentals. .
The big disadvantage of the Internet is that it is most accessible to the affluent and techno-savy segment of society. It is also easy to post false and misleading information. There is little “quality control” and that is almost impossible to define. But “repressive” regimes seem to be those that exercise censorship of any media content. Freedom of the press is a commonly accepted belief at the UN level and is one of the principles of Human rights, but it is also subject to interpretation.
The large principals of human rights and good government are being established by agreements made in the UN and the administrative affairs of one’s native country are being subtly and not so subtly guided into conformity of global standards of practice and belief.
The US and Euro zone will be happiest with democracies that allow them the greatest opportunities to cross invest. The fundamental goal of all the governments of the world – of living, not failed states – is to provide the best possible standard of living for themselves. They want to profit from their relationships. They disagree internally on how that standard of living is distributed.
The west sells a market oriented way of life. All values are subservient to the market or appear to be. And ideally everyone has access to it on as equal terms as possible. During most of my life the west has even been characterized as libertine by not only puritanical communist regimes, or arch conservative Islamic parties but also the Catholic and fundamentalist Christian Churches. Israel and the Palestinians both have their under worlds, as do most all the countries on earth. And even religions have their living black markets or underworlds. There are such things as the governments of the ungovernable.
One could almost suggest that what the western Democracies want is the right for as much liberty shading into underworld activities as it can maintain without loosing itself in its own luxury and vice. The regimes it fears most are those that want to tone the “party” down too much. They tend to be depressing, brutal and bland. They tend to be systems that speak louder than those than live within them. The advanced economies don’t like things “sub-standard”. The UN also does not like substandard but its terms are broader than what is commercially defined.
But lets not fool ourselves: societies can be totally controlled by a few when they are most full of people distracted from the main sources of influence and power. And no political system can entirely protect its citizens from that. In fact the elites of all types of governments like as few hands stirring the pot as possible. Why else are elite schools so expensive?