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The Stalled Arab Spring

(National Interest) Aaron David Miller - More than a year into the Arab Spring, one inconvenient and politically incorrect truth stands out: the Arabs are much better at acquiring and fighting over power than they are at sharing it. Unless the Arabs figure out a way to share power toward some common purpose, the prospects for anything resembling democratic and accountable polities will be slim to none. Indeed, these weren't revolutions where new overturned old as much as they were transactions in which established powers and parties maneuvered for control. In Egypt, the end of the Mubarak regime created new political space, but it was quickly occupied by the military, the Muslim Brotherhood and remnants of the old regime. Real power-sharing requires a commitment by politicians and publics to a national vision designed to further the common good. Instead, the Arabs have organized themselves into corporatist entities - military, tribes, Islamists of varying persuasions, minorities, Shia - each determined to protect their own. The writer is a Distinguished Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center In Washington.
2012-06-08 00:00:00
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