On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal had a debate between two former Bush (George W.) administration appointees on what we should do in Egypt. John Bolton said the U.S. should back the Egyptian army (subscription required). Elliott Abrams said we should cut off military and economic aid, both because it is required by U.S. law* and because it is in accord with American values (subscription required).
So who is right? I don’t know (though I suppose my heart is with Mr. Abrams). But while I am not sure whether aid should be cut off or not, it is important to understand what is involved here. If we do decide to cut off aid because, inter alia, the Foreign Assistance Act requires the suspension of foreign aid when a military coup ousts an elected government, we should be clear that we doing so because the Muslim Brotherhood government was “elected,” not because the Muslim Brotherhood government was democratic.
The fact that the Muslim Brotherhood government was elected does not mean Egypt was a democracy or that the Muslim Brotherhood was democratic. The key to democracy is not electing a government. Rather, it is being able to get rid of a bad government. In an article in The Economist in 1988, Sir Karl Popper said it this way:
“In ‘The Open Society and its Enemies’ I suggested that an entirely new problem should be recognised as the fundamental problem of a rational political theory. The new problem, as distinct from the old ‘Who should govern?’, can be formulated as follows: how is the state to be constituted so that bad rulers can be got rid of without bloodshed, without violence?
This, in contrast to the old question, is a thoroughly practical, almost technical problem. And the modern democracies are all good examples of practical solutions to this problem, even though they were not consciously designed with this problem in mind. For they all adopt what is the simplest solution to the new problem – that is, the principle that the government can be dismissed by a majority vote.”**
If the key to democracy is removing a government, as opposed to electing one, then, as I said, the election of the Muslim Brotherhood government in 2011 did not make Egypt a democracy. In the United States, for example, the proof of our democracy was not the election of George Washington in 1789. Rather, it was John Adams leaving office in 1801. Election of a government is a step toward democracy. Peaceful removal of a government is confirmation of democracy.
If this, i.e., the peaceful removal of a bad government, is the definition of democracy (or, alternatively, if this is what Egypt should want in its government), what is the best way to get there? Would it be a continuation (or reinstallation) of the Muslim Brotherhood government? Or is it more likely to come, eventually, from the Army coup?
Framing the question as a matter of being able to peacefully remove a government, as opposed to merely electing a government, may make the question of what to do harder to answer. After all, if the Muslim Brotherhood was duly elected, then restoring the Muslim Brotherhood would establish a duly elected government. But who is more likely to let themselves be peacefully removed? Or, perhaps, a better way of asking it would be this: Which of the two, the Muslim Brotherhood or the military, is more likely to turn into or eventually result in a government that would let itself be peacefully removed? While one can’t know for sure, my guess is that it’s the military. The attacks by the Muslim Brotherhood on Coptic Christians gave us no confidence that a Muslim Brotherhood government would ever let itself be removed peacefully.
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* Section 508 of the Foreign Assistance Act provides as follows (here and here):
“None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available pursuant to this Act shall be obligated or expended to finance directly any assistance to any country whose duly elected head of government is deposed by military coup or decree.”
** Sir Karl Popper, “Popper on Democracy: The open society and its enemies revisited,” The Economist, April 23, 1988.
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