[In this book, author Hamid writes about what he calls a
"democratic dilemma" facing U.S. policymakers, who, he says, "want
democracy in theory but do not necessarily want its outcomes in
practice.”]
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PORTSIDE CULTURE

THE PROBLEM OF DEMOCRACY  
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Jonathan Freedland
January 18, 2023
The Guardian
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_ In this book, author Hamid writes about what he calls a "democratic
dilemma" facing U.S. policymakers, who, he says, "want democracy in
theory but do not necessarily want its outcomes in practice.” _

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_The Problem of Democracy
America, the Middle East, and the Rise and Fall of an Idea_
Shadi Hamid
Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780197579466

Whatever else he leaves behind, Sam Bankman-Fried, the crypto-whiz
charged with multiple counts of fraud
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has bequeathed a lasting gift to the publishing business. “I don’t
want to say no book is ever worth reading, but I actually do believe
something pretty close to that,” mused SBF to an interviewer. “If
you wrote a book, you fucked up and it should have been a
six-paragraph blog post.”

Of course, most literary types would dismiss those as the words of a
barbarian. But they have utility all the same. They could serve as an
initial hurdle any would-be author must clear, if only with their own
conscience: does this warrant a book – or could you boil it down to
six paragraphs in a blog?

That’s especially applicable to a nonfiction work of argument such
as the latest from Shadi Hamid, a rising-star scholar affiliated with
two of Washington’s liberal bastions, the Brookings Institution and
the Atlantic. Hamid writes the book as if prepared for his argument to
be distilled into six paragraphs or fewer. Indeed, he regularly
performs the task of summary himself, offering cable-TV-ready precis
of his thesis’s core elements.
 

His case is that when it comes to US attitudes to the great abroad,
especially the Middle East, there is a “‘democratic dilemma’: we
want democracy in theory but do not necessarily want its outcomes in
practice”. He cites the Arab spring of 2011 and especially the way
it played out in Cairo, a place Hamid knows well: he was born and
raised in Pennsylvania, but his parents came from Egypt and he was on
the ground during the great upheaval a decade ago.

He describes how US policymakers were rhetorically all for democracy
in Egypt, until the demos chose an Islamist, Mohamed Morsi, as its
president. That choice alarmed Washington to such an extent that the
US was not sorry to see Morsi toppled by the Egyptian military within
12 months. Barack Obama, who had taken his oratorical gifts
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Cairo just a couple of years earlier, hymning the glories of
democracy, refused even to call Morsi’s removal a coup.

The dilemma is hardly confined to either the past or the Middle East.
Repeatedly, well-meaning democrats find specifically democratic means
resulting in illiberal ends. It happened most recently in both Italy
and Sweden, where free and fair elections handed power to politicians
of the ultra-nationalist far right. It happened in the US itself six
short years ago. The result, in the Middle East at least, has been for
the US to put democracy to one side and support unelected autocrats
– so long as those dictators are happy to go along with US strategic
priorities for the region.
 

Hamid’s answer to the dilemma begins with separating democracy, the
way a society makes its choices, from liberalism, which he regards as
no more than one particular choice: “If democracy is a form of
government, liberalism is a form of governing,” he writes. While
stressing that he himself remains a liberal, committed to human
rights, individual liberty and gender equality, he suggests that the
US should no longer bundle up those principles with democracy in the
set of demands they make of other countries. Instead, Washington
should require no more than “democratic minimalism”, asking only
that publics get a fair say in who rules over them.

The thesis would appear to stumble at an early hurdle: given the
education Americans (and Britons) have had these last few years in the
importance of democratic norms, can a system really be considered
democratic if it’s stripped of its liberal accoutrements? In fact,
when we speak of “democracy”, isn’t that shorthand for
“liberal democracy”, which would include a free press, independent
judiciary and freedom of assembly?

Hamid anticipates that challenge and counters that such essentials are
included in his minimalist definition of democracy. It’s the quest
for liberal policy outcomes in previously undemocratic states that US
policymakers ought to drop. Yes, a new government in a hypothetical
Arab state might legislate to allow, for example, women lesser
inheritance rights than men, but if that’s what the people in that
state have voted for, then the US should swallow it – and keep the
military aid coming.
 

So that, in broadest outline, is the argument – expressed in six
paragraphs, as it happens. Does it clear the Bankman-Fried hurdle? It
does because Hamid combines an essay rooted in the abstract concepts
of political philosophy with close-up Washington reporting. It’s an
ambitious endeavour – a book that wants to be part John Rawls, part
Bob Woodward – but it yields some valuable insights. Confirming
Hamid’s thesis, and illustrating how gingerly Washington often
approaches democracy in the region, one former Obama adviser explains
that the US sought to ensure Egypt held presidential elections before
parliamentary ones – because they feared that in the latter contest,
the Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood would dominate. As indeed they
did.

Few would predict that Hamid’s “democratic minimalism” will
become US policy any time soon. It’s hard to imagine Joe Biden
telling Democratic party activists that they should be content to back
states that hold elections, regardless of any violations of women’s
or LGBTQ+ rights. But Hamid is surely right to say that continuing
with the current long-established approach – which sees the US hail
as partners regimes that are neither democratic nor liberal – should
be no kind of option at all.

 

 

* democracy
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* U.S. foreign policy
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* Liberalism
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