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Since the Taif agreement of 1989, which helped end the civil war, half of Parliament has been reserved for Christians, the other half for Muslims, with each half distributed among 11 of Lebanon’s 18 officially recognized sects (Maronite, Greek Orthodox, Protestant, Sunni, Shiite, Druze, Alawite, etc). Each of Parliament’s (pdf) 128 seats is sect-specific: only members of that sect can run for it. (Voters, however, can cast their ballot for every seat in their district regardless of their own religious affiliation.) The president must be a Maronite, the prime minister a Sunni and the speaker of Parliament a Shiite. Hundreds of bureaucratic appointments are also subject to sectarian apportionment under the Constitution.

The imposition of religious representativeness in politics is a scourge. In the best of circumstances, it is vulnerable to the demagoguery of religious leaders; in the worst, it breeds civil violence and paralyzes the government. But others fear that a more open system would not provide the guarantees of power-sharing among religious minorities that the current model entails.

In recent months, the focus of these long-standing divergences has centered on the intricacies of Lebanon’s electoral law. The next parliamentary elections are less than a year and a half away, and a loose coalition of civil society groups, independent politicians and Lebanon’s president – the former army general Michel Suleiman — has recently proposed implementing a system of proportional representation to replace the current majoritarian, or “winner-take-all,” model.

Under the existing system, a fledgling party with a small but dedicated following stands no chance of getting its candidates elected in a district where a more established party holds sway. Under proportional representation — in which seats are allocated in keeping with the share of votes collected — a small party could win some seats with a minority of votes. In addition to ensuring multiparty representation in each district, proportional representation would empower lesser-known independent candidates. Over time the newcomers could coalesce to form a bulwark against the traditional political mainstream and advance a more liberal agenda.

Predictably, most major parties have conspired to protect the status quo; they want to maintain their primacy within it. The Future Movement, the main Sunni party, worries that the Sunni allies of its Shiite archrival, Hezbollah, might encroach on its turf. Walid Jumblatt, the country’s main Druze leader, fears that he would lose votes to other Druze figures with small-time followings in his traditional stronghold, the Chouf mountains.

In a rare show of unity, the leaders of Lebanon’s main Christian parties have come together to oppose the president’s draft law. The proposed law would combine Lebanon’s small electoral districts into fewer and larger ones, which is necessary for proportional representation to work effectively. (Imagine an election between 10 different parties in a 10-seat district: if each party wins 10 percent of the overall vote, each one gets its own seat. In a two-seat district, only the top two lists win seats.) But an electoral map with  larger districts also means  larger constituencies, which in turn means that substantial numbers of Christian candidates could be voted in on the lists of non-Christian parties (like the Future Movement and Hezbollah). And that would erode the influence of the traditional Christian political elite.

And so the Christian political establishment has offered a radical counter-proposal: a law that would institute proportional representation but also require citizens to vote only for members of their own sect (Sunnis would elect Sunnis; Greek Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, etc.)

One of the many problems with this idea is that it would generate considerable inequalities of suffrage between Christians and Muslims. As is, Christians already have greater voting power than Muslims because they still occupy half of Parliament even though they now represent less than half of Lebanon’s population. Under the new proposal, this disparity in representation would be further exacerbated.

Worse is the vision of Lebanon’s political future at the heart of the Christian plan. The president’s proposal envisages a country whose citizens vote for candidates on the basis of party affiliation and political platform, not sect. The Christians’ counter-proposal imagines Lebanon as a collection of 18 insular religious communities jealously nominating their own nobility and eyeing one another with suspicion. The first model is a bold step toward dismantling political sectarianism; the second is an enormous step backward, toward greater divisiveness.

Because of its inexpediency, a substantive revision of the electoral law in time for the 2013 elections seems unlikely — despite the fact that a solid majority of Lebanese say they would prefer proportional representation to the current system. Yet if Lebanon is ever to establish a new social contract — one based on true citizenship rather than begrudging coexistence — it will need to change its electoral arithmetic.

A year has passed since the Egyptian uprising, one of the defining moments of the democratic wave that surged across the Arab world. Since Jan. 25, 2011, three long-standing Arab dictatorships have toppled and citizen movements continue to challenge entrenched autocratic regimes. Reflecting on this pivotal moment, five scholars at Stanford's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law talk about how these events changed the course of democracy – if at all – and what they mean for the region as a whole.

What are the prospects for democracy in the Arab world today?

Larry Diamond: The near-term prospects for democracy are mixed and uncertain – but far better than they were a year ago. Within the space of a single year, Tunisia has become an electoral democracy – the first in the Arab world since Lebanon fell apart in the mid-1970s. This is an astonishing achievement, and Tunisia’s prospects to build democracy are quite good. Egypt has a chance to turn the corner politically, but it depends on whether the Muslim Brotherhood will evolve in a truly democratic and tolerant direction, and whether the military will step back from power. Libya must still disarm its militias and build democratic institutions and a viable state. Syria and Yemen remain much more deeply troubled, with a risk of civil war.

In examining the arc of history, was the Arab Spring inevitable? Should we have been surprised by what happened?

Francis Fukuyama: Economic growth and technological change foster the rise of a middle class that fosters demands for political participation. This is the social basis for democratic revolutions around the world. Some people argued that cultural factors – Islam, Arab passivity –would prevent this from unfolding in the Middle East, but this has clearly been proven wrong. These structural shifts do not imply inevitability, since it is human agents who must translate social demands into political action. This is why the general phenomenon of a revolt may have been predictable, but the timing absolutely uncertain.

Have living conditions improved in the Arab world, or are they worse for the average citizen?

Lina Khatib: The Arab Spring has brought immense change in the lives of Arab citizens. Political taboos have been broken, and the wall of fear that used to govern their everyday lives has crashed down. The Arab world still has some way to go before it can be called democratic in the full sense. While the economy in particular has taken a hit in the current period of transition and uncertainty – making conditions worse for many in the short term – the average Arab citizen today can actually look forward to seeing freedom of expression, human rights, and political and economic reform. These are no longer unrealizable dreams.

What are some of the lessons U.S. policymakers have learned from the Arab Spring?

Jeremy M. Weinstein: A number of fundamental ideas that underpinned 30 years of U.S. policy in the Middle East were upended by the events of 2011. The idea that Arabs do not care about democracy, are politically apathetic, and are too frightened to resist oppressive regimes has been disproved. The notion of authoritarian stability is now questioned, and it is no longer taken for granted that “the autocrats we know” are the safest bet to secure U.S. interests. And the fear of Islamists is slowly receding among policymakers as they confront the electoral success of Islamist parties and begin to directly engage a new cadre of leaders.

How did Arab monarchies weather the storm and avoid the experiences of Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia?

Ahmed Benchemsi: Except in Bahrain, where security forces opened fire on unarmed crowds, Arab monarchies generally managed to outflank their respective protesters in a peaceful way. They did so either by implementing illusory reforms while in fact playing for time (in Morocco and Jordan) or by buying off the opposition with huge social spending (in the Gulf). As this last tactic may remain effective for some time, non-oil monarchies’ victories are more likely to prove short-lived. New rounds of popular anger could be spawned sooner rather than later by, if anything, growing economic difficulties. These will be harder to quell by subterfuges.

Looking forward, are you hopeful that democracy will prosper in the Arab world?

Diamond: Yes, I am quite hopeful that democracy will develop in the Arab world, but I think there will be wide variation among Arab countries in the near term, and much will depend on whether there emerges an instance of clear democratic success that inspires other countries. This is why I think we should bet heavily now on Tunisia, while also intensively engaging Egypt, the largest Arab country.

Fukuyama: In the long run yes, in the short run, no – a safe answer.

Khatib: Even if democracy takes decades to materialize, the Arab world has finally taken the first steps in what – as history has taught us – is always a long and difficult journey, and that’s an important milestone.

Weinstein: All of us know that the road to democracy is uncertain and filled with obstacles. But I take comfort in the fact that no one could have predicted a 2011 in which Ben Ali, Mubarak, Gadhafi, and Saleh would leave the stage. Something profound has changed in the region, and I am confident that – having lost their fear – citizens will make their voices heard as the struggle for democracy continues.

Benchemsi: For democracy to have a real chance in the Arab World, liberals must build grassroots organizations – ones that would be large and strong enough to challenge both autocratic regimes and Islamist groups. When this is done, I will have reason for optimism.

Interview by Stephen Smith

This is translated from the French version that appeared in the French journal, Le Débat.

There is no one better able to provide a more informed perspective on the upheavals in the Arab world than Prince Moulay Hicham ben Abdallah El Alaoui. The first cousin of the King of Morocco, Mohammed VI, and heir to a long Pan-Arab line through his Lebanese mother, he is also a research fellow at Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law in California. In 1994, he established the Institute for the Transregional Study of the Contemporary Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia at Princeton University, where he went to college. He also directs the Foundation for Social Science Research on North Africa and the Middle East which bears his name. Born in Rabat in 1964, Moulay Hicham settled in the United States in 2002 for the reasons he explains below.

Stephen Smith. – You bring a number of qualifications to your views on the Arab world: as a member of the royal family of Morocco, as the "red prince" either loved or hated by the media, and also as a Stanford University researcher and sponsor of a research foundation focusing on North Africa and the Middle East. So tell us, on behalf of whom and in what role do you speak?

Moulay Hicham. – Nobody invents himself. I belong to Morocco's ruling family through my father, Moulay Abdallah Ben Mohammed El Alaoui, and I am very proud to be part of a monarchy that joined with the people to put an end to colonialism. Through my Lebanese mother, Lamia el-Solh, I belong to one of the Arab world's great nationalist families, a family planted across the entire region. But my "familiarity" with the Arab world does not come just from my parentage. After I finished Princeton, I pursued research on transitioning from authoritarianism to democracy. At present, I am a Consulting Professor at Stanford. In short, it’s a whole package. I grew up in the palace alongside my cousin, who became King Mohammed VI. I spoke up to King Hassan II very early on, while learning a great deal from him, and while accompanying my father – when he served as his brother’s personal representative– on diplomatic missions abroad. After my uncle died, I continued to maintain publicly that the Makhzen -- that is, the patronage network that effectively runs Morocco -- needed to perish for the monarchy to thrive and serve Moroccans. I also came out against the caliphate, that is, against a monarchy under the "Commander of the Faithful," which mixed political and religious prerogatives. I still believe and defend all of that, both because of what I am and because of what I have made of myself. Of course, no one is self-invented. But I am also the product of my journey and of my study. One can be whole, at least I hope so.

S. S. – What does the "Arab Spring" mean to you? And, for starters, is the right name being used?

M. H. – I'm not sure it is. I would rather talk about an "Arab Awakening," because spring is a season, thus ephemeral and cyclical. And I do not believe the Arab world can reverse course and go back to sleep. But no matter what term is used, we need to get rid of culturalist prejudices about "the Arabs” and ahistorical readings of Islam. Ever since Leibniz and, following him, Ernest Renan, spoke of the fatum mahometanum, we were not far from believing that an immutable form of despotism was built into the genes and religion of the Arab world. Good riddance! An oppressed Arab is first and foremost someone who, like any other oppressed person, seeks to become emancipated. Of course, we need be intellectually honest: if a tidal wave of democratization is breaking across the Arab world, we have to explain its relevance within the context. If it isn't "Arabness" mixed with Islam, what is it? I don't have a ready-made answer. No doubt, it's a cluster of factors, including a particular kind of political archaism/throwback arising, first, from colonization, followed by a decolonization defined by the "catastrophe" – the nakba – that was the establishment of Israel in Palestine; there is also an economy based on oil rents, which sharpen geopolitical rivalries and foster the betrayal of the elites. Add to that a generous helping of "Orientalism," and we're probably not far from a stew simmering until the lid blows.

S. S. –For some time, everybody has been eating humble pie about having spoken, in the past, about the "Arab street," a term one now sees as a mere culture-based prejudice. Isn't that paradoxical, right when so many Arabs are actually taking to the streets?

M. H. – Yes, it turns things on their head, but I can understand how people would be ready to abandon the cliché about the sleeping volcano that the "Arab street" was supposed to be. That’s true for us as well, who see the Arab street – al shariai al arabi – as the opposite extreme from the Rais, king, or omnipotent "sultan." The street now needs to turn into public forum -- that is, a public opinion that doesn't sweep away everything in its path, but rather expresses itself in a steady, organized fashion, because, henceforth, governments will have to take into account the will of the governed. To stick to the metaphor: the devastating flood must become a canal that irrigates democracy.

S. S. – For the time being, the street does not speak the language of institutional politics and expresses itself instead in the – moral – register of indignation. In concrete terms, how can "the Dignity Revolution" be achieved?

M. H. – Politics, for its part, needs its share of dreaming. When people want to create a new order, they don't use hackneyed words. The vocabulary of socialism and liberalism cannot convey the dream spilling into the streets of the Arab world – nor, in fact, can the language of religion, which is not the least we have learned from the events taking place since the start of the year. With these events, we enter the field of indignation or, rather, the of a dignity to be restored after a long series of degradations: endless reigns, predatory police states, trampled rights, and mock kingdoms, not to mention the doublespeak about the Palestinians, our favorite victims, whom our dictators have used as a pretext to turn around and victimize us. Dignity – karama – has become the new value to which we refer. What could be easier to understand? Of course you are right to say that taking to the streets over and over again is useless if these marches do not lead to the halls of power in the end. But how? In Tunisia, they are in the process of seeking the way, day by day. In Egypt, the army has joined the people, but we still don't know if it was to confiscate the Tahrir Square victory or bring it to completion. In Syria, demonstrators are confronting part of the armed forces, with the possibility of a widespread insurrection. In Morocco, the February 20 Movement – and it may not be by chance that the common denominator is limited to a date... –, the slogan "Freedom, dignity, social justice," and mobilizing "until all demands are met" need to move from speech to action, because telling the truth is not enough to bring about change.  Finally, Libya is a case apart and, I fear, will remain so, due in part to outside intervention. Is it possible to impose democracy manu militari, By external intervention, without, perforce, betraying the message of popular sovereignty being proclaimed?

This is a question that can no longer be ducked, ever since Iraq was invaded in 2003 under the banner of democracy as a corollary of regime change – however harmful the regime brought down under such circumstances. In Libya as in Iraq, this raises the issue of national unity. Unfortunately, bombing "Gaddafi's country" to turn it into a democracy, may well split Libya itself back into its three former components: Tripolitania to the west, Cyrenaica to the east and Fezzan in the great desert south.

S. S. – Through an extreme simplification harking back to Lenin's definition of communism in 1920's Russia as "Soviets plus electricity," the Arab Spring has been explained by the press as "social networks plus youth." So, first of all, what do social networks have to with a revolt for democracy?

M. H. – It is clear what reporters mean by that: the cyber-revolution would favor democracy because social networks are per se "democratic," allowing anyone to make connections while eluding the usual gatekeepers, starting with reporters themselves, and outwitting the censors. Only, it's not that easy. First, access to the Internet and, even more so, to social networks such as, for example, Facebook, is still far from universal in the Arab world. While 40% of Moroccans and a third of Tunisians have access to the Internet, only 21% do in Syria, with 10% in Yemen. A quarter of Tunisians use Facebook, but only 9% of Egyptians, and so few Syrians and Yemenis that they are statistically insignificant. Next, in particular, while digital media function "democratically," their content is not necessarily democratic – and nor, therefore, are the results of networking at the electronic speeds that dazzle all of us. Since 2009, Harvard University has been doing an in depth study on the Arab blogosphere – titled Mapping the Arabic Blogosphere: Politics, Culture, and Dissent – by indexing some 35,000 sites and examining 4,000 of them closely. The authors, in their conclusions, warn against the illusion of a "techno-democracy." For technology changes the rules of the game, but does not predetermine its winner. History is also instructive: nobody would claim that the telegraph lit the fuses all at once in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt in 1919, or that The Voice of the Arabs – the famous short wave radio station in Cairo – explains the Pan-Arabism of the 1960's. Technology merely served – efficiently – to relay Woodrow Wilson's fourteen points for "making the world safe for the democracy" in the first case, and in the second, Nasser's charisma. And nothing would have happened if local players had not seized upon the ideas of either of them.

S. S. – So new media are a condition rather than a cause. And what about youth or, more specifically, the age pyramid of a given population?

M. H. – A country's demographic profile is significant but, once again, things are not so simple. Contrary to what is being said and written pretty much everywhere, the Arab world's population – except for the Gaza Strip and Yemen – is not exceptionally young, at least not relative to populations south of the Sahara. So, if the number of young people – chebab – was in and of itself a condition favoring the advent of democracy, sub-Saharan Africa would be a paradise of the popular will. Of course, there is a large number of youth in the fifteen to thirty age group in the Arab world, the result of a very high birth rate until the end of the twentieth century that is now arriving on the job market – where it can't find work, at least not work of adequate quantity or quality. Yet the same age group is much larger in sub-Saharan Africa, where, let it be noted, the World Bank presents this profusion as a future "demographic bonus" – this after having promised a  “demographic gift” to the Arab world twenty years ago. However, no matter how precious this human capital may be in absolute terms, it only becomes a “gift” or “bonus” if it can become invested in a society. Which takes us back to governance. Without good governance, the young find themselves out of work or, worse, lapse into violence. While the young need democracy to thrive, it is not a given that democracy prospers in a country with a particularly young population. In fact, studies show pretty much the opposite: you need a certain demographic maturity for democracy not just to take hold, but to last over the long term. Tunisia has the structural advantage of being a country with a median age of twenty-nine. All other things being equal, Tunisia has a greater chance of becoming a lasting democracy than, let's say, Yemen, where the median age is only eighteen. For the simple reason that it is not easy to run institutions when eight out of ten inhabitants are under thirty and expect opportunities to “succeed” from their elders, who are few in number. Lastly, I would like to mention that the UNDP’s excellent reports on human development in the Arab world focused on three structural impediments: not just poor governance, but inappropriate education of our young and the – far from resolved – issue of the emancipation of women. In the present euphoria, let us not forget what we had already understood while the horizon was still gray.

S. S. – You just mentioned sub-Saharan Africa. Do you find it striking that commentators on the “Arab Spring” are far more likely to mention the revolutions of 1789 and 1848, or the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, rather than the democratization wave south of the Sahara twenty years ago, after the end of the Cold War?

M. H. – Any comparison can be enlightening. However, Westerners tend to seek parallels in their own history, which they continue to view as the universal model, and the Arabs, who readily complain about discrimination, would be offended to be told they were following Black Africa... However, history does not repeat itself. But it would be productive to ask why the end of the Cold War allowed the liberation of sub-Saharan Africa, but not the Arab world? The importance of petroleum? The shadow cast by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Whatever the reason, we have a lot to learn from democratization south of the Sahara. Political pluralism is often limited to reducing the number of single party states, so to speak, and only a handful of countries have become fully democratic, while pseudo-democracies prevail in most States, with presidents serving multiple terms and popular elections that are decided in advance. At the other end of the spectrum, a handful of countries have even experienced, after their spring of democracy, an autumn of restored authoritarianism.  It would be reckless to deny that there is also a risk of unfinished, and even wayward or misguided transitions in the Arab world. Finally, the sub-Saharan experience serves as a warning about the fable of the bad prince and the good people. It’s a fable. Democrats are few and far between, not only at the helm of our States, but in the opposition, parties, associations, and bases as well.

S. S. – Concerning geopolitics at the end of the Cold War: the “Arab Spring” is a odd assortment of homemade revolutions. Anything extending beyond borders tends to lose speed, from Pan-Arabism to Jihadism, not to mention the last hegemon which, for a long while, served as the greatest foil, namely America. Even the centrality of the Palestinian problem seems to be in doubt.

M. H. – The Palestinian issue will come galloping back and take center stage again, but not as the political toy, not to say diversion, it once was. This said, I agree that nationhood, while a product of colonization, is raising its standard. Literally, too, because people are demonstrating everywhere under their national colors. Although not as a chauvinist-type of nationalism but, rather, a patriotism reviving the social bond whittled away by decades of authoritarianism. They are “making” community, but not a Pan-Arab or a religion-based, borderless community, and even less so an international jihadist one. Ossama bin Laden was politically dead; the Americans didn’t need to kill him. Political Islam, however, is more complex: the fundamentalists’ purpose was to target the nation-state they and might someday find a way forward to participation, if a consensus were built around democratic rules. Many Islamists – in Tunisia, Egypt and no doubt also Morocco – understand perfectly well that nobody is looking for a new authoritarianism, and that what they have to offer needs to be adapted to the political market. Reconverting the Islamists will be all the easier because in order to resist repression, they have often joined social networks for solidarity. I don’t want to speculate idly, but it is not out of the question for the Arab world to experience a Muslim democracy, just as Europe experienced, and continues to experience, a Christian democracy.

S. S. – Meanwhile, the dustbin of history is filling up helter-skelter: Pan-Arabism, global jihad, a hypnotic fixation on the West...

M. H. – Not everything ends up in the dustbin, but it is true that “all-inclusive” projects no longer hold an appeal. Pan-Arabism is not dead. To wit: we are presently experiencing a democratic Pan-Arabism, both joyfully and painfully. But historical Pan-Arabism is now seen for what it was, that is, a quest for unanimism, and, therefore, a false quest for modernity. Nevertheless, let us not forget the contexts in which past ideologies emerged. Pan-Arabism was a response to colonialism’s dividing to conquer, just as, later on, petroleum served as an economic weapon for resisting the dictates of the Cold War. Lastly, borderless jihadism in its Al-Qaeda guise, and what I would call the “Occidentalism” of the Arab world, were also branded by a dialectics of enclosure. Orientalism caricatured us – so we caricatured back. As for Ossama bin Laden’s jihad, would it have taken on the same dimensions if the Global War on Terrorism – George W. Bush’s GWOT – had not turned it into something larger than life? I believe these are legitimate questions that we can now ask.  But, in any case, we are no longer wedged between the authoritarian anvil, on the one hand, and the Islamist or American hammer, on the other. The Arab world has a triple liberation in its sights. It is no longer alienated by Al-Qaeda's terrorism or the political agenda of the neo-conservatives, who have lost their power in Washington. The Arab world has also begun to rid itself of its autocrats and, paradoxically, it is finally able to acknowledge that foreign domination may not have been so much the cause as, to a great extent, the consequence of its weakness.

S. S. – You have already alluded to that: the armed forces are playing a central role in bringing democracy to the Arab world.

M. H. – Indeed. However, there are a multitude of possible outcomes. First, is there any army capable of influencing the course of events? In Tunisia, the army, compared to the Ministry of the Interior and its 155,000 agents, looked like a lightweight. Next, the army needs to be either professional, consist of conscripts, or backed up by paramilitary units, each of which would lead to radically different outcomes. In Egypt, a nineteenth century witticism about Prussia raises the question of whether it is a state with an army, or an army with a state. In any case, the Egyptian army is also an important economic player. The wheeling and dealing of its top officers will affect the on-going transition. In Syria, the Republican Guard, on the front lines against the protestors, is dominated by Alaouites, that is, by the minority in power, unlike the rest of the Army, whose composition reflects the majority in the Syrian population, over three quarters of whom are Sunni. Finally, in several Arab countries, the army is not one institution among others, to which a new role could easily be attributed in place of its old one. I am thinking, for example, of Algeria, as well as Jordan. In both cases, the army is an historical component of the state. One cannot be conceived of without the other. It is a given that they form an indivisible whole. Obviously, that complicates the equation.

S. S. – Is this why until now Algeria has remained on the sidelines of the present movement?

M. H. – Probably, but there are at the least two other strong reasons. First, the nine years of bloody civil war, between 1992 and 2001, remain piercingly fresh in everyone's memory – after that kind of shared trauma, you don't take risks. Second, as in most countries of the Arabian peninsula, petroleum money plays a buffer role. Petrodollars are a way to pay off discontent, at least in part, for a certain time. Until when? You're quite right to specify "for the time being."

S. S. – In non-petroleum producing countries, the major stumbling block is the economy. To the protestors, democracy epitomizes prosperity. The "Arab awakening" you mentioned earlier is likely to be hard.

M. H. – Right, because the link between public liberties and economic performance is not one of cause and effect, even though I think that in the end only economic actors freed from repressive constraints can and will want to give their best. However, in the short-term, the upheaval of the old order and the ferment peculiar to transitions will inevitably disrupt economic life. Tourists go elsewhere and investors remain on the sidelines while waiting for things to sort themselves out. At the same time, a rise in openly expressed demands weighs on the costs of production. Finally, you have to be realistic relative to the discourse of the industrialized countries. Not only has their support of democratization of the Arab world sometimes been hesitant but, in addition, it will remain verbal. There will be no equivalent to a Marshall Plan. In the midst of a financial crisis, when 20,000 Tunisian refugees were all it took for the Schengen area to close in on itself, what Western office-holder is going to risk making austerity worse in his or her country to promote Arab democracy? I would add, in all sincerity, that I am only halfway sorry about it, if at all. For our countries, this is a blessing in disguise, that is, an unintended benefit. As long as our institutional capabilities remain limited, a "democracy premium" would produce the same effect as any other source of income: it would feed corruption. In fact, this is the only thing I don't want to see democratized... Egypt, which has received forty billion dollars from the Americans since 1978 as a "separate peace dividend”, is a good illustration of my fears.

S. S. – In your country, Morocco, you are more than a committed observer. You are part of the problem. Do you also hope to be part of solution, or even the solution itself?

M. H. – Neither. Besides, I don't really see how I could be part of the problem, except for having earlier raised the issues which are now out in the open, while it would still have been easy to solve them. After Hassan II's death, I told Mohammed VI with all the sincerity my affection for him demanded, that real change was necessary, that modernizing the Makhzen was not enough. Since then, I have only seen the King, my cousin, twice, for strictly family events, where our exchanges have remained courteous and distant, as required by the circumstances. Politically, I am persona non grata at the palace.  I'm not complaining. I said what I had to say, but I was not heard by either Mohammed VI or by those information handlers who presented him as the "king of the poor" while dubbing me the "red prince." Better to just laugh about it! So I took some distance by moving with my family to the United States, and I congratulate myself every day for making a decision that has allowed me to achieve a lot both professionally and personally. Besides, and this is fundamental for me and my wife, it allows our children to grow up in an open, free environment. In short, I am not a problem to anyone at all, or at least I shouldn't be. For my part, I don’t have a problem with anybody. This also answers your imputation that I should see myself as the solution. No, not at all. If there is a solution, it is up to the Moroccans to find it together. In this regard -- that is, as citizen Hicham ben Abdallah -- I won't deprive myself of contributing what I can, to the best of my abilities. But I do not believe that democratizing Morocco has any special need of a prince. Just as I've also come to the conclusion that I’m in the King’s way, so I keep my distance. To be perfectly clear: I believe that involving myself more directly would be a disservice to democracy in my country, because, at this stage, it would add to the confusion. But I claim total freedom of expression, without any red lines I shouldn't cross. We'll see whether either the king or the February 20 Movement will complain about it.

S. S. – Since the subject has come up, let's get down to brass tacks: how do you view Mohammed VI's constitutional reform, which was adopted by referendum on July 1st, by 98% of those voting, with a 72% participation rate?

M. H. – Let's look at it from the right side:  I have no doubt that the constitutional reform proposed by the King was adopted by the great majority of Moroccans. Duly noted. That said, 98% "yes" votes and a 72% participation rate -- that is, almost double the previous election --is simply not credible. We'd hoped that the "score-making" machine had been mothballed once and for all, but it's back at full tilt: people were herded into buses, they were driven to the polls like electoral livestock and, to make sure they clearly understood what was expected of them, they had a sermon, dictated by the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, crammed into their heads in the mosques on Friday, June 25 – unheard of, even back in the days of Hassan II and his Minister of the Interior and grand master of referenda, the late Driss Basri! The kingdom's largest Sufi brotherhood, the Zaouiya Boutchichia, was mustered, and, just as disturbingly, so were gangs of young hooligans who were tasked with creating sometimes violent "counter-demonstrations." In short, if a progressive kind of democratization was the goal, and if – as I believe– a majority of Moroccans were ready to go along with this proposal, why turn a citizen referendum into a populist beiya (allegiance)? The modus operandi belied the purported objective. The Makhzen, cautiously hanging onto its privileges, abused the popular vote to establish a "party of order," that is, a rampart behind which to seek shelter. But that is a petty solution. The sacredness of the monarchy, while no longer written into the new Constitution, is reaffirmed in spirit in its most retrograde form in practices from another age. The result is twofold, and twice as destructive: on the one hand, the fears of the majority – the fear of losing their livelihood, of being alienated in a globalizing country with new and disturbing mores, particularly among the young... – were kindled, while the point was to create hope and confidence in a better future; on the other hand, the February 20 Movement can only harden its positions and may well find itself shoved into the arms of the extra-parliamentary Al Adl Wal Ihsan (Justice and Charity) Association Islamists. Besides, since Sunday July 3, the refuseniks of the Moroccan street have started marching again, by the thousands, under the slogan «Mamfakinch» (we will not let go).

S. S. – The King allowed democratic measures to be included in the new Constitution while feigning they were not conceded under pressure. Who is he kidding? And, as a matter of fact, is that enough?

M. H. – I don't think there was any intention to deceive anyone, but I fear the King may have fooled himself. People in Morocco, particularly members of the propertied classes, wonder if, with the vote, they can hold their own. As for me, I have interest in any reform completely lacking any enlightened, sincere intent, beyond seeking a short-term advantage, to move towards parliamentary monarchy. Some – very narrow –measures were put in place: a new title for the Prime Minister, who will henceforth be the "head" of a government which the King will continue to appoint and dismiss as he pleases; a number of "councils" were created, all controlled by the monarch, thus completing his "NGO-ization" of the Moroccan State, thus multiplying appointments with which to co-opt the members of both the political class and civil society; finally, a whole raft of "rights" were included in the Constitution, which will have to await their implementing orders, but will frequently prove, in actual practice, to be unenforceable. For example: while article 36 of the new constitution "prohibited" conflicts of interests and the abuse of office, do you really think the members of Mohammed VI's inner circle, whose names are regularly booed in the streets, are going to lose their incomes and positions, when the royal holding alone pulls in 8% of the Moroccan GDP? The Constitution might as well state that Makhzen is no longer the etymological root of the French word "magasin [store]" – which would be just as absurd. In this regard, we may well witness one predation layered upon another, if the new Prime Minister takes his new autonomy to the limits by seeking to insert his own clients into key state positions. In short, we could find ourselves with a street stall set up alongside the big "store."

S. S. – But if the King hasn't given up anything essential, why would he be mistaken? From his point of view, he remains in control of the country, while you acknowledge yourself that the protest movement is struggling to move from the street into the seats of power.

M. H. – First, allow me to clearly state how much sympathy and respect I have for the February 20 Movement. The young people who launched it are prophets of the people, because they are openly proclaiming the truth. Acknowledging that this is not enough to improve the daily lot of most people is not disparaging of them. It is just a reminder that a statement is not an act, saying is not doing. Something else to keep in mind is the experience of the Moroccan movida at the start of "M6's" reign, when greater freedom of speech in a new independent press made a nice illusion for a while. There's not much left. After the intoxication, the toxic. Nowadays, several protagonists from that period, such as Boubker Jamaï, Ali Lmrabet, and Ahmed Benchemsi, comment on events from abroad, where they now live. Next, while the King has ceded almost nothing to the popular sovereignty, he has ceded the essential where national unity is concerned. For a long time, I have been strongly in favor of recognizing Morocco's Berber culture. I believe richness lies in diversity. But this constitutional reform has institutionalized the fragmentation of the Moroccan State. The King attempted to innovate, and perhaps also to give assurances of openness by acknowledging the Berber language and Hassania, the language of the Sahrawi. But the text that was adopted has ended up twisting the cultural demands as well as the regional framework for localized democratization by creating a political market for identity brand selling. Are we really, over a half century after Independence, going to recreate the 1930 "Berber dahir," that sought to infect the Moroccan people with the seed of division? Morocco is not an American-style melting-pot, it's a big couscous where everything can be tossed in. However, the new provisions, which have been taken lightly, may spoil the national dish. When you leave certain ingredients out, the whole dish loses its richness.

S. S. – Earlier, you went as far as saying that Mohammed VI had erred to his own disadvantage. How so?

M. H. – The King has implicitly acknowledged the failure of the "executive monarchy" he set up at the beginning of his reign twelve years ago. The trade-off of a technocratic promise of top management performance against the further weakening of an already anemic political class has run its course. But who will now "inhabit" the new areas set up in the name of democratizing the system? The same political class, reduced more than ever to shadow theater? This is a fundamental contradiction: to win his gamble on renewal, Mohammed VI is counting on collecting the I.O.U.s from those for whom he’s done favors.  How could such people conceivably build a new institutional framework? And if, extraordinarily, they should manage to, their success would prove the king's failure at two essential levels. On the one hand, they would be proving they can manage the economy better than Mohammed VI and his inner circle, and that the royal "store" should close shop. On the other, they would be demonstrating that a new era of human rights is possible without repressing the Islamists, without the Temara torture center denounced by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, without the silent renditions of those presumed foreign terrorists whom Morocco has received entirely illegally as a favor to George W. Bush, who turned the Commander of the Faithful into the jailer of his fellow Muslim believers. In short, the new Constitution may help the Makhzen save some time, but the country will surely be the loser. Because, sooner or later, it is likely to turn against Mohammed VI.

S. S. – Since you have started making predictions, what future do you foresee for the "Arab Spring" as a whole?

M. H. – If this year has taught us just one thing, it's to be properly humble about our predictions... But I'm not trying to duck your perfectly legitimate question. So, first, I think the whole Arab world has just rounded a corner, maybe even passed a point of no return. Even if there is authoritarian regression, nothing will go back to the way it used to be. Next, I think we can identify three geographic and geopolitical areas – the Gulf States, the Near East and North Africa – provided we don't start seeing them as fatalistically-determined communities. And since we were just on the subject of North Africa, let's start there, where any outcome is possible. I think, for instance, that Tunisia has a real chance of managing a breakthrough to become the first Arab democracy. From a demographic, sociological and political point of view, all the conditions are there – which doesn't mean it's guaranteed. I am equally optimistic that Morocco will eventually become progressively democratized. On the other hand, Egypt runs the risk of a "frozen" transformation at some stage. As for Algeria, I'll admit I don't foresee anything besides a status quo, even though everybody knows it is untenable. And I am frankly pessimistic about Libya. It risks becoming a failed state, and was already fairly "Bedouin" under Gaddafi.

S. S. – What about the Gulf States?

M. H. – In their case, their common traits give them advantages: petroleum money, which disconnects the state from its citizens and makes them into dependents the weakness of civil society in spite of having a middle class; the high number of immigrants who do the basic work of the economy, at the lowest cost; and, finally, the lack of significant geopolitical pressure for democratization, thanks to their supply of petroleum. All of these conditions come together to smother any aspiration for greater freedom under a cozy down comforter. As the situation plays out, I expect the Arabian Gulf States will be the least affected by the great movement now taking place.

S. S. – Is that also the case for the Middle East, for other reasons, that is, because it is located in the eye of the storm?

M. H. – I don't think so. Anything can happen in the Middle East, especially in Iran and, even more so, in Iraq, where the state shaped under the American occupation – a state dominated by former exiles and ethnic marketing entrepreneurs – is corroded and corrupt to the extreme. Will this regime collapse? Are the American troops going to leave? And when? Everything is on the table. On the other hand, there are further determining factors in the Middle East. Pressure towards democratization has already led to a reconciliation agreement between Hamas and Fatah, although this agreement has yet to be put into action. Nonetheless, it is a given that the Palestinians, particularly the ones on the West Bank, are the ready-made pioneers of Arab democracy, thanks to their education and their – forced – openness to the world. But in absence of political freedom, under Israel's iron rule, only their institutional capabilities can be seen. Finally, almost five million Palestinian refugees living scattered about the Arab world have everything to hope from a democratization of their host countries. It still would not be the long-awaited "return" but, nevertheless, democracy would make adopting their second homelands more palatable.

S. S. – In which case Israel would lose its regional monopoly on democracy...

M. H. – It's almost a given. And we can wonder how the United States, in particular, will go about repositioning themselves in a strategic region with a multiplicity of partnerships available to them, without the opprobrium of supporting dictatorships. Of course, there will always be the pro-Israeli lobby in America to consider, which will endeavor to tip the scales to the detriment of the Arab democracies. But it will no longer be the same. All the less so, because Israel, under Benyamin Netanyahu’s frankly narrow-minded leadership, is on the verge of missing the boat. The current government continues to reason in terms of "peace between regimes" rather than "peace between people." Instead of making overtures to Arab public opinions – a term which henceforth needs to be in the plural –, the Israeli authorities are hunkering down while waiting for new Arab leaders to emerge, whom they hope to approach like the old ones. Speaking on behalf of the Israeli opposition, the centrist Tzipi Livni has publicly expressed regret about their short-sightedness. The "Arab Spring’s" window of opportunity could well close again without the Arab people having understood the interest of an historical compromise with Israel within a context of shared civil liberties. Nobody should complain later on if an anti-Israeli populism grabs the “pot” so rashly left there for it to snatch.

While academic political science has not had much to tell policymakers of late, there is one book that stands out as being singularly relevant to the events currently unfolding in Tunisia, Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries: Samuel Huntington’s Political Order in Changing Societies, first published over forty years ago.¹ Huntington was one of the last social scientists to try to understand the linkages between political, economic and social change in a comprehensive way, and the weakness of subsequent efforts to maintain this kind of large perspective is one reason we have such difficulties, intellectually and in policy terms, in keeping up with our contemporary world.

Huntington, observing the high levels of political instability plaguing countries in the developing world during the 1950s and 1960s, noted that increasing levels of economic and social development often led to coups, revolutions and military takeovers rather than a smooth transition to modern liberal democracy. The reason, he pointed out, was the gap that appeared between the hopes and expectations of newly mobilized, educated and economically empowered people on the one hand, and the existing political system, which did not offer them an institutionalized mechanism for political participation, on the other. He might have added that such poorly institutionalized regimes are also often subject to crony capitalism, which fails to provide jobs and incomes to the newly educated middle class. Attacks against the existing political order, he noted, are seldom driven by the poorest of the poor; they instead tend to be led by rising middle classes who are frustrated by the lack of political and economic opportunity—a phenomenon noted by Alexis de Tocqueville in his masterful analysis of the origins of the French Revolution and raised again in the early 1960s by James Davies’s well known “J-curve” theory of revolution.²

Something like this Huntingtonian process has unfolded in recent months in both Tunisia and Egypt. In both cases, anti-government protests were led not by the urban poor or by an Islamist underground, but by relatively well-educated middle-class young people used to communicating with each other via Facebook and Twitter. It is no accident that Wael Ghonim, Google’s regional head of marketing, emerged as a symbol and leader of the new Egypt. The protesters’ grievances centered around the fact that the authoritarian regimes of Ben Ali and Mubarak offered them no meaningful pathway to political participation, as well as failing to provide jobs befitting their social status. The protests were then joined by other groups in both societies—trade unionists, Islamists, peasants and virtually everyone else unhappy with the old regimes—but the driving force remained the more modern segments of Tunisian and Egyptian society.

Societies lacking institutions that could accommodate new social actors produced a condition Huntington labeled praetorianism, in which political participation took the form of strikes, demonstrations, protests and violence. The military often seized power in such circumstances because it was the only organized actor in society capable of running a government. The Egyptian Republic’s first autocrat, Gamal Abdel Nasser, came to power in precisely this manner back in July 1952, when his Free Officers movement represented the rising Egyptian middle class. The tragedy of modern Egypt is that there has been scarcely any meaningful political development in the more than half-century since then—meaning, in Huntington’s terms, the rise of modern institutions that could peacefully channel citizen participation.

Socioeconomic development, meanwhile, has proceeded apace: Between 1990–2010 Tunisia’s Human Development Index (a composite measure of health, education and income compiled by the UN) rose 30 percent, while Egypt’s rose 28 percent. Both countries produced tens of thousands of college graduates with no discernable future and a lopsided income distribution in which a disproportionate share of the gains from growth went to a small group of politically connected insiders. Huntington’s analysis of Egypt in the 1950s and 1960s thus remains eerily relevant today.

In Political Order Huntington was also making a broader point about the process of development itself. The significance of his book needs to be seen against the backdrop of post-World War II modernization theory, which in turn drew on classic 19th-century European social theory articulated by academics like Edward Shils, Talcott Parsons and Walt W. Rostow. American modernization theory argued that development was a single, seamless process. Economic development, changing social relationships like the breakdown of extended kinship groups and the growth of individualism, higher and more inclusive levels of education, normative shifts toward values like “achievement” and rationality, secularization and the growth of democratic political institutions, were all seen as an interdependent whole.

By pointing out that the good things of modernity did not necessarily go together, Huntington played a key role in killing off modernization theory. Political development was a separate process from socioeconomic development, he argued, and needed to be understood in its own terms. The conclusion that flowed from this point of view seemed at the time counterintuitive to the point of stunning: Without political development, the other aspects of modernization could lead to bad results—to tyranny, civil war and mass violence.

There were other reasons why Western modernization theory fell into disrepute by the 1970s: It came to be regarded as too Eurocentric—indeed, as too Americentric insofar as it seemed to posit American society as the pinnacle of modernization. It failed to recognize the possibility that countries like Japan and China might take roads to modernity that would look very different from the ones pioneered by Britain and the United States. But even if one agreed that the end point of development should be some form of industrialized liberal democracy, Huntington made it clear that arriving at the desired destination was far more elusive and complicated than modernization theorists believed.

The central piece of policy advice that emerged out of Huntington’s work was the concept of the “authoritarian transition.” If political systems opened up to democratic contestation too early, before the development of political parties, labor unions, professional associations and other organizations that could structure participation, the result could be chaotic. Authoritarian regimes that could maintain order and promote economic growth, Huntington argued, might oversee a more gradual institutionalization of society, and make a transition to democracy only when broad participation could be peacefully accommodated. This form of sequencing, in which economic development was promoted before a democratic opening, was the path followed by Asian countries like South Korea and Taiwan, which made democratic transitions in the late 1980s only after they had succeeded in turning themselves into industrialized powerhouses. It was also the development strategy recommended by Huntington’s former student Fareed Zakaria, as well as by the leaders of many authoritarian governments, who liked the idea of economic growth better than the idea of democratic participation.³ We will return to the question of how well that strategy worked in the Middle East later.

Development in Silos 

As interesting and important as Huntington’s work was, it lay outside of mainstream thinking about development, which from the start was a highly Balkanized academic field that was dominated by economists. Few scholars have sought to understand development as an inter-connected process with political, economic and social parts. Few scholars have sought to understand development as an inter-connected process with political, economic and social parts.Development economists looked primarily at economic factors like capital, labor and technology as sources of economic growth, and thought neither about the consequences of growth for politics nor the relationship of political institutions to growth. The Harrod-Domar growth model that was dominant in the 1950s suggested that less-developed countries were poor primarily because they lacked capital, which then led development agencies like the World Bank to try to kick start growth with generous infusions of capital for physical infrastructure. It was only when steel plants and shoe factories in sub-Saharan Africa went idle due to corruption or lack of organizational capacity that they were forced to go back to the drawing board.

The political scientists, for their part, scaled back their ambitions from large Huntingtonian-style theory and focused primarily on political phenomena. Beginning in the 1980s, there was increasing interest in the problem of transitions into and out of democracy; with democratic transitions in Spain, Portugal and nearly all of Latin America, this became a particularly pressing issue. There was some revival of interest in the democracy-development linkage, but it never led to a clear consensus on the causal links connecting the two phenomena.

The academic interest in transitions corresponded to the burgeoning of democracy promotion as a distinct field of international practice, both on the part of the United States and of other democracies around the world. The idea was planted during the 1970s, when the institutes linked with the German political parties played a key role in beating back an attempted Communist takeover in Portugal and facilitating that country’s transition to democracy. The 1980s saw the establishment of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a taxpayer-funded but quasi-independent organization devoted to support of pro-democracy groups around the world. One of the NED’s early successes was its funding of the Solidarity trade union in Poland before the collapse of communism. The 1990s saw the growth of a host of international organizations capable of monitoring elections and the funding of the Democracy and Governance branch of the U.S. Agency for International Development to the tune of almost $1.5 billion annually.

By the late 1990s, there was some degree of convergence in the agendas of economists and political scientists. By that point Douglass North and the school of “New Institutional Economics” he founded made economists aware of the importance of political institutions—particularly property rights—for economic growth. Economists increasingly sought to fold political variables like legal systems and checks on executive power into their models. Political science had itself been colonized at this point by economic methodology, and it was natural for such rational-choice political scientists to start looking at the economic impact of political institutions.

The return to a more interdisciplinary approach to development was marked as well by the tenure of James Wolfenson as President of the World Bank from 1995 to 2005.⁴ Wolfenson early on gave a speech on the “cancer of corruption” and signaled to the institution that, henceforth, political issues like corruption and good governance would be taken seriously. The publication of the 1997 World Development Report, The State in a Changing World, marked an intellectual break with the Washington Consensus focus on economic policy and state downsizing, and the Bank created a new branch devoted to reform of developing country public sectors. These changes constituted an open admission that politics was a critical component of development, and that the state was not simply an obstacle to growth but often a necessary underpinning for it. Increasingly, donor agencies have seen the promotion of democratic accountability as one tool in the fight against corruption.

This modest degree of convergence should not, however, obscure the continuing degree of compartmentalization that exists in the field of development. While paying lip service to the importance of institutions, most economists and field practitioners still see politics as at best an obstacle to the real work of development, which is improvement in incomes, health, education and the like, and not as an independent objective of development strategy. (Amartya Sen is an important exception to this generalization.) The democracy promotion agencies, for their part, spend relatively little time worrying about economic growth, social policy or public health, which in their view are goods often used by authoritarian regimes to buy off populations and prevent democratization.

The intellectual confusion surrounding development has led to severely Balkanized policies both in the United States and in the international community that often work at cross purposes from one another.The intellectual confusion surrounding development has led to severely Balkanized policies both in the United States and in the international community that often work at cross purposes from one another. For example, the authoritarian or semi-authoritarian regimes of Meles Zenawi in Ethiopia, Paul Kagame in Rwanda and Yoweri Museveni in Uganda have been aid darlings over the past decade because of their track records in promoting economic, health and social goals. At the same time, democracy promotion groups have been highly critical of them and have supported opposition groups and civil society organizations seeking accountability and limits on executive power. To be sure, aid agencies don’t object to greater government accountability on the part of these regimes, while the democracy promotion community wouldn’t stand in the way of progress on HIV/AIDS or malaria. Yet no one takes a larger view and asks, for example, whether existing aid programs are helping to keep the regime in power or, conversely, are destabilizing it.

Egypt itself presents a good case of this particular form of policy incoherence. Despite the fact that Egypt ranks as one of the top American aid recipients, it is hard to say that Washington was pursuing development goals of any sort there. The United States was primarily interested in stability. Despite brave speeches on democracy by both Condeleezza Rice and Barack Obama in Cairo, the United States actually pulled its punches in pushing serious democratic reform on Egypt, particularly after the Hamas electoral victory in Gaza in 2006. Nonetheless, U.S. economic aid programs were still pushing education and economic policy reform programs in the country. Had American aid administrators taken the Huntingtonian view that their assistance was covertly designed to promote an expectations gap and delegitimate Hosni Mubarak, this might have been a clever strategy. But no such cleverness existed. Instead, it was simply an example of compartmentalized aid programs doing their thing in ignorance of the interdependent effects of politics and economics.

What Is to Be Done?

Ideas precede action. Before we can hope to generate a coherent set of policies for Egypt, or anywhere else for that matter, we need a better understanding of development—that is, how changes in economy, politics and society over time constitute a set of discrete yet interlinked processes. Whatever the shortcomings of classic modernization theory, it at least began from the insight that the phenomenon under study required development of a master social science that transcended existing disciplinary boundaries. This objective is as far away as ever in academia, where the traditional disciplines keep a chokehold on how younger academics think and do research. Today, the single most popular form of development dissertation in both economics and political science is a randomized micro-experiment in which the graduate student goes out into the field and studies, at a local level, the impact of some intervention like the introduction of co-payments for malaria mosquito netting or changes in electoral rules on ethnic voting. These studies can be technically well designed, and they certainly have their place in evaluating projects at a micro level. But they do not aggregate upwards into anything that can tell us when a regime crosses the line into illegitimacy, or how economic growth is changing the class structure of a society. We are not, in other words, producing new Samuel Huntingtons, with the latter’s simultaneous breadth and depth of knowledge.

On a policy level, we need far more mutual understanding between those who promote socioeconomic development and those who work on democracy promotion and governance.On a policy level, we need far more mutual understanding between those who promote socioeconomic development and those who work on democracy promotion and governance. Traditional development agencies like USAID already think politically to the extent that their aid projects are designed to support U.S. foreign policy. But they, like their counterparts in multilateral organizations like the World Bank, are not trained to do political economy analysis; they do not seek an understanding of the political context within which aid is used and abused, and what is not sought is very rarely found. We call for the liberalization of ports in Haiti, for example, without trying to understand which particular politicians are benefiting from existing arrangements that keep them closed. For their part, democracy promoters focus on democratic transitions, providing help to opposition parties and civil society organizations in authoritarian countries. But once a transition occurs, as it did after the Orange and Rose revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia, they have relatively little to offer new democratic governments in terms of policy agendas, anti-corruption strategies or help in improving the delivery of services that citizens want.

Beyond these relatively minor adjustments, a more robust theory of social change might tell us that, in certain circumstances, the best way to destabilize an authoritarian society would be not the funding of civil society groups seeking short-term regime change, but rather the promotion of rapid economic growth and the expansion of educational access.⁵ Conversely, there are many societies we know will simply waste development assistance dollars because they are ruled by unaccountable authoritarian regimes. In such circumstances, it might be a more efficient use of aid resources to cut development aid entirely and to work only for political change. This is, in effect, what has happened to Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe, but the country had to sink very far before anyone considered pulling the aid plug.

Huntington got a number of things wrong. The authoritarian transition was not a universally applicable formula for development. It worked reasonably well in East Asia, where there were a number of figures like Lee Kwan Yew, Park Chung-hee or the Chinese Communist Party leadership, who used their autocratic powers to promote rapid development and social change. Arab authoritarians were cut from a different cloth, content to preside over economically stagnant societies. The result was not a coherent development strategy but a wasted generation.

The aspiration of social science to replicate the predictability and formality of certain natural sciences is, in the end, a hopeless endeavor. Human societies, as Friedrich Hayek, Karl Popper and others understood, are far too complex to model at an aggregate level. Contemporary macroeconomics, despite dealing with social phenomena that are inherently quantified, is today in crisis due to its utter failure to anticipate the recent financial crisis.

The part of social change that is the hardest to understand in a positivistic way is the moral dimension—that is, the ideas that people carry around in their heads regarding legitimacy, justice, dignity and community. The current Arab uprising was triggered by the self-immolation of an overeducated 26-year-old Tunisian vegetable seller whose cart was repeatedly confiscated by the authorities. After Mohamed Bouazizi was slapped by a policewoman when he tried to complain, he reached the end of his tether. Bouazizi’s public suicide turned into a social movement because contemporary communications technologies facilitated the growth of a new social space where middle-class people could recognize and organize around their common interests. We will probably never understand, even in retrospect, why the dry tinder of outraged dignity suddenly ignited in this fashion in December 2010 as opposed to 2009, or ten years before that, and why the conflagration spread to some Arab countries but not to others. But we can certainly do a better job in putting together the few pieces we do understand, in a way that would be useful to policymakers coping with the reality of social change.

¹Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies: With a New Forward by Francis Fukuyama (Yale University Press, 2006).

²Davies, “Towards a Theory of Revolution”, American Sociological Review, Vol. 27 (1962).

³Zakaria, The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad (W. W. Norton, 2003); see also Zakaria, “A Conversation with Lee Kuan Yew”, Foreign Affairs (March/April 1994).

⁴For a description of the Wolfenson presidency, see Sebastian Mallaby, The World’s Banker: A Story of Failed States, Financial Crises, and the Wealth and Poverty of Nations (Penguin Press, 2004).

⁵See Harold James’s retroview, entitled “Growing Pains”, of a classic December 1963 essay by Mancur Olson (“Rapid Growth as a Destabilizing Force”) in The American Interest (September/October 2006).