Laszlo Bruszt and David Stark: The West Must Support Democracy in Arab World as It Did in Central Europe

Laszlo Bruszt is professor and chairman of the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. David Stark is the Arthur Lehman Professor of Sociology and International Affairs at Columbia University in New York City. Their coauthored book, “Postsocialist Pathways: Transforming Politics and Property in East Central Europe,” will be translated and published in Arabic in 2012.

The summer has not brought consolidation to processes of political change in North Africa. The political landscapes in Egypt and Tunisia are highly volatile. With only a few months before crucial elections, it is still highly uncertain who and what can guarantee that elections will widen and not narrow the road to consolidated democracy.

This situation is remarkably similar to the one Central Europeans experienced during their summer of uncertainty in 1989. But, whereas Western leaders offered a new vision about political change in Eastern Europe, the clumsy steps by Western leaders in 2011 do nothing to promote guarantees for democratic outcomes in North Africa, and they might actually have detrimental effects.

Democratic transitions in Central Europe in 1989 and those in North Africa today have an important feature in common. Authoritarian regimes on both continents were embedded in geopolitical pacts: External support given to these repressive regimes was seen as integral for sustaining regional stability.

In Eastern Europe, interventions by key Western leaders, at a highly uncertain and crucial conjuncture, helped reframe notions of regional security. Confronting head-on the dominant views that saw regime change in these countries as a potential threat to stability, they pictured democratization as an opportunity to recast global and regional frameworks....