Project Syndicate Op-Ed on Democratic Transitions in Tunisia and Egypt

Article 2. Project Syndicate Democracy’s Dawn in Tunisia and Egypt? Alfred Stepan 2011-05-12 -- CAIRO — With protests fading in Tunis and seeming to have peaked in Cairo, it is time to ask whether Tunisia and Egypt will complete democratic transitions. I have been visiting both countries, where many democratic activists have been comparing their situation with the more than 20 successful and failed democratic- transition attempts throughout the world that I have observed and analyzed. One fear should be dismissed immediately: despite worries about the incompatibility of Islam and democracy, more than 500 million Muslims now live in Muslim-majority countries that are commonly classified as democracies — Indonesia, Turkey, Bangladesh, Senegal, Mali, and Albania. But, for almost 40 years, not a single Arab- majority country has been classified as a democracy, so a democratic transition in either Tunisia or Egypt (or elsewhere in the region) would be of immense importance for the entire Arab world. Tunisia’s chances of becoming a democracy before the year ends are, I believe, surprisingly good. A key factor here is that the military is not complicating the transition to democracy. Tunisia has a small military (only about 36,000 soldiers), and, since independence in 1956, it had been led by two party-based non-democratic leaders who strove to keep the military out of politics. Moreover, the current civilian-led interim government engages in at least some negotiations about the new democratic rules of the game HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_030064