For those of us living in a country such as Canada, with guarantees of civil liberties, freedom, and a liberal democratic process, the idea of life in a place with few freedoms and no ability to choose our leaders is alien to most. Because of this, events such as the Arab Spring come with a sense of inevitability, as though such struggles for democracy should exist wherever despotism is in power, and that it is simply a matter of time before the whole world becomes democratic like Canada. After all, who would choose to live under an undemocratic regime when they could fight for more rights and freedoms?
The reality is that such assumptions are too shortsighted, for no other reason than that the perfect system for one country may be incompatible in another, let alone wanted by its people. Even the idea of our Canadian system, where a party with a majority has almost absolute power on a country’s governance, is thought to not have enough accountability to our neighbors to the south.
The problem becomes more complicated when one takes into account the state of democracies around the world. As I wrote in my last column, the number of full democracies — free, non-corrupt systems that follow any ‘western’ liberal democratic model — are diminishing, all the while, the number of authoritarian regimes is on the rise. What makes the idea of a fully democratic world even more far-fetched is the fact that many of these authoritarian governments are doing just fine.
In Saudi Arabia, democratization is but a pipe dream, not only because the ruling family is so entrenched into government, but also because much of the population do not wish to see change. The economy is running well, people are mostly happy, and many feel there is no need for change. Though there are sections of the population calling for it — mostly women and religious minorities — the strength of the al-Saud family makes it so the changes come from the top, rather than create instability at the grassroots level.
Even in a nation such as Russia (which is apparently yearning for change), change is just as unlikely to come anytime soon. Putting aside the fact that elections in Russia are not free or fair according to many independent election watchers, the grim reality is that any opposition to Vladimir Putin’s United Russia is too disorganized and poorly funded to mount a meaningful challenge. More importantly, for as many people who take to the streets against Putin, there are likely just as many -— if not more — who would not like to see him go; these are not only the oligarchs and the rich businessmen, but many ordinary Russians who remember the chaos of the early ‘90s when Russia attempted to become fully democratic and almost slid into civil war. For them, stability – economic or otherwise – may be more important than the ability to choose who sits inside the Kremlin walls.
Democratization is not an easy process. Tunisia had it easy, Egypt and Libya are struggling to establish it, and Syrians are learning the hard way how difficult it is to rid one’s country of a tyrant. Absolute power not only corrupts, it addicts, and those in power will do whatever they need to in order to stay there.
