Opinion & Commentary
Liberal democracies do it their own way
Arab Springs don’t bring Western clones, writes Benjamin Herscovitch.
While the international community dithers with a recalled Arab League monitoring mission and a failed United Nations Security Council resolution, Syrian government forces continue their siege of the flash-point city of Homs.
Beyond the internecine violence raging in Syria, the poster children of Arab Spring-induced reform, Egypt and Tunisia, are in the grip of Thermidorian Reactions. Islamist parties in both countries are putting on impressively muscular electoral performances.
Not only does the downfall of one of the most draconian Arab rulers still seem distant in the absence of the blunt tool of international military intervention, democratisation in Egypt and Tunisia will apparently pave the way for an illiberal Islamist renaissance. The high-water mark of the Arab Spring is thus seemingly far short of nourishing the roots of stable liberal democracy in North Africa and the Middle East.
Despite these countervailing developments, the Arab Spring, like the melting away of the Cold War, is in fact nothing less than further confirmation that human history has reached its denouement. Although it may not be immediately obvious from the vantage point of the bloodied streets of Homs or the Ennahda Movement-dominated Tunisian Constituent Assembly, the Arab Spring bears out Francis Fukuyama's contention that we have witnessed “an unabashed victory of economic and political liberalism”.
Far from a shocking example of ignorant liberal triumphalism, Fukuyama’s claim that “there are no serious ideological competitors left to liberal democracy” is simply a comment on the almost irresistible gravitational pull of liberal democratic values. While there is no guarantee that liberal democratic reformers will be able to sweep away a despot in Syria or that the Egyptian and Tunisian democratic systems will be liberal in the same way as their Western counterparts, the victory of liberal democracy in the hearts and minds of the peoples of North Africa and the Middle East is unequivocal.
Detractors will likely argue that the Arab Spring was less a function of the near-universal appeal of liberal democracy and more a product of primordial economic impulses.
Although economic factors like inflated grain prices undoubtedly played an important role in fomenting dissent in Egypt and elsewhere, it is equally true that whatever the specific triggers for the unrest, the protests quickly became more generalised calls for liberal democratic political reforms.
A further objection is that the supposedly unabashed victory of liberal democracy can hardly be said to be anything more than hollow if liberalisation and democratisation pave the way for Islamisation.
The mere fact that the Arab Spring has enabled, for example, the electoral victory of the moderate Islamist Nahda Party in Tunisia in no way implies the abandonment of the liberal democratic values that drove the Arab Spring. The precise significance of the institutionalisation of liberal democratic values is that individuals can legislate for themselves. While the electoral success of the Nahda Party is consistent with that basic liberal democratic principle, the imposition of a party that did not offend the sensibilities of Australian liberal democrats would betray the liberal democratic commitment to individuals living as they see fit.
Irrespective of how the street battles of Homs and the electoral tussles of Tunisia and Egypt play out, the broad-based upswell of calls for liberalisation and democratisation is unmistakeable. The Arab Spring is therefore just further confirmation that the twilight of human history has truly descended. From here on in, we can expect nothing more than false dawns.
Benjamin Herscovitch is a PhD candidate in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Sydney. His article, Liberal Values and the End of History, appears in The Centre for Independent Studies' journal Policy magazine.
