September 23, 2012
I had the pleasure this week
of mingling with historians at a conference at Missouri State University,
co-sponsored by Drury University and universities in Oklahoma and Arkansas,
which allowed me to share analyses with them on the issues in the ongoing Arab
uprisings that are truly historic and others that are merely fleeting. Using
the narrative tools of the journalist along with the analytical lens of the
historians, I suggested that we can already identify a series of genuinely historic,
new and meaningful developments in many of the Arab states in transformation,
after 21 months of the Arab uprisings.
Here is my list of the five most important ones:
1. New legitimacies are coming into play,
including legitimate governance structures, leaders and political actors,
replacing their former counterparts that enjoyed incumbency but had long ago
lost legitimacy. The transition from mass public humiliation to newfound
legitimacy in national governance and the exercise of power is the single most
important foundational change that is taking place in these Arab uprisings and
national reconfigurations. These new legitimacies provide the foundation on
which all other new developments occur, especially new national systems of
governance and citizen rights.
2. New actors now participate in the process of
contested politics that will shape national governments systems and policies at
home and abroad; these include most notably revolutionary and other youth,
individual citizens with the power to choose and change governments and
presidents, Muslim Brothers and more hard-line Salafist Islamists (some of whom
lead or participate in coalition governments), tribes (some with militias),
secular-nationalist political parties, the armed forces that now engage in open
rather than secret politics, the judiciary, civil society groups, and private
sector interests.
We should note three important aspects of these
new players. They all emanate from these Arab societies and did not parachute
in from abroad, and they now operate in public and with populist democratic
legitimacy, rather than working in the shadows as many of them did before,
including the military, tribal forces, the private sector, and some Islamists.
They reflect the important development that very few people are now excluded or
marginalized, as was the case previously when the vast majority of citizens
were shut out from the decision-making process. And, they evolve and change, as
they share or seek power via the consent of the governed; they soften or harden
positions and clarify their policies in response to citizen demands, and so
they act in a political manner, reflecting their need to remain legitimate and
credible in the eyes of their supporters and the public at large.
3. New accountabilities: Power is no longer
exercised totally with abandon, but rather public decisions now are often held
accountable to checks and balances by other legitimate actors and institutions
in society. Among those who are now more accountable than they were before 2011
are some presidents, parliaments, ministers, and security-military officials,
along with the private sector and foreign powers. It seems clear now that no
single group in Egypt, Tunisia or Libya can try to monopolize power and
dominate the state decision-making process as did the former autocratic and
dictatorial regimes that were overthrown. If they do, they will immediately be
confronted by countervailing pressures by others in society who insist on
maintaining the pluralism that has been earned with the citizenry’s rebellion
and blood.
4. New rules, primarily in the form of new
constitutions that capture the legitimacy and accountability imperatives, and
transform the concept of democratic pluralism and citizen rights into practical
applications of the rule of law. The intensive consultations and contestations
taking place now in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya over the drafting of new
constitutions that reflect a genuine national consensus are the single most
important political process underway in this post-regime change phase of the
national reconfiguration projects underway. They capture the immediate gains of
the revolutionary changes, which include free citizens and organized parties
and other groups (civil society, religious, tribal and private sector forces)
engaging in peaceful political dialog and contestation in the public realm.
This is both historic (it never happened before seriously) and historical (it
will go on for decades or centuries).
5. Seminal new balances are being defined and negotiated
in several crucial realms of public life that will shape national systems for
decades to come. The most important ones strike me as the balance between
military and civilian officials, between religiosity and secularism in public
life, and between private-tribal-local and public-national identities. These
balances required decades or even centuries to be fully agreed in other
countries and to result in stable, credible political systems. The process to
define them has just started and will take years to reach conclusions.
These five developments seem to me to represent
some truly historic consequences that we can identity from the last 21 months
of transformations in several Arab countries, and they are the reason I remain
optimistic that the future for many Arab countries will continue to brighten in
the years ahead.
Rami G. Khouri is
Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares
Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American
University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon. He can be followed on Twitter at @ramikhouri.
Copyright © 2012 Rami G. Khouri --
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