Mubarak has resigned. Next steps in Egypt are uncertain, but it’s certain that authoritarian rulers around the world are watching these events with great trepidation.
What’s the lesson that China and the 102 of 160 developing countries around the world that are “partly free” or “unfree” (see Freedom House) are taking from Egypt and Tunisia? And is there a lesson for Western donors?
This paragraph is from a Ross Douthat Op-Ed in the New York Times a few days ago, referring to Egypt:
Recent events in Tunisia suggest two lessons. First, the west is wrong to think of old dictators as useful allies. Like other longstanding authoritarian despots before him, President Ben Ali managed to convince the United States (and also western allies like France and the UK), that the repressive nature of his regime was essential for regional stability. In this case, his bloated police state was viewed as a necessary inconvenience by western diplomats, given the alleged threat of radical Islam, even if it meant that the West was maintaining close diplomatic relations with a corrupt and
How long should presidents rule? On Tuesday, Colombia’s senate approved a national referendum to amend the constitution—again—to allow the popular president Alvaro Uribe to stand for election next year to yet another term in office.
You should care because this is representative of a big phenomenon that spans the whole developing world. For good reasons, many developing countries built presidential term limits into their constitutions—the contracts that govern how people agree to be ruled by each other.
The Templeton Foundation's ad in Sunday's NYTimes, and the associated postings on the foundation's Web site asked "Will Money Solve Africa's Development Problems?" A quick glance at the distribution of answers is bound to cause some chagrin in the development aid world. Of the eight men asked, two said "yes," five said "no" or "no way" or "I thought so" (which I took as a 'no") and one hedged his bet with "only if."