Analysis: “The Promise of the Arab Spring”

In a recent Foreign Affairs article, Sheri Berman contends, “It’s easy to be pessimistic about the Arab Spring, given the post-revolutionary turmoil the Middle East is now experiencing. But critics forget that it takes time for new democracies to transcend their authoritarian pasts.” Berman points to historical examples that mimic the Middle East’s wave of uprisings: “Every surge of democratization over the last century — after World War I, after World War II, during the so called third wave in recent decades — has been followed by an undertow, accompanied by widespread questioning of the viability and even desirability of democratic governance in the areas in question.”

She suggests that the ”first error critics make is treating new democracies as blank slates, ignoring how much of their dynamics and fate are inherited rather than chosen. Turmoil, violence, and corruption are taken as evidence of the inherent dysfunctionality of democracy itself, or of the immaturity or irrationality of a particular population, rather than as a sign of the previous dictatorship’s pathologies.” Berman adds that critics  ”set absurdly high benchmarks for success, ones that lack any historical perspective” and that “They interpret post-transition violence, corruption, confusion, and incompetence as signs that particular countries (or even entire regions or religions) are not ready for democracy, as if normal democratic transitions lead smoothly and directly to stable liberal outcomes and countries that stumble along the way must have something wrong with them.”

Berman offers a number of comparisons to European experiences with democracy, including France, Italy, and Germany. Finally, the author suggests that “problems so evident in Egypt and other transitioning countries today are entirely normal and predictable, [and] they are primarily the fault of the old authoritarian regimes rather than new democratic actors, and that the demise of authoritarianism and the experimentation with democratic rule will almost certainly be seen in retrospect as major steps forward in these countries’ political development, even if things get worse before they eventually get better.”