The fragility and strength of democracy

I've just come back from a lecture sponsored by the Electoral Reform International Services organisation (and for those of you with knowledge of the UK lobby scene, it shares only the name with the lobby pushing for proportional representation). For the last couple of years, they have sponsored a lecture on, essentiality, democracy outside the magic circle of the established and stable democracies.

This year, the lecturer was one Mohsen Marzouk. He's a democracy advocate from Tunisia, and has been for some years with a track record to prove it. Given the geographical context, Tunisia and the Middle East and North Africa, it is of supreme interest to note that the word Israel came up only once, and then in passing, and only because it has a vulnerable border with Syria. Well, it's vulnerable only if you're not a member of the IDF, a military planner with the IDF or an Israeli, of course.

As an aside, the talk was held in what I'm told used to be the Conservative Party headquarters in Smith Square, Westminster but is now the home of the European Union Commission and European Parliament in London. Still, I'm sure they'll have carried out an appropriate exorcism ceremony before moving in.

What I found intriguing about the event was less what Mr Marzouk had to say (and that was very interesting on the chances for democracy taking root and flourishing in the Arab Spring countries and elsewhere in the region), and more about the thoughts that it triggered in my mind as to what was required for a democracy to become and remain stable.

I came up with a list of about 10 factors. I'm not going to bore you with them, but among them I thought that these were quite interesting: freedom of and from religion; the rule of law (no arbitrary actions on the part of the state); and the acceptance of collective as well as individual rights. What would your list include or exclude?

As to the fragility of democracy, with at least 10 factors needing to be in place, it's astonishing that they have survived for so long, not least in the so-called Anglo-Saxon democracies of the UK and Commonwealth Dominions (and I'd include India in that list) and the USA. Perhaps there's something in the common culture, and the fact that they've avoided invasion by non-democrats (interesting that: when was the last time genuine representative democracies went to war against each other?).

Balancing that, of course, is the problem of succession for authoritarian regimes. If they can't guarantee the control of the army, they have no way of ensuring peaceful (or at least unopposed) succession. One of the most interesting comments that Mohsen Marzouk made (among a large number) was to suggest that, if you get the rules right, even a non-democrat can be constrained to act as though they were a genuine democrat. We'll all have our candidates for that role of the constrained authoritarian. I know who mine is for the UK!

That said, democracies have no problem with succession: either the electorate or the political parties sort that one out.

And I think that Israel fits in just fine with the list of democracies: 64 years and counting ain't bad in this wicked world.

By Brian Goldfarb.