More Lessons from Revolution in the Arab World
Sami Mahroum, from the Abu Dhabi campus of INSEAD, the top-tier European business school, is making the case that what we are witnessing across the Arab world is indeed something completely new.
"The patterns of revolutions tend to be similar, focusing on the rise and fall of their leaders, a plunge into lawlessness, and finally a new order – not often any better than that which was overthrown. Today’s movement is different: its very plurality could render it invulnerable to being hijacked by any particular interest group. It is the dawn of a new power base not only in the Arab world, but in the world as a whole."
Mahroum argues that Western governments have in the past focused almost exclusively on positional and titular leaders, wherein the strategic question tends to boil down to "should we change dictators or not?" What this approach missed, besides improving leadership, was the emergence of a "Second Society" in the form of Facebook, Twitter, text messaging, and NGO's. This Second Society, in the hands of the Arab world's vast youth population bubble, competes with official and formal systems for communication, affiliation, and revolution.
"Small groups of like-minded self-organising people created islands of autonomy that were able to eventually torpedo the continuum of state-controlled hegemony and bring about the desired change."
The situation from Morocco to Pakistan remains fluid at this writing, and it remains to be seen whether politics in Tunisia and Egypt, to say nothing of Libya, will be any more democratic. Nonetheless, Mahroum's point is that the current type of revolution breaks the old model by not relying on charismatic or inspirational leaders to provide energy. It is the first revolution carried out by Generation Z, a generation that seems increasingly allergic to traditional types of centralized leadership. [And, as such, maybe we need to rethink just what is meant by "leadership" in a Second Society world.]
Mahroum's thinking is on-target so far as it goes, but I see two problems with assuming that his islands of autonomy are effective across the board. First, as Libya now seems to be illustrating, the Second Society may be the forum for getting a revolution started, but it may not be the best at completing the task when the government in power is willing to shoot its own citizens. A revolution when the government fights back requires some degree of formalized organization and strategy if it is to be more than a perpetual guerrilla insurgency.
The second problem I see is that overthrowing a government is a very different thing from building a new one. How should a Second Society-fomented revolution go about providing needed services, security, and an economy? Especially in countries as populous as Egypt or with densities as high as Gaza or where the makings of civil society are lacking. The devil really is in all those details.
This is not meant to be a critique of Mahroun, nor is it an indictment of the revolution. Rather, I agree with his point and support the aims of the revolutionaries, insofar as they include more humane and democratic governments, but I am concerned that we not confuse starting something with seeing it through.