Arjan Dirkse wrote:I think without democracy as a mechanism to put someone in power what it gets down to is just a power struggle. So for instance the "legitimate" Baath regime in Syria got power by a bloody coup.
True, though, prescribed democracy, supported by the west via state aid, IMF, NGO's etc. (is that what we are talking about?) has a litany of failures to suggest that that approach is seriously flawed.
An interesting report I read recently suggested aid to develop democracy in "fragile states" should, in the first place, be supporting long term national governments to allow stability to take hold. The idea (if I understand it correctly) being to avoid the mistakes of the past, whereby after the old system has collapsed, there is a rush to hold elections. These elections, do by definition, create democratic political divisions (via duopoly or multiparty system), which inadvertently replaces the old autocratic divisions, and are themselves a form if instability, that, inevitably, lead to the reimposition of a dictatorial regime by the successful "democrat".
It's an interesting take I think.
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