February 6, 2011
Abrupt Change of Authoritarian Regimes
Abrupt Change of Authoritarian Regimes-Becker
The Tunisian and Egyptian political eruptions were pretty much totally unexpected by the governments of the United States and of other countries, and by the vast majority of experts on Egypt and the Islamic world. To be sure, experts were aware that the government of say Egypt was not popular among many segments of the population, including The Muslim Brotherhood, most intellectuals, and many members of the growing middle class. However, the timing and speed of the uprising there (and in Tunisia) was rather a complete surprise since Mubarak and Ben Ali were in power for over 20 years, and seemingly in rather complete control.
I was first impressed by the unexpected and speedy nature of the overthrow of authoritarian regimes in 1979 when a combination of religious and leftwing groups forced the Shah of Iran from power. Until very close to the end he looked invulnerable: he seemed to be in full control of a strong and well-equipped army, and had an active and dreaded secret police, the SAVAK, that imprisoned anyone who vocally attacked the government. That the overthrow was unexpected is objectively measured by the stability of the international value of the Iranian currency, the rial, until just a few weeks before the Shah was ousted. Had the overthrow been anticipated, the value of the currency would have plunged as Iranians and others tried to get out of rials into dollars and other hard currencies. The rial did plunge in value shortly after the revolution appeared to be succeeding.
The rapid disintegration of the Soviet Union is another telling example. In 1989 my wife and I took a train from West Berlin through East Germany to go to Warsaw. The customs agents in East Germany were unpleasant, and the East German government headed by Erich Honecker seemed totally in charge. Much to my surprise, less than six months later, close to one million younger men and women were demonstrating in the streets, and the government was soon quickly gone, along with most of the Russian empire.
The unexpected nature and the speed of the overthrow of these and other authoritarian regimes is what is so glaring and challenging to theories of authoritarian rule. Analytically, what happens is that over time such a regime may be shifting in unnoticed ways from stable equilibrium positions, where the government is in rather complete control, to an unstable equilibrium where seemingly small events trigger massive changes, including the ouster of the government. The overthrow of the government may be quick and without much violence, as in the East German and Tunisian cases, or involve considerable violence, as during and especially after, the Iranian revolution.
Such unstable equilibria are sometimes called "tipping points". This term was first used to describe rapid changes in housing neighborhoods from being mainly white and Christian to "tipping", and then rapidly becoming mainly black or Jewish. A neighborhood may remain basically say all white until a few black families move in. If more black households move in over time, their fraction may become large enough that many white residents begin to panic, and put their houses up for sale. After that the neighborhood quickly "tips" into becoming a mainly black neighborhood.
The basic underlying reason that authoritarian regimes fall quickly, with or without violence, is that, as Posner emphasizes, they do not have any natural succession process. A strong man like Mubarak would be in power, but as he ages and gets weaker who is to succeed him? His son or confidants? Opposition groups may begin to see opportunities, or the unhappiness and frustration of young people and others may spontaneously erupt into mass demonstrations, as in Egypt, or in Iran after frustration over the outcome of the presidential elections two years ago. Sometimes these demonstrations succeed, as in Tunisia and apparently now in Egypt, and sometimes they fail, as in Iran after those elections, and in the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations in China.
Will similar demonstrations spread to the rest of the Arab world in North Africa and the Middle East that without exception have non-democratic regimes? Already the Jordanian government and a few others have started to make concessions to the opposition, including giving greater representation to various disaffected groups. I do not know how many of these governments will change radically and speedily. The theory offers little guidance on the timing of major political changes, but I do believe that large changes in this region toward freer elections and greater representation will occur before very long.
The Internet, Facebook and other online social networks, are changing the dynamics of the political landscape in all countries, including Islamic countries. In addition, the middle classes are growing in importance throughout Middle East and North Africa. As a result, these countries will experience the same aspirations for greater freedom of expression and greater representation in the government, as is found in other parts of the world. Eventually, these aspirations will force a conversion of the political institutions of these Islamic countries into something that may not be the same as Western democracies, but will offer more contested elections, greater political and social freedoms, and probably also greater economic freedom.
Why Dictatorial Regimes Are Brittle—Posner
Dictatorships, as we are seeing in the Middle East today, and as we saw in Iran in 1979 and in the communist nations in 1989—not to mention France in 1789—have a way of imploding unexpectedly, the unexpectedness lying in the fact that no external event seems to have precipitated the collapse. These events belong to chaos theory: if you rock a canoe, it will maintain an equilibrium until at some unpredictable point you rock it so hard that it capsizes. So I will not be speaking of regimes that collapse because of a catastrophic military defeat, nor of regimes ended by civil war, nor of sesessions, such as the American revolution, but just of sudden collapses, unforeseen because there was no visible triggering event that might have been foreseen.
Over a long period of time, democratic and quasi-democratic nations change profoundly, but the change is gradual. Dictatorial regimes change in fits and starts, so that most of the time they seem more stable than nonauthoritarian regimes. They experience punctuated rather than incremental change.
There are several reasons. The obvious one is lack of information. A government that uses intimidation, surveillance, and control of media to quell dissent deprives itself of good information about the population's concerns. People keep their concerns to themselves out of fear. Grievances are driven underground, to fester. Not having a good handle on what people want, the government risks being blindsided by a sudden explosion of repressed anger. Repression also fosters conspiracy; fearful of expressing themselves publicly, people learn to form secret cabals; they become experts at dissimulation.
Second, the leadership of an authoritarian regime has difficulty obtaining information even from its own officials, or more broadly of managing disagreement and absorbing and responding to criticism. Without fixed terms of office and rules of succession, the position of leaders is insecure: they maintain their position by charisma or fear, by projecting an image of infallibility and omniscience, and these sources of power are undermined by criticism, which is often implicit in "bad news" conveyed to leaders by their subordinates. Even without being critical, the subordinate who warns his leader about popular disaffection is implicitly claiming to have knowledge that the leader did not have.
Third, and again attributable to the absence of set rules for peaceful transition of leaders, authoritarian regimes tend to be conservative in the sense of reluctant to change even in response to known problems. If you do not have a good handle on public opinion, it is very difficult to predict the consequences of change—change may convey weakness, create expectations that cannot be fulfilled, empower the advocates of change, and undermine belief in the infallibility and omniscience of the leadership.
Fourth, and again related to the absence of regular rules of appointment and succession, the leadership of authoritarian regimes tends to be old and sclerotic. Retirement is dangerous. The leader will have made enemies and when he relinquishes power he is defenseless against them. By clinging to power he grows out of touch, and is ill equipped to respond decisively and effectively to a challenge.
Although there are exceptions (particularly in East Asia), authoritarian regimes tend to be bad for economic growth, and this is still another source of potential weakness. No person can rule alone, or by fear alone; he has to reward his key officials, and so corruption tends to be common in such regimes. Also, the military tends to be larger and more expensive than actually required for national defense, because the regime depends on force and therefore most cultivate the loyalty of the military. It is not that a large, well-paid army is necessary to maintain internal order, but that if the army is not coddled it may overthrow the regime, or fail to come to its defense in crisis.
When an authoritarian regime suddenly collapses, this is seen by the world as an occasion for rejoicing—democracy has triumphed. That is the response of most of the media to the current crises in Tunisia and Egypt. And in fact a sudden collapse often is followed by a democratic interlude, as happened during the French, Russian, and Iranian revolutions. But I emphasize "interlude"; there is nothing automatic about a democratic succession to a collapsed dictatorship.
Indeed it is likely that if, unlike the formerly communist nations of Central and Eastern Europe, a country has never had a democratic government for more than a brief period, the flowering of democracy in the wake of the collapse of the authoritarian regime will also be brief. Admittedly there are numerous exceptions. Russia is one, though it is less democratic today than it was immediately after the collapse of the communist regime. Japan is a partial exception, because it did have a parliamentary government before World War II, though it was never really democratic. India is a real exception, and there are others in Africa and Latin America. As these examples show, nations are capable of transitioning from authoritarian to democratic societies. There are many democratic nations today, but, apart from the ancient Greek city states, there were virtually none before the nineteenth century, and few before the twentieth. Most of these, however, emerged from authoritarian government by a process of evolution, rather than suddenly; there were democratic roots in the American colonies and Great Britain, for example, long before democracy became the regime of either polity.
In a country without democratic or liberal traditions, the party to win the first election and become the governing party will think it the most natural thing in the world to endeavor to retain power, by whatever means available, once power is achieved. And the party to win the first election might be whatever conspiratorial faction was best organized; it might have no commitment to democracy. So the first election might be the last. The old regime's techniques and institutions of repression would be at hand to facilitate the takeover by the winning party. That is why the media's celebration of the emergence of democracy in the Middle East today is premature, and why the Obama Administration is beginning to back away from its public celebration of what is happening on the streets of Cairo and other Egyptian cities.