Monkey cage reader Ed Schatz sends along the following comment:
In this comparison of East Europe in 1989 and the Arab Middle East in 2011 (ungated), Lucan Way offers a series of fine insights, among which is that the international environment was crucially different in the two times/places. Proximity to the EU reinforced processes that would consolidate democracy in the 1989 bunch; Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya in 2011 lack the same.
Yet, I wonder: if we choose different comparative cases, would we be more optimistic about the chances for democracy in the Middle East? One take on liberalization in Turkey in the 1990s and the 2000s is that the armed forces compelled the Islamists to become good secularists, which, with fits and starts, they have done. I know too little about Tunisia or Egypt to comment, but enough to ask the question:
Are there enough domestic incentives to compel Ennahda in Tunisia or the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt to consolidate the democratic rules of the game, assuming they are both in power after upcoming elections?
The article by Way that Schatz refers to in his comments is part of a collection of articles on the Arab spring in the most recent issue of the _Journal of Democracy_. The Journal has made two of this pieces available for free; the rest can be founded gated here. In addition to Way’s piece on the comparisons between 1989 and 2011, there are also pieces on the global context, the role of the military, the impact of electoral systems, and whether the protest will eventually spread to Saudi Arabia. A nice example of how political science journals can occasionally be (at least somewhat…) current.