The recent popular uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa have exposed the fragility of the region’s ostensibly stable authoritarian regimes, and brought into sharp relief these governments’ inability to deliver public goods and economic prosperity to their people.
The democratic openings in Egypt and Tunisia, and the determination of ordinary people to pursue their rights in the face of violent repression in countries like Libya and Syria, have also shaken a number of commonly held assumptions about democracy and governance in general.
One particularly persistent myth is that people in certain cultures have an inherently weak desire for greater freedoms, economic opportunity, and democratic accountability, and will acquiesce to despotic rule if their most rudimentary needs are met.
Another is that authoritarian governance is a guarantor of stability. In reality, authoritarian systems steadily erode the independent institutions and safeguards that guarantee basic justice; ensure government efficiency, integrity, and responsiveness; and provide for regular, peaceful transfers of power. These regimes come to focus on enriching themselves and suppressing complaints rather than addressing underlying problems, and their intrinsic lack of transparency on the nagging issue of presidential succession makes crises almost inevitable.
Unfortunately for the world’s established and aspiring democracies, authoritarian states have the same negative effects at the international level. They block human rights initiatives in international bodies, restrict international media and civil society groups, flout international law, and often attempt to control political and economic affairs in neighboring states. As in the domestic sphere, such regimes become brittle, grasping, unavoidable, and supposedly irreplaceable presences in their regions.