The executive summary from the sixth Korea-U.S. West Coast Strategic Forum, held June 2011 at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, is now available.

When the semiannual Korea-U.S. West Coast Strategic Forum convened in Seoul in late 2010, North Korea had just attacked South Korea’s Yeonpyeong Island and revealed to American experts its work on a nuclear enrichment facility. These events capped a year that also witnessed the alleged sinking by North Korea of the South Korean naval vessel Cheonan and telling signs of succession preparations underway in North Korea. There have been no major incidents in recent months, but these events and the uncertainty they engendered weigh heavily in the minds of Korea observers and officials in South Korea and the United States.

Views on North Korea’s intentions and domestic political situation are mixed, as are voices on the appropriate U.S. and South Korean response to the events of 2010. These issues fit within a greater discussion of the U.S.-South Korea alliance and the Northeast Asia region wherein China plays a major economic and political role. The most recent Forum, held June 2011 at the Walter. H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC), provided an arena for informed, policy-oriented discussion of major peninsular and regional issues impacting South Korea and the United States.

Twenty subject experts and former senior officials from the United States and South Korea gathered at Stanford University on June 8 for an exchange of views. Amidst a diversity of opinions, collectively the participants expressed a wish for regional stability and the continued need for a strong U.S.-South Korea alliance in order to achieve it. The full executive report of this sixth session of the Forum is now available online, and includes discussion of:

• The current state of North Korea’s nuclear program and possible scenarios for reducing the risk of proliferation
• North Korea’s 2010 military actions and increasingly strong rhetoric toward South Korea since, especially in relation to its domestic political situation and the impending succession
• China’s response to North Korea last year and the complex relationship between the two countries, including Kim Jong Il’s frequent recent visits to China
• Northeast Asian regional cooperation with a focus on the South Korean-Chinese-Japanese leaders’ summit
• The factor of U.S., South Korean, and Chinese domestic politics in shaping policy toward North Korea, and the upcoming U.S. and South Korean elections
• The U.S. security role on the Korean Peninsula and in greater Northeast Asia

The Korea-U.S. West Coast Strategic Forum was established in 2006 by Shorenstein APARC to serve as an ongoing forum for the exchange of views on issues of significance to the U.S.-South Korea alliance. Co-sponsored with the Sejong Institute, a leading South Korean think tank, the Forum alternates between Stanford and Seoul. Summaries and agendas from past Forums are available on the Shorenstein APARC website.

In reaction to the arrest of Dominique Strauss-Khan for allegations of rape in May, Kavita Ramdas and Christine Ahn argue in a piece for Foreign Policy in Focus that gender bias is embedded in the global policies and practices at the IMF, which unfairly target women. Kavita Ramdas is the former president and CEO of the Global Fund for Women and a visiting scholar at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.

In reaction to the arrest of Dominique Strauss-Khan for allegations of rape in May, Kavita Ramdas and Christine Ahn argue in a piece for Foreign Policy in Focus that gender bias is embedded in the global policies and practices at the IMF, which unfairly target women. Kavita Ramdas is the president and CEO of the Global Fund for Women and a visiting scholar at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.

As Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the world’s most powerful financial institution, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), spends a few nights in Rikers Island prison awaiting a hearing, the world is learning a lot about his history of treating women as expendable sex objects. Strauss-Kahn has been charged with rape and forced imprisonment of a 32-year-old Guinean hotel worker at a $3,000-a-night luxury hotel in New York.

While the media dissects the attempted rape of a young African woman and begins to dig out more information about Strauss-Kahn’s past indiscretions, we couldn’t help but see this situation through the feminist lens of the “personal is political.” 

For many in the developing world, the IMF and its draconian policies of structural adjustment have systematically “raped” the earth and the poor and violated the human rights of women. It appears that the personal disregard and disrespect for women demonstrated by the man at the highest levels of leadership within the IMF is quite consistent with the gender bias inherent in the IMF’s institutional policies and practice.

Systematic Violation of Women’s Human Rights

The IMF and the World Bank were established in the aftermath of World War II to promote international trade and monetary cooperation by giving governments loans in times of severe budget crises. Although 184 countries make up the IMF’s membership, only five countries—France, Germany, Japan, Britain, and the United States—control 50 percent of the votes, which are allocated according to each country’s contribution.

The IMF has earned its villainous reputation in the Global South because in exchange for loans, governments must accept a range of austerity measures known as structural adjustment programs (SAPs). A typical IMF package encourages export promotion over local production for local consumption. It also pushes for lower tariffs and cuts in government programs such as welfare and education. Instead of reducing poverty, the trillion dollars of loans issued by the IMF have deepened poverty, especially for women who make up 70 percent of the world’s poor.

IMF-mandated government cutbacks in social welfare spending have often been achieved by cutting public sector jobs, which disproportionately impact women. Women hold most of the lower-skilled public sector jobs, and they are often the first to be cut. Also, as social programs like caregiving are slashed, women are expected to take on additional domestic responsibilities that further limit their access to education or other jobs.

In exchange for borrowing $5.8 billion from the IMF and World Bank, Tanzania agreed to impose fees for health services, which led to fewer women seeking hospital deliveries or post-natal care and naturally, higher rates of maternal death.  In Zambia, the imposition of SAPs led to a significant drop in girls’ enrollment in schools and a spike in “survival or subsistence sex” as a way for young women to continue their educations.

But IMF’s austerity measures don’t just apply to poor African countries. In 1997, South Korea received $57 billion in loans in exchange for IMF conditionalities that forced the government to introduce “labor market flexibility,” which outlined steps for the government to compress wages, fire “surplus workers,” and cut government spending on programs and infrastructure. When the financial crisis hit, seven Korean women were laid off for every one Korean man. In a sick twist, the Korean government launched a "get your husband energized" campaign encouraging women to support depressed male partners while they cooked, cleaned, and cared for everyone.

Nearly 15 years later, the scenario is grim for South Korean workers, especially women. Of all OECD countries, Koreans work the longest hours: 90% of men and 77% of women work over 40 hours a week.  According to economist Martin Hart-Landsberg, in 2000, 40 percent of Korean workers were irregular workers; by 2008, 60 percent worked in the informal economy. The Korean Women Working Academy reports that today 70 percent of Korean women workers are temporary laborers.

Selling Mother Earth

IMF policies have also raped the earth by dictating that governments privatize the natural resources most people depend on for their survival: water, land, forests, and fisheries. SAPs have also forced developing countries to stop growing staple foods for domestic consumption and instead focus on growing cash crops, like cut flowers and coffee for export to volatile global markets. These policies have destroyed the livelihoods of small-scale subsistence farmers, the majority of whom are women.

“IMF adjustment programs forced poor countries to abandon policies that protected their farmers and their agricultural production and markets,” says Henk Hobbelink of GRAIN, an international organization that promotes sustainable agriculture and biodiversity. "As a result, many countries became dependent on food imports, as local farmers could not compete with the subsidized products from the North. This is one of the main factors in the current food crisis, for which the IMF is directly to blame."

In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), IMF loans have paved the way for the privatization of the country’s mines by transnational corporations and local elites, which has forcibly displaced thousands of Congolese people in a context where women and girls experience obscenely high levels of sexual slavery and rape in the eastern provinces. According to Gender Action, the World Bank and IMF have made loans to the DRC to restructure the mining sector, which translates into laying off tens of thousands of workers, including women and girls who depend on the mining operations for their livelihoods. Furthermore, as the land becomes mined and privatized, women and girls responsible for gathering water and firewood must walk even further, making them more susceptible to violent crimes.

We Are Over It

Women’s rights activists around the globe are consistently dumbfounded by how such violations of women’s bodies are routinely dismissed as minor transgressions. Strauss-Kahn, one of the world’s most powerful politicians whose decisions affected millions across the globe, was known for being a “womanizer” who often forced himself on younger, junior women in subordinate positions where they were vulnerable to his far greater power, influence, and clout. Yet none of his colleagues or fellow Socialist Party members took these reports seriously, colluding in a consensus shared even by his wife that the violation of women’s bodily integrity is not in any sense a genuine violation of human rights.

Why else would the world tolerate the unearthly news that 48 Congolese women are raped every hour with deadening inaction? Eve Ensler speaks for us all when she writes, “I am over a world that could allow, has allowed, continues to allow 400,000 women, 2,300 women, or one woman to be raped anywhere, anytime of any day in the Congo. The women of Congo are over it too.”

We live in a world where millions of women don’t speak their truth, don’t tell their dark stories, don’t reveal their horror lived every day just because they were born women.  They don’t do it for the same reasons that the women in the Congo articulate – they are tired of not being heard. They are tired of men like Strauss-Kahn, powerful and in suits, believing that they can rape a black woman in a hotel room, just because they feel like it. They are tired of the police not believing them or arresting them for being sex workers. They are tired of hospitals not having rape kits. They are tired of reporting rape and being charged for adultery in Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia.

Fighting Back

For each one of them, and for those of us who have spent many years investing in the tenacity of women’s movements across the globe, the courage and gumption of the young Guinean immigrant shines like the torch held by Lady Liberty herself. This young woman makes you believe we can change this reality. She refused to be intimidated.  She stood up for herself. She fought to free herself—twice—from the violent grip of the man attacking her. She didn’t care who he was—she knew she was violated and she reported it straight to the hotel staff, who went straight to the New York police, who went straight to JFK to pluck Strauss-Kahn from his first-class Air France seat.

In a world where it often feels as though wealth and power can buy anything, the courage of a young woman and the people who stood by her took our breath away. These stubborn, ethical acts of working class people in New York City reminded us that women have the right to say “no.”  It reminded us that “no” does not mean “yes” as the Yale fraternities would have us believe, and, most importantly that no one, regardless of their position or their gender, should be above the law.  A wise woman judge further drove home the point about how critically important it is to value women’s bodies when she denied Strauss-Kahn bail citing his long history of abusing women.

Strauss-Kahn sits in his Rikers Island cell. It would be a great thing if his trial succeeds in ending the world’s tolerance for those who discriminate and abuse women. We cannot tolerate it one second longer.  We cannot tolerate it at the personal level, we must refuse to condone it at the professional level, and we must challenge it every time it we see it in the policies of global institutions like the International Monetary Fund.

CDDRL consulting professor Hicham Ben Abdallah wrote a new piece for the French daily Libération on the state of the democratic movement in Morocco as it enters a defining period this summer.

As the Arab Spring meets the Moroccan summer, the movement for democratic reform in our country finds itself in a rare moment when constitutional issues are in the forefront, demanding immediate attention, while the political and social forces that shape the fundamental context, and will determine ultimate outcomes, remain in motion and cannot be forgotten. With the February 20th movement evolving into a series of rolling demonstrations, and the regime drawing other political forces into a process of constitutional reform guided by a royally-appointed consultative commission (CCRC), the major players continue to circle each other, testing their strengths and weaknesses. The movement wants to see how far it can go with militant non-violence, reinforced by the regional momentum of reform; the regime wants to see how well it can contain the pressure with a mixture of co-optation and repression, and is also drawing on an emerging regional pushback against reform demands.

For the moment, the regime has established an agenda: By the end of June, a consultative commission will report to the King, who will then prepare a revised constitution to be presented to the voters in a referendum. The King’s speech regarding this commission was initially greeted as a very positive response to popular pressure, but observers are now wary that this process is quickly being diverted into familiar channels of cosmetic change. 

The regime has put itself in a conundrum: Either you have a real campaign with open, democratic debate around this commission and the proposed reforms – in which case there will be serious dissent and the results will be unpredictable; or, you have a carefully managed and restricted theater of discussion with a familiar cast of characters and a predictable happy ending. 

What seems to be developing is more like the latter – an opaque process, in which traditional party and union leaders (most of whom withheld or hedged their support of the movement), presided over by a royal advisor, will formulate reform proposals that will be further edited by the king before being submitted to a popular vote. From such a process, it will not be difficult to come up with some “good enough” constitutional revisions that are likely to win approval in a quick referendum, as well as international praise. This would gain the regime some instant credibility for democratic reform, and might give it an excuse to brand any further extra-electoral mobilization as “undemocratic.” Since this process would also produce low participation, a weak turnout, and increased disappointment, those extra-electoral demonstrations would be a virtual certainty.

It is not hard to understand why movement activists have declined to participate in such a tightly-managed “consultative” process, though their participation could have transformed it into a useful forum. The constitutional issues in play are extremely relevant in the Moroccan context, as the demonstrators themselves have made clear, with, for example, their frequent references to the articles pertaining to the commanderie des croyants. Clearly, the heart of the matter, and the real test of constitutional reform, will be whether and how the powers and prerogatives of the monarchy are, for the first time, precisely and carefully delimited. This includes, not only the powers of the monarch relative to the different branches of government, but also a wide range of traditionally extra-legal, patrimonial prerogatives, such as the power to issue royal decrees, which should now be delimited within a constitutional framework.

Authoritarianism is not an office but a system, embedded in a widely-dispersed network of institutions and practices. Hicham Ben Abdallah

But, although no real reform will advance without resolving this question of monarchical privilege, the kind of political change that people are now seeking goes beyond the fate of any single institution. Authoritarianism is not an office but a system, embedded in a widely-dispersed network of institutions and practices. Nowhere else is this clearer, for example, than when we consider the issues surrounding elections. Until now, we have tolerated “transparent” elections that are, in fact, structurally rigged, through gerrymandering, the complexity of the electoral code, and the tacit agreement of parties, to prevent an inconvenient majority. At the least, we need to strengthen the electoral code, and give the electoral commissions total independence from the Ministry of the Interior. If we also think about the independence and integrity of municipal and regional governments, the judiciary, the police, schools and universities, and even economic entities, we see the breadth of the changes that are implied in a thorough process of democratization. The persistence and complexity of the political effort necessary to advance that process and make it self-sustaining is clear. Democracy is a process, not a result, and it would be naive to think that a statute, or a referendum, or a demonstration could make it happen.

Indeed, beyond any set of legal or institutional changes, there is the more fundamental question of political culture. It requires, not just elections, but engagement -- the ongoing participation of millions of citizens in all the difficult decisions required to remake their society and their lives. But the legacy of decades of authoritarianism includes passivity, resignation, fear, and cynicism -- as well as, in Morocco, illiteracy. It includes a political framework in which parties become part of a spoils system, inured to their dependence on the monarchy, and reluctant to embrace a reform that would cut those ties. These implicit but powerful elements of authoritarianism provide the most stubborn obstacles to a thoroughgoing, self-sustaining process of democratization. The world is full of countries with perfect constitutions, passive, fearful citizens, and compliant political parties.

The educated, energetic, internet-savvy youth who inspired the February 20th movement, like their comrades across the region, have largely overcome this legacy for themselves, but have barely begun to bring with them the large swaths of Moroccans who are traditionalist, religious, culturally conservative, and -- not without reason -- afraid of making their lives any worse. To attract and mobilize these people, to help them become active citizens rather than passive subjects, requires setting another agenda, proposing a new social project—something visionary enough to inspire them, and programmatic enough to give them hope that their lives can be, not just different, but better. Do that, and the law will follow.

It has been understandably difficult to articulate such a project in a movement that has been a mixture of different social and political tendencies. But to advance, the movement must become more than a front de réfus. It has to adapt to a political space in Morocco that is more open than in many other Arab countries, and a target for its demands that is more difficult to define. The movement has tapped into the enormous desire for change among the populace, but has not yet been able to craft coalitions that will mobilize a broad constituency or develop a politically effective program and strategy.

For its part, the regime has not yet articulated a new vision of its own, adequate to the challenges we face. It is likely to find that the aura of history and tradition is no longer sufficient to sustain its own front de réfus, bricolé from the sticks and carrots of the security apparatus and the usual suspects among the political parties, against the forces of change. 

The relations between movement and regime are still dominated by suspicion and fear, and this creates a very dangerous situation. We have to realize that, whatever the results of the consultative commission and referendum, they will almost certainly be overtaken by ongoing political events. Constitutional reform might turn a page, but it will begin another chapter. Either it will be substantive, and therefore become the condition and support of a continuing process of democratization that affects all the institutions of society, or it will be restricted and superficial, and quickly become an excuse for increased repression and a provocation to renewed militancy.

Particularly troubling in this regard is the regime’s seeming turn, already, to a strategy of harsher repression. It’s as if the regime believes not only that a single constitutional reform constitutes the process of democratization, but also that the mere promise of one puts an end to it. Beating people out of streets and squares, mass arrests, and drive-by attacks by police on motorcycles will do more to undermine the support of the government, and the monarchy, than would a sympathetic understanding of the need for a change that is comprehensive and social, not narrow and legal.

Whether the result of a momentary ascendancy of our own forces sécuritaires, or of the fear of lobbies with vested interests, or of the influence of some of our Arab brethren, who seem to think the Arab Spring can be choked off in mid-bloom by a strong enough dose of the herbicide of repression, such a harsh turn is dangerous and self-defeating. Throughout the region, the appeal of monarchy as a unifying and stabilizing force has been real, but it is also fragile, and requires its own careful and constant tending, or it may quickly wither. In February, the demonstrators in Bahrain were not calling for the ouster of the King or the end of the monarchy. Does anybody think they will be as reticent the next time they take to the streets? Does anybody think there will not be a next time? No “club of Kings” will protect a monarchy from the rage of people who have been beaten by the King’s clubs.

Bleeding wounds leave a harsher and longer-lasting impression than cast ballots. It would be wise for all political actors in Morocco to build on their own strengths rather than on their own or others’ weaknesses, to meet their political opponents with respect rather than fear, as compatriots and citizens rather than as enemies, and to prepare, as best they can, for a complex project of reform that will reach beyond the central squares of major cities, and will not be over in a month, or two months, or on anyone’s timetable. The Arab Spring is entering a long, but let’s hope not too hot, Moroccan summer.

The Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) is pleased to announce that undergraduate senior honors student Yihana von Ritter was awarded The Firestone Medal for Excellence in Undergraduate Research for her outstanding thesis examining HIV/AIDS policy in Papua New Guinea. Von Ritter was presented with the award at a ceremony held on June 11 during commencement weekend at Stanford University.

Von Ritter, a political science major, spent the summer of 2010 on the Papua New Guinea island of Karkar, where she performed extensive field research. She interviewed over 40 government officials, medical personnel, religious and civic leaders, youth, and HIV positive individuals. Her thesis entitled "Between Hope and Despair: An Assessment of HIV/AIDS Policy in Papua New Guinea," underscored the fact that while only 1% of Papua New Guinea's adult population is AIDS-infected, a public health crisis is looming if preventative policies are not swiftly adopted.

According to her thesis co-advisor Professor Emeritus David Abernethy, Von Ritter's thesis received the Firestone Medal­--awarded to the top ten percent of honors theses in social science, science, and engineering--for its remarkable combination of social science analysis and informed policy advocacy.

"Von Ritter provides policy-relevant recommendations in her thesis to enhance interagency communication and encourage active government leadership (in Papua New Guinea)," said Abernethy. Von Ritter also worked closely with Francis Fukuyama, FSI senior fellow and CDDRL faculty member, who provided guidance and support during the thesis writing process.

Purun Cheong and Kamil Dada were both recipients of the CDDRL Undergraduate Honors Program "Best Thesis Award" for their outstanding research and policy-relevant scholarship. Cheong, an international relations major, critically evaluated the failed United Nations state-building efforts in East Timor in his thesis, "When the Blind lead: The United Nations in East Timor-Lessons in State Building."

After spending a summer conducting research in Pakistan, Dada, a political science major, wrote "Understanding International Democracy Assistance: A Case Study of Pakistan," a sobering account of democracy assistance to Pakistan. Cheong and Dada were both advised by CDDRL director Larry Diamond.

CDDRL congratulates the 2011 graduating class of CDDRL Undergraduate Honors

Students:

Purun Cheong

International Relations

"When the Blind Lead: The United Nations in East Timor- Lessons in State Building"

Kamil Dada

Political Science

"Understanding International Democracy Assistance: A Case study of Pakistan"

Sarah Guerrero

International Relations

"Automation Nation: Electronic Elections, Electoral Governance and Democratic Consolidation in the Philippines"

Ayesha Lalji

International Relations

"Unleashing the Cheetah Generation: How Mobile Banking Enables Access to Capital for the Poor in Developing Countries"

Lauren Swartz

International Relations

"Agribusiness as a Means of Economic Development: Case Studies of Chile and Mexico"

Ann Thompson

History

"The Other Side of the Coin: The US Military and Afghan Women in Contemporary Counterinsurgurgency Operations"

Yihana von Ritter

Political Science

"Between Hope and Despair: An Assessment of HIV/AIDS Policy in Papua New Guinea"

Ari Weiss

International Relations

"Israel: Managing Diversity with Democracy"

 Check out more photos of this event on our Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/StanfordCDDRL

The Center for International Security and Cooperation is pleased to welcome Dr. Amy Zegart as an affiliated faculty member at CISAC in conjunction with her position as a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. 

Zegart comes to Stanford after serving as professor of public policy at UCLA's Luskin School of Public Affairs, where she taught graduate and undergraduate courses in U.S. national security policy, U.S. intelligence, global studies, and public policy. She has won three UCLA teaching awards, including the 2010 Outstanding Public Policy Professor of the Year for excellence in undergraduate teaching.

Zegart has been featured by The National Journal as one of the ten most influential experts in intelligence reform. Her research examines the organizational deficiencies of American national security agencies. Her first book, Flawed By Design: The Evolution of the CIA, JCS and NSC, which chronicled the politics of bureaucratic design of the Central Intelligence Agency, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the National Security Council, won the American Political Science Association's Leonard D. White Dissertation Award and has become standard reading for several U.S. military and intelligence training programs.

Her second book, Spying Blind: The CIA, the FBI, and the Origins of 9/11, which examined why U.S. intelligence agencies failed to adapt to the rise of terrorism before 9/11, won the 2008 Louis Brownlow Book Award, the top literary prize given by the National Academy of Public Administration for outstanding contributions to the field.

She has also published in International Security, Political Science Quarterly, Presidential Studies Quarterly, and other leading academic journals.

Zegart served on the Clinton Administration's National Security Council staff. She has testified before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, provided intelligence training to the Marine Corps and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and was a member of The National Academics of Science Panel to Improve Intelligence Analysis.  

She currently serves on the FBI Intelligence Analysts Association National Advisory Board, the Los Angeles Police Department's Counter-terrorism and Community Police Advisory Board, and advises local, state, and federal officials on intelligence and homeland security matters.

She will arrive at Stanford on June 17.  

As a new era of democratic change swept across the Arab world this year, the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy (ARD) at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law hosted two conferences to examine the Arab Spring. On April 29, twelve internationally renowned Egypt scholars convened at Stanford to probe the root causes of the Egyptian revolution and debate the challenges facing the transition period. The second annual ARD conference held May 12-13, brought Arab activists and academics from the region together to provide a comparative perspective on political activism.

Participants in the Democratic Transition in Egypt conference were hesitant to label the popular uprising in Egypt a revolution in light of the fragile transition period. According to Professor Jason Brownlee of the University of Texas at Austin, "repressive agencies of the old order still exist in Egypt: the military intelligence, state security, and the general intelligence service."

Scholars unanimously agreed that nascent opposition parties face the enormous challenge of organizing during a hurried transition period and within a competitive party and campaign structure. Professor Samer Soliman from the American University in Cairo emphasized this point, "the party law is designed to bias the old guard and a legacy of suspicion towards political parties leaves youth hesitant to join or form political parties."

Significant discussion was dedicated to the role of the Muslim Brotherhood who many argued is the only well-organized opposition party in Egypt capable of commanding a majority in the upcoming parliamentary elections. Scholars were left wondering how to translate the success of this popular movement into a constitutionally-based political system representative of all societal interests.

The From Political Activism to Democratic Change in the Arab World conference featured eight activists from Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Morocco, Bahrain, and Yemen--in addition to a live presentation from Ramallah by Mustafa Barghouthi --who were joined by leading scholars to provide a grassroots perspective and original voice to the uprisings.

Panels presented country-based case studies highlighting the key challenges activists face in diverse Arab states and societies to evaluate the potential of democratic transition to take root. While variation exists in each country, it was clear that activists faced the same obstacles in pursuit of their goals and clearly benefitted from this shared forum at Stanford.

A new generation of young political activists connected through social networks learned through the revolutionary experiences of their Facebook friends. Stephane Lacoix, Sciences Po

Participants emphasized the contagion that spread protests across the region, beginning in Tunisia. Stéphane Lacoix of Sciences Po illustrated this point, "a new generation of young political activists connected through social networks learned through the revolutionary experiences of their Facebook friends."

Looking forward, participants agreed that these revolutions are far from complete and challenging work lies ahead. According to CDDRL director Larry Diamond, "democratic change is not produced by grassroots protest and activism alone but requires organization, strategy, and hierarchical structure.”

In each Arab country, tribal, sectarian, political, and religious division threaten the stability of the fragile transition period. In the near term, participants stressed the importance of delaying elections to give time for political parties, institutions, and leadership to develop so the status quo does not reassert itself.

The role of external actors-- from the US to the GCC--was cited as exerting influence on the internal politics in each country. Activists collectively commented on the inconsistency of US foreign policy in the region, which has placed strategic interests above ideological ones, not actively pressing for change in Bahrain, Jordan, and Syria in the same way as in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya.

A tone of cautious optimism imbued both conferences as scholars and activists alike were hesitant to declare the Arab Spring a success, stressing that time will determine the ultimate outcome. Both conferences allowed the ARD Program to make a substantial contribution to the body of scholarly research on this topic as conference papers will be published in an edited volume.

 

In a new piece published on the Foreign Affairs website, CDDRL Director Larry Diamond argues that the Arab Spring is witnessing a thawing and freezing across the region as anti-democratic forces threaten nascent democratic transformations.

The decades-long political winter in the Arab world seemed to be thawing early this year as mass protests toppled Tunisian President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in January and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in February. It appeared as though one rotten Arab dictatorship after another might fall during the so-called Arab Spring. Analogies were quickly conjured to 1989, when another frozen political space, Eastern Europe, saw one dictatorship after another collapse. A similar wave of democratic transitions in the Arab world was finally possible to imagine, particularly given the extent to which previous transformations had been regional in scope: Portugal, Spain, and Greece all democratized in the mid-1970s; much of Latin America did shortly thereafter; Korea and Taiwan quickly followed the Philippines’ political opening in 1986; and then a wave of change in sub-Saharan Africa began in 1990. All of those were part of the transformative “third wave” of global democratization. In March, many scholars and activists reasonably imagined that a “fourth wave” had begun. 

Two months later, however, a late spring freeze has seemingly hit some areas of the region. And it could be a protracted one. Certainly, each previous regional wave of democratic change had to contend with authoritarian hard-liners, opposition divisions, and divergent national trends. But most of the Arab political openings are closing faster and more harshly than happened in other regions -- save for the former Soviet Union, where most new democratic regimes quickly drifted back toward autocracy.

If Tunisia still provides grounds for cautious optimism, the Egyptian situation is already deeply worrying. Its senior officer corps, which currently controls the government, does not want to facilitate a genuine democratic transition. It will try to prevent it by generating conditions on the ground that discredit democracy and make Egyptians (and U.S. policymakers) beg for a strong hand again. The ruling officers have turned a blind eye to mounting religious and sectarian strife (and an alarming explosion in crime). The military has spent enormous effort arresting thousands of peaceful protesters in Tahrir Square and trying them in military tribunals over the last two months. (In April, one such detainee, a blogger named Maikel Nabil, was sentenced to three years in prison for “insulting the military establishment.”) Yet it claims that it cannot rein in rising insecurity. Many Egyptians see this as part of the military’s grand design to undermine democracy before it takes hold.

The parliamentary elections slated for September are unlikely to help: New political forces have no chance of being able to build competitive party and campaign structures in time. The Muslim Brotherhood, which initially said it would only contest a third of the parliamentary seats, has now announced its intention to contest half of all seats, forming a new political party (Freedom and Justice) for the purpose. If the electoral system retains its highly majoritarian nature, it might well win a thumping majority of the seats it contests (perhaps 40 percent in all), with most of the rest going to local power brokers and former stalwarts of the Mubarak-era ruling party, the National Democratic Party.

Both theory and political experience teach that regimes with spent legitimacy do not last, and the legitimacy of the Libyan, Syrian, and Yemeni dictators is utterly depleted.

Elsewhere in the region, Bahrain’s minority Sunni monarchy opted to crush peaceful protests and arrest and torture many of those with whom it might have negotiated some future power-sharing deal. With active Iranian support and a bizarre degree of American and Israeli acceptance, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad unleashed a slow-motion massacre that could go on for weeks or even months. In Yemen, the government is paralyzed, food prices are rising, and the country is drifting. Having seen the fate of Mubarak, Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh is playing for time, but his legitimacy is irretrievably drained, and he lacks the ability to mobilize repressive force on the scale of Assad’s.

Of course, not every country in the region has been affected by the apparent freeze and some could still avoid it. Jordan and Morocco are not yet in crisis but could be soon. Both countries face the same conditions that brought down seemingly secure autocracies in Tunisia and Egypt -- mounting frustration with corruption, joblessness, social injustice, and closed political systems. Not yet facing mass protests, Jordan’s King Abdullah is in a position to lead a measured process of democratic reform from above to revise electoral laws, rein in corruption, and grant considerably more freedom. Yet there is little sign that he has the vision or political self-confidence to modernize his country in this way.

Morocco’s King Mohammed VI is still domestically revered and internationally cited as a reformer, but he is even weaker and more feckless than Abdullah. He has been unwilling to rein in the deeply venal interests that surround the monarchy, or ease the country’s extraordinary concentration of wealth and business ownership. Instead, his security forces, narrow circle of royal friends, and oligopolistic business cronies fend off demands for accountability and reform, further isolate the king, and aggravate the political storm that is gathering beneath a comparatively calm surface.

For now, both monarchies are treading familiar water: launching committees to study political reform but never moving toward real political change. This game cannot last forever. As a former Jordanian official recently commented to me privately: “Everyone is expecting serious changes to the way the king rules the country, and if these changes don’t happen, the system will be in trouble. The king can’t keep talking about reform without implementing it.”

Scholars of the Arab world had been arguing for years that the region’s various repressive regimes (not least Saudi Arabia’s Al Saud dynasty, which keeps several thousand princes on the take) would either pursue democratic reform, or rot internally until they were overthrown. Ultimately, the options remain the same for the regimes that have avoided revolution this year. Those who have reasserted authoritarianism will find only temporary reprieve. Both theory and political experience teach that regimes with spent legitimacy do not last, and the legitimacy of the Libyan, Syrian, and Yemeni dictators is utterly depleted. They will surely be overthrown if not now, then in coming years. The Jordanian and Moroccan monarchies, however, could still survive if they spend what remains of their political legitimacy on democratic reform. In other words, even if the Arab spring comes in fits and starts, it will eventually bring fundamental political change. But whether democracy is the end result depends in part on how events unfold and how regimes and international actors engage the opposition forces.

Short of the wars that have periodically broken out in the region, the United States has never faced a more urgent set of opportunities and challenges there: real prospects for democratic development exist alongside the very real risks of Islamist ascension, political chaos, and humanitarian disaster. Countries across the Arab world differ widely in their political structures and social conditions, and the United States cannot pursue a one-size-fits-all strategy. But there are a few basic principles that it should apply everywhere. As it has generally and in a number of specific cases, the Obama administration must explicitly and consistently denounce all violent repression of peaceful protest. And it should enhance the credibility of those words by tying them to consequences. For example, in Libya, the United States identified and froze the overseas assets of top officials who were responsible for brutality. Additionally, it imposed travel bans on them and their family members, and asked Europe to do the same. In the past few days, the Obama administration has also moved to freeze the personal assets of Assad and other top Syrian officials. In extreme cases -- Libya is one, and Syria has now become another -- the United States can press the United Nations Security Council to refer individuals to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.

When Arab governments turn arms against peaceful protesters, the United States and Europe should stop supplying them with weapons. Western countries have been selling (or giving) regimes, such as Saleh’s in Yemen, the tools of repression, including tear gas, ammunition, sniper rifles, close-assault weapons, and rockets and tanks. Although Saleh may have been a valuable asset in the fight against terrorism at one time, he has become a liability. By ending such trade, the United States would firmly send the message to the leaders of Bahrain (another recipient) and Yemen that if they are going to violently assault and arbitrarily arrest peaceful demonstrators for democracy, they are at least not going to continue doing so with U.S. guns.

For now, there is an urgent need for mediation to break the impasse between rulers and their oppositions and to find ways to ease the region’s remaining dictators out of power. Recognizing the need for an active UN role during the Arab uprising, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has begun to dispatch experienced and talented UN staff to engage in dialogue with different groups in Yemen and elsewhere. These diplomats can help develop possible political accommodations with the protesters. The United States should encourage the UN to try to mediate these conflicts, reconcile deeply divided forces within political oppositions, and help governments pave the way for credible elections. Because it is more neutral, the UN is the international actor best suited to mediate as well as convene experts on institutional design and help supply technical support for drafting constitutions.

American diplomats will have their own role to play: They can channel financial and programmatic support and provide another venue for different actors to meet and discuss differences. They should also speak out for human rights, civil society, and the democratic process. Such expressions of moral and practical support have made a significant difference in transitional situations in other countries, such as Chile, the Philippines, Poland, and South Africa. The Arab world has its own distinct sensitivities, but the ongoing uprisings present an unusual opportunity for U.S. ambassadors to join with representatives of other democracies to lean on Arab autocrats and aid Arab democrats.

The United States should help Arab democrats get the training and financial assistance they need to survive while urging them to cooperate with one another. This does not just mean more grants to civil society organizations. There is, of course, a need for such funding, but too much U.S. money thrown at these groups will discredit them as “American pawns” or promote corruption. Aid should be pooled among multiple donors, provide core (rather than project-related) funding for organizations with a proven track record of advancing democratic change, and must be carefully monitored to ensure that it is being used effectively.Western countries have been selling (or giving) regimes, such as Saleh’s in Yemen, the tools of repression, including tear gas, ammunition, sniper rifles, close-assault weapons, and rockets and tanks.

Finally, given its enormous demographic weight and political influence in the Arab world, as Egypt goes, so will go the region. Engaging Egypt will prove vital to any larger strategy of fostering democratic change in the Arab world. Beyond aid and vigilant monitoring of the political process, the United States must deliver a clear message to the Egyptian military that it will not support a deliberate sabotage of the democratic process, and that a reversion to authoritarianism would have serious consequences for the U.S.-Egyptian bilateral relationship, including for future flows of U.S. military aid. The United States cannot allow the Egyptian military to play the cynical double game that the Pakistani military has, or Egypt may become another Pakistan in two senses: an overbearing military may hide behind the façade of democracy to run the country, and the military may consort with our friends one day and our enemies -- radical Islamists within Egypt and Hamas outside it -- the next, to show it cannot be taken for granted.

This period of change in the Arab world will not be short or neatly circumscribed. Not a continuous thaw or freeze, the coming years will see cycles -- ups and downs in a protracted struggle to define the future political shape of the Arab world. The stakes for the United States are enormous. And the need for steady principles, clear understanding, and long-term strategic thinking has never been more pressing.

As part of the ongoing Ethics and War series, Jason Armagost, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force, and Brian Turner, who served for seven years in the U.S. army, read recently from their works of prose and poetry. CISAC affiliate Richard Rhodes moderated a discussion afterward.

The Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) hosted a conference on the democratic transition in Egypt on Friday as part of its Program on Arab Reform and Democracy.

A series of four panels explored a number of issues surrounding the transition to democracy following the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak. Prominent scholars from Stanford and other institutions participated in the conference.

Twelve Egypt scholars from American, Egyptian and European universities and think tanks convened in four panels throughout the day to discuss the revolution, the transition process, the changing political landscape and Egypt's future. The conference was co-sponsored by the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies.

Panelists included Hoover Institution senior fellow Larry Diamond, history professor Joel Beinin, political science assistant professor Lisa Blaydes, CDDRL visiting scholar Ben Rowswell and CDDRL Program Manager Lina Khatib. They were joined by academics from Kent State University, Harvard University, Georgetown University, the University of Texas, Notre Dame University, the University of Exeter, the American University in Cairo and the Brookings Doha Center.

Each panel featured an introduction by the chair, followed by two or three 30-minute talks by panelists and a 30-minute Q&A session.

Emad Shahin, an associate professor of religion, conflict and peacebuilding at Notre Dame, opened the first panel with a talk that emphasized the role of the youth in charging the 18 days of protest that toppled former President Hosni Mubarak.

"In 18 days, this movement dismantled three pillars of Mubarak's regime-the security apparatus, NDP [National Democratic Party] and...the military," he said.

Samer Shehata, an assistant professor of Arab politics at Georgetown University, discussed the response of the regime to the protests and the reasons for its failure.

The second panel looked to the future, focusing on the Egyptian presidential elections scheduled for later this year. Speeches addressed the process of negotiations between the regime and opposition groups, the agenda for constitutional and institutional reform and political repression.

Panelist Jason Brownlee, an associate professor in the Department of Government at University of Texas at Austin, drew a parallel between the current situation in Egypt and the one in Russia in 1991. He described the liberal movement as "electorally weak" and said it experienced difficulty in maintaining momentum.

The third panel addressed political parties in the post-revolution landscape, including the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood party. Panelist Hesham Sallam, a doctoral candidate at Georgetown University, spoke on how the timeline for the parliamentary elections, currently set for this September, disadvantages newly formed parties and favors parties such as the Muslim Brotherhood.

"The speed of transition in Egypt  gives advantage to existing political parties by not allowing time for newcomers to organize," he said.

"The Brotherhood knows how to play politics where liberals have absolutely no idea," added Shadi Hamid, the director of research at the Brookings Doha Center.

Diamond described parallels with the situation in Iraq in 2004 and 2005.

"The liberals weren't good at organizing, had no mass constituency and got electorally crushed...but they had a constructive influence on the constitution making process," he said.

"We should look at this as an iterative process of several elections to come," he added.

The final panel focused on looking forward. Rowswell presented a new "Open Source Democracy Promotion" project, designed to provide Egyptian activists with an option for crowd sourcing constitutional negotiations.

"The best approach is for informed and engaged citizens to support the Egyptian activists...inspired by the opportunity Egyptians have given themselves but also inspired by what Egyptians have given the world regarding democratic state building and ushering in a new age of democracy based on mutual collaboration and participation," Rowswell said.

Hamid delivered the final talk of the conference, presenting his forecast for the parliamentary elections. He singled out newly formed parties backed by wealthy individuals as key players in the upcoming vote.

"The established political parties will do quite well, but also individuals with name recognition in their districts and those with resources will do well," he said.

Hamid cautioned against overly idealistic projections, given the disorganization of the liberal parties in Egypt.

"We have to be realistic," he said. "We wanted to think for a long time that once there was democracy, Egyptians would become fluffy American-style liberals, and we don't know if that is true."

"From the perspective of international actors doing democracy promotion, I think there's a distinction between encouraging Egyptians to make one choice over another," Rowswell said. "I think it should be ensuring that there is a choice to make."