Egypt's democratic reformers face major challenges in exiting from 60 years of authoritarian rule. But there are grounds for optimism, writes Hasan Afif El-Hasan* At the end of the last century, more people than ever before in human history lived in countries whose governments were democratic except for post-colonial Arabs. The Arabs were living under authoritarian regimes that had been remarkably successful in sustaining their rule by repressing dissent and controlling public opinion through state-run institutions. In the oil-rich Arab states, the state maintains its patriarchal rule over its citizens by taking advantage of its ability to dole out generous financial bonuses when it chooses, thereby ensuring public support despite the corruption, the lack of human rights and the absence of individual liberties. Only Arabs have absolute monarchies, and the Arab leaders have legitimised the concept of republics with an inherited presidential office. The rulers of Egypt, Libya and Yemen openly prepared their children to succeed them. In the Arabian Peninsula, a woman has no political rights, and she can go to jail if she tries to drive a car. Her crime is that she was born a woman. Corruption and influence peddling have become accepted practices and a way of life. The Arab regimes' political elites reaped wealth through corruption and cronyism, inhibiting economic growth and creating poverty and hopelessness. Institutionalised authoritarian rule in the Arab states even led prominent scholars to suggest that some aspects of democratic practices ran against deeply held values of the sanctified major religion and traditions in the Arab world. Because of the current prospects of democracy in the Arab world, it is important to look at the challenges it faces, especially in Egypt, the most populated and the leader of the Arab world. Until recently, Egypt has been ruled by an authoritarian regime, first under the military and then under a dominant established party, for more than 60 years. The 1952 Egyptian military coup was staged by members of the Free Officers group under the leadership of Gamal Abdel-Nasser, this group believing that Egypt needed dictatorship because the political parties would not support the Free Officers' socioeconomic reform programme. The political right, represented by the Wafd Party, would resist change, the left was too radical, the Muslim Brotherhood would not accept modernisation, and the masses would support the traditional leadership. Therefore, the military group abolished political parties, restricted freedom of speech and forced the political opposition to go underground. Despite the absence of pluralistic political participation, Nasser's regime enjoyed legitimacy mostly due to its land reforms and string of foreign-policy successes. Its constituency included small farmers, the new class of officers, and the technocratic elites largely recruited from the urban middle classes. The rural middle class dominated the local branches of the ruling party and filled the lower and middle ranks of the bureaucracy. Nasser himself could have made the transition to democracy, run on his domestic and foreign policy record and won elections, but he did not. That was Nasser's biggest political blunder. Unlike his successors, presidents Anwar El-Sadat and Hosni Mubarak, Nasser and his family lived a simple life and one more like any other member of the middle class, rather than one close to those of rich upper-class Egyptians. Nasser also never sought personal wealth. Yet, even with the best intentions, his rule planted the seeds of the corruption and abuse of power that ensued. Over the past 40 years, the dominant party in Egypt was transformed into a bureaucratic privileged institution rather than a political party with an ideology or a national programme. The dominant party provided the regime with a means for recruiting the subordinates that would be able to maintain government control through fraudulent elections and emergency laws. The regime restricted the activities of independent interest groups and political opponents and created and institutionalised a form of crony capitalism to accommodate the interests of its privileged supporters. As a result, the regime was unable to have any coherent economic and foreign policies. The leadership's self-serving economic policy carried the country towards agricultural, commercial and industrial stagnation. After the recent democratic uprising, the question is whether there will now be a transition to liberal democracy, economic reform and an end to corruption, and whether such a democracy will be sustainable. Democracy will only be consolidated when fear ceases to be employed as a political currency, when competition replaces monopoly decision-making, when alternation in office takes place peacefully between political adversaries, and when government officials are accountable for their actions. However, democracies may be weakened or break down for many reasons, including wars, economic depression, and ideological and communal conflicts. Historically, established democracies have sometimes degenerated into new forms of tyranny or façade democracies. Most of Latin America fell into the hands of military dictators during the 1960s and early 1970s, including countries which had long traditions of democratic practices. These included Argentina, Brazil, Chile and even Uruguay, which had been known as the "Switzerland of Latin America." Only Costa Rica, Colombia and Venezuela were ruled by democratic governments by the mid-1970s. In Europe, Greece was seized by the military in the mid-1960s. In Asia, the Turkish military staged coups in 1960 and 1971. The ethnic violence that erupted among Malaysia's people in the late 1960s undermined the country's democratic system and moved it to something close to authoritarian rule. There is also always a possibility of a transition to a fraudulent democracy even when democratic features of parties, elections, parliamentary bodies, generous suffrage and constitutions are fulfilled. The democracy in Mexico between 1929 and 2000 is an example, with the 1917 Mexican constitution being structured like that of the US, but the government practices from 1929 to 2000 being very different from the US model. The Mexican president controlled both houses of the legislature through a hegemonic party, exercised authority with no restraints and designated his successor. Mexico was ruled by an authoritarian regime through a dominant party based on a corporatist structure even as its constitution limited the president to one six-year term. This happened even when civilians ruled Mexico after 1946. In exiting this situation, Mexico was able to make the transition by giving the presidency to the opposition party candidate for the first time in the 2000 presidential elections. Parties are requirements for democratic transitions, but the problem with political parties in democratic systems is that they often do not win elections in order to carry out their campaign promises, but rather formulate their programmes in order to win elections. In some so-called democracies, foreign ambassadors often wield more authority than the elected president himself. Iraq is the latest example of a client state that will have limited freedom in making decisions even under an elected government. Why otherwise is the US embassy in Baghdad bigger than the state department in Washington? Democratic reformers in Egypt now have to alleviate the deteriorating economic conditions of poverty, unemployment and homelessness in the country that they inherited from the authoritarian regime. But democratic leaders who depend on consent rather than coercion face a major dilemma in reforming the economy. They will face pressures to postpone corrective actions or even to abandon programmes that are required to deal with the economy once their immediate cost becomes palpable. Voters are unlikely to evaluate the costs and benefits of the reform programmes against the alternatives. The success of a nascent democracy in Egypt is likely to be constrained by authoritarian enclaves that have been institutionalised over the years, supporters of the old regime who control business and capital, the weak exercise of citizen rights due to illiteracy and exclusion, and the intolerable levels of poverty. Egypt's democratic transition faces pressures from new groups entering the political arena, uncertainty about the democratic loyalty of the political groups associated with the former authoritarian regime, and the number of political and economic problems inherited from the old order. The economic crisis due to corruption and cronyism was a major reason behind the uprising by the middle class and the poor. The poor state of the economy reduced the capacity of the authoritarian regime's ruling elites to control the process of political change, including the terms on which they could themselves have exited. Under democratic rule, the politically influential groups that benefited from the authoritarian regime's institutional arrangements will attempt to maintain the status quo by opposing economic policy adjustments. Prospects for consolidating democracy will be difficult to achieve when the government is not able successfully to fix its economic inheritance. And transition from authoritarian rule rarely spells the end of military intervention in politics. Yet, there are two reasons for optimism. First, unlike authoritarian rule Egyptian democracy will be able to draw on reservoirs of legitimacy and support from the public at large during periods of crisis. Second, the widely recognised support of the military for the popular revolution is likely to enhance, rather than undermine, civil-military relations. As a result, it is likely that the military will gradually recede to the back of the stage, the state will bolster the strength of civilian government institutions, and the civilian leaders will make sure that the military remains focussed on external missions and not internal politics. * The writer is a political analyst and author of Is the Two-State Solution already Dead? (Algora Publishing, New York).
