The Root of Egypt's Problems?

My friend Steve Saideman has recently posted some excellent stuff on what's going on in Egypt, despite his avowed position that he doesn't know much about Egyptian politics. His emphasis on the basic rules of democracy is an extremely important reminder of what underlies democratic politics in any nation. Since I don't know much about Egypt either, I am naturally going to follow him down that road.

One thing I think may be missing from his list is a condition necessary for democracies to work. When we think about democracies and defining them, we think about process - the how of politics. But most people aren't process people, they're outcome people - they care a great deal more about what happens then about how it happens.

People's willingness to tolerate or go along with various sets of process rules tends to hinge on whether the outcomes generated are acceptable. As the aphorism goes, if you don't like the game, change the rules. Egyptians didn't overthrow Mubarak because he was undemocratic; they overthrew him because they were tired of corruption and being randomly thrown in jail and being poor.

This helps explain, by the way, why otherwise fundamentally undemocratic systems that produce acceptable outcomes (Singapore?) are stable. If you're wealthy and have a reasonable amount of freedom in your personal and professional life, it's harder to get you to take up arms against the tyranny of government.

What does this have to do with Egypt? The current inability to form a stable government, and the reason for the military takeover, may relate to an underlying problem: factions within Egypt have definitions of "acceptable political outcomes" so fundamentally divergent that there is no space available for stable politics.

We expect there to be differences of opinion - every society has those. In functioning democracies, those differences are not so severe that different factions refuse to accept outcomes acceptable to the other side(s) and turn instead to revolt and open revolution. Aside from a very small number of fringe elements in the US, even the current state of polarization in American politics hasn't led anyone take up arms, either against the state or against members of the other party. As Steve pointed out, even the contested 2000 election was settled not by the military but by the courts. It's been two generations since we've seen any significant armed resistance to political outcomes.

Contrast this with Egypt today, which is clearly sharply and perhaps irrevocably divided between numerous factions. The Islamists put together a coalition big enough to win an election. But the outcome they wanted was beyond the range of tolerance for other groups in society, who rose up against a "democratically elected" government - a clear case of political outcomes trumping the supposed legitimacy of the process itself. Now that the military has swept the Islamists from power, the latter are starting to resist forcefully as well (if not yet effectively), and it isn't clear that there's enough common ground among the non-Islamist factions to base even a temporary government on.

The logical conclusion to this line of reasoning is a depressing one: Egypt may simply be too divided to have a functioning democracy. If that is the case, all the elections and constitutional conventions in the world won't solve the problem - they simply provide new battlegrounds on which various factions will fight their winner-take-all battles. In that case, military rule may in fact by the only stable solution that prevents the country from sliding into civil war.

The solution to Egypt's crisis lies, as it always does, with Egyptians. The military or various political leaders may be able to help, but in the end democracy there will only work if there's enough overlap in what different people think of as acceptable political outcomes to base "normal" politics on. Given the violence of the last few weeks, it seems that point is a ways off. Until then, I suspect we're in for a period of either protracted instability or prolonged military rule - and despite our own democratic predilections, the latter may be preferable to the former.

A Difficult Political Question: When Is a Military Coup a Good (or Necessary) Thing?

The latest news from Egypt raises a very troubling political question:

Egypt army gives Mursi 48 hours to share power

The difficult question is this: what if a nation's people are so divided that they cannot, in fact, rule themselves in civil and peaceable order? What if the divergences of opinion is so vast that there can be no compromise stable enough to last? Are we witnessing the outer limits of democracy - the point at which elections and "freedom" don't work?

And if we are at that point, is a military takeover the only viable option? The US has spent decades condemning military coups (albeit selectively...) - is this one of the "good ones" that we should welcome rather than criticize?

Not knowing boo about Egypt, I can't answer any of these questions, of course. But the questions themselves intrigue me - despite our faith in "freedom" and "democracy", there may well be limits and circumstances where holding another election is not the answer.

Violence Speaks to Violence

Over the last few days, the headlines have been dominated by tiny groups of people who are primarily talking to each other in the language of violence. While the line between peaceful protest and violent outrage is sometimes fuzzy, it's clear that the airwaves are now being dominated by those shouting in anger. The murder of the American ambassador in Libya and the storming of embassies in Yemen and Egypt have captured everyone's attention - the world stage has been seized by the violent.

This is not only true of Muslims across the Islamic World (although most coverage is now going to protests and the potential for further violence). Here in the US, the voices that have been heard most loudly are those that lashed out in anger or disdain (as the Romney campaign did in its initial reaction to events) and, paradoxically, those that created the offending movie in the first place. The President, the Secretary of State, and a host of others have been forced to respond to this agenda of violence, anger, and hate - in the midst of the microscope that is a presidential campaign.

We are, by and large, listening to the violent and angry, and then turning to our leaders to ask "what are you going to do about it?" In so doing, we are missing a fundamental truth and we have lost our own voice in the maelstrom.

The truth we're missing is that, although violence and anger are loud, volume does not mean size. The number of people involved in making the film appears to be remarkably small - and based on news reports, some of those didn't understand what the film would ultimately be about. There appears to have been a very small handful of people whose vitriolic hatred of Islam pushed them to make and release this video. Theirs is a violence of word and voice, if not bullets and fire.

Too, the crowds that have mobbed and attacked US embassies overseas may in fact be relatively small groups of people. The group that attacked the US embassy in Sanaa, Yemen numbered a few hundred in a city of two million. Reports have emerged of others in Yemen, Libya and Egypt who are ashamed of their countrymen, including some moving photos of an anti-violence rally in Benghazi. These voices are not as loud as the voices of anger and violence - but they may well be more numerous.

There is, of course, a third group: those that sympathize with the violence (on either side), that harbor the anger and support those who lash out. We don't know how large this group is, either. The lines are not clearly drawn. But I have seen enough anti-Muslim snark, even among my own FB contacts, to know that there are those who to some degree or another approve of the hatred behind the video. These are the "you're either fer us or agin' us" types whose anger is cloaked in righteous indignation, which often serves as a justification for violence or coercion.

In this kind of environment, violence and anger rule the day. They seize everybody's attention and become the dominant means of dialogue. Violence speaks to violence, while those who want peace are caught in the middle, silenced by the din.

I think that if we're really interested in peace, we have a responsibility to say so. We must first examine ourselves, and make sure we're not falling into the "fer us or agin' us" trap. There are peace-seeking people on all sides - if we want to be among their number, let us first make sure that we're not inadvertently feeding the violence and anger in our own interactions.

Next, we should find a way to speak on behalf of peace. The media probably won't listen - anger and violence sell papers and ads far better - but we should do it anyway. In particular, we should speak on behalf of peace to those around us - to our friends, our neighbors, our co-workers and fellow church-goers, our FB friends, our twitter followers - wherever we have a voice that someone listens to.

Speaking for peace also means listening. We seem to believe that other people will listen to us if we shout loud enough, or are clever enough in our snark - even though we ourselves never listen to such people. If we really speak on behalf of peace, we are willing to listen, to reflect, and to honor and respect others' voices. If a desire for peace unites us, that is enough ground on which to stand in conversation.

We should do this not because speaking for peace will silence the violence and anger, but simply because peace needs a voice. We don't know where our words will travel, or what effect they will have. But we know what will happen if we are silent. If no one speaks peace to the violence and anger around us, the violent and angry will have their way and their wars. We can do better. At the very least, we should try.