From: The Post-Dictator Era
[I'm hoping the author expects Bush & Cohorts will be joining the ex-dictators' club - hopefully behind bars for a very long time.]
Depressed? Don't be. Thanks to international institutions and the NGO community, the notion that governments should be constrained by constitutional checks and balances is increasingly becoming a global norm. Just the fact that Putin, who enjoys 80% approval ratings, honoured his term limits and stepped aside shows that democratically elected despots are increasingly having to pay attention to such restraints. Even lip service counts for something. Although prime minister-'elect' Putin is expected to still dominate Russia, relinquishing the substantial formal powers of the presidency will make that less straightforward than before.
What has really complicated the lives of dictators, however, has been a communications revolution that has given a growing proportion of the world's population access to the internet and satellite television. Consider how Russians (or for that matter Kenyans) can now follow Barack Obama's roller-coaster ride through countless primary elections and compare it to their own system.
That is not to say that political repression is a thing of the past. Far from it. But contrary to what Larry Diamond of the Hoover Institution writes in Foreign Affairs that "the democratic wave has been slowed by a powerful authoritarian undertow, and the world has slipped into a democratic recession", in fact the opposite is true. Autocrats everywhere, from Putin to Musharraf, are finding it much harder to command obedience by controlling informational flows. Egyptian bloggers, Burmese YouTubers, Pakistani satellite TV news anchors, and the online community in China and Iran make it much harder for even smarter, savvier dictators to flourish.
No comments:
Post a Comment